GROWING up in a small town in the US “fly over” state of Idaho, Erik Finman hated school and the negative teachers, one of whom told him he’d end up working at McDonald’s.
So at age 15, he begged his parents to let him drop out.
Shortly after, he announced to his parents — who met at Stanford University while getting their doctorates in electrical engineering and physics — that he didn’t want to go to university.
In the ensuing negotiation process his parents committed to a wager: He didn’t have to get the qualifications to go to university if he was a millionaire by the age of 18.
- First project
“(High school) was pretty low quality,” Erik said. “I had these teachers that were all kind of negative. One teacher told me to drop out and work at McDonald’s because that was all I would amount to for the rest of my life. I guess I did the dropout part.”
Having gained the first $100,000 on bitcoin investment, Finman launched online tutoring service Botangle.com that offered students and tutors a diverse array of resources that just do not exist in a normal classroom setting.
Finman gathered a team consisting of more than 20 workers, including designers, programmers and animators. He admits that it wasn’t easy to make potential employees take him seriously.
http://www.coinspeaker.com/2017/06/21/meet-erik-finman-18-year-old-bitcoin-millionaire/
He currently owns 403 bitcoins, which at the current $2,700 a coin puts his bitcoin value at $1.09 million. He also has smaller investments in other cryptocurrencies, including litecoin and ethereum.
The first time, he turned $1,000 into $100,000
Finman began investing in bitcoin in May 2011 at the age of 12, thanks to a $1,000 gift from his grandmother and a tip from his brother Scott.
Though he's close with his family — which he calls the "Elon Musk version of the Kardashians" — growing up in "small town" Idaho outside of Coeur d'Alene wasn't easy. Finman was especially frustrated with his high school teachers, and begged his parents to let him drop out at 15.