A Bitcoin investor bought at $100 per coin in 2013 with a "10,000 or bust" pledge, then sold weekly at $3,000 when Coinbase capped withdrawals, watching the price later hit $20,000. He recognized the bubble when his aunt started pitching Ethereum as easy money.
Okay, I have some Bitcoin stories. Not as good as that, but I'll share. So 2013, I'm running Monkey Inferno. And so basically it's me and, I don't know, 15 engineers and one designer. And one of the engineers, our sort of IT security guy or ops guy, Pete, he was always talking about Bitcoin at lunch. And Pete's also always talking about like a bunch of anarchist shit. And so, you know, I just kind of bucketed it with that. And Pete's like, no, you know, these ops guys, they hang out in IRC channels with other ops guys and this is all they talk about. And so he's like, no, we should be doing something with Bitcoin. And like, we're an idea lab. And so people are always saying stuff we should be doing. I was like, you know, all right, tell me about it. And I think at this time Bitcoin had just had its like spike out of the cents into the dollars. And he was like, hey dude, I've been mining Bitcoin on our servers. Like, we made some money. And I was like, okay, Pete, but like, we really need to stay focused on like business, not like this thing that you're talking about. So I'm like way off here, but I start catching the bug. I start tracking it and it goes to $7 and then it went to like, you know, $70 and everybody was like going crazy about it at that time, which is funny cuz now it's at like whatever, $10 grand. And, um, and so we, we start getting greedy and we're like, all right, we gotta do, we gotta get in this Bitcoin game. Coinbase was out there. We're like, we gotta get in there and start a company. And so we, we start sprinting on this product that's going to be like a Coinbase type of competitor, but with a different angle. And, and then Michael Birch, who's our investor, gets word of it. The lawyer basically calls him. It's like, hey, you know, they're like doing a Bitcoin thing. I think Bitcoin's for drugs and like, I don't know what Sean's up to now. And so he, you know, comes over for lunch unannounced. He's just like, hey, what's going on? I heard we're doing a Bitcoin thing. And I was like, yes, you know, this could be the new financial system. And I start like trying to explain it, but I don't actually know my shit, right? So I'm just in the hype cycle as well. And so he's like, I don't think we should do this. I think there's a lot of risk. He's like, you know, he's a billionaire. So he's like, you know, you can lose the money I give you. Just don't lose all my other money by getting me sued because you started a crypto like exchange. Like, don't do that. And so he like, and he's like, you know, are you sure you wanna do this? And I was like, and this is where I made the mistake. I didn't have enough knowledge or conviction at that time to stand up and be like, no, we need to be in this game. This is real.
God.
And so I missed that, but I did buy some then and I made a pledge. I was like, 10,000 or bust, because the daily jumps and drops were like so much. I was like, I can't even look at this because every day I'll be tempted to sell. So I was like, 10,000 per coin or bust. And I thought that was my way of saying like, I'm going to be a billionaire.
Like, I mean, you're going to buy—
you bought coins, you go, I'll sell it at 10,000. I'll sell it only at 10,000 or zero. Like, it's— I'm not selling in between. And I thought that was such an outrageous number, 10,000 a coin, because it was at like, whatever, It just touched $100 and I was like, you know, $10,000 per coin. That's insane. And, but at the time I started looking into it. So what's cool is you can go back and find the original forum posts where Satoshi posted the Bitcoin whitepaper and you could see the reaction in those forums of what people are saying about it. And you could read all these sort of like, you know, the correspondence back and forth. It's really fascinating. Like if you're a nerd, this is a, This is a great 3 hours of your life. And so, um, so I got into it and then I got spooked, which is a big mistake. I go to a wedding in DC and my aunt, who's like an old Indian auntie—
what is she like? How do you, how do you— so you dig in the ground and mine it?
No, she's telling me that she's like, have you heard about Ethereum? Like, Ethereum is very good. She's like, Ethereum, very good. I'm like, wait, you know what Ethereum is? I was like, I know what Ethereum— you don't even know what— like, your phone doesn't even work. You hope you keep it plugged in. Like, it's a cordless— like, has a cord in it.
It's like, dude, you have a—
you're—
it's like Auntie at AOL.com.
Yeah, exactly. And so I was like, what's good about it, Auntie? And she was like, oh, it's very easy. You buy it and it makes you money. And I was like, oh, this is like what a bubble is. I was like, this is, you know, I've read about the dot-com boom and bust and I was like, this is what happened. People just thought you buy it because it makes money and that's what was happening. And I had cousins quitting their jobs and becoming like crypto traders and they had like good jobs before this. And I was like, I got to go. And this was at $3,000. So I tried to sell everything. Luckily, Coinbase has like limits. You can only sell certain amounts per week.
$5 grand a day or $5 grand.
It was like $15 grand a week. So I start selling. I try to sell $15 grand each week. I do that for like 2 or 3 weeks. And then by the end of it, I'm like, okay, I've cashed out a profit. Maybe I'll just hold the rest. So I think I still had like half of whatever left. And, and then it ran up to $20 grand. And then my mom's like, Dude, your aunt knows more about this than you. Like, she was telling you it's good. Why did you sell? And so, and then it did bust eventually. But like, that's like kind of a lesson learned. You can't actually— even when you know—
answer new financial advisor—
even when you know it's overhyped, you don't know when it's going to burst. And that's like, you know, just a big problem.
I've, uh, I've held it the whole time. I, I just said, uh, I'm just never going to sell it. I'll just— I mean, like, if I ever have to pay rent, but, uh, Yeah, I don't care.
I don't even love you. Yeah, fuck forever now.
