Hey it’s Richard Patey, here’s my backstory of how I got into the world of digital assets

Domaining

I got into domaining back in 2020 during lockdown, from discovering excellent domain podcasts such as Domain Sherpa and also one by Josh Reason at the time.

I invited Josh onto my Website Investing podcast and learned about how to buy at wholesale value, and sell at retail value at 10x the price.

I started purchasing domains, using tools such as ExpiredDomains.net , at GoDaddy Auctions and also hand registering domains such as lightweight.co for $130 which I sold on the brand marketplace Squadhelp for $999.

You can see a list of my domains for sale on Dan.com .

But in 2021 my attention moved to NFTs, a much more liquid asset.

Crypto & NFTs

I first bought Bitcoin back in 2016 and caught the altcoin run up in 2017 before selling everything at the start of 2018.

Over 3 years went by, where I was focussed back on online business, until March 2021 when the price of Ethereum started to rise again.

I'd been out of the market for so long that I felt the need to reeducate myself, so what better way than subscribing to a paid Substack (like the one I had sold) called Bankless.

I got in at just the right time as I minted a free NFT badge (my first NFT mint) that got me their $BANK token drop and access to their DAO - a decentralized media organisation.

I then went super deep into media DAOs, earning tokens by contributing to their newsletters and blogs, and learning about token gated access, web3 and the future of work .

I made money by receiving and then ultimately selling DAO tokens before the market collapsed in Q1 of 2022.

But my attention on DAOs and social tokens took away from getting in super early to NFTs.

I'm pretty sure I landed on the Bored Ape Yacht Club website back in April 2021 when they launched but didn't understand what the hell it was - a potential $450K error (per Ape) if I'd miraculously sold at the top.

My first purchase of an NFT was a Lazy Lion in August of 2021 and that, combined with a series of Domain Sherpa NFT focussed podcasts called Down The Rabbit Hole, got me into purchasing a Mutant Ape for 4ETH in October 2021.

My best trade was minting a Moonbird for 2.5ETH and selling at 21ETH, although it’s also feels like my worst trade as I should have sold between 30-40ETH. Learned a hard lesson on this one.

In August of 2023 I started buying Solana October 2023 I went to the Solana Breakpoint conference (did write up here). Since then I’ve traded a Mad Lads NFT and now own and rock a Tensorian as my PFP.

Blockchain domains

I mentioned my patey.eth wallet address above which is actually an NFT domain on the Ethereum Name Service .

On ENS, you buy a second level domain (i.e. 'patey') on their top level domain (i.e. .eth).

In March of 2022 I discovered Handshake blockchain domains at the HandyCon conference .

Handshake domains are new TLDs based on a distributed and decentralized blockchain. They are domain names that you own and can’t be taken away (or have websites you publish on them taken down).

And you can sell second level domains on them.

The top Handshake TLD is c/, owned by Clay Collins (who I mentioned in the first email in this series) which makes him six figures a year in renewal fees.

I bought the lazy/ TLD and plan to sell names on it soon as discussed in Handshake Domains Coming of Age .

Come follow me on Twitter or Linkedin and subscribe to my Solana focussed newsletter:

Cheers!

Richard Patey