If you haven’t heard of cryptocurrency, you might want to start doing your research because it’s the latest craze in the digital asset exchange universe. Ellie is a stay-at-home mom in Toledo who started investing in cryptocurrency in order to pay for a $50,000 roof. She referred to cryptos as “the future of money.”

Cryptocurrency is a type of digital assets class used as a means of exchange. Bitcoin is the first known example of cryptocurrency and alternative coins have followed since.

Ellie was first turned on to the idea of trading crypto coins while listening to Max Keiser several years ago. That’s when she and her husband decided to look into it more, and she even started doing her own research.

“If something happened to him I would have no idea what to do with it, so that’s when I started looking into it,” Ellie said.

The more she looked into it, she realized there were more than just Bitcoins, but also other types of cryptocurrency such as Litecoin and OMG. She hopes to pay off her daughter’s medical bills with what money grows from the Litecoin, and she has some OMG that she hopes will turn into money to buy an RV for traveling around the country. Some are predicting that the value of OMG will increase tremendously within a few years, which will supply Ellie with enough money for the RV she wants.

Because Ellie is downsizing, she sells a lot of her stuff on eBay that she would have otherwise thrown away. She takes the money she gets from eBay and puts it into cryptos. She said it’s like free money in her mind.

There are several platforms you can use when trading crypto coins. One of the platforms Ellie uses is ABRA. On ABRA, you can invest in 25 kinds of cryptocurrencies. She anticipates that the money she has on ABRA will grow and pay for the roof she needs. Other exchange sites that Ellie has used include Coinbase, KuCoin, ForkDelta and EtherDelta.

“Then you want to get your coins off of whatever platform you have it on and you want to have it in a wallet,” Ellie said.

Just like any currency exchange, cryptocurrency is a gamble, but tends to be more volatile than other money markets. Ellie explained that you have to have “a strong stomach” when trading cryptos because there’s always a chance that the market can go to zero, and it’s a risk you’re taking just like with the stock market. She plans to continue trading cryptocurrency for the foreseeable future.

The $5,000 she invested on ABRA has the potential to grow to 10 times her money by January, and she’s looking forward to using that money to pay for her new roof. She encourages everybody to try Coinbase, even if they were just to buy $100 of Bitcoin and $100 of Litecoin, forget about it for five years and see how it grows.

“I strongly feel that what the Internet was to communication, cryptos are to banking,” Ellie said.

Trading cryptocurrency leaves Ellie time to devote to her other hobbies. When she’s not taking care of her kids or researching the crypto exchange world, she likes to work on her vegetable garden, scrapbook and play with essential oils.

Caitlin Renton

Caitlin Renton owns and manages Silicon Rust Belt with the goal of spreading the latest news about technology events and startups in the Midwest. She is a copy editor, writer, cat mom and horror movie enthusiast from Michigan.