Face it, everybody wants to get rich in crypto. Most of us come to this space after reading about or hearing stories through the grapevine of people that leave gas station clerk jobs for yachts and business class seats on trans-national flights, or of 14 year old Filipino kids buying houses for their parents based on Axie Infinity profits during the last cycle, and we want to catch that next gem and follow in their footsteps.
The big question becomes, how realistic is this for most of us? Will we “make it”, and become rich like the aforementioned gas station clerk dabbling in meme coins in between selling scratch-off lottery tickets and mopping the filthy bathrooms?
It IS possible, but it is not likely unless you have a well defined path to realistic success in this wild west of a space.
What are these 5 steps? I will list them, and then elaborate.
Emotional Resilience and Longsuffering
Buy mostly tried and true “blue chip assets”
Patience
Luck
Stay away from most NFTs
Emotional Resilience and Longsuffering
I’m going to give it to you straight. You need to be prepared for extreme swings in prices in the cryptocurrency space. You have to be prepared to lose money. You have to prepare yourself to be in the red on investments not just for days, but for YEARS. I’m not exaggerating.
Can you handle that kind of uncertainty and volatility? I will ask again, can you REALLY handle that kind of uncertainty and possible loss? Can you handle the lonely nights? Can you handle the ridicule from friends and family?
Not everybody can. I promise you 100% that if you spend more than 6 months in crypto you will lose money and experience the maelstrom, and when you do you have to ask yourself if it’s something you can mentally handle for sometimes years at a time because if you want to make it in crypto you have no choice aside from learning how to embrace this uncertainty with a stoic sense of longsuffering or you are not gonna make it.
Buy mostly tried and true blue chips
Look, there’s nothing wrong with taking a risk with a small % of your funds into random altcoins or even memecoins, but most of the time with those you will lose unless you manage to get in — and out — at the right time. While nothing is ever totally certain in life or in crypto, what we do know is that in general coins like BTC, ETH, LTC, and XMR have held up during multiple cycles and will likely be around in the next five years. Your odds of making a positive return on your investment in these are more certain than most altcoins.
If you’re going to dollar cost average into the last cycle “Ethereum Killer” layer 2 scaling solution or even worse — -altcoins that live on some other chain, like tokens on Solana or EGLD — your odds of engaging in the sunken cost fallacy go up exponentially and you more than likely will lose money.
So if you want to make it then do not overexpose yourself to altcoins. It is a matter of life and death to your portfolio. I will reiterate — it is a matter of life and death to your portfolio, full stop. Take that from someone who has lived through multiple cycles. Maybe you get lucky, but more often than not you will watch your money evaporate.
Patience.
Everybody wants to be like the gas station clerk who borrows 10k from a bank, buys some memecoin and immediately quits his job as his token gamble shoots up 10000x from his buy in, but it just doesn’t happen that way for most people, myself included. The more likely way the story above plays out is you borrow 10k and your “investment” goes to zero quickly — like in days or a few months — or you find yourself having to explain to the bank two years later why you can’t pay back the loan as you stare at your 10k turned $100. That is not me being hyperbolic. That is the nature of crypto gambles. I have seen this again and again and again.
If you want to make it in this space you have to be willing to take the long view and learn to be patient. By patient I mean you have to be willing to think in terms of 5–10 year timeframes instead of just months or even a few years. That is why the emotional resilience I spoke about earlier comes into play because there will be months and months or even years when nothing goes your way.
That is another reason why “blue chips” are the way to go, because even when things are in goblintown or sideways for years at least you can be reasonably certain that they will go up eventually. With altcoins there is no such certainty.
Can you handle that?
If not then you have no business in crypto because the only journey you are going to be taking is a trip to the proverbial “Rekt City.”
Luck
Face it, sometimes you get really lucky in this space. It has happened to me and hopefully, it happens to you too. It isn’t all doom and gloom. For instance, back in Sep ’20 I got that free UNI airdrop, and in ’21 I managed to nail the top on the FORTH airdrop and made a good $23k at the click of a button, after having lost $100 in AMPL months earlier. You have to gamble sometimes, and occasionally you’ll get lucky and catch a break.
Make sure you put at least a little money into gambles like memecoins, NFTs, Ordinals, or a few cool protocols or projects that seem interesting to you. If you’re going to play at the wildest casino in the 21st century you may as well let loose and gamble a bit. Just treat it like gambling, manage your risk, and consider it a loss. if you win you will be over the moon. Have fun with it, but exercise caution. With this stuff, the house usually always wins.
Stay away from most NFTs
**Don’t get me wrong, I love NFTs, but they are some of the most perilous, illiquid ways you could possibly park your money in this space. **Most will go to zero, and even if you do hold something that is worth a lot it means nothing unless you can actually sell it. So you have a $500k jpeg? Big deal. It means nothing if you can’t sell it.
Does that mean you should not ever invest in NFTs?
No.
**But what I’m saying is that NFTs are some of the riskiest, most illiquid assets in all of crypto, so prepare accordingly. **I would suggest you stick to cool and original projects, or mostly established projects, or vintage NFTs, and prepare to hold for like five or ten years minimum to see any kind of profit. And remember, even if it is worth a small nation's GDP if there are no buyers it’s just a jpeg with a price tag, period, close the book.
Conclusion
Making it in crypto is not easy, but there are some actionable steps you can take that bump up your odds of making it. Prepare your mind and your pocketbook accordingly, temper your expectations, and prepare to suffer for years in the trenches. Don’t expect to get rich quickly. Don’t gamble more than you can afford to lose, and try to have fun.
Crypto is an arena that will teach you a lot about yourself if you allow yourself to learn from it. It has taught me a lot about emotional resilience, delayed gratification, and risk management over the years. Approach it like you’d approach any arena of battle — by preparing for war. By getting all your mental strength ready, and by bringing enough supplies to outlast your enemy. In this arena, the biggest enemy is your own mind. If you learn these skills you may not fly business class or own a yacht in the next 5 years, but I can guarantee you will be one of those who “make it” in crypto, and you will have been a survivor in one of the toughest arenas in modern investing.
Thanks for reading.