# Diary of a Crypto Noob > One beginner, every mistake, written down Diary of a Crypto Noob covers onramp, offramp, swap, corporate wallet, custody, acquiring, stablecoin payments, bitcoin payments, otc, licensing, cards, industries, exchange and nothing else. Every article is written by Sam Ortega. Came into crypto in 2024 with $500 and no idea what he was doing. Has been keeping a diary since. The intended reader is other beginners who need to know they are not alone in their mistakes. No price predictions, no investment advice and no paid placements: articles explain how something works so the reader can decide for themselves. Where a number matters, the article states where it came from and when it was measured. 45 articles, published 2026-03-16 to 2026-10-20. Every article is also served as plain Markdown: replace the trailing slash with `.md` — https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-payments-policy-we-wrote.md ## Industries - [The Two-Page Policy That Settled Most Arguments](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-payments-policy-we-wrote/): What our crypto payments policy says, why the auditor asked for one, and the sections we nearly left out. - [A Year of Crypto in the Accounts, Reviewed](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/crypto-and-our-accountant-a-year-later/): What our accountant said at the second year end, and the three things that made it straightforward. - [The Conversation With Our Bank That Made Everything Easier](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/what-our-bank-needed-to-know/): Fifteen minutes with the relationship manager, before the first settlement, and we have had no questions since. - [The Client Who Insisted on Paying in Crypto](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/when-a-client-wanted-to-pay-in-crypto/): It was not about cost for them. Understanding why changed how I handle these conversations. - [What Crypto Payments Changed for a Consulting Business](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/crypto-for-a-consulting-business/): A year of numbers: which invoices used it, what it saved, and where it made no difference at all. - [Which Businesses I Know Actually Use Crypto Payments](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/how-different-businesses-use-this/): A survey of people I know, and the pattern that explains who adopted and who did not. ## Exchange - [How We Chose Where the Company Trades](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/choosing-where-we-trade/): Six questions in one email eliminated three of five venues before we compared a single fee. ## Licensing - [Rechecking Our Providers a Year Later](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/verifying-a-provider-annually/): Two had changed ownership. One had varied its permissions. Nobody had written to tell us. - [I Read the Terms of Service. Two Clauses Changed My Mind.](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/reading-the-terms-of-service/): Fifteen minutes on a document nobody opens, and it told me more than a week of comparing features. - [I Checked the Licences of Every Platform I Use](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/checking-a-platform-licence/): Five minutes each. Two did not check out, and one of them was holding a balance for me. ## Corporate wallet - [The Quarterly Review That Takes Twenty Minutes](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-wallet-review-we-do-quarterly/): Who has access, which addresses are registered, and what the log shows. It has caught something every time. - [When We Outgrew the Shared Login](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/when-we-outgrew-the-shared-login/): One account for the whole team seemed practical until someone left and we could not tell what they had done. - [Month End Took a Day. Now It Takes an Hour.](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/reconciling-crypto-at-month-end/): What changed: separate wallets by purpose, a mandatory reference field, and a platform whose export actually reconciles. - [Setting Up the Company Wallet, and the Control We Nearly Skipped](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/setting-up-the-company-wallet/): Approval rules felt excessive for a team of four. The one we almost disabled is the one that would have mattered. ## Swap - [Paying a Supplier Abroad for the First Time](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/paying-a-supplier-abroad/): The transfer would have cost fifty euros and taken four days. What I did instead and what I had to check first. - [I Compared Swap Quotes Properly for the First Time](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/comparing-swap-quotes/): Two minutes of arithmetic showed I had been paying about four times more than necessary on routine conversions. - [I Sent It on the Wrong Network](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/my-first-swap-mistake/): The most common expensive mistake in crypto, made by someone who knew about it, and what actually happened next. ## Otc - [Who Sends First: The Question We Settle Before the Price](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/settling-a-trade-safely/): A counterparty who accepted our settlement terms at a small size and objected at a large one told us what we needed to know. - [Why We Keep Two Desk Relationships](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/two-desks-not-one/): Not for pricing, though that improved. For the week our usual desk stopped quoting. - [Asking Three Desks for the Same Price at the Same Time](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/getting-a-desk-quote/): My first attempt at comparing quotes was useless because I did it sequentially. Here is what changed. - [The Trade That Moved the Price Against Me](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-trade-that-was-too-big/): I placed a market order that was larger than the book could absorb, and watched it fill at progressively worse prices. ## Stablecoin payments - [Deciding What to Do With the Balance Nobody Decided to Hold](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/what-we-do-with-the-balance/): We had several thousand in stablecoin for two months because nobody had chosen not to. Here is the policy we wrote. - [The Invoice Template That Stopped the Problems](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/our-stablecoin-invoice-template/): Seven lines, each one