From My First $2,000 to a Crypto Millionaire
From the very first time I invested to when I became a crypto millionaire, it took more like four or five years. And honestly, $70,000 was a small amount to pay to become a millionaire. I remember the first investment I made was something like $2,000, and I think that was a great decision for me at the time. First off, I didn't over-invest. I didn't take money where all of a sudden I couldn't pay rent anymore. I said, no, I'm just going to try this out. I was kind of skeptical of crypto as it was, but I was going to try it out anyway. Then I was like, okay, this is kind of working, I can see it, and I started to invest a little bit more month after month. Slowly I started to build a substantial amount of wealth, until I was at six figures with just one crypto coin.
Unfortunately, that turned back into $10,000, and I ended up selling it right there, which was a mistake. In the bull market, if I would have just held on, I would have been in massive profits. I was buying it at like 60 cents, 30 cents, and I was selling at the bottom around 10, 13, 15 cents. If I would have held instead of panic-selling there, I would have literally done a 10x with that crypto at the top.
The biggest mistake I've ever made in crypto is over-investing and being too emotional about a single project, because all of my money was in one thing. That was the biggest mistake I made with Steem back in 2017 and 2018. I went all in on that one crypto. I said, this is the one, I see the roadmap, I've been to the events, this is going to make it. I just had so much conviction. And then the CEO ended up basically saying, I'm out of here, took his millions and ran. That was completely out of my control. I didn't see it coming, and the price just tanked. So I asked myself, all right, what did I learn from this? I'm never doing that again.
Then I went completely the opposite direction, which was diversification like crazy. So now I have coins everywhere, I really truly do. There is a window of opportunity in crypto, and if you time it correctly, even if you mess it up nine times, on that tenth time, if you do it right, it can bring life-changing money. And that's exactly what happened to me.
The 100x Launch I Studied for a Month
There was one community where they launched a previous token that did over 100x. It literally went from zero to 100x within a week. There was tokenomics behind that, and there were all these details, but it was mainly because of the community. This community had a lot of conviction and a lot of people willing to just go all in. A lot of people missed out on that very first coin, and they wanted a second one, a second opportunity. And lo and behold, the creator of the first coin decided, we're going to do a second one. The first one did so well, why don't we do a second one? So they did a second one, and they made it even more scarce, more rare.
I knew that if I timed that one perfectly, it could bring crazy, crazy wealth. And I remember this like it was yesterday, because it was quite a process. Before that coin launched, I studied and was in that community for over a month. There was so much hype and build-up to this coin. Weeks went by, they were telling us exactly what was going to happen and what the tokenomics were. I waited an entire month, and I studied it relentlessly. I knew exactly how much money I was going to invest, I knew exactly when the countdown was going to happen, and I studied how to actually make the swap so I could beat one of the first people in there, because there's a whole process to that.
It was going to be launching at like 5:30 in the morning my time. So I was like, oh God, I've got to get up at 5:30 in the morning. And there are always delays with these crypto launches, always issues, because they're brand new. But this one, for whatever reason, actually launched right on time on Friday. It was a fair launch, meaning anyone could buy it as soon as the countdown timer hit zero, at which point it became available to the market. So as soon as that countdown timer went down, I invested $10,000. That was my limit, which was a pretty substantial amount of money to me at that time. But I knew, look, if this does 100x, that's like a million bucks, if not more. And even if I just double or triple my money, I'll be thrilled.
So I remember sitting there waiting. Everyone was hyping it up in the Telegram group. It was this big drumroll moment. The countdown hit zero, I swapped out my coins and got the new one, and I was one of the first ten people in, I think one of the first five to buy that coin. And the coin literally went up more than 50 times within a matter of a minute. It was that god candle everyone in crypto loves, that insane green candle. They exist, and they especially exist in these new crypto projects, because everyone, all this energy, all this mass, is trying to get in there first. And if you don't time it right, you could be the one unfortunately buying the top, because there's always that person.
This was my first experience doing this, so in hindsight I could have done so much better, but I'm still grateful for what happened. It pumped all the way to 50x, so my $10,000 became $500,000. I kid you not, if I would have cashed out right then and there, I would have had $500,000 in cash. I didn't do that. I just watched it go up. And then I watched it crash and nosedive down. My $500,000 became like $100,000, and I'm going, oh my gosh, I don't know what to do, which buttons do I hit. It was insane. Then it leveled off and went sideways, and I still didn't know what to do. Then it went up a little bit, one last little push, and then the project completely died out. It's gone now.
