Yes I could have simply bought EOS in the market, but I wanted to experience what buying in the crowd sale was like, and I could potentially get the tokens slightly cheaper than the market rate.
For those of you unaware, the EOS crowd sale is nearly a year long! Each day 2 million EOS tokens are released and divided among all the ether pledged that day. So on days with fewer eth pledged, each participant will receive more EOS per eth. In practice it's fairly efficient and the auction usually ends with the tokens costing around the prevailing market rate.
But why is EOS doing a crowd sale on the Ethereum network? Good question! I guess they felt that it was a useful platform to use for funding...but it does introduce complexity (like we need more of that in crypto!)
Have you read the terms and conditions?! Yes, the EOS tokens on the ethereum network entitle the holders to nothing/zip/nada. They are not tokens native to the EOS network, these haven't been created yet. Predictably this has led to accusations of fraud (you'll find many YouTube videos on this subject). Early investors picked up EOS tokens very cheaply. Have a look here: https://eosscan.io/ scroll down and it gives you the price raised in each days auction. In the early days you could pick up a token for a dollar... I paid $8-or-so for mine. I think the price spiked in recent weeks because the EOS team are now asking token holders to register so their (currently ERC20) tokens can be mapped over to the EOS network to be swapped for the real ones in 2018. Basically there's more trust and certainty in the market now.
As I said in my previous post, I think EOS could be big, potentially with a market cap higher than Ethereum in the short term. So I decided to invest what is quite a lot for me: I bought 1 eth worth a day for 6 days, so the amount I got each day varied. In the end my 6 ETH became 522 EOS.
The process is still too complex. First I plugged in my hardware wallet, then I moved ETH from MyEtherWallet (MEW) through Meta Mask to https://www.EOS.IO (had to pay fees to the ethereum network). I elected to buy 1 eth-worth of EOS a day for 6 days over Christmas, my cunning plan was that others would be distracted and I'd receive more EOS (this was nonsense as it turned out!). Pledging my eth to the auction was fairly straightforward. Then all I could do was wait.
EasyJet killed my laptop during my trip home to Ireland for Christmas. Today I got a new laptop and attempted to retrieve my tokens. This was NOT so easy!
I Watched lots of YouTube vids & read a few Steemit posts which turned out to be wrong. Then figured out I had to go back through the process like I wanted to buy more EOS on EOS.io. I think I'm on the right path, but this doesn't work at first. Then my Meta Mask pop-up box is blank. I Eventually figure out (after having a little meltdown and reading Reddit posts) that it's a bug with the software & I have to re-install it.
Finally we are motoring... the process of claiming my tokens and then them being sent to Meta Mask is straightforward. I manage 4 (out of 6) transactions before running out of eth to pay for the gas. Luckily it was very seamless sending a few $ from Coinbase to Meta Mask...but at the completion of this transaction it was just stuck on 'pending'. I'd no idea what was going on. Eventually it cleared after 2 hours (!) & I was able to finish the transaction. Now my tokens are on Meta Mask. I've no idea if, or how, to move them to MEW...is Meta Mask just a wallet? Is it secured with my hardware wallet? I've No idea. Mission accomplished, but it's all really awkward & needs to be much easier to do for mass adoption of this stuff.
In retrospect I should just have bought EOS on an exchange!
Happy New Year everyone!