My experience with Bitcoin and how it made me smarter with Money

My experience with Bitcoin and how it made me smarter with $

    

    In 2014 I was trying to figure out drop shipping and connecting with different sources all over the world for products not available in the USA. I was using the Alibaba platform and others like it to source materials. Amazon had not moved into China at the time so you could still make money buying from factories in China and. I was buying different things mostly from a dropshipping site called TradeVV.com (Which has now since gone) They had some good prices on products, but instead of using bank transfer, western union, PayPal, etc. They said that they wanted the $50 in Bitcoin. So I did my research to see what it was and I simply ordered some using my debit card which was not the easiest task at the time, but I managed. From then on I always had always been curious about how a code left in a 4 Chan forum had been built out enough to actually carry a value. Throughout the next few years, I would hear and see slices of data and sound bytes of what Bitcoin doing, but it was never the main subject, it was more of a filler story on the news.

In the summer of 2015, I met a co-worker that was pretty smart with computers who used Bitcoin all the time and loved to remain 'anonymous' for government entities. He was also buying things like fake and real sneakers, access to free Netflix accounts for a one-time low fee, and music as well. When I had a conversation with him once I decided to ask more blunt questions about how you stayed anonymous and what all was really for sale. He and his friends were the party type and from chatter, the dark web was where they were buying party favors from. So I asked him, and even though he was reluctant he told me that it was possible to get almost anything you wanted from the dark web.

I had been researching Bitcoin and how it worked for a few months now and the anonymity it provided you and how you had to buy from a peer-to-peer system meaning no middle man to handle the transaction. But where would I get the currency if I wanted it? At the time the kids I knew were buying their Bitcoin from a company/network of buyers and sellers called Local Bitcoins which essentially charges you a certain percentage for the cost of Bitcoin. It was in most cities would have someone meet up with you in person somewhere like a coffee shop where you could meet and exchange cash for Bitcoin. We knew a guy who was in town a couple weeks a month that always had Bitcoin available and was willing to take most gift cards as payment as well, especially Amazon gift cards for some reason those held a better value than the USD at the time.

After doing my research and spending enough time with the co-workers that got me interested I decided I wanted to get online and see what was really going on. One night I was bored so I decided to download the internet browser, configure it to my computer, and bam I was in... I thought. Since everything for the most part was written in code I found it hard to navigate. So I simply went to a subreddit and got a few questions answered and was all of the sudden at the registration page for the Agora Marketplace. I registered with a spoof ID and suddenly was able to see what was hiding underneath the wool and the surface of the clear net. It was thrilling and quite amazing. There were thousands of buyers and vendors/sellers. There were hundreds of thousands of listings from everything to fake IDs and hacking guides to discounted Netflix, Hulu, and HBO subscriptions to drug listings and I am not only talking bout illegal drugs. There was a market for everything, books, data, information and of course services were all there. But this was the PG version of the Dark Web people told me and I was fine with that because the things I had heard and knew I now had the power to see were not of interest to me. The marketplace was good enough. It reminded me that where there is a demand someone will supply. And how the old wild west trading stations must have been like before government regulations and rules came into play. But what intrigued me the most was the number of buyers/sellers, the volume of money at play, and how many people were connected in this underground criminal oasis. It was a big part of the underworld's economy. And Bitcoin was the currency of choice.

Since the listings from vendors were endless you could be on the marketplace for hours looking at different things that you did not know were real or were not. It was than how I found out how business was done in the underworld. Similar to buying home decor if you wanted to order something you could place an order and your funds would go into a separate escrow account provided by the marketplace. It would stay there until you received the item. After you received the item you could finalize the order and release the funds or if it was not what you thought it should have been you could dispute the order and hold on to the funds until on moderator/admin looked at the case and made a decision based on whatever evidence you had. Having the option to have your money go into an escrow account meant t a lot because it would ensure that the seller would follow through at some level on their services.

After months of using the digital asset Bitcoin, it began to accumulate in an account. Every time I used the digital asset there would be a little bit leftover and it would just sit in an account. Well in 2016 the price of Bitcoin went from $200-$1000 by end of the year. That's 5x growth. The leftover amount just sat in my account. At the lowest, I saw Bitcoin at $180 a coin. From there it took off and entered 2017 at $1,000 a coin. At the peak, I owned 16 BTC. It was a lot of money but was worth less than 16k at the time. I did not have any idea what it was going to do in 2017.  As we know now in 2017 it went up 2,000% in price hitting an all-time high of $20,000. If I had managed to keep that 16 BTC I would have had $320,000, but that is not the fairy tale ending that was destined for me. At the beginning of 2017, I had lost my job and was virtually living off of Bitcoin. I was an advocate for a cryptocurrency (that did not pay anything) and was learning to day trade the currency. Like a lot of first-time traders, I would make a little money but, my losses far outweighed my earnings. So what I learned is if I would have just listened to intuition instead of outsiders that got me to invest in shit coins and pyramid schemes I should have been working a job, any job, and letting the coins sit. 

But good lessons are rarely won from winning, losing and failing are where good lessons really blossum from. As I write this Bitcoin is valued at $61,000. 16 x 61,000 = $976,000. Yes it hurts to know that I would be close to a millionaire if I would have held the coins in a cold storage wallet, but I doubt that would have ever happened. 

So as I continue to invest in Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies I am humbled and joyed to know that I got in when people thought I was crazy and that I was wasting my money. Well being right sure feels good. 

Now I look at everythign as an investment. I spend $100 on dinner and think I could have invested that. $200 on clothes... I should invest this. And this is now how my mind works. So this is how i live and believe me it has unlocked a state of mind that 99% of the world is still trapped in. Learn to make your money work for you even if you fail 100 times.

-Rett Sloat
10-23-2021