If I were to judge myself based solely on the first half of my life, I would say I was completely fucked. From an outside perspective, I was a loser. I would spend all of my time playing computer games like Runescape and World of Warcraft (WoW). I mean it when I say that EVERY waking moment was either dedicated to playing these games or thinking about them. I didn’t know it then, but by obsessing over these games, learning how people interacted within them, and understanding how the micro-economies worked within the game, I was setting myself up for major success
At around 15 years old, I became acutely concerned that if I continued to play video games like it was my day job, I was going to end up with a life that looked like a heaping pile of shit.
I put no effort into studying, ignored my assignments, and was at the absolute bottom of my whole school. To say my grades suffered would be an understatement. They were so bad it was almost like my academic career didn’t even exist.
I decided that If I wanted some semblance of a life that I could be proud of, I needed to focus on school and stop obsessing over these video games. It took a lot of effort, but I redirected my gaming obsession and transferred that energy into studying and going after academic achievement. By the end of my senior year, I was one of the top students.
I pulled off the comeback of the century and ended up getting accepted into an Ivy League school where I studied finance. I channeled my tendency to obsess into my studying and ended up becoming one of the top students in my class. To be clear, I was never a naturally gifted person. I would just become completely immersed in whatever I decided I was going to put my energy into.
Upon graduating, I was recruited to work as an investment banker at a top firm. It was a job where I was expected to work 18 hours a day, pull all-nighters and be okay with being treated like I was sub-human.
The sheer amount of work I was doing and the concepts I was expected to learn was like drinking from a fire hose. I learned a lot, but, there’s no question about it: it absolutely sucked.
On top of the insurmountable workload, I had an absolute drill sergeant of a boss. He would scream at me after pulling all-nighters to prep the team for important meetings the next day. My life didn’t matter to this guy. Nobody’s did. To put it bluntly, he was an unrelenting asshole, but if there was anything good that came out of it, it was that he made me realize that I don’t want to be working in finance for the rest of my life.
What made this whole experience bearable, though, was that I was in my early 20s and I was making more money than I could’ve ever dreamed of.
Despite this, I was just biding my time until I could figure out my next steps.
When COVID hit in 2020, it marked the beginning of a massive shift in my life. Everything came to a halt. My work slowed down dramatically and I found myself with more free time than I knew what to do with.
I was always a big Magic: The Gathering trading card fan so, with this newfound time, I was reconnected back with my roots. At the same time I was getting back into Magic, I noticed that a ton of the hobby shops where I would buy these cards were going out of business. They were selling cards that would normally go for $100 for $20. It clicked at that moment that this was a massive opportunity.
I poured all the money I had at that time into buying these cards and reselling them. I became obsessed. I would spend 12 hours a day, checking internet forums, meeting the big players in the market, buying cards for $0.20 on the dollar, and flipping them for their true market value.
It was actually a lot like what I used to do with video games when I obsessed over them. In those games, I would buy rare items and flip them for in-game currency. Ironically, the time I had spent on these video games and flipping Magic cards, taught me everything I needed to know about person-to-person trading (also known as over-the-counter or OTC markets).
It wasn’t until 2021 that I started learning about crypto. Up to that point, I owned a bit of Bitcoin and Ethereum but thought – for the most part – that it was a scam. I didn’t even know what NFTs were at that point.
During that summer, I ended up connecting with a college friend of mine who worked at a San Francisco-based VC firm, which was an early investor in Solana. He was convinced that it was going to be one of the biggest cryptocurrencies in the market and that it solved the shortcomings of the other currencies. His enthusiasm was compelling enough to get me to do my own research and by the end of my investigation, I was convinced too.
In my typical ‘all-or-nothing’ fashion, I took the money I made trading Magic cards, and the Bitcoin and Ethereum I had at the time, and went all-in on Solana!
Not long after diving into Solana head-first, I remember scrolling Instagram where I saw my friend post a story of an 8-bit photo of a cartoon monkey. I thought it was interesting and the art was cool, so I messaged my friend asking what it was. He told me that it was an NFT project called Solana Monkey Business (SMB) and they were minting that day for 2 Solana (about $70 at the time). I bought 30 of them that night.
This one mint changed my life. It was the beginning of the realization to me that NFTs were at the intersection of community, culture, technology, and investing. It didn’t take long before I quit my investment banking job and went all-in on Web 3.0.
I would spend every waking moment learning about new NFT projects, Web 3.0, and the technology behind it. I was so consumed that I would literally listen to NFT and crypto-related podcasts all day. I would shower with a podcast on in the background and fall asleep at night listening to them. There was virtually no time in my day that I wasn’t dedicated to learning more.
My unmitigated infatuation with Web 3.0 armed me with the information necessary to be able to navigate the space but, the things I learned in WoW and Runescape and selling Magic cards provided me the skills to really succeed in the NFT market. The video games taught me how small, somewhat illiquid markets worked, and flipping Magic cards was like taking a crash course in OTC markets.
I didn’t know it back then, but my childhood video game addiction and Magic: The Gathering hobby set me up for major success.
SMBs minted in August 2021 and by October of that same year, the cheapest SMB was selling for about $50,000. This one NFT project turned me into a millionaire and I wasn’t even 30!
While markets are constantly moving and prices are always changing, there is one thing I know for sure: NFTs aren’t going anywhere. When the dust settles on Web 3.0 and NFTs, we will come to see that NFTs were the driving force introducing the masses to crypto…and that you can’t doubt the value of a good video game.
Follow me on Twitter @solanalegend for everything Web 3.0.