Alas, William, who just turned 27, is now living like he has retired early.
At the end of 2019, this guy ran back to Xiamen from Shenzhen and lived in a nice-looking sea view apartment. He walked a few steps to the park, took a walk every day, checked the market on OKEx, did some transactions, and casually posted on Weibo and wrote on WeChat public accounts, just like a FIRE youth.
What is FIRE? To put it simply, it means financial freedom and early retirement.
This William is considered a "fat guy" among the FIRE youth. Now his worries have nothing to do with buying a house, 996, or annoying bosses. The only thing left is "being forced to get married by his parents."
Fans ask him every day on Weibo: "Are your parents urging you to get married again today?" If he says "yes", he will immediately get dozens of likes. Last year, his Weibo was viewed 230 million times, which is really popular.
Speaking of the source of this "fat fire", we have to thank the digital currency trading platform OKEx.
Four years ago, William stepped into the cryptocurrency world right after graduation. As a result, Bitcoin became extremely popular that year, which directly increased his assets dozens of times.
Although he experienced declines and losses, he managed to hold on. In early 2019, Bitcoin began to recover, and William suddenly found himself a big shot in virtual currency investment.
William is a well-known "hold fast" person in the cryptocurrency circle. He only knows how to save money, not invest, and does nothing but work hard. Some people are wondering: "How can this guy make 100 million yuan when he has no skills?"
William was quite calm and said, "Have confidence and don't be impulsive. According to the current market conditions, it is not difficult to increase your assets tenfold every year." Oh, this sounds like bragging, but he really did it.
The story of this FIRE youth sounds interesting:
In order to teach me a lesson, my parents borrowed 200,000 yuan from me behind my back to let me mess around.
As a result, I lost 100,000 yuan in half a year, and almost made my parents angry to death.
However, I have to be grateful for this first pot of gold. Although it was obtained through a loan from my parents, with it, I eventually became a FIRE youth who earns $100,000 a day and retired early.
In 2016, I graduated from Xiamen Jimei University with a major in applied physics.
To be honest, I didn’t choose this major because I like physics so much. I was transferred to this major purely because my college entrance examination scores were not good enough. But then again, this major has high math requirements, which may have laid a foundation for my later investment career.
When I was in school, I was a person who didn't follow the beaten path. I always felt that working for others had no future, and I boasted to my classmates all day about my plans to start my own business.
But to be honest, I don’t know what I can do. I’m just like those young people with dreams and passion, I dare to try everything.
I also started a business. A classmate and I persuaded a boss from Quanzhou to invest in our fruit delivery APP. Unfortunately, there were too few users, the delivery area was only as big as the school, and we didn't stick with it, so it failed in less than a year.
As for me, after graduation, I went to Shenzhen Huaqiangbei to tinker with digital products and beauty products. I bought products from Internet celebrities, and then sold them myself to make a profit. As a result, my vision was really bad, and all the products I bought were wasted.
In less than half a year, I lost half of the 200,000 yuan my parents gave me. But I was a very open-minded person and was not really affected. I took the remaining 100,000 yuan and continued to look for opportunities, doing whatever was popular.
Later, Bitcoin became popular, and mining machines also became popular in Shenzhen. Mining is to mine Bitcoin. If you use an ordinary computer to mine, you may not be able to mine one in ten years. However, mining machines are like many computers that can mine together at once. The efficiency is much higher, but the power consumption is terrible. Some mining machines burn more than 1,000 kWh of electricity in a quarter.
I actually don’t know anything, what Bitcoin is, how mining machines work, I don’t know anything. I just watched others having fun, so I followed suit. At the time, I thought, as long as the Bitcoin I mined was worth more than the electricity bill, then I would make money.
Hey, come to think of it, I have now stepped into the cryptocurrency world.
At that time, in 2016, mining machines were not expensive, and you could buy one for more than 3,000 yuan. As a result, the price rose to 30,000 yuan. However, mining is also very fast, and you can get your money back in 1-2 months. As for Bitcoin, there is only so much in total, and I heard that there are only 21 million. Later, it became more and more difficult to mine. By 2018, the profit of mining machines was pitifully small.
