Losing money teaches you more than making money...
A few years ago, I was an avid consumer of Eckhart Tolle's video conferences and in some of his teachings, he often emphasized the significance of pain as a spiritual teacher. I get it... If you look back on your childhood memories, you'll notice that the most vivid ones are often the bad experiences and failures you had.
Personally, I have a quite painful experience in crypto that happened during the summer of 2022, involving LUNA. I managed to destroy a portfolio worth $3,500 by continually chasing falling knives with this coin until my portfolio was worth just a few bucks.
I'll never get that money back, but I learned a valuable lesson from that experience. That episode taught me that you don't have to invest or trade based on emotions, that you don't always have to have a position, and that revenge trading won't fix anything. If I had stopped after the first failed trade, I would have been in a much better position.
I had to go through it, and whenever I get the chance to talk about crypto, I share my story so that others can learn from it, especially new investors who come to this space believing they'll make a fortune quickly. The truth is, for most of us, it takes years and years before we see a significant return on our investments.
A few days ago, I spoke with a friend of a friend who isn't involved in crypto at all. He's made a lot of money in his life and I listened intently to his story, but when it was my turn to talk about what excites me, he dismissed crypto as a "casino."
When I mentioned blockchain, Bitcoin, and crypto, he dismissed it outright, saying it was a casino. At first, I wanted to argue with him, but then I realized he lacked education in the field and tempered my response. I tried to give him a basic education on blockchain technology and crypto, but he refused to listen and stuck to his claim that crypto is a casino.
While it's true that some market participants behave like gamblers, you can't reduce the entire space to that. You simply can't... And then I wondered, why do we always have to have an opinion on everything?
For a while, I thought this was a trait particular to my people, but I guess it's an international phenomenon. No matter what we're discussing - health, fitness, money, cars - we always feel the need to voice our opinions, sometimes without any basis or knowledge.
Why is it so hard to say "I don't know"? When you start a conversation from a position of uncertainty or admit you don't know something, you create the opportunity to learn. But when you instantly reject something or pretend to know more than you do, you kill your chances of becoming an expert in that field.
This guy I mentioned, who's good at making money, missed his chance to learn about crypto right in the middle of the bubble. He'll have to learn the hard way, as Eckhart Tolle once said, through pain... The pain of being left on the sidelines while we continue to create generational wealth with our magic internet money.
That's all from me for now. I wish you all a great day and see you tomorrow.
Thanks for your attention,
Adrian