I was way, way out of my comfort zone – but here’s how I made money trading bitcoin

It was exhilarating being on the super-highway to the future for a moment – but it is really little more than gambling, writes Katy Brand

I was the owner of half a bitcoin. I was swimming in a natural current with the cleverest turtles (Getty)

When did you first hear about a thing called cryptocurrency? And what was your immediate reaction? If you are anything like me, it might have been: “I will not be able to understand that. At all.” And then you forgot about it all because there were more pressing matters to attend to like an MOT to book, or a child shouting that there is a wasps’ nest in their bedroom.

So I was as surprised as anyone when a few years ago I actually made some money trading bitcoin. I know. It is scarcely believable. I have only recently learned how to use Google docs.

This is how it happened. Back in 2012 I was feeling a bit flush. Also a little over-confident about my tech abilities having recently bought and installed a new smart TV. On a slightly slow work afternoon, I thought: “I wonder if I could buy a bitcoin? I wonder what that would be like?” I embarked on what I thought of as a kind of “crypto-tech safari”. I was way, way out of my comfort zone.

I found a website that sort of explained it, if you already knew what you were doing. I set up a digital wallet that had a very long and complicated password that I was not allowed to re-set myself. I went on to a forum that traded bitcoin. It did not look like any of the websites I had ever visited before to buy things on the internet. But I was determined. I had come this far. With one eye shut I entered my bank details, bought half a bitcoin for £200, watched it ping into my digital wallet and then I shut my computer and had a bit of a lie down.

I was the owner of half a bitcoin. In the sense that you can ever really own anything that exists in the ephemera of the digital world, yes, I owned it. I did not know what to do with it, but I suddenly felt that I had joined a fast track to the future. I was swimming in a natural current with the cleverest turtles. Then the batteries in the smoke alarm needed replacing and I had to get a chicken in the oven for tea, and so I promptly forgot all about it.

Cut to five years later, with a house move and a new computer in between, and I was not feeling so flush. And then I remembered my bitcoin. Now, don’t get too excited – this was some years ago. I did not sell that half bitcoin for ten grand in January. No. But I did sell it for £2,000, and that £2,000 came in very handy indeed at the time.

It took three rather tense days to find the damn thing, though. My digital wallet had buried itself deep in the pit of my hard drive. It really did feel like mining. And then it appeared – a miracle of indecipherable code. I tapped in my password (yes, I did! Incredibly, I’d had the foresight to email it to myself – well done, past me). I was in. I sold it to a man named Parrot24 who lived in Singapore. The whole thing felt like a strange hallucination. And then, grateful for the bit of extra cash, I paid a few bills and forgot about it again.

About six months ago I decided to give it another whirl. I bought some more bitcoin, this time from a very friendly, helpful and customer-facing app. It was weirdly easy. And this time, £200 bought me an awful lot less. I watched anxiously every day as it swung about, gaining, losing, gaining, losing. It was like having a very unpredictable pet. I found it rather exhausting. I would check it all the time. Incremental differences on the graph would make me nervous.

Well, cut a long story short, yesterday I sold it all for a negligible profit. I had started to read more about bitcoin and I hadn’t previously fully understood the issues around mining for it and its impact on climate change. I grew tired of relying on capricious billionaires’ social media activity to see what would happen to my money on an hourly basis.

I read an article that explained very clearly that until the aim of a cryptocurrency is to become stable and balanced against other major currencies, it is really little more than gambling. So, I have retreated for now. It was exhilarating being on the super-highway to the future for a moment, but it will have to wait. I’ve got to feed the cat.