This is an opinion editorial by Konstantin Rabin, a finance and technology writer.
I am one of those lucky enough to discover Bitcoin over a decade ago before it gained mainstream attention. Sadly, I’m also one of the jerks who saw this opportunity, he didn’t think too much of it at first and let it go.
In this little story, I would like to share the path that led me to stop investing in bitcoin three times before finally giving in and becoming a HODLer. So here are the key lessons I learned throughout this journey that are worth sharing with anyone who is still doubting BTC.
the beggining
Since I started my first full-time job at an online brokerage in 2011, it should come as no surprise that I had a group of colleagues who were genuinely into trading and super passionate about all things investing, technology and progress in the financial world It wasn’t long before I made a friend named Edgar. We share some interests, predominantly gaming and our old addictions to nicotine. Even though we worked in different departments and rarely had to collaborate on our jobs, we still pinged each other whenever it was time to go outside and have a smoke, chatting happily about life, the universe, and everything in between, all the while dosing ourselves. of nicotine. and fresh air.
One day, sometime during 2012, I came across one of these “smoke?” I texted Edgar when I noticed his Skype status was some kind of gibberish that looked like a cat had been walking on his keyboard.
It looked like this: “1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2”.
During our smoke session, I asked him, “Was it a cat or did your account get hacked?” He denied both possibilities and then went into a long and convoluted explanation about Bitcoin addresses and blockchains.
Edgar passionately explained what the whole Bitcoin thing is about, and his enthusiasm instantly made me very interested in the subject. Being in the investment industry, I was very aware of many online scams and dubious fake products like e-gold, which seemed, at least on a superficial level, to be all similar. But, the more he told me about it, the more it seemed that Bitcoin could be much more than just a night flight scheme; at least it was worth the gamble.
My biggest issue was that 2012 was probably my worst year on record when it came to financial health, and while 3,730,218 public keys already existed on the Bitcoin network by then, I certainly didn’t have the extra money to bet on a new and unproven technology that promised to “revolutionize” the way we make money.
To put it bluntly, I was so poor. So poor, in fact, that by the last week of every month, my visits to the grocery store were reduced to choosing between buying food or killing my hunger pangs with a pack of cigarettes. So, I came to the conclusion that while eating meat was considered a luxury, betting on the future of digitized tokens was not within the scope of logical spending. At that time, bitcoin was trading for less than $10.
The doubt
Fast forward to 2015. Having gotten a few good years of work under my belt, I was a seasoned employee and had risen to head of marketing strategy and execution for one of Europe’s most prominent fintech start-ups. The workplace was great. Most of my colleagues were hardcore software developers who worked tirelessly to retrieve people’s financial data from banks without asking the banks for permission. As if to enforce the type of work being done, there was even a good old pirate flag flying in the office As you can imagine, many of my colleagues were huge fans of Bitcoin and all it stood for.
Since I had grown quite professionally, the numbers indicating my salary had also seen a substantial addition. I was finally able to buy cigarettes Y food, while even having a large amount of money that could be reserved for a rainy day. Working in this world, I knew more than anyone that simply keeping your money in the bank is not the way to go and I started thinking about investing my additional capital as I had no real plan to spend it.
My colleagues threw the term “Bitcoin” around the office quite often, but I was still skeptical that it would make a solid investment. At that time, bitcoin was trading at around $250, has just fallen from its all-time high of around $1,000. I tackled it with my well trained investment brain and came to the conclusion that bitcoin szx will most likely never recover and would continue to decline until only some of the most hardened nerds were still holding on to it.
I was even looking at the bitcoin mastery charts and seeing that despite this drop, it still had a massive dominance over the market, which led me to the conclusion that it was the only cryptocurrency that managed to achieve anything, and without competition, it would never manage to grow to something giant.
“I need a more stable investment product for my savings,” said the wise investor in my mind, and I bought $7,500 worth of gold bullion. Having watched gold’s continued rise since the 2008 economic crisis, it struck me as one of the most stable investments possible.
rejection
Fast forward to 2018 when the whole world was absolutely crazy about cryptocurrencies. In addition to bitcoin, many other cryptocurrencies emerged and the initial coin offering (ICO) boom was in full swing, with $6.88 billion raised via ICO in just the first quarter of 2018. Everyone and their mothers were talking about Bitcoin and cryptos. You would go to get a haircut and find out at the barbershop, you would go on Facebook and you could not find a single page or group that did not mention cryptocurrencies in one way or another; even my parents called me and asked if I had any, telling me that I should get one since they heard it’s likely to go up.
