I'm in college and a millionaire because of crypto. Q&A
I'm a college sophomore at a target, and currently at about $2 million altogether. I've been involved in the Bitcoin community for a couple years now. I cashed out $1 million into fiat, and I still have $1 million invested in crypto currencies. My initial investment was $25K, from selling my car, although I've put smaller amounts of money here and there into crypto. I originally found Bitcoin because I used to play online poker in high school, and some of the sites gave you bonuses for using Bitcoin.
I made the most money from getting into ETH at a good time, and then XRB. Most recently, I got into XRB at around $.60 in early last month, and now it's at around $28-30.
I lost a ridiculous amount of money day trading, and would not recommend it. I thought I knew how to read candlesticks and such, but I'm now convinced that technical analysis is usually not relevant to crypto. Right now, I'm invested in: XRB (60%), WTC (20%), XBY (10%), ENJ (5%), and MOD (5%). This portfolio probably higher risk than what a lot of people would be comfortable with, but I feel more than confident on all of these investments.
New investments on my radar? I'm looking into putting about $100K into BBT soon, which aims to create a decentralized marketplace, has an already-working product, reputable team, CEO has two degrees from Harvard, and the coin has a low market cap of around 12 million. Also putting more into MOD soon, since it's the only cryptocurrency that is immune to a cryptocurrency market crash. Also have my eyes on a couple different promising ICOs, like Birdchain.
Probably don't ask me about mining besides the basics. I'm going to start mining in February or March, since I have a guardian masternode for WTC and am getting a masternode soon for XBY, but am not that knowledgeable about mining yet.
If anyone has any questions about crypto, wants to debate about the viability of crypto, wants opinions on coins, or has anything else crypto-related to ask, feel free to post here.
How did you handle taxes?
Alright, so here's my research process.
First, it's always important to look at the market cap and supply of coins, and whether or not there will be a burn-off or something similar. Also, look at what exchanges the coin is trading on. These are huge in relation to price, and should be thought about it in terms of your investing goals, and especially look at the supply existing.
Then comes the actual research. I always read the white paper. The first thing I want to know is: what does the coin do and why is it a novel adaption to the crypto space? Usually, if the white paper lacks technical information, this is a red flag. Also, a lot of coins create coins just for the sake of getting funds from an ICO, without really having a strong use-case. So I always ask myself: what is the point of this coin? Could this project be a thing without the coin implemented? Once you read enough white papers, you begin to be able to naturally identify good projects, but what you're looking for is innovation.
Then I look at the team. Who are they and what are their credentials? If you can't find the founders on LinkedIn, that is usually, although not always, a red flag. You want them to have a good mix of coders, but also a strong marketing and business development team. Marketing is huge in this space. Then I look at their sponsors or partnerships, which is a huge factor for adoption. After looking at the white paper, hopefully I have confidence that the coin can perform what it says it can, and carry out its roadmap.
I then go onto the coin's website and look all over the site, especially at the roadmap or upcoming features that might cause some price action. Then I look at the social channels, specifically Reddit. It can be full of trolls, but it also has some good information here and there, and I read the FAQs, and assess the community. Also, I like reading peoples' shills now and again, just to make sure a good opportunity doesn't pass me by. When I research a coin on Reddit, a lot of times I want to read what people say is bad about the coin, because the white paper doesn't always mention the coin's obstacles or weaknesses. If the coin has a lot of hype, that is a big factor, because crypto trades almost exclusively on fundamentals, and the investors in this space are all trying to make money quickly.
So to make it simplified, here are the things I look at: 1. Novelty/Innovation 2. Team/Credentials 3. Use Case/Potential for Adoption 4. Marketing Ability 5. Strengths/Weaknesses/Obstacles 6. Sponsorships/Partnerships 7. Supply 8. Hype
And pigs also have recently grown wings. Saw one flying over my building the other day.
Let me put it this way - any asset which doesn't generate cash doesn't have any "fundamentals" on which to trade. Even those which do generate cash are subject to a great deal of subjectivity in their valuation (notice all P/E ratios are not the same).