Making money depends on luck. If you get the timing right, your wealth will grow. If I had graduated two years later, or encountered Bitcoin two years later, I probably wouldn’t be so successful now.
Later, I found a trading platform called OKEx and put all the bitcoins I mined on it for trading. I never thought that these virtual things could really be exchanged for money. Seeing so much money in my account, I was like a chicken blood injection, and I immediately decided to continue investing.
In this way, I exchanged the 100,000 yuan that my parents borrowed for Bitcoin. Hehe, from then on, I embarked on the road of investment and there was no turning back.
I made a lot of money as soon as I entered the cryptocurrency circle
After entering the cryptocurrency circle, I realized that there are all kinds of monsters and demons in this world.
There are many great people on OKEx who have been in the circle since 2013, and many of them often reveal their wealth of hundreds of millions. This is a great stimulation for a person who has just graduated and has never participated in a formal job. It seems that you can smell the smell of money when you chat with them.
However, the public opinion on Bitcoin has always been skeptical. The mainstream investment circle has always believed that Bitcoin is a bubble and that it will burst sooner or later.
However, on May 12, 2017, computers using Microsoft systems in nearly 100 countries around the world were simultaneously attacked by the WannaCry (meaning "Do you want to cry?") or WannaDecryptor (meaning "Do you want to unlock?") computer virus, and at least 45,000 computers were infected. At that time, the hacker promised to help the victims unlock the computer for a fee, but only accepted Bitcoin.
I thought to myself, "If it's a bubble, why would hackers want it?" This further strengthened my confidence in Bitcoin.
At that time, everyone was talking about the entrepreneurial trend, and I felt that Bitcoin was my trend.
In order to understand Bitcoin investment, I began to cram all the knowledge related to blockchain, joined countless virtual currency investment groups, and listened to those "teachers" and "big guys" talking about buying, buying, and buying.
2017 was a bull market for virtual currencies. You could make money by buying any virtual currency. Just pick one, even if it was a fake coin or a copycat coin, and invest tens of thousands of dollars. When you woke up, you would find that it had increased tenfold.
It was really crazy at that time. In one year, the price of Ethereum increased two or three hundred times. Because venture capital could not find a direction, a lot of hot money turned to virtual currency, and some famous venture capitalists followed suit.
I live a very frugal life. I don't spend much money on weekdays. Once I make money, I immediately invest it again. In order to record my investment and income, I also created a public account. The response was good at the time. After a few articles, the number of fans climbed to 100,000.
Less than a year after entering the cryptocurrency circle, my total assets reached three to four million yuan by the end of 2017. At the end of the year, I withdrew 500,000 yuan, paid back the money I owed my parents, and bought an Audi A4 for my father.
When I went back to Xiamen to celebrate the Spring Festival that year, my old friends and classmates heard that I was doing well and came to ask me: How do I play virtual currency?
I followed suit, feeling like I was omnipotent. But soon, reality hit me hard.
Young man, the little money you have comes too quickly, and sooner or later you will fall flat on your face.
After I made 3 million, I started to think about how to make money faster, and also started to invest in other virtual currencies. At that time, the Algo market was very hot, and everyone went to invest. I also followed the trend and invested in several projects. As a result, I became a "harvested leek" - the investment agent took the money and ran away, and I lost 20 Ethereums in one go, which is equivalent to 200,000 RMB in RMB.
It was useless to call the police, because there was no evidence and no case could be filed. I just followed a group of victims and cursed them online to vent my anger, but the investors had already disappeared and no one could find a real way to punish them.
I told myself at the time: making money based on trust, getting cheated is also one of the costs.
But I didn’t expect that this wasn’t the end, and a bigger setback came. In 2017, virtual currencies were extremely popular, and everyone was trying to get involved. There were all kinds of “virtual coins” in the market. I felt something was wrong at the time, but I was still blinded by the money and didn’t stop.
