Interviewer: Hi there Alex, tell everyone a bit about yourself.
Alex: So I’m Alex, I’m 25 and I’m a Bitcoin millionaire.
(Alex is not his real name but for privacy reasons he’s decided not to disclose this)
Interviewer: How did you find out about Bitcoin?
Alex: Back when I was a lot younger I was sort of in the perfect place at the perfect time. I was always a bit of a stoner nerd with an interest in finance so when I found out about the silk road in late 2013, it was perfect for me.
Interviewer: Can you explain the silk road to our uninformed viewers?
Interviewer:The silk road is a – was an online marketplace for illegal drugs and other illegal items like fake passports and the like. Although I don’t condone the use of drugs now, at the time I considered myself a libertarian so the idea that a consumer could choose their own risk tolerance when it came to drugs suited my ideology.
Interviewer:How does this link back to Bitcoin?
Alex: So because the silk road championed anonymity, Bitcoin was the main currency the site’s users traded in. Bitcoin is anonymous and had no KYC restrictions on buying and selling it so it was easy to use in illicit transactions.
Interviewer:What are KYC restrictions?
Alex: KYC or know your customer rules essentially assert that a broker should make a considerable effort to know who their customers are and who could act on their behalf. It’s becoming more and more common on crypto trading platforms especially in America, making money laundering with crypto a little harder- but not much.
Interviewer: Okay, let’s backtrack a little. Why does Bitcoin have value and how does it work?
Alex: That’s a big question. Basically the reason why digital currencies didn’t work before Bitcoin was because someone owned them, therefore for example if I created AlexCoin, I could just give myself infinite alexcoins and get infinite money, or steal your alexcoin, making it worthless and based on trust. Bitcoin changed that because every single transaction is permanently noted down on an immutable ledger called the blockchain. Not immutable in the sense that new transactions can’t be added but in the sense that no transaction can be deleted or changed. On top of this, each transaction is audited by other users’ computers as a part of the Bitcoin mining process, meaning that there is no need for an auditor or bookkeeper. This is what people mean when they say Bitcoin is decentralised because it is controlled by no regulatory body. Bitcoin has value because it is finite, so can’t be printed like dollars. Also, because every Bitcoin transaction is verified and listed on this big ledger called the blockchain it is both public and anonymous. This anonymity and financial security gives Bitcoin an inherent value. For example people in countries with governments that suppress protests, protestors can have their bank accounts frozen. In this instance, having a backup of independent currency that can’t be inflated is a very useful safety net for those people.
Interviewer:When did you notice this inherent value?
Alex:So yeah basically I started just using Bitcoin to buy weed on the silk road but eventually when that got shut down in 2015, I stopped smoking and began looking deeper into the technology of the blockchain. I began to understand what I just explained about Bitcoin’s inherent value and began buying as much of it as I could. A single Bitcoin was about $300 at the time.
Interviewer:How much did you put into bitcoin?
Alex: So at the time I was freelance coding for some companies and took a couple of jobs for shares. The companies did pretty well over that year so I had some money from that and then some inheritance and a trust fund. I basically emptied everything – sold the shares and stuff, much to my parents dismay. All in all I stuck about 60k into bitcoin.
Interviewer:How much was that when you took it out.
Alex: Well I got very lucky with my timing of when I pulled it out, but I ended up making almost eleven million dollars so like… eight point five million pounds.
Interviewer:That’s crazy.
Alex:I know, it’s a return of almost 100,000 percent.
Interviewer: What’s it like having ten million dollars in your twenties?
Alex:I mean obviously it’s pretty cool sometimes. I went a little crazy when I first pulled the money out.
Interviewer:Define crazy.
Alex: Well just like irresponsible travel and lots of partying. I also bought a stupidly expensive watch that I don’t even wear anymore, it’s just like in a box in my house. But actually it hasn’t changed too much in the long run. I put most of my money immediately into property, just because it’s comparably stable and it’s an asset you can live in if times get tough. I get a lot of scam calls and phishing scams because I used to be pretty well known in the crypto community.
Interviewer: So sort of a more money more problems scenario?
Alex:Well I don’t regret my decision, but definitely becoming rich so quickly has come with interesting new challenges I didn’t expect. When I first settled into it, this sense of nihilism set in. Like, I’ve won the game, what do I do now? When you have more money than you’ll ever need it becomes paradoxically hard to get out of bed in the morning because its like “why would I?”
Interviewer:Did the Oneplus Zen mode help alleviate that somewhat?
Alex:Yeah actually. When I was younger I sort of discounted the impact of screen time and not focusing on my mental health but it makes a huge difference to focus on mental wellness and disconnect for a bit. As you suggested, I turned on Zen mode and just went for a walk in a park and my brain felt like it had a chance to let go a little. I’m chronically online so I think my body and mind really relished the break.