When I was 15, I signed up for an ASX share trading game as part of the economics class. Each of us got $50,000 of paper-trading money to invest in stocks, and everyone could see their ranking on a public leaderboard. I can’t remember if I made or lost money (probably the latter), but the exercise sparked an interest in investing. I liked the idea that I could outperform other people by doing more research, figuring out which companies might do better, and then seeing that reflected in reality with my portfolio.
By the end of the competition, I was hooked. I worked almost every day after school at a local butcher, and at this point, I had saved up a nice little pot of money that I was planning to use to buy my dream car, a Landcruiser. If I could invest the money and grow my portfolio, I would be able to buy the car even sooner.
So off I went on a quest to buy some shares for real. However, my journey was short-lived. I quickly learnt I needed to be 18 to open a share trading account in Australia. More research revealed I could ask my parents to open a trust which would allow me to invest in their name until I was 18, but the idea never got off the ground.
Undeterred, I continued searching for other things I could invest in. I looked at gold bars, collectible coins, stamps—anything I could potentially put my savings into. That’s when I stumbled upon mentions of this thing called “bitcoin” on an investing forum on Reddit. It sent me down a brief rabbit hole of figuring out what cryptocurrency was.
To be honest, at this stage, all I really cared about was investing in something, anything at all. I didn’t do any serious due diligence on the investment case for bitcoin; I just knew that it looked like it was going up in value and that I could buy it without being 18, which is what mattered to me at the time.
So, I searched “buy bitcoin now” on Google and clicked the first link. It took me to a site that appeared to be based overseas, detailing the process of making a wire deposit to buy bitcoin.
Full of confidence, I marched into my bank the next day and announced I was sending my entire savings to Poland to buy Bitcoin. Needless to say, the banking assistant didn’t take me seriously.
Unfazed, I eventually found some local Facebook groups of Australians interested in crypto. I connected with one of the more active members in the community and chatted with him on the phone to figure out how to get started. It turned out he lived nearby and said he would be happy to meet in person to explain some concepts and show me how to set up a crypto wallet.
He seemed genuine, so I agreed to meet him for a coffee at McDonalds. I chose a busy, public place because I was wary of meeting someone from the internet and thought that if I was going to break the golden rule, I should at least be smart about it.
Full of confidence, I marched into my bank the next day and announced I was sending my entire savings to Poland to buy Bitcoin. Needless to say, the banking assistant didn’t take me seriously.
To my relief, he turned out to be genuine and very helpful. He showed me how to set up a paper wallet and sent me some bitcoin on the spot. And just like that, I had my first little sliver of bitcoin. It wasn’t much, but to me it was the start of something big.
Little did I know, this was just the beginning of a journey that would consume the next decade of my life.