I was right at the foot of mountain when bitcoin took the leap.
It all started with the book, “the creature from Jekyll island”. The book was a financial awakening. It was like an eye opener and changed the complete understanding about the money I ever had.
From the name, it seems that the book was about some fictional being, but it was about the federal reserve and how we all are being fooled by it all around the globe. It made something clear that all that white money in bank is nothing but just a number which does not means anything. Imagine you have $1 million stored in a bank. You leave the money there, and let the years pass by. Every year assuming the “healthy” 2% inflation rate, your $1 million will mean squat in next 20–30 years.
This is what the book is all about. Fiat money — or the paper money or in the current days, digital currency that we use, is nothing but a centralised/controlled asset which we do not actually have, but we have the illusion we have them. If the bank goes bonkers on giving loans and loose all of your money to give those loans, one day it might run bankrupt. The big number which you see in your statements will crumble down to zero. The book taught me one thing, the assets we have is not the money in the bank, but some actual existent thing which holds some value. Now coming to this question how is this value created ? This value is not controlled by any central body, it is decentralised or depends upon the demand and supply. This is in limited number and will end someday. Some of these things are gold, diamonds, stocks and the show stopper bitcoin.
After reading the book, I wanted to use all of my money in the bank into some valuable investments. The day was 14th December 2020. I wanted a low risk high gain investment plan. Does such thing actually exist ? Well, the answer is a big no.
I researched upon various investment options, looked for gold, stocks (many companies were about to go public at that time). But everything seemed tough to transact in and I had no knowledge about it. Being an engineer and having some knowledge about blockchain, I started looking at crypto currency. Bitcoin valued at around ~$20000. I saw the last year’s trend to check what were the prices in March/April and guess what ? It was just around ~$6000. Ethereum also showed a similar trend. I wanted to get my hands dirty. I checked whether cryptocurrency was legal in my country or not. Got to know it got legal just in time few months back. I downloaded the crypto trading app. Uploaded my verification documents and waited for my account to begin. It took 2 days. The day was 15th Dec 2020.I bought 0.006 bitcoin and 0.04 ethereum as my first investment. The next day, bitcoin made history and went above $20000 for the first time ever in it’s lifetime. I got really excited.
I had no predictions, about where it was going. I just had a good feeling. The money was not huge, so the risk was low and the gain too was low, still any free money is a sense of great joy for anybody. I was doing nothing and I just earned a week’s dinner from Domino’s with a premium desert. I saw some youtube videos, tried to understand about money and investing in general. I heard some advice “Invest the same amount of money after a fixed interval for minimising risk and balance things out”. I used this advice and decided to invest the same amount every week. Little did I know, that this was not a chicken who would lay eggs slowly, rather it was a chicken which had to be torn apart to get all the eggs it had. Within 7 days, the date of my next investment, bitcoin prices soared as high as $24000. I couldn’t resist into buying more than the last time, because i saw that the grown was exponential, and all the stars were aligned. 7 days went past again, bitcoin crossed $30000 first time ever. It was the second record it had set in just 14 days. I told my family, told my friends everyone wanted to invest. I told them the risk was high, so they did not invest much. My sister invested just $100.
I kept the money invested. I was happy and also sad. If I had invested a big amount, I would have made a huge sum. I followed daily trends and it became a hobby seeing the graphs, trying to understand and make the predictions.
On 8th Jan 2021, bitcoin crossed $40000. I was on the 9th cloud. I was on the right place at the right time. Only if I had invested more, I would have been a millionaire in less than a month. The price doubled from the initial price when I started investing on 15th Dec. As this was a peak, I did not want to lose my gains. After 15th Dec, the prices started declining, and the decline was nearly as steep as the growth. Afraid of losing the gains, I sold all the invested amount happy that I dodged a bullet, because in the next 10 days, bitcoin was battling at around $30000.There was no hope of its rise according to the predictions by various websites. Everyone thought, that the days were gone. I wanted it to drop more, to invest again and then gain from the next rise. But what happened, broke all records…….
A tweet from Elon Musk, drove the next bull run for bitcoin. The prices again started increasing. By the time I got to know, they were already at $40000. So, I felt no point of buying it at this huge price. I wanted it to fall. Few days later came a news that changed everything…. Tesla invested $1.5 billion into bitcoin. The prices sky rocketed. Bitcoin crossed all its previous records reaching as high as $58000, almost, triple the price on 15th Dec 2020. With this, Elon Musk became the richest man in the world as Tesla stock prices grew along with Bitcoin.
In all this I made some profit, I learned a lot about how crypto and stocks work and also that social media today rules the world, and is now the new money…..
