Ben Simpson recounts his seven-year journey from humble beginnings in Launceston, Tasmania to building a seven-figure cryptocurrency portfolio. He describes early discovery of Bitcoin at age 17, learning through intensive self-education, high-risk early investments (including taking a loan backed by his parents), large gains from early narrative bets (notably Metaverse-related altcoins), mistakes from following online theories, the importance of conviction in assets (e.g., Ethereum), self-custody/security practices, and consolidating holdings into a few high-conviction assets (BTC, ETH). He frames five core lessons: learn deeply, accept some losses, avoid following unverified online narratives, hold conviction & double-down during bear markets, and keep custody of your crypto.
Questions this video answers
Seven years.
17 years old.
Around $3,000–$5,000.
Approximately 75x–85x.
Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH).
Chapters
Seven years ago, I was sharing a bunk bed with my brother in little old Launceston, Tasmania. And seven years later, I've been able to grow over a seven figure crypto portfolio from starting from zero. And in this video, I'm going to share with you my journey, my lessons and takeaways so you can take this story and implement it in your own life to try and create the financial freedom that you want in your own life.
When I was 17, I was so interested in business. I still love business to this day, but I was looking at any opportunity to try and make money where it was iPhone repairs. I had a sportswear company, I was running an events company. And then when I was 17, an old friend of mine sat me down over lunch and made me download the Coinbase app. And he sent me a hundred dollars of bitcoin over lunch and I was absolutely mind blown. I was like, what on earth just happened? And something within me sort of sparked for the first time, you know, really found something that I wanted to learn about and to be obsessed about. I love obsessing over things and learning as much as I can. So I went down this six month journey, this rabbit hole of consuming everything. So I read all the bitcoin books I could. I was listening to every YouTube channel and podcasts. I could consume as much information because it's so hard to wrap my head around this crypto space. And I still didn't have much money at the time. Six months later, after the 2017 crash, crypto started to come down. Institutional investors are not buying through these exchanges, so the price of bitcoin is not properly reflected. This point I really had conviction. The things around the monetary policy, the printing of money, inflation, all these things just made so much sense. I'm like, why does not more people know about this? And as the prices came down, I wanted to invest, but I had no idea how. I actually took a loan out at the time to buy bigger bitcoin. I do not recommend that at all. I was still living at home at the time. I had no downside risk. My mum and dad guaranteed the loan. If I, if it didn't pay off, I don't know what I was going to do. But it paid off. I bought bitcoin, I bought some old coins, but predominantly bitcoin. When bitcoin was at that sort of 3,000 to 5,000 level, I can't remember exactly how. And that's what got me into crypto. That's, you know, got me, got me in the market. From there, I Started to look at some of the alternative coins, right, Because I saw that they had a lot of upside potential. And the ICO boom came again around that 2017-2019. There was so many ICOs that dabbled in and started putting Ethereum and whatever else. But I got really early in the narrative of the Metaverse, before the Metaverse was even really a thing. And there was a few projects that, you know, we were able to get exposure to sort of the sub 10, sub 15 million dollar market caps that eventually ran on to hit 5 600, $701 billion market caps. So I think the biggest return I had was somewhere between like a 75 and you know, 85x return. But there were a lot of investments I made that didn't go anywhere near that. In fact, a lot of them went to zero. So one of the biggest lessons I learned from starting out and starting to get in old coins, that you're going to have some that return break even, but then going to have a handful that go to zero and you need to be okay with that. Now the risk tolerance that I had was super high, right? So I had my Bitcoin, had some Ethereum, but then I went really heavy on these old coins again. I was 18, didn't really have so much, you know, that much downside risk and went hard. And to be honest, I was really lucky on a lot of the investments I made by getting into a narrative before the retail market come is your ticket to success if you can be on the buy side before everyone's starting to buy and be on the sell side before everyone else starts to sell? That is the key, easier said than done to try and find those narratives. And it's becoming harder and harder, but it was one of the biggest things that was allowed me to, to return a lot of those returns that I had was to get so early in those narratives. Now I nearly lost out on a lot of this money as I was running this portfolio up. There was one YouTuber online that I was listening really heavily