The Weird World of Cryptocurrency from a Newcomer's Point of View

There is a moment when you walk in through a plain-looking door and discover that there is a secret world, with new codes, activities, costumes, rituals, and games. And within that room there are more doors that lead to even stranger places where people trade digital graphics for actual money and "mine" monkeys! If you step back and look at this world, I think you will agree... It is pretty Weird!

But so fascinating! And, to be honest, there seems to be so much promise - and such a diversity of ways - for building financial independence in this space, that I couldn't help myself. I walked in through the door and tried to join Cryptoworld.

The learning curve is crazy steep in this world and so many of the rules that people learn about investing or money management don't seem to apply. As someone with true beginner's eyes, I wanted to share my journey before I forgot what it was like to really be surprised and confounded pretty much every day. I also want to convince you why it might be important to understand the perspective of inexperience folks like me.

I  am a mid-life, Gen X American guy. I have a decent job, am accomplished in my field, and have been socking money away in the kinds of retirement investment vehicles that people in my generation were warned would be our only alternative to eating dry cat food under a bridge. We weren't supposed to believe that the government social security apparatus would still be around when it came time for us to start living off the proceeds of what we'd contributed. We'd be on our own. 

So, when I had a few spare dollars, I'd write a physical paper check and mail it off with a physical, licked, paper stamp to some big mutual fund company and slowly grow my retirement account. At every job, I upped my contribution to 401k retirement funds until I hit the company match ceiling. I'd read that someone my age would need $1,000,000 at retirement age to survive. Then 10 years later I'd read the number had grown to $2 Million. Then $3 Million, and now my discount broker webpage scolds me that I will need $4,000,000. Next year, I am sure it will be 5 Mil and by the time I actually am of retirement age, I'll need $500 Million. 

This is the world I know. Folks like me pore over mutual fund disclosures and Morningstar ratings, throw in some international funds, allocate to some aggressive strategy that you promise you'll shift toward bonds and cash when you get older, and hope that the market doesn't crash when you're finally retiring, or that inflation doesn't come back and send you to Cat Food Under a Bridge Island. Every once in awhile I'd have some fun choosing individual stocks to invest in, and started following a rule that I would never invest in any company I could understand from a business perspective and from a use case perspective. In each of these cases, you could imagine walking down to the store and seeing the products, or to the central business district of a city and seeing the people working for this company.

And then November 2020 happened and I stepped into a weird new world where I felt powerless to avoid putting my money into an invisible coin that was really some kind of computer program that required planet-smothering levels of energy consumption to calculate...seemingly executed by hidden armies of underground coders. 

I get it. People like me start off as strangers in this strange land. But I think I represent the next wave of retail investors...the wave that you want to sell to and trade with over the coming decades as we look at non-traditional assets. We're not the ones who pumped up $WallStreetBets, but the ones who have been investing in the stock market or rental properties or uncirculated gold coins or whatever for a while and now want to understand the incredible opportunities in cryptocurrency. To be honest, we are extremely inspired by the digital generation whether they be nomad or crypto investors. We want our 2nd passports, our banks on a flash drive, and a view of Hong Kong Harbor, Marina Bay, or Old Town Tallinn over our laptop screens, too.

Earlier pioneers to this transformation blazed the trail, and I am hoping that by sharing my experiences I can dial down some of the apprehension and worry that I see in so many people who have been trying to build their financial independence the traditional way - and who are now freaking out about fiat debt, civil unrest, the generational costs of the COVID pandemic, and the hungry monster of inflation lurking in the bushes.

Cryptoworld is confusing, yes. And requires new skills, new analytics, tons of patience with CAPTCHA, and the patience to wade through oceans of new terms and exchanges to find the ones you can count on.

But it is so worth it if at the end of the day, each of us can take more control of our financial lives... from earning to owning to transporting with us anywhere we want!