Even assets that don't generate cash (computers, refrigerators, cars) have no "fundamental" value - not even the cost of production. The value of the asset is completely subjective - it's what the buyer thinks its worth, which can often be less than the cost of production.
Also, "the investors in this space are all trying to make money quickly" and "trades almost exclusively on fundamentals" are very, very rarely true of the same asset.
Just before anyone buys BBT based solely on OPs recommendation, the CEO of Bitboost (BBT) only has a Masters of Education from Harvard, not "2 degrees from Harvard" as OP claims.
No. When I was in IB, we all traded cryptos without restrictions. Stocks on the other hand, even if your group doesn't cover them, almost always require authorization.
No, my parents do not know about crypto. Might tell them sometime. I've kept it quiet to most people other than a couple friends though.
Seriously dude....pay your fucking tuition and buy your dad a rolex. That's sad man.
I'm seriously considering not doing the whole Wall Street thing and starting a business instead if this stuff all works out. I would love to do entrepreneurship and travel. Who knows though.
Not sure if anyone has already suggested this but you should absolutely go see a private wealth manager ASAP. With 1mm+ in the bank, you can easily make 50-100k+ per year just sitting in some portfolios. If you already have another 1mm in crypto, that's fine but you should do your best to save that 1mm that you've converted to fiat.
“Don't confuse brains with a bull market”
For one's first big career jump, there are a lot of things going on psychologically. Make sure that you have proper systems of coping mechanisms (stress relief) intact (gym, sports, arts, hobbies etc). These hours of the day spent on stress relieving activities are essential for this period for you. Ghandi said for his difficult days, he spent not one hour in mediation, but two. I would recommend the same for you. I'm not saying you have to do meditation, but whatever coping mechanism works for you and that you enjoy. Develop an emphasis of how much 'therapy' you will need over the day to master your activities. Spend some extra money to pamper your body or mind if needed. Nutrition and sleep are paramount as well during this time. I'm not saying to ax double cheeseburgers forever, but this particular phase of your life needs a bit of caution and preparedness so that you may reach the next stage, whatever that may be.
Nice job so far and good luck.
This is awesome and I honestly recommend you cash out a little more, especially since almost all of your gains are probably short term right now. XRB has dropped 30%+ from ATH so you probably lost a little bit there. You probably know this but investing 100K into BBT will significantly move the needle, while that is fine, be prepared to buy your first and last unit at nearly 2x difference. This can be avoided if you break up your buys into smaller transactions. Be careful on EtherDelta a lot of people make mistakes I assume you are pretty experienced and will be fine. Before you read below, you should know I am really involved in the crypto space, am making a website for it, and am heavily, although not to your level, invested in it. But taking a objective view of things, read below.
I will say this, I don't think 2018 will be the same gravy train as 2017. I have made these comments many times before but here is why.
1. Increasing regulation across the globe is continuing to hurt the growth of crypto. This won't stop crypto, the stock market has been regulated forever and it grows, but it will definitely slow the insane gains.
2. Dilution of coins do to the surging rate of ICOs, funds that do flow into the crypto space usually flow in through BTC, ETH, & LTC. Now they might start to flow into others like BCH & NEO. Either way, people are going to have far too many projects. Most of the recent price explosions are because all the funds flowed towards a few of the most shilled coins. Now there is more to shill
3. The exchanges literally cannot handle the pressure and have on and off turned off registration. This literally limits the growth ability of the coins. While this will be alleviated, it is a sign that there are issues now, and these issues put a negative light on the crypto industry as a whole
4. If you remove the last 5ish months of 2017, the gains in crypto aren't that great. LTC sat around $15 for literally 4/5 years. BTC for nearly 5 years floated between $200 and $400. 90% of the other coins either didn't exist or weren't traded. Because of this the flood of new money is and was expecting this intense growth. Some people saw it, others didn't. Without this incredible growth continuing to occur, people won't keep flowing into it. It's almost like a self fulfilling prophecy where the growth drives additional investment.
