In 2009, Norwegian student Kristoffer Koch was writing his master’s thesis on encryption and read Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper on Bitcoin, which made him see the potentials this new technology has, leading him to invest $26.60 to buy 5,000 Bitcoins. In 2013, Koch cashed out 1,000 Bitcoins and bought an apartment, and the other 4,000 Bitcoins he had, whether he still holds them or not, are now worth tens of millions of dollars.
Stories like this have for years inspired people to invest in crypto, hoping to get rich easily by being present early in the game, especially when it comes to new cryptocurrencies that they believe will explode in value the same way Bitcoin did. But can crypto make you rich for real?
The big shift
The answer to this question is a bit complicated. But if we rephrase it as “Can crypto make you rich the same way early adopters got really rich?”, then the answer would be “probably not”. For those early investors, the amounts they’ve put got doubled by 20, 30, and 100 times. For some early adopters, the value of their investment doubled even by 1,000 or 10,000 times at the time they cashed out.
The main change that happened since the time early crypto millionaires made their initial investments is the economical status shift for cryptocurrencies. When these investments were made, Bitcoin was frowned upon as a scam, or an imaginary idea that can fail and disappear without much effect on the global economy.
Today it’s different, with many major financial and tech companies, and even governments, being involved in the cryptocurrency economy. And while the early millionaires made their profits from the shift of cryptocurrencies from being a niche choice to popular investment assets, those who entered the market after this shift still can make good profits but are unlikely to add zeros to the value of their investment.
Still, cryptocurrencies represent an attractive investment opportunity for those willing to take a risk in exchange for high potential profits, due to their high volatility compared to other conventional assets such as stocks, forex, and real estate.
So… how to get rich?
You can absolutely make money through crypto, just as you would trading any other type of asset. But with the extra volatility, there is a higher risk and higher potential profits. Generally speaking, there are two ways to financially benefit from crypto:
Investment: There are many styles of crypto trading, mostly lying under three main categories. First is long-term investments, where you buy the assets you believe would have greater value in the far future – 3 to 5 years – and keep them until the value you hope for is achieved. There’s also swing trading, where you buy an asset and wait for a couple of days or weeks before selling it back to make some profit. And finally, there’s scalping or daily trading. In this case, you’re not actually betting on the increase in value, but on the natural price movements that happen every day to make minor but continuous profits.
Utility: When cryptocurrencies were first created, the goal wasn’t to provide an investment asset, but an alternative financial system that benefits from the convenience of the internet and the latest technologies. Cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology in general can help save a lot of money. That’s especially true if you make a lot of cross-border transactions, whether it’s for your business or for personal purposes. Making international transfers using blockchain technology can save you a lot of time and money. Also, hundreds of decentralized apps and blockchains perform the same functions the software you pay for does, like cloud services and supply chain tracking and record management, and usually for much less than what you pay for centralized services.
Unfortunately, the crypto industry has attracted a lot of fraudsters and scammers. These are the ones that promise you to get crazy rich if you invest in one crypto project or another. One common way they do that is by creating new cryptocurrency projects and encouraging people to buy the coins – from them – before stopping their support of the project and leaving investors with assets that have zero value.
Here at BitOasis, we always run any coins we’re willing to list through a rigorous review process to make sure it complies with our criteria. And even after listing the coins, we run a regular review to make sure they’re still valuable and safe projects. But this is not the case for many other exchanges, and it’s essential to do your own research before investing in any cryptocurrency and to take all the necessary safety measures to protect yourself from any unbearable risks, starting with investing only the funds you can afford to lose.