in. I won't name who he was or the theory that he had, but it caught a lot of the attention of the crypto market sort of through 2018 to 2020. And it was this hyperwave theory, this theory that evolution of financial markets, supply and demand metrics of crypto and bitcoin specifically that the hyperwave theory was basically saying that we were going to go right down towards like the thousand doll climbing back up into a new bull market. And I bought into that and this was the biggest Lesson I learned about incentives and listening to people online don't know what they're talking about and buying into their narratives. I actually sold a lot of my bitcoin during this time because I thought, and I believe that we were going to head lower because of some random chart. And luckily, by me being out of the markets for two or three weeks, the market hadn't done much. And throughout that time I really started to think about, well, what does this actually mean? What happens if crypto runs up and I'm now out of the game? What does that actually do to my portfolio and what does it do to me? And luckily I bought back in and the hyperwave theory was complet. Completely redundant. It didn't work. The market blew off. Another lesson I learned listening to people online and buying into some of these theories. There's no blueprint to this crypto market. You've got to take independent information from a wide source and come up with your own investment strategy. Right? Just listening to someone online is not going to give you the answers that you need. Number three here is having conviction in the assets that you like. I remember back in Ethcon In Sydney in 2018, Vitalik came to Sydney and he spoke at this conference. There wasn't many people there and Ethereum was $80. And the conversation at the table at the conference was when Ethereum was gonn back to $100. And just listening to these people talk about the future, talk about their ideas, talk about where they thought this space was going and the opportunity that they had in front of them made me so bullish. It gave me so much conviction. I went home and I basically sold everything else I had. I had my sportswear company at the time actually put predominantly a lot of the money that I had on the balance sheet into Ethereum. I wish I bought more. The reason I didn't was during those times, it's so bearish. So many people are super bearish on the crypto space. No one believes in it. It's an important thing that's kept through with me. Every single bear market is. It's always the same. It's the same people talking about how the market's not coming back. It's the same people saying that this place is not going anywhere. But yet the prices, the market caps continue to increase. So have conviction, double down, back yourself and it's going to return you so much more money than just dabbling during these periods of downturns. Really back yourself and buy and hold. Number four is, I've been able to navigate the big blowers of FTX, Celsius and BlockFi. And the biggest reasons I've been able to do that is because I've never given up my crypto to a centralized exchange or given it to a non custodial wallet. I've always maintained my crypto on my own ledger, a big one. Most people coming into the space don't understand that or they're just happy with the risk, they don't think it's going to happen to them and then overnight they lose their crypto. I know it sounds pretty obvious, but if you lose your crypto you're not going to make much money. So be cautious of security and safety. Lock this crypto away and hold it securely. Don't give it to other people because more likely than not, at some point in time you may lose that crypto. And number five back during the 2018 and 2019 bear market I consolidated a lot of my altcoins into BTC and ETH and into a couple of altcoins that I really had strong conviction on. So a big key point and lesson for me again is that by having 10 or 15 or 20 altcoins that are averagely performed versus consolidating them into two or three that you really have conviction on and you really know has a long term potential. Think about that as a quality Strategy because holding 10 or 15 average coins is not going to give you the returns that you need versus really backing yourself and having conviction. I guess at the end of the day that's probably my biggest takeaway here of how I've grown my portfolio from, you know, basically nothing up to seven figures over the last six or seven years is by having conviction, backing yourself. Navigating the pitfalls of giving a crypto up and getting into themes and assets early enough to navigate and be on the sell side when speculators and retail investors are coming in. If you're following the rest of the crowd, if your favorite influencer is talking about a topic, theory, a crypto or a sector, it's too late. You need to be in that before everyone else is talking about it. And if you can do that, you're gonna make life changing amounts of money. Hopefully that's helped. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments below. I'd love to get back to you have any new ideas for videos you want me to do? Please let me know in the comments below and I'll see you on the next episode.
