Trip Report: Struggles of a new crypto user

Hi all, just want to give an idea of what it’s like for a new user of cryptocurrency.

Prior to this past month, I have never used crypto before. I however wanted to buy a knife on a game called CSGO in a third party market, so I decided to try out crypto to make my purchase.

I first research where to buy crypto, and find that one of the few available exchanges to me is Gemini.

I make an account, and submit my information and ID to verify. It verifies in 6 hours, which wasn’t a fun wait but whatever I guess.

I get back on my Gemini account and use my debit card to deposit. Deposit fails about 5 times, and after calling back my bank they finally let me purchase. That process took about an hour to figure out as a newbie.

I then finally have balance in my Gemini account of $300, and make a purchase of Litecoin as my research told me this has some of the cheapest fees on its network when sending to another Litecoin wallet.

It tries to only first give me like $280 worth using their autobuy feature, but then I realized you can go on the actual market itself within Gemini and I was able to get $300 for like $295ish. Kind of a trap if I really didnt look any deeper so bad taste in my mouth already from that

I then try to withdraw my Litecoin to the csgo market and I get a warning that my crypto is locked on the platform for 10 DAYS and I cannot withdraw it.

What the FUCK. At no point leading up to this was it ever mentioned I had to wait this long just to get my own crypto off the exchange.

Thankfully, the value of my Litecoin has gone up a bit since then but if it had fallen I would not have enough money to actually buy what I wanted.

I wait 10 full days and I finally get the chance to send it off to the csgo market and by that point the specific knife pattern I wanted was already gone.

What a pleasant experience this was. I consider myself relatively tech savvy but this seemed quite complicated of a process with a lot of traps to avoid.

I’m unsure how the average public would even be able to use this, because my first experience honestly fucking sucked when I reallyyyy wanted to enjoy it