Most Projects Die, But the Winners Change Your Life
That happens to a majority of new crypto projects. They just will not make it. There are something like 22,000 cryptocurrency projects right now, and maybe a hundred or two will make it in the long run. That's the truth. Almost no one understands that, but this is what I've been teaching people for years. Today, the best way to go deeper on this with me is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, because that's where this massive opportunity really opens up.
So I learned. And I actually cashed out about $250,000 from that experience. Then, how I became a crypto millionaire is I said, all right, now I have some money to play with, I have money to reinvest. And I started reinvesting in other new cryptocurrency projects. I just repeated the process. I asked, when's the next new crypto launch, how can I be in there first, what is the process to this, really diving into it, because that was awesome and I wanted to do it again.
But I also started diversifying. I started going, all right, what are the cryptos that are just going to stay forever? Bitcoin, Ethereum, maybe any of the other top ten. So I started diversifying. I was buying Ethereum at like $400 or $500, I was even buying it at like $1,000, and Ethereum went all the way to $5,000. I also ended up buying Hex at 0.0032, because it had this big payday thing. Then it went all the way down, and I said, okay, it's down 80 or 90%. If this project ends up making it, I'm going to throw a couple thousand bucks at it, and it's going to do really well. Well, that couple thousand dollars turned into over a million dollars in Hex at the peak, which is absolutely insane when you think about what it did.
So that's one way I became a crypto millionaire. The other way was just from all the other investments I made ending up going up at the top of the bull market. Literally taking $10,000 into $250,000, continuing to reinvest, continuing to play the game all through the bull market. At the peak, when I look back at how much I ended up having, I think it was close to $5 million in my portfolio between all the mixing and matching. Since then I did take seven figures off the table, but I still have a lot of my money invested in the market.
Seasons for Sowing and Reaping
I think the timing of all this is important, and there are a couple of things to learn from it. One, in my experience there are seasons for sowing and reaping with crypto. There are bull and bear markets, and it's very important to pay attention to those, because if you can time that out even a fraction, you can do incredibly well for yourself. There's an insane amount of volatility with crypto. It's not like stocks and the S&P, where there's some volatility. This is like that times a hundred. This stuff is absolutely nuts.
So if you don't like that volatility, in my opinion you probably stick to Bitcoin and just dollar-cost-average into that, and you'll probably do well over the next five or ten years on average. Again, this is not financial advice, and no one knows what will happen, but that might be the game for you. The game I just described is high risk, high reward, and I should say super high risk, super high reward, but that's exactly how I did it.
I think a lot of people resonate with that, because they want to take a small amount of money, like a thousand, maybe ten thousand, and become a crypto millionaire. The truth is, you can do it. I did it, so I can say that. However, what I did was very, very specific, and I was willing to take the risks and put in the work. I think people just assume they're going to watch a YouTube video, invest in a coin, and become a millionaire overnight. The truth is, if you really want to become a crypto millionaire, you've got to put in the work one way or another, and you have to be willing to take risks one way or another. You have to take the risk.
Whether Bitcoin goes up or down, whether ETH goes up or down, or any of these other coins go up or down, you have to be willing to sit in losses. If you're going to buy where the market already is and the coin has already launched, this is why I love, I absolutely love buying new coins. There's all of this excitement, all of this potential energy and money ready to fly into these things, and that's where I love capturing those gains if possible.
Now, I will say too, you're not going to be perfect every single time that you try to do this. There have been times where I bought the top, recognized it, and took a small loss. There are times where I bought the top and took a bigger loss. But overall, I am millions of dollars in crypto profits. So that's the good news: even if you mess up a little bit, which you will, especially if you're new to it, you're going to make mistakes. And that's the biggest lesson I want to share with people today. Back in 2017 and 2018, I made all the mistakes. I made them. And if you're not willing to go through that process of making, of failing, of learning, you're not going to get where you want to go.
Thinking about taxes before you invest
So I went online and started researching how you pay as little as possible in taxes legally. That's the key here. Legally. You don't hide this stuff. You don't do that. Everything that I do is legal, and I have an amazing tax team, so shout out to them. But I started looking all around, thinking, how do I do this? Well, there are really two ways that you can do this. There are a lot of other ways, but I'm going to stick to two here for simplicity, because in my opinion these are really the only options as a US citizen. If you're not a US citizen, this probably isn't going to apply the same way, but even then there are nuances to this which I think can be helpful.
