Hey - Do any of you guys know anything about
bitcoin? You’ve probably heard people talk about
it. I think a lot of people have heard of it,
but most don’t really know what it is or how it works. You’ll need to know a little bit about it
to understand my story. First of all, bitcoins aren’t really coins,
like, you can’t actually hold a bitcoin. It’s digital money, also known as cryptocurrency,
so you just keep what you own in an online account. And bitcoins aren’t like dollars, where
a dollar is worth a dollar. It’s more like the stock of a company. Bitcoins have a value, or price, just like
stocks do. And just like stocks, you can buy and sell
them online, and the price can go up and down. And because it’s all done online on the
internet, anyone anywhere in the world can buy and sell bitcoin. It isn’t controlled by any banks or any
governments, like dollars are controlled by the U.S. government, or pounds are controlled
by the British. Nobody even knows for sure who invented bitcoin
- the guy everyone thinks created the concept goes by an alias, and some people even think
it’s a group of people going by a single name. Anyway, now that I’ve rambled on about bitcoin,
let me introduce myself. Hi, my name’s Carson, and I’m 19. That’s not actually my real name, because
(surprise!) just like whoever invented bitcoin, I go by an alias. Why? Because, thanks to the magic of bitcoin (and
some really good luck!) I’m a millionaire. This is the first time I’ve told this story
to anyone, so I’d like to thank you all for listening. I first found out about bitcoin when I was
12. I know, not exactly what you expect a 12-year
old to be into, but I didn’t have a ton of friends, so I just spent my time in internet
chat rooms, talking to strangers about whatever came to mind. Yeah, my parents probably should have kept
a closer eye on me, but I never got into any trouble. I started seeing all these jokes and comments
about bitcoin, but I didn’t know what it was, so I sent a message to one of the chat
groups asking what they were talking about, and they gave me a basic explanation, kinda
like the one I gave you guys earlier. I just thought the whole concept was really
cool. A lot of people find economics boring, but
I liked the idea of an underground currency that wasn’t controlled by the government,
one that anyone could use. And then I started to learn how bitcoin’s
value can change over time. When my grandmother on my Mom’s side passed
away, she left a $1500 gift to each of her grandchildren to spend on whatever they wanted. Trust me, this was a huge surprise. None of us were rich, and Granny certainly
didn’t seem to be, but she obviously had some money saved up. Fifteen hundred bucks is a ton of money for
a 13-year old, and a lot of people would have spent it on something like videogames or a
really nice bike. I definitely wasn’t a biker, but I’ll
admit, the videogames tempted me. In the end, I decided it would be better to
spend it on something that could make me even MORE money….bitcoin! In the end, I didn’t spend the whole 1500
on bitcoin. Mom and Dad didn’t really understand what
I was doing, and I didn’t want them to feel like I was throwing away all my money into
a scam or something. I think to them, it seemed like I was buying
in-game purchases for one of my video games or something – you know, go to the store
and buy 500 coins for $50 kinda thing. Bitcoin was a lot cheaper then than it is
now. I think one bitcoin was less than $10, so
only investing $500 got me around 50 bitcoin, which I stashed in an online account. It was weird to think about – having so
much money that was entirely digital. I know you want me to say that I kept investing
in bitcoin, working hard, earning my money – but honestly, I forgot about it for a
while. It’s easy to forget you have something if
you can’t see it or touch it. I put $500 of the money into my savings account,
and yeah, I ended up spending what was left over on video games, which kept me occupied. I was smart enough to keep quiet about my
bitcoin investment, both in real life and in chat rooms. It wasn’t that big of a thing then, but
I’m glad that there is hardly anyone who knows I have so much bitcoin now. About 6 months later, I came across more info
online, this time about bitcoin mining. But first, a little more about bitcoin. Bitcoin is secure because it uses something
called a blockchain. Blockchains are nothing more than a bunch
of calculations, and everyone who’s part of the chain can know the whole chain, so
nobody can make a change because then the answers to the equations would change and
everyone would know. To create more bitcoins people would solve
all these equations on their computer, and when they’d come up with a solution they’d
be adding to the chain, and be rewarded with bitcoin. That’s how bitcoins were created and put
out into the system. Doing all the calculations and adding to the
chain is called mining. Sort of like minign for gold, but instead,
you’re mining for bitcoin. Well, I was good with computers, and had even
used part of my Grandma’s money to build my own PC for gaming, so I thought I might
as well give mining a go, too, to add to my bitcoin stash. The price of bitcoin was going up, too, which
was a good incentive. Mining isn’t especially fast, so I didn’t
end up with the 12 bitcoin I heard of people getting when they successfully processed a
block, but I did get fractions of bitcoin, which added up over time. I mined mostly when I was bored, or I would
leave my computer mining bitcoin when I was off doing other things and didn’t need to
game, like when I was at school. Every so often, when bitcoin prices were low,