As a result, in 2018, virtual currencies suddenly collapsed collectively. At the worst time, all the coins returned to zero, and Bitcoin also fell from 20,000 US dollars to 3,000 US dollars, and 85% of its market value was gone. The K-line chart that year fell all the way, without even a chance of rebounding. It was really unlucky!
When I went home for the Spring Festival in 2018, my old classmates asked me about my current situation. I could only force myself to smile and say that I didn't lose much. In fact, I felt very bitter. I had less than one million yuan left in my assets.
After the Chinese New Year, I exchanged all the remaining virtual currencies for Bitcoin, thinking that Bitcoin is halved every four years, and with fewer new Bitcoins, the price must go up. I thought, I will wait for two years and see after the halving in 2020. At that time, I quit all Bitcoin investment groups and rarely updated my public account. At the same time, I also began to send out resumes crazily, intending to find a decent job during the "bear market".
Unexpectedly, in March 2019, Bitcoin suddenly started to rise again, and continued to rise across the board. I was looking for a job, and seeing this trend, I stopped sending resumes and started paying attention to Bitcoin investment groups again.
But the result is that all those big names with assets of over 100 million and millions of profits are gone. Even 99.9% of my old fans on Weibo and public accounts are gone. When I send messages to them, they only get a group of new fans responding.
This cryptocurrency world is so cruel, and the metabolism is so fast. As soon as the market recovered, I became a top opinion leader in virtual currency investment, and my Weibo followers increased by another 100,000 in 2019. It's really funny!
Some people made a lot of money, while others lost everything. Why did all those big names disappear? Most of them lost their money by playing futures and leveraging during the bear market.
These big guys used to look down on people like me who just “hold on” to Bitcoin without doing anything, neither trading nor speculating. They thought I, hey, didn’t have the ability to maximize profits.
In fact, I have done futures trading once. In 2018, the market was terrible and I was eager to make some money back, so I started to trade other virtual currencies.
I saw that the price of one of the coins kept falling, so I thought about buying it and added leverage. Guess what happened? A few minutes later, its price suddenly went up, and when I realized what was happening and withdrew, it fell back down again.
Looking back at the K-line chart, damn, it felt like a needle was deliberately pricking me at that moment.
This time I lost 30,000 or 40,000 yuan, which is not a lot, but it also made me realize that I am not a good gambler and I don’t have the nose required for trading. I really don’t have the ability to foresee fluctuations before they occur and to react quickly when they occur.
I think that the investment strategies advocated by these bigwigs are, to put it bluntly, gambling.
Also, why don’t I speculate? Because I was born with bad luck. I can’t win any prizes, not even scratch tickets.
To be honest, 9 out of 10 traders will eventually die.
Gambling means you can lose everything even in a bull market. Last year, Bitcoin was so popular that a man in Dalian lost 20 million yuan in futures trading.
Later, the news broke that he was in too much debt and couldn't think straight, so he committed suicide with his wife and children. He first killed his 3-year-old daughter, left a suicide note with his wife, and then jumped into the sea. As a result, his wife drowned, but he survived.
There are so many tragedies like this in the cryptocurrency world. Why is it so dramatic? Virtual currencies have high leverage, like Bitcoin, which can be leveraged 100 times. A novice buys 0.5 Bitcoins and plays with 20 times leverage. If the price moves a little, he loses everything and his account is blown up. The excitement is even more exciting than a roller coaster!
Those virtual currency trading platforms will immediately shut down as soon as the market soars or plummets, causing you to miss the best trading time, and in serious cases, even lose your position. Not to mention those "pig-killing schemes" under the banner of exchanges, maliciously unplugging the network cable, eating up the customer's loss, and not being able to withdraw the profit. There are all kinds of problems.
Although I also missed a virtual currency that appreciated a hundred times, I don’t regret it. After all, “you can’t make money beyond your knowledge.”
Every penny a person earns is the realization of his or her understanding of the world; every penny a person loses is proof of his or her flawed understanding of the world.
