Also enjoy some pictures of my travels!
Now lets begin,
Despite being a Colombian, I have lived outside of this incredible country a good part of my life because of my dad's work. I have lived on all continents except Australia and known many cultures and languages; Just to say that throughout my life I have learned and forgotten English, Spanish and French a few times. I arrived in Colombia when I was 13 years old and stayed there since. I studied in an excellent school and continued to study Mechanical and Industrial Engineering in the best university in the country.
Throughout my university career I always had the feeling that I wanted to leave the country to explore, to learn and try to understand a little about the path I wanted to take throughout my life. But that was it for several years ... Just a feeling. Time passed and I graduated from Mechanical Engineering, I stopped studying for a year and did a business internship.
Towards the end of my practice and thanks to my dad I discovered something that changed my whole mentality. It all started one day when I left work to have lunch with him and he mentioned a topic that I had heard of before, but had never paid attention to; A crazy idea of virtual money, a revolutionary concept created by Satoshi Nakamoto (a person? a group?), he spoke to me about Bitcoin. This idea kept ringing so loud in my head that when I went back to the office it was all I could think about, then went home and it was all I could think about. Such was my obsession that the next day I had read everything about this supposed cryptocurrency, and my mind had become obsessed and passionate about this subject ... I wanted Bitcoin.
A few days passed, I went back to lunch with my dad and mentioned that I wanted to buy Bitcoin. Enthusiastically he helped me search how we could buy a piece of this virtual Gold. Such was our dedication that after a couple of hours I had 0.16 Bitcoin in my virtual wallet (When it was at $700!). But the story does not end here. Just like any obsession, I wanted more. MORE! AND MORE! So, I set myself the goal of buying little bits until I had one complete Bitcoin.
I continued working and at the end of each month when I received my salary payment, I dedicated a fraction of it to buy a little more. And little by little, by the end of the year I had managed to have 1 Bitcoin. My pride! The happiness I felt for having reached my goal was unparalleled! I had all my family and friends tired of this subject because it was the only thing I talked about. And I stayed like this for a couple of months, with my beautiful Bitcoin, seeing as it rose and fell in price. Up and down.
I had always kept my Bitcoin in a virtual wallet on my cell phone until one day I wanted to store it on my computer and started looking for other options. I started to investigate and reached for a computer wallet called Exodus. And BOOM! It was as simple as that that I learned that Bitcoin was only one of the many cryptocurrencies that exist in the world, and despite being the most well-known and important, there are others, with very interesting technologies behind.
Exodus allowed me to change Bitcoin for other types of coins and because of the price change of those other currencies it was possible to have more Bitcoin (and of course less too) without having to buy more! So, this was my new goal, to grow the amount of Bitcoin I had, BUT, without investing more cash into it.
As all this happened, I went back to college to continue my career in Industrial Engineering and as more time passed and the closer I was to finishing my studies, the slight sensation that I had always felt of wanting to leave the country became stronger and stronger. I told my parents that I wanted to go to Germany and after thinking for a few days they agreed and gave me a one-way ticket to Frankfurt, Germany. The problem was that my savings were not enough for me to live outside the country by myself and here is where crypto helped me fulfill this desire.
It was April 2017, and I had a flight to Frankfurt in 3 months ... I had 3 months to accumulate as much Bitcoin as possible to be able to travel. I spent most of my time trading between different virtual currencies to accumulate and accumulate. Every time I made big profits, I cashed out a portion of it and kept investing the rest. After 3 months, I had managed to cash out my initial investment, cash out enough money to live in Germany for about 3 months and still had some cryptocurrency to continue investing. IT HAD BEEN ACHIEVED! Thanks to technology I had managed to have enough capital to go do what I wanted, to see Germany and live outside of Colombia.
With all this experience, I realized that nowadays technology has opened a door to an incredible world where the number of ways that exist to make money is innumerable, where everyone can find something they like to do and live from it. Cryptocurrencies are changing my life and I know they will continue to do so for many more years!
To whoever read this far:
Cheers and best regards from GERMANY!
Anthony Potdevin
