When I started investing in cryptocurrency- I was drawn in by the fact that it's practically unchartered territory.
Selfishly, I am driven by legacy.
What can I leave behind?
Ralph Nelson Elliot created an analytical framework for predicting price movement (Elliot Wave Principle) in 1930, and no one has come up with a better tool for predicting price action since (in my opinion).
I want that.
I see cryptocurrency and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as my best chance at creating that.
Even if I didn't think that projects like Ethereum could be world changing, or that blockchain technology has the potential to globally disrupt financial systems and the distribution of wealth. I would still be drawn to this market.
I'm extremely competitive, starting a job in a field like advertising or banking would be a zero sum game in my opinion. Being in my twenties, and an entrepreneur, I have a bit of a mental Napoleon complex when it comes to thinking about how many years of experience I have.
I don't want to start off in a race where everyone else has 20+ years more experience than me, the rules have already been set in stone, networks and communities have already been built, and billions of dollars have been spent on determining what IS the best strategy for success in this field.
I don't like those odds.
I never wanted to have a corporate job, I looked at the trajectories a lot of my friends from high school were taking and realized I didn't want to work a 9--5. I didn't want to slowly work my way up the corporate ladder as I accumulated years of meaningless experience to add to my resume.
That sounds really fucking boring.
I knew that a traditional 9--5 wasn't for me, so the question became: what the hell is for me?
The way I saw it, whatever I did had to be on the internet- that's the only way I could get a leg up on everyone else.
While most of the people I was "competing" against had time to beef up their LinkedIn's with 10+, 20+, even 30+ years of experience in their given fields, the internet is a relatively new platform.
Even younger than the internet itself, is Social Media. So I chose to set out selling and executing social media campaigns for small businesses. At this point in time, some small business owners still weren't sure if Facebook was just another fad or something they needed to be invested in. I made it my business to convince them it wasn't a fad.
Social Media in itself was a speculative bubble that I bet on lasting for the long run.
I'm glad I did.
Self awareness creates direction.
I grew up surfing the internet, and going from one online community to another. I used to build ugly little websites in middle school that were basically photo collages of stuff I thought was cool at the time. I wasn't a programmer but I knew my way around a computer.
While basic social media tasks may have seemed beyond certain business owners at the time, they were simple to me. I honestly didn't believe that anyone would pay me to do something that seemed so easy.
I wasn't close to being the first person to offer social media marketing services to small businesses, but Social Media was so new at the time, that I saw a higher probability of myself capturing enough of a market share to support myself.
I was willing to compete with people who had only a few years of experience on me, the knowledge they have over me I could pick up from practice and application.
I'm obsessive to a fault. Once I'm halfway decent at something, I get enough satisfaction from completing the tasks involved to motivate me to dive deeper and deeper into a subjective rabbit hole.
Fast forward a few years and I now have the coveted 6+ years achievement unlocked in my field of social media marketing. I run a small digital marketing agency with close friends who I love working with, and still have never had a "real job".
I tell this story because I was drawn to crypto for many of the same reasons that I was drawn to start my agency.
IT'S NOT TOO LATE
The most common reason I hear for not getting involved in cryptocurrency is that it's too late. This market is in it's infancy, even the "experts" have only been "experts" for a few years. That reasoning is ludicrous.
If anything, you have a better chance of outworking someone in this market because it never sleeps. You can buy Dogecoin at 3 AM PST if you want to. The market never stops and there is always more that can be learned- it's practically infinite.
If you really want to succeed, and you're willing to put in the time, you can catch up. Better than that, you can surpass.
It's a somewhat level playing field.
Cryptocurrency, much like Social Media, hasn't been around for very long. Both are younger than me and I'm relatively a wee Padawan.
Bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency that was created and it has only been around since 2009.
There are no rules, this is an unregulated market that exists literally EVERYWHERE by the nature of decentralization and DLT. This isn't an industry like advertising where I have to follow the playbook of those who paved the path before me --- shit I don't even have a path as much as a shady dirt trail.
And take a big whiff of that, you smell that? You know what that is?
That's legacy waiting to be made Morty.
Legacy.
If you've been investing in cryptocurrency or exploring blockchain projects since their inception, than you have a maximum of 6 years of experience on me.
I can work with those odds.
This is a game I can win.