With the boom of the cryptomarkets in 2017, the prototypical Bitcoin millionaire stories that you’ve most likely heard of probably fell into 1 of 2 categories:
- They held onto the Bitcoin they bought years ago.
- They forgot about the Bitcoin they had and recovered it.
But today, I share with you a story about a different kind of cryptomillionaire. One where his success went beyond just “hodling” and/or forgetting. One where their success was earned.
Atypical Beginnings
Our story begins with a boy named Billy who was born in one of the poorest parts of the U.K. When other people paid bills, Billy’s mom paid meters for electricity and gas.
Council Housing- Subsidized housing by the city for low income families in the UK. This is a random photo taken from wikimedia.
While other parents went to work, his mom struggled just to stay alive. Between battling through cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) from smoking, thyroid issues, and even depression, the two of them struggled to make ends meet having to deciding regularly between paying for rent, buying food, or foregoing hot water with what they got from disability payments.
It is in this context that our atypical cryptomillionaire was given a Kubuntu Linux CD by his grandfather at the age of 7 to go along with an old Dell Inspiron desktop with Pentium 4 and 2 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM. Through this dated pairing, Billy’s fascination with Linux and coding was kindled as he scoured the internet for tricks to make this barely usable computer functional.
It was this key moment that redirected the course of Billy’s life. Rather than following in his family’s footsteps of working in a factory or as a receptionist, Billy started down a path that would eventually lead him to become a cryptomillionaire.
Q: So when did you first hear about cryptocurrency?
A: Some time in 2011, I decided I wanted to make money online. I started off by going through various “pay-to-click” sites, survey sites, pay for traffic sites, etc.
The problem was, being that I was underage (probably like 14 at the time), it was impossible to get something like AlertPay (now Payza) or PayPal to receive the money without putting in false information. This led to the issue that my funds could be (and were) seized at any point, simply because the world’s payment systems discriminate against underage people.
I then found out about Bitcoin. I was glad there was finally a system where I could receive payments, and not have the risk of payment providers shutting me out simply because I was underage.
I then spent a lot of time just scraping Bitcoin faucets, and developed some applications for Bitcoin and Namecoin — the two major coins at the time. I was happy to finally do some work for a payment platform that wasn’t actively discriminating against me. That’s why I loved cryptocurrency, because it didn’t care about my age.
Q: Lol yea faucets were the lifeblood of Bitcoin in the early stages. Not so much now. Did you ever decide to buy any?
A: I have never bought cryptocurrency before with fiat. I have earned every coin I have right now, apart from the few which I’ve purchased using other cryptocurrencies (e.g. bitcoin->litecoin)
Q: So when you say “earn”, does that include mining? Or just faucets?
A: I had mined for a while. Funny story — I had some cheap PSU that came with my case. When I started mining for the first time (I had an AMD HD6870), turns out my PSU was falsely labeled as 500W. After about a day of mining Bitcoin, my PSU caught fire and shut off. Thankfully my grandfather was kind enough to buy me a new PSU.
I’m not sure how much I mined after that event, I think I was terrified of burning out my GPU or PSU a second time and didn’t mine much after that.
Q: Okay final question. In 2017 you became a millionaire. What was that process like? How much was holding? How much of it was earned?
A: At the start of 2016, I had around $20,000 spread across Bitcoin and Litecoin. It was mostly amassed from donations and small development projects that I was paid to work on.
In mid-2016 I joined Steemit, the social media platform running on STEEM. I made some open source projects for Steem, as well as some posts, which had made me over $10,000 in the space of a week. This was the most money I had ever gotten from such small projects.
I then started being a STEEM witness within a few weeks of joining Steemit. In the beginning I was only earning pennies, but I slowly earned more as I climbed up the ranks. It’s taken over a year but I’m now a high ranking witness making over $10,000 USD per month. I also continue to regularly post for additional income.
At the start of 2017 (when I was 20 years old), I had roughly $300,000 USD spread across STEEM, Litecoin, and Bitcoin. A large portion of this was mostly from hodling the Bitcoin and Litecoin payments/donations I received from development projects I did early on. But the other significant portion was earned through my STEEM posts and payouts as a STEEM witness.
Finally on January 2, 2018, now as a 21 year-old, I checked my crypto portfolio to find that I had a total net value of over $1 million dollars.
To be honest, I live a very modest life generally spending no more than $600/month, which has helped sustain and grow my crypto holdings. I don’t spend on crazy things like Lamborghini’s or other “rich people things,” but I don’t really need that kind of stuff.
Billy’s story embodies the idealized promise of wealth redistribution that many have hoped blockchain technology would bring. Without cryptocurrency, he would not have had the same financial and earning opportunities in life as he does now. However, Bitcoin gave him the freedom of uncensored payments and introduced him to blockchain communities that have supported him.
And it is in this detail of Billy’s life that we can distinguish a key characteristic of the state of cryptocurrency today: that someone can earn and even thrive earning a living solely through the blockchain economy.
Realistically speaking, it is still yet to be determined if the blockchain ecosystem is a viable economic model where people can live by earning and spending cryptocurrency alone. But if there’s one lesson that we can take away from the life of this anticryptomillioniare, it’s that you should never underestimate the value of censorship resistant money and you should never count out the underdog.
*Billy is a pseudonym.