In an article titled 'This high school dropout who invested in bitcoin at $12 is now a millionaire at 18' on CNBC:
Erik Finman made a bet with his parents that if he turned 18 and was a millionaire, they wouldn't force him to go to college. Thanks to his savvy investments in bitcoin and the current all-time high valuation, he won't have to get his degree.
Let's see what we know about him, according to the article:
- He started buying on May, 2011 at the age of 12, with $1,000 from his grandparents, and tip from his older brother;
- He believes that "bitcoin is going to be worth a couple hundred thousand to a million dollars a coin." Kudos to the kid. He is right on, as I also started to believe 11 months ago on my very first Steemit post (bitcoin goes to US$50,000 - 1,000,000 in 10 to 20 years!).
- "Finman sold his first bitcoin investments at the end of 2013, when they were valued at $1,200 a piece." This is the MOST remarkable thing about him. While everyone is barely talking about his $1,000,000 dollar BTC wealth, the astonishingly fact has been his timing.
Take a good look at the charts.
and on a log scale:
The closing price of BTC has never reached $1,200 until April, 2017, but it could well have traded at $1,200 intraday on one of the exchanges somewhere in the world at the end of 2013. Please note, I am not being cynical or doubting his first winning trade. I want to point it out about how remarkable he has achieved.
Imagine yourself, a 12-year-old kid or whoever you are, bought BTC or anything for investing at $12. You now watch it reaching $20, then $24 (you just doubled your money), then $48, then... onto $1,000! You are still holding on to it. Still hold on to it....
Bam! You sold all of it at $1,200, the highest point the market has ever seen up until that point, and more importantly, for years to come. You just picked the very top to sell! And that's not luck alone can give you. Weather or not he made 100x of his money, or just the sloppy reporting by some clueless 'financial reporter,' is not the point.
The point is, he bought low, bought early, and he had the ability to hold on! How many people bought MSFT or AAPL 30 years ago, but still not a millionaire today? Why? Because they sold for a small profit or a much bigger loss along the way. That is why only the early tech company employees are filthy rich now, because their company WOULDN'T ALLOW them to sell!
This kid is awesome also because he had built and sold a company at such a young age.
He also got the guts to say, not just do:
"I can proudly say I made it, and I'm not going to college."
That's totally against what all the good people are telling you this days.
This kid is gonna be heard again for years to come (if this CNBC reporting is accurate). He might be the next Elon Must, Peter Thiel or other current tech titans.
Because he started early, and does it well!