A long time ago at this point, I decided to stop giving people any kind of financial advice. The truth is, most people don’t want to put in the work. They don’t want to understand how finances work to begin with. They feel completely comfortable delegating the thinking to someone else. That way, if things go south, they can avoid guilt. And that might very well be the underlying dynamic at play.
To be completely honest here—I too was, at one point, the kind of person who preferred chewed-up information. Finances are complicated. The more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know. But eventually, you learn just enough to know what to stay away from. And I guess… that’s where I exist these days.
It doesn’t really embarrass me anymore to admit that I fell for many scams in my life. I bought into the MLM hype in my early twenties, and when I was chasing that elusive “financial freedom” (whatever that means), I found crypto—and bought into some more ponzis for good measure.
One memory that keeps circling back is my experience with the now-defunct Bitconnect. The so-called “lending platform” that, at one point, was front-page material in any cryptocurrency ranking. You’d think having just been burned by scams a few months earlier would’ve been enough to keep me away—but no. The lavish lifestyles of YouTubers at the time, their videos showing real cash-outs, eventually wore me down.
There was a channel back then—I wish I could remember the name. It wasn’t well known, and the host never showed his face. I remember a British man, a professor maybe. Unlike other Bitconnect promoters, he focused on the tech.
He had whole videos dedicated to explaining the bot. The one responsible for all the profits we investors were seeing in our wallets. A bot no one else understood—but it was supposedly doing the magic.
Of course, we now know no such bot ever existed. We know now, quite clearly, that Bitconnect wasn’t like a ponzi. It was one. And when the pool of new “investors” dried up—mostly thanks to governments throwing a bucket of cold water on our fever dreams—the whole thing exploded.
I went through a deep depression after it happened. I had been so gullible, so stupid—I’d even taken out a loan to invest in the ponzi. All in all, I had $35,000 riding the wave of a ticking time bomb. My days consisted of watching a number go up on a screen and dreaming of better days just around the corner.
Unlike many other dum-dums, I had one amazing thing on my side—my wife. She supported me. We accepted the mistake and made a plan to dig ourselves out. That investment “lesson” cost me $35k—a year’s salary for an average worker.
The experience stained me. Scarred me. Use whatever metaphor works. And because of it, I feel strongly that intelligence doesn’t protect anyone from being seduced by a promise of better days. People will leap in desperation. And I don’t want to be a catalyst for that. I don’t want anyone to follow my actions blindly as if I’m some sort of oracle. If they don’t understand what I’m doing, they shouldn’t follow. Period.
Maybe I’m just talking to myself. But I also think I’m talking to an audience—one that isn’t here yet, but will surely arrive. The newbies. The noobs. Pick your label.
They’ll stumble into this blog, maybe this blockchain, with little idea of how any of it works. They might get seduced by a charismatic personality or a bullish blog post. Or worse, they might choose to stay ignorant—following someone “smarter” just because.
If they find this post—these words—I want them to know: they are wrong. And they’re likely to mess up.
If you want to win at the game, you have to understand the rules. If you want to make good financial decisions, you need to learn what money even is, the history of it, why the financial reboot that crypto offers was even necessary.
Because if you don’t get that, you’ll make the same mistakes we all made. You won’t understand the power of being your own bank, of removing the middleman. And you’ll definitely fall for the shiny promises that have no value behind them.
Who knows? Your financial lesson might cost less than mine—less than $35k—but if there’s one thing I’m sure of, it’s this:
It won’t be free.
It never is.
MenO