added after something specific went wrong. - [The Network That Cost Twelve Times More](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-network-fee-that-surprised-us/): Same stablecoin, same amount, same client. The network choice changed the fee from under a dollar to over ten. - [Why We Convert Stablecoin Immediately](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/why-we-do-not-hold-usdt/): Holding it felt harmless. Three reasons changed my mind, and one of them was the accounting. ## Acquiring - [Integrating Crypto Payments: The Part I Skipped](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/integrating-payments-what-broke/): The happy path took an afternoon. The thing I did not build caused every support ticket for a month. - [The Settlement That Arrived Two Days Late](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-settlement-that-arrived-late/): One missed payout, an explanation that sounded reasonable, and the rule I made afterwards. - [I Worked Out What Our Payments Actually Cost](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/comparing-what-payments-cost-us/): Not the card rate. Everything, including the transactions we could not accept at all. The number was larger than I expected. - [How We Chose a Crypto Payment Provider](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/choosing-a-payment-provider-for-us/): The question that eliminated three of five before we looked at a single fee. - [The Refund Request I Declined, and Why](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-refund-request-i-declined/): A customer overpaid and asked for the difference sent somewhere else. Everything about it was polite and I said no anyway. - [The First Client Who Wanted to Pay in Crypto](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/accepting-crypto-from-a-client/): What I had to decide before saying yes, and the two things I got wrong in the first month. ## Custody - [Why We Stopped Keeping Everything in One Place](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/splitting-where-we-keep-things/): Not because anything went wrong. Because working out what would happen if it did was uncomfortable. - [The Custody Questions That Got Uncomfortable Answers](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/what-our-custodian-diligence-found/): Nine questions to three providers. The ones they would not answer told me more than the ones they would. - [Do We Actually Need a Custodian? What We Worked Out.](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/do-we-need-a-custodian/): Three questions decided it for us, and none of them were about technology. ## Cards - [The Crypto Card I Stopped Using, and What Replaced It](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-crypto-card-i-stopped-using/): It worked fine. The tax record it generated was the problem, and one configuration change fixed it. ## Bitcoin payments - [I Measured Which Customers Actually Pay in Crypto](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/who-actually-pays-in-bitcoin/): A quarter of offering it, without a discount, and the split was not what I expected in either direction. - [The Bitcoin Payment That Took Forty Minutes](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/accepting-bitcoin-for-the-first-time/): The customer had paid. Our system said unpaid. Nothing was wrong and it still cost us a support conversation. ## Offramp - [Explaining Crypto Payments to My Accountant](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/explaining-crypto-payments-to-my-accountant/): The questions she asked, the records that satisfied them, and the export I now insist on before using a platform. - [Invoicing a Client in Crypto for the First Time](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/getting-paid-in-crypto/): What I put on the invoice, what I got wrong, and the six lines that stopped it happening again. - [The Bank Called About My Crypto Transfer](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-bank-called-about-my-transfer/): What they asked, what answered it, and what a colleague did wrong that cost him the account. - [Getting Money Out Took Longer Than Getting It In](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/my-first-conversion-back-to-euros/): The sale was instant. The bank transfer was not, and the first one triggered checks nobody had mentioned. ## Onramp - [What the Corporate Account Application Actually Asked For](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/opening-a-corporate-account/): The full document list, the questions that were harder than expected, and what I would prepare in advance next time. - [Nine Days Waiting for a Verification I Could Have Done Earlier](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/waiting-for-verification/): A payment stalled because I hit a limit I did not know existed, during a week when it mattered. - [The Card Fee My Bank Charged That the Platform Never Mentioned](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/the-card-payment-that-cost-extra/): I compared providers on their fees and paid a larger one somewhere nobody told me about. - [Buying Crypto for the Company: Everything That Went Wrong First](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/my-first-company-crypto-purchase/): The transfer bounced, the invoice was useless and the limit was lower than I needed. What I would do differently. ## About this site - [About](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/about/): what the site covers, who writes it and how articles are checked. - [Author](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/author/): Sam Ortega. Came into crypto in 2024 with $500 and no idea what he was doing. Has been keeping a diary since. - [Contact](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/contact/): corrections and questions. - [Privacy](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/privacy/): what the site does and does not collect. ## Machine-readable - [https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/llms-full.txt](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/llms-full.txt): full text of every article in one file. - [https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/sitemap-index.xml](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/sitemap-index.xml): every indexable URL. - [https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/rss.xml](https://diaryofacryptonoob.com/rss.xml): feed of new articles.