When your wealth exceeds your cognition, society has a hundred ways to harvest you until your cognition matches your wealth. Even if I caught the virtual currency that appreciated a hundred times and made money, I would still lose it in the future.
In the past few years in the cryptocurrency circle, I have seen those speculative masters making a lot of money, and I was full of admiration for them. But where are they now?
Looking back, among those who do trading, who is doing better than those who just hold on to it?
There is a saying in the cryptocurrency world: No matter how hard you try, you can’t outperform Bitcoin. That is to say, the benefits of Bitcoin’s rise are always much greater than the returns from investment.
By 2021, the price of one Bitcoin had risen to $40,000, which is about the same as a Tesla. It has risen 45 million times in 11 years. Isn't this return enough? Virtual currency itself is part of the financial market. It sounds a bit wrong to engage in financial speculation in the financial market.
In my opinion, the cryptocurrency world is not a business, it is just a casino. I can go to casinos, but I just sell water and never gamble.
Now that the bull market is here, there are so many things in the cryptocurrency circle, such as Defi, public chains, mining, etc. But I don’t plan to invest or work hard one by one. Why? The threshold is too high and it wastes time. Besides, most of the projects on the market are just concepts. If you don’t make a good judgment, the investment rate of return will be negative, and it will be a waste of time in the end.
So, I just took a look on OKEx. The advantage of a centralized exchange is that it will screen out all the messy projects in the market before putting them online, which saves me some worries.
Now I have 100 million yuan in my hand, and I am not in a hurry to get married. In the long run, Bitcoin is likely to rise.
As soon as the global epidemic broke out, central banks around the world began to inject money. With more money, it naturally flowed into the virtual currency market.
The U.S. dollar joining the virtual currency market is a big deal. The trend of the U.S. stock market in the past 10 years is the future direction of virtual currency. As long as it can be stabilized, a 10-fold return in one year is guaranteed.
So, just look at the big picture, and don't be fooled by short-term fluctuations. Do more low-cost, low-return things. For example, when the market fluctuates greatly, the prices of different platforms are not synchronized. We can earn the price difference between the platforms and then wait for the market to rise.
In this cryptocurrency world, there are so many young people who have suddenly become successful. The younger they are, the easier it is for them to succeed.
Young people are more likely to accept virtual currency. They have been using virtual money since they were young, such as recharging online and paying membership fees. Many people born after 2000 have never used banknotes, so how can they know what it feels like to hold a hundred-yuan bill? To them, money is just a string of numbers, similar to Bitcoin.
But being young also has a disadvantage, which is that you are easily impulsive. You have never made a lot of money, so when you see the rise or fall of the market, you will gamble too much, which will result in big mistakes.
For those who are new to the cryptocurrency world, I have one suggestion: buy in bulk, buy in bulk, and buy in bulk again. Don’t gamble, because you will lose if you gamble. People will get carried away, but the market always rewards calm people and punishes impulsive people.
If you want to get into Bitcoin now, you have to choose a good trading platform, especially its risk control capabilities. I have used no less than 10 exchanges. In summary, a reliable exchange must have strong technology, good trading depth, a complete risk control system, and a responsible platform.
I also often give suggestions to exchanges. For example, OKEx recently tested a unified account function, which allowed me to experience it in advance and find bugs. I complained a lot, so they gave me the title of "Product Experience Officer". I am very happy to get feedback from this kind of communication. The hard power and soft power of the exchange can be seen from the communication, whether they want to cut leeks or really do things.
At the end of 2019, I had nearly 100 million yuan in assets, and I was considered a FIRE youth. At that time, I decided to leave Shenzhen and move back to Xiamen. Anyway, I don’t have to work, so I can live anywhere. Life in Xiamen is even more comfortable. As for urging me to get married, I’m 27 years old this year and I don’t have any plans. My parents keep urging me, so I’ll just follow their wishes and take this necessary step. I’m not too old, so it’s not too late to get married at 30.
Creation is not easy