5. There is significantly less FIAT in crypto than many people think. The $700BN figure on CMC is not the amount of FIAT (I am sure you already know this) The volume indicator is also incorrect because it essentially quadruple counts. It counts the buy and sell volume, on both coins. When you trade BTC for Coin A. BTCs volume increases on the buy & the sell, so does Coin A's volume. The crypto market is very fragile and it's why we see such flash crashes
6. No major institutional players want to get into the market quite yet. There may be a shop here or there that gets in, but the liquidity, exchange issues, and unclear regulation and laws make it difficult. Additional it goes against most investment agreements. Also if they do get in, it will be a top 3 liquidity coin they invest in. You may know this but GS isn't going to put $10K into some unknown coin and hope it 100x's.
7. Companies that are looking at blockchain technology realistically are not utilizing the coin. A ton of banks came out and said they will not us the XRP token, but may use the technology. As people realize this more and more the idea behind being a token owner goes away. What good is the token when it has no voting rights, no revenue share (dividends), no growth because the technology is open source, provides directions on how to use it via the white paper and free.
8. Most of the cryptos have failed to deliver and this will continue to sink in to peoples thoughts. On ICO/in the white paper they are great technologies and ideas but they fail to deliver. Additionally, the concepts are getting outrageous now too, more like the dotcom bubble. Did you see the crypto hotel? The first ever blockchain hotel. Hotel's don't need blockchain.
9. A majority of the projects are actually 100% useless, FIAT is great to be utilized in place of most of the technologies, and for other ones preexisting technologies work. There are some cryptos with solid purpose and these are the real ones worth investing in.
I want to point out that I love cryptos and am a decent size investor (no where near you, bit big for me). I just wanted to provide my reasonings for why I think the market will be slower in 2018 than 2017 by a significant amount. During 2017 the market cap increased by 5000%. If this happens again the crypto market would be a $35 trillion dollar market. I do not think that can or will happen. I think we will see triple the market cap at best. That does not mean it limits gains to 2/3x because coins move independently of market cap obviously, but it will definitely be more difficult to find them and invest in them.
Sorry for typos/grammatical errors. It is 3 AM and I am tired. Side note, anyone who wants to get involved in the website with me let me know and I will provide more details about it and how you might be able to get involved!
I have recently consolidated due to the changing market tides. I am currently in NEO, USDT, and DBC. NEO has made me a lot of money and also pays out dividends, DBC is highly speculative gamble, USDT is my money on the side waiting to jump in when I see an opportunity I like.
My recent trades/results (Last 3/4 weeks)
•400% Gain REQ (Got in at .25 sold over $1) •100% Gain TNB (Got in at .08 sold at .20) •120% Gain NULS (Got in at $3 sold at $6.5) •60% Gain BNTY (Got in at .30 sold at .48) •600% Gain XRB (Got in at $4.50 sold at at blended $27 [sold half at $32 half at $24] •30% Loss PRL (Got in at $2.8 sold at $2)
Currently: •30% Loss DBC •Flat (Obviously) USDT •10% Gain NEO
Now while the gains all look really nice, pretty much everything purchased in mid/late December went flying up early in the new year. I am not necessarily the best picker there is, but I do have a strategy I follow to pick what coins to throw money at which usually tends to work.
I believe you, but I haven't actually heard of any real agreements to use tokens currently in existence. Can you point me towards some, because I would love to look into them. Most of what I hear/see is hear say/some random guy who works at a company posting a tweet, but not a formal partnership.
While I do agree here, Mark Zuckerberg is looking to create his own crypto, so this wouldn't do anything to pre-existing crypto's. Goldman Sachs may be looking at it, but would most likely use some sort of derivative or synthetic investment directly with a counter-party rather than actually buying the underlying.
I agree it adds legitimacy, but some of that regulation will cut down on scam/illegitimate coins such as TRON which bring the highest returns. So in my opinion, it will significantly cut down on the upside possibilities. A lot of the insane returns seen on CMC website are literally pump and dumps from telegram groups. I have spent my fair share in telegram groups analyzing these pump and dumps, they can literally make a coin go 2-3x in an hour. Most of the time the group owners pre-buy and sell when they advertise it in their group.I agree it hasn't casted a negative light, but the space has lost $300BN market cap from it's all time high recently. In addition it's having tons of trouble moving forward right now. To me this is basic market mechanics. Over the last week I have made a pretty decent profit regardless of all this though.
