One of the services I offer people, is help with navigating their cryptocurrency investments. Private keys, wallets, exchanges, KYC, earning interest, taking a loan, remittances, taxes; you name it. The standard financial advisor business model is to take money from customers, invest it for them, and take a cut of the return. Not only do I NOT have a license to take peoples money, I wouldn’t feel right doing it. To me, this is entirely counter to the ethos of cryptocurrency in the first place. Learning about Bitcoin, and consequently managing every aspect of investing in it has been incredibly financially empowering for me. I’ve come away from this experience much more financially literate. Best of all, I am my own bank.
What Financial Literacy is to Me
To me, financial literacy is not just being able to manage your credit card debt, and pay your taxes. Financial literacy is about knowing …
Where your money is
How your money is being used
Why your money is in the place you put it
Knowing the answer to these questions will lead you to feel a sense of empowerment over your finances.
Empower Yourself Financially
There is a time and place for managing other peoples money, so I am not bashing financial advisors. In my personal experience, I haven’t had them be very helpful for me, but I know they do a lot of good in the world for people with money problems that are tricky to solve.
My hangup was more so around the arbitrary requirements that must be filled before someone could even begin working with a financial advisor. Working with financial advisors typically involves some minimum investment, and yearly fees regardless of the performance of your investments. You need to have a bank account, and in order to have that, you need to have a government issued identity. Needless to say, there are barriers that make obtaining financial services difficult for some.
Lastly, and this was the kicker for me, I would have little to no control over the actual investments that my advisor would make on my behalf. I know there are exceptions to each of the scenarios above, but this is the general case I observed based on my experience. For me, working with a financial advisor meant not having answers to the where, how, and why questions I asked above.
To me, financial empowerment means creating confidence that I have secured my own prosperity today, and improved conditions for those around me tomorrow. It means that I have optionality, and that I am the one in control of my profits, and my losses.
Vote With Your Money
I am a strong believer that how you spend your money and what you spend your money on is politically stronger than your vote. You spend money every day rather than voting once every few years. Where you spend your money has ripple effects that either stays and circulates in your local community, or ends up in a multi-national bank account.
At the end of the day, the very companies that you want to see fail in the future run on money. Money is the gasoline for the engine of business. The money these business are using comes from a lot of places, but one of those places is from people investing in them. If I don’t want to see oil companies prosper in a world that is on fire, then I should have zero oil companies in my investment portfolio. If I want to see the proliferation of regulated medicinal psychedelic mushrooms, then I should invest in the companies that are working to bring that into fruition.
The reality I most would like to see manifest on this planet, is one where everyone unbiasedly has the ability to financially liberate themselves with the best form of money on the planet. That is Bitcoin, and thats why it makes up 95% of my portfolio. I believe Bitcoin improves the state of the world for those around me, which empowers and emboldens my investment decision.
Crypto Literacy is Financial Literacy
After a couple of years into my crypto journey, I realized that I had learned a ton about how money works. Because of Bitcoin, I learned about …
ownership (through key management)
market dynamics (supply and demand)
market capitalization (how to value an asset)
inflation (and thus scarcity)
Credit, debt, and interest rates
Monetary History (what is money)
Ultimately what Bitcoin did for me, was taught me how to value and how to think about money. I was never taught that there is an art to valuing goods and services. I grew up learning that the price is the price, and price is synonymous with value. Truth be told, price and value are two totally different things. The price is what something costs now, and value is a subjective interpretation of what a good or service is worth. It’s hard to believe I learned all of this by studying Bitcoin, but it’s true. If you follow the Bitcoin rabbit hole deep enough, you may arrive at similar conclusions.
Investing in cryptocurrency sort of forces you to learn things about money because of how they’re designed. It forces you to ask some pretty uncomfortable questions about how money has historically been created, managed, and controlled. Fortunately, investing in cryptocurrency simultaneously gives you the ability to voluntarily remove yourself (and your money) from your current monetary system. The feeling of empowerment that comes from taking control of your financial destiny is unparalleled.
Manage your Own Bitcoin
I know this is scary for some newcomers, especially if you would describe yourself as “technically challenged”. I implore you to take baby steps, but take the steps nonetheless. One of the best ways to start teaching yourself financial literacy, is to make decisions that force you to learn. Managing your own Bitcoin means voluntarily taking on the responsibility of learning what to do, and what not to do. It means being in charge of the security of your funds. It means reaping the rewards of your decisions, however it can also mean suffering the losses and learning the lessons that losses bring.
Are You Waiting For The Next Bitcoin?
In my crypto journey, I was gung-ho about finding the next bitcoin cause it seemed out of my grasp when I got into crypto in 2015. I spent a couple of years waiting for “the next Bitcoin”. I constantly was putting off learning, and investing, because I was waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. Looking back now, the opportunity to learn was always in front of me. Bitcoin was a great investment, but also an invaluable learning tool. It taught me about all the other cryptocurrencies, but also about financial literacy in general. It is difficult to place a dollar value on the lessons that I learned.
I can tell you how to get into cryptocurrency, or I can help you directly. Earlier in this letter, I talked about how I educate my clients on how to empower themselves and take charge of their finances. The important thing to remember is that no matter what anyone else tells you, this IS within your ability to learn, understand, and leverage.
Wherever you might be in your journey, you can reach out to me to see what is next! Email me at ready@gofullcrypto.com and we can go from there.
Cheers,
Keegan