Came into crypto in 2024 with $500 and no idea what he was doing. Has been keeping a diary since.
What Sam Ortega covers here
Everything published on Diary of a Crypto Noob is written by one person, and the scope is deliberately narrow: onramp, offramp, swap, corporate wallet, custody, acquiring, stablecoin payments, bitcoin payments, otc, licensing, cards, industries, exchange. Articles stay inside it rather than chasing whatever is trending.
How the writing is checked
Figures carry the date they were taken. Claims that can be verified link to a primary source rather than to another article summarising it. Where something is genuinely uncertain, the article says so instead of rounding the uncertainty away.
Corrections are published with a note saying what changed and when. If you find an error, the contact page is the fastest route.
Published on this site
- The Two-Page Policy That Settled Most Arguments
- A Year of Crypto in the Accounts, Reviewed
- How We Chose Where the Company Trades
- The Conversation With Our Bank That Made Everything Easier
- The Client Who Insisted on Paying in Crypto
- What Crypto Payments Changed for a Consulting Business
- Rechecking Our Providers a Year Later
- The Quarterly Review That Takes Twenty Minutes
- Paying a Supplier Abroad for the First Time
- Which Businesses I Know Actually Use Crypto Payments
- Who Sends First: The Question We Settle Before the Price
- Why We Keep Two Desk Relationships
- Deciding What to Do With the Balance Nobody Decided to Hold
- The Invoice Template That Stopped the Problems
- Integrating Crypto Payments: The Part I Skipped
- The Settlement That Arrived Two Days Late
- I Worked Out What Our Payments Actually Cost
- Why We Stopped Keeping Everything in One Place
- The Custody Questions That Got Uncomfortable Answers
- The Crypto Card I Stopped Using, and What Replaced It
- I Read the Terms of Service. Two Clauses Changed My Mind.
- I Checked the Licences of Every Platform I Use
- Asking Three Desks for the Same Price at the Same Time
- The Trade That Moved the Price Against Me
- I Measured Which Customers Actually Pay in Crypto
- The Bitcoin Payment That Took Forty Minutes
- The Network That Cost Twelve Times More
- Why We Convert Stablecoin Immediately
- How We Chose a Crypto Payment Provider
- The Refund Request I Declined, and Why
- The First Client Who Wanted to Pay in Crypto
- Do We Actually Need a Custodian? What We Worked Out.
- When We Outgrew the Shared Login
- Month End Took a Day. Now It Takes an Hour.
- Setting Up the Company Wallet, and the Control We Nearly Skipped
- I Compared Swap Quotes Properly for the First Time
- I Sent It on the Wrong Network
- Explaining Crypto Payments to My Accountant
- Invoicing a Client in Crypto for the First Time
- The Bank Called About My Crypto Transfer
- Getting Money Out Took Longer Than Getting It In
- What the Corporate Account Application Actually Asked For
- Nine Days Waiting for a Verification I Could Have Done Earlier
- The Card Fee My Bank Charged That the Platform Never Mentioned
- Buying Crypto for the Company: Everything That Went Wrong First