This is a perfect example of the fact that crypto currencies themselves are useless, and the technology is where the benefit's are. Additionally a lot of companies can just use their own closed POS system. That being said, my issue with the "Blockchain Hotel" is this, if your largest selling point at a hotel is that you use blockchain, then get the fuck out. I want a comfy bed, and I don't want to sleep on top of a bunch of computers. It's like the companies adding blockchain to their name and exploding on the stock market, or Kodak's attempt and trying to live. People are using the term blockchain as a lifeline or attempt to gain attention. Cutting out the middleman is great, and blockchain/lattice/tangle has it's area. But for people to think (and I am sure you have seen this places) that it belongs and is the only solution to every problem is just ignorant. I would say a solid 7/10 examples people have given me for how a blockchain is used, I have been able to counter with a current pre-existing technology. The key here is 7/10 and not 10/10, there are definitely awesome use cases where this technology should exist.
Right now we have like 10+ different privacy coins, 10+ different currencies, 10+ different platforms/technologies (blockchain is actually old at this stage of the game).
Also, the entire concept of decentralization has a lot of costs and it's never appropriately discussed. A lot of crypto is lost due to people losing seeds/keys, the anonymity provides an easy way for theft, with POW chains the miners have a lot more control than people give them credit for, in POS chains whales can manipulate the voting and ledger if they deem to, XRP is centralized and a top 3 currency right now, NEO is centralized and a top 10. Centralization also has costs but when you spend time in the crypto space, you hear one sided arguments, all the pros of decentralization and all the cons of centralization.
Enjoy chatting with someone knowledgeable on the subject, let me know via PM if you have Discord or something to chat more (also reply here of course!)
"I'm in college and WAS a millionaire because of crypto" RIP
Ok I'm calling OP out right now because this story doesn't add up.
Update: This guy has a post about how he has invested his friends and family members money into bitcoin. Turning 15 grand into 50 grand two months ago. This guy is full of shit! Your parents don't know but your family does?
First off, you're only a sophomore and you sold your car a couple of years ago. If you traded your car in at a dealership without purchasing a different car (which is rare) then your car must have been worth approximately $50 grand when your parents purchased it for you. They paid this car all in cash and put the title in your name? They haven't noticed that you sold your car in the past 2 years? Additionally, if you look at car sales through craigslist almost no listings are above $20,000. Either no one has that kind of cash to buy a car looking through craigslist or they don't trust buying a car for that kind of money through a private party.
So either you have really trustworthy and wealthy parents that bought you a very expensive car in your name (which would also effect insurance costs), or you're just full of shit. Also, you waited until now to come up with this cryptocurrency story? Now that it's the hottest thing to talk about?
Also you have a post written about living in your car a few months ago. So you sold your $25,000 car and then bought another car with your own money and then paid it off again?
This.
Story does not add up and OP demonstrates poor understanding of crypto trading in his responses.
How do I demonstrate a poor understanding of crypto trading? I really don't see how my "story doesn't add up." If you would like proof of any of these things, feel free to message me.
The living in my car thing was a hypothetical whenever I was bored, if you read the post. I never did this.. Your spiel about the car thing is nonsense. I'm not even going to bother explaining why your analysis is really faulty. For one, I didn't use Craigslist to sell my car, and I fail to see how recent listing prices on this platform I did not use somehow acts as proof that my story is bogus..
Hi OP,
You clearly know what you're talking about and I've been trading on some of your recommendations (which have all gone well).
What are your thoughts on the following?
Also, I'm down about 30% on TRX but have a pretty large investment in it. I know you're not optimistic about it long-term, but what would you do with it in the short-run? I've been holding hoping to recap my initial investment (it was up 100% a few days ago) but would you recommend dumping it now?
Thanks in advance!
Are you still a millionaire?