At the time, he was already offering some content marketing services independently, and business was doing well, as the ICO brothers would spend money on almost any service offered to them, as long as they could pay in crypto. Even though stablecoins like USDT had already been around for a while, it was quite rare for anyone to transact on them. I saw that most of my payments came in the form of BTC, with the rate ranging from $4,000 to $13,000 per bitcoin.
It was during this time that I acquired my first bitcoin, but being swept up in the utter madness surrounding the entire crypto space, I decided not to own any BTC and sold it all through someone I found through local bitcoin as fast as i got it. Back then, the daily volatility was huge, and I would take a cab to the local Bitcoin exchange as soon as BTC hit my wallet to cash out for fiat money safety.
The acceptation
The middle of 2018 was a turning point for me, career-wise. I stopped working full time for someone else and decided to focus on building my own business. At that time, I was also able to trade in one of my projects for a substantial sum, which provided the seed capital to get my new business off the ground, while the funds in my account allowed me to sleep peacefully at night while building the new business.
Life was good. He already owned some real estate, made far more money than he could spend, and had all the job opportunities he could handle. Things were up and up.
Then one day, it just hit me. Why the hell would she charge? I have a lot of fiat in the bank and many other investments in the markets. How does having an extra $10,000 in my name make a substantial difference to my well-being?
I finally came to the conclusion that I wouldn’t, but not having bitcoin could make me poor again. What if fiat becomes monopoly money? After all, I don’t really trust the government and the people I’ve met throughout my life who trusted Bitcoin were the ones I really trusted much more than the people who ran fiat. With this in mind, I began to accumulate and hold as many BTC as my finances would allow. My logic was simple: they pay me in BTC, I can keep it without getting paid, never.
What lessons have I learned?
I’m not mad at myself for not getting bitcoin sooner. In general, I am a happy man and, despite the recent crypto winter and events like ftx accident, I remain very bullish on cryptocurrencies as a whole. However, there are some specific lessons I learned from my BTC journey that I would like to share with you now.
Lesson one: never be too “small” to invest
At the early stage, I was thinking that it would be great to spend about $1,000 to acquire BTC, but I just didn’t have it and I passed up. In general, if you see an opportunity, take it.
You shouldn’t invest all of your savings or feel uncomfortable about your investment, but committing even a fraction of your income shouldn’t be too difficult. Could you have somehow saved $50 in 2012 to acquire 5 BTC? Most likely yes, but the idea of investing just $50 was a turn off for me.
Lesson Two: Sacrifices Must Be Made
I had to dig up some past experiences to compose this story as I wanted to get the dates right. While doing so, I noticed a $100 hotel reservation made in early 2012. It was for one night abroad, which was more or less a sightseeing trip with my girlfriend.
Yes, being broke and spending so much on a hotel is not the wisest decision in general. But in hindsight it’s 20/20 and looking back, I certainly could have saved the trip and invested in BTC instead, or I could have just gone to a cheaper hotel and spent the rest buying BTC. There’s no use looking back and feeling bad, but remember that making a sacrifice today could lead to your financial well-being years from now.
Lesson Three: Balance Your Investment Portfolio
Every investment book tells you, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Nothing is new here. However, this is something that I completely ignored in 2015. I had money to invest and had some desire to acquire BTC, but for some reason, I decided to stick with only one commodity. If I had only invested 20% in BTC, my return would have been substantially higher.
Lesson Four: Don’t Chase Historical Prices
One of the reasons I chose to invest in gold over BTC is simply because I felt like I was buying “cheap” gold. I balanced this against the fact that I would have had to pay 25 times more for bitcoin at that time than I might have paid some three years earlier. In hindsight, I now know that price now is price now: Don’t discount an investment today just because it seems expensive compared to three years ago.
Lesson Five: Become part of the ecosystem
Accepting and holding BTC is considerably easier (mentally) than buying it for fiat. If you offer services or goods, why not let your customers pay in BTC? Just don’t make the mistake I did and remove everything as soon as you enter it.
Keep at least a fraction of your BTC balance intact and forget about it for now. This will only increase adoption rates and work in your favor and that of the entire community in the long run.
This is a guest post by Konstantin Rabin. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.