Number one, you can renounce your citizenship as a US citizen and then basically live wherever you want to. In certain parts of the world, like Portugal or Dubai, you can just go there and pay zero on crypto. Those are options. Or there was one option, which was to move to Puerto Rico, because in Puerto Rico they have something called Act 60, where if you run a business you can pay as little as 4% in corporate taxes. That's not a lot. There are nuances to that as well. Act 60 has two parts: there's the investor part, and then there's the business part, covering the crypto gains and the business itself.
So I looked at this and I went: palm trees, warm weather, lowering my taxes legally, sign me up. And that's what I ended up doing. At the time of this recording, I'm actually in Puerto Rico recording this. That's the decision I ended up making. The tax incentives are there for sure. If you do it legally, you're going to keep a lot of money. You spend your time here, you buy property, and there are a lot of other nuances that go into it. And it's not for everyone, trust me. There's been a lot of learning in moving here to Puerto Rico. But those options are real.
So is moving to Puerto Rico an option for a lot of people? I'm a single guy who was able to just, on a whim, take everything and move it to Puerto Rico. That was still a transition for me. If you have a family, you've got to move your entire family. You've got to move your entire business. You've got to move everything you've got. That might be an issue for a lot of people. For most people, it's just not attainable, and it's not worth the hassle of doing it. So there are very few people who are actually in this program and able to capitalize on those taxable advantages. It's not for everyone, truthfully.
The other way, though, if you're not going to move to Puerto Rico or move somewhere to get zero percent tax, and you're looking to minimize your taxes, is not to trade. You basically buy and hold for over a year. If you do that, you can cut your taxes roughly in half. So if you're paying 40%, depending on how high of an income earner you are, then you're paying up to 37 or 40% on your capital gains. But if you just hold it for over a year, I believe it drops to around 20%. So it's very attractive to hold a lot of these assets for over a year, and then you can do whatever you want with them.
The problem that I saw, though, was that I'm not doing that. I'm buying, I'm selling, I'm moving these coins, I'm taking profits. And yeah, it adds up quickly. Fortunately for me, I got in at the right place at the right time. I moved in January of 2021, right before the bull market took off. Boots were on the ground, I moved into this place, and it worked out, timing-wise, insanely well. My business skyrocketed. My YouTube channel skyrocketed with the market. It went up like a hockey stick. Everything did.
Now, since then, the business has definitely come back down to earth. The investments have certainly come back down to earth. So there's reality in this as well. But it's been the best decision I've ever made in my life. I've personally learned a lot. It's been something that's really been helpful for me. And if there's anything you get out of this, it's that you've got to think about tax implications. You've got to think about the tax implications first, before you even start investing, because that right there will help you with your strategy. If you're just trying to buy, sell, trade, and move, you're going to be causing yourself, legally, a lot of taxable events. You can track this. There are softwares that do it. It's not that difficult to do. But truthfully, if you just have the mindset of buying a crypto, that's all you do is buy it, there's no taxable event there.
Keeping expenses low and reinvesting
I kept my expenses low, though. Genuinely, I did. Even when I moved here to Puerto Rico, I kept all my expenses as low as I possibly could. I'm not out partying. I'm not out renting Lambos and getting yachts and doing all of that. I could do that. I could go buy a Lambo in cash tomorrow. I genuinely could. But I don't, because here in Puerto Rico that just doesn't even make sense to do. If you lived here, you would know that driving a Lambo in Puerto Rico is probably one of the not-smartest things you can do, because of the roads. It doesn't make any sense to do that here. So I keep all my expenditures really, really low, because I want to keep growing. I want to keep reinvesting, because that's how the rich people get really, really rich.
You're still insanely early
There is a massive opportunity here, and in my experience you are still insanely early. Truthfully, I believe you are still insanely early to this. You just have to get started. And the best way to do that is to follow people who have walked the path, to understand their processes, to learn, and to stop making excuses. Put the work in. Study. Get in there. If you want to see how I break down individual projects and my process for evaluating them, you can go through my Crypto Reviews playlist and follow along.
Most of all, find a community. Find people you resonate with. That's what I did. I joined a bunch of communities. I spent the time. I spent the money. I went out there. I researched. I tried. And through that experience I gained the experience to then capture the moment when the market was ready and hot. If you want to do that alongside me, the best way today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we go through this process together.
And that's the secret to how I became a cryptocurrency millionaire.