I would buy some more. I felt like I had a strange collection, like
how some people collect stamps or bugs. And the price of bitcoin kept going up. I’d watch the markets every week, and there
was an amazing upward trend. I started to learn more about economics and
how to read the graphs I found online. In 2013, things really boomed – bitcoin
became a lot more mainstream, way more people were interested in it, and one bitcoin was
worth HUNDREDS instead of the ten or twenty bucks I’d been able to buy it for originally. At this point, I got more into mining, and
set up some more servers so I could get more coins. I wasn’t selling it though – not yet,
I wanted to see how much I could make! During high school I just did normal geek
stuff, got better working with computers, and spent A LOT of my time playing video games. I managed to get a job when I was 16 working
in IT support, so I got to do my hobby and make money out of it. Okay, there were a lot of angry customers
who didn’t even know how to copy and paste, but it was better than working at McDonalds! I still didn’t talk about my “collection”,
which I am SO glad about in hindsight. You might not know this, but bitcoin miners
and people with a lot of cryptocurrency are targeted really frequently by hackers. People will try to impersonate you and gather
information about you any chance they get. That really taught me about how unsafe the
internet can be, even if it’s also a lot of fun. There is no easier way to avoid those things
than by simply making sure no one knows your name, or how much you have. When the price of bitcoin fell in 2015, don’t
think I didn’t start having my own doubts about my secret collection. But bitcoin started to become, I don’t know…almost
“mainstream.” It was even making small headlines in the
news, when it used to be this weird internet thing that most people didn’t even know
about, and other people thought was a hoax. It was still around 400, which is INSANE when
you think about how much I bought it for. If I had started buying it then, even if I’d
used all my grandma’s money, I could have only bought 3 bitcoins. But by then, I had around 100. It was June of 2019 when I finally decided
to take the leap and cash some of my bitcoin out. I decided that I would take out 30, which
got me around $300,000 USD! That meant I still had some in the bank – in
case the value kept rising, which I thought it would – but I also had the safety net
of knowing I had some of the money out, in case the market dropped. I used it in really boring ways, sorry…I
paid for college and put down a deposit on a house. Still, I felt like that was pretty impressive
for an 18-year old guy! I told people that I had used my savings,
and let them assume I meant my savings from when I worked at the IT place. I still had a couple of incidents with attempted
identity theft. I have NO IDEA how, maybe in my time spent
in the bitcoin chatrooms I ended up in the sights of some dark web criminal. I had good security systems in place at that
point, and I used a random password which I changed every month, so none of them were
able to get me. Getting the email saying someone attempted
to get into my account from a different location was terrifying, though. You might be wondering where I am today. Well, I live in the master bedroom of my three
bedroom house, with two super chill roommates who pay me rent. It’s helping me pay off the mortgage, and
yeah, it’s nice to have a bit of extra income AND be able to live with two people who have
become close friends. College is going well too! It’s definitely better than high school. I can see myself making computers and IT into
a full-time career once I graduate, maybe even building some custom PCs for people commercially. I recently asked my roommates, Sophie and
Connor, if they would be okay with me bringing a pet into the household, and they said yes,
so I’ve been looking around the local animal shelters to try and find the perfect fit. I have a big back yard, so I think a dog would
be good… do you guys have any dog breed recommendations? Small or large? I don’t really want to train a puppy, so
an adult would be best, but I’m open to anything. I can imagine after reading my story, you’re
thinking that getting into bitcoin yourself might be a good idea. Honestly? I think I just got lucky. I had a lot of faith, AND got access to a
large (ish) amount of money at the time that bitcoin was really cheap, so I ended up being
able to buy a lot of it. Remember, bitcoin wasn’t guaranteed to increase
in value – it could have decreased over time, and then I would have lost $500! It’s sort of like gambling, but not, and
the price definitely isn’t moving now like it was in 2016. In fact, it’s less than half of what it
was at its highest, so just keep that in mind, and don’t make any spur of the moment decisions! There are two things I would love for you
to let me know in the comments. First, I was serious about those dog breed
recommendations – I’ve been doing a lot of research, and honestly, they all seem amazing! I’m definitely going to adopt, not buy,
but apart from that I’m open to anything. Second, we should have a story time – if
you have a time where you got really lucky, like me, let everyone know in the comments
– I’ll be reading them. Thanks for listening to my story. It felt really good to finally share it with
someone. Hope you found it interesting, and maybe even
learned something new as well. There’s a whole lot of information out there
on the internet, if you’re interested! Oh, and don’t forget to like and subscribe
for more stories like mine!
