How would you like to be a millionaire by the age of 18?

in #story7 years ago (edited)

Let me tell you a story of a young boy who did just that.

It all started back when Erik Finman was just 12 years old. It was May of 2011 and Erik had just received a $1,000 gift from his grandmother. (Nice gift eh?)

At the advice of his older brother Scott, Erik invested that money in Bitcoin when it was trading around $12 per coin.

At the time, Erik was very frustrated with his teachers in Idaho. He described them as pretty "low quality". Saying that one even told him to drop out and start working at McDonald's because that was likely where he would end up anyways.

Erik begged his parents to let him drop out. He even made a deal with them that if they let him drop out of high school, he would be a millionaire by the time he was 18 years old, and if he was not he would go back and finish school and then go to college. 

Surprisingly, his parents took him up on his bet. 

Which is even more surprising considering his parents met while pursuing their Ph.D.s at Standford University. As you can imagine education was likely very important to them. 

Roughly two years later at the the end of 2013, Erik sold his Bitcoin investment for roughly $1200 per coin. Which represents roughly a 100X return on his original $1,000 investment. Which turned his original $1,000 into over $100,000. 

Erik made his first $100,000 when he was just 14 years old.

Using that $100,000 Erik started an online Education Company called "Botangle". The goal of the company was to connect frustrated kids (like himself) with higher quality teachers.

The company didn't immediately take off but it also didn't flop either. 

He spent the next year or so pitching his company to different investors. One of them being one of the higher ups at Uber. 

Erik said that he was pretty frustrated with the executive not even really taking him seriously because he was only 15 years old and basically told him he would eventually have to go back to school. Not really even listening to his business pitch about Botangle.

Eventually a year or so later, Erik found a buyer for his Botangle company in 2015. The buyer offered him one of two options. 

He was offered $100,000 cash or 200 Bitcoins for the sale of his company. (At the time Bitcoins were trading around $200 per coin.)

Just about everyone (including his family) was telling him to take the $100,000 cash offer as it offered roughly $40k more in value.

Instead, Erik took the 200 Bitcoins saying that he believed in the technology and believed "Bitcoin was going to be the next big thing." He looked at the sale as more of an investment in his future than anything else.

(Why he didn't take the $100,000 cash and then just buy bitcoins with it is beyond me. You would think he would have been able to amass more than the 200 he was getting, but that is a question for another day I guess)

For the next several years, Erik managed his Bitcoin investment as well as a couple other smaller projects on the way to amassing the roughly 400 Bitcoins that he owns currently. At the current price of $2700 per coin, his Bitcoin holdings are worth over $1 million USD. 

He did it!

He proved to his parents that he could be a millionaire by the time he was 18 years old by dropping out of high school and by not going to college, and Bitcoin made all that possible.

I imagine there are several stories out there like Erik Finman's. Perhaps not the dropping out of school part, but about Bitcoin making young people large amounts of money when the rest of the world told them it wasn't possible. 

Regarding his current thoughts on Bitcoin...

Erik thinks it's best days are still in front of it. In fact his price predictions are similar to that of some other pretty well know analysts.

Erik had this to say regarding future prices:

"Personally I think Bitcoin is going to be worth a couple hundred thousand to a million dollars per coin (at some point)."

And then this regarding the technology itself:

"Bitcoin and the blockchain technology that it's built on allow people to cut out the middleman. An open source blockchain ride-sharing platform would allow users to power the service on their phones using peer-to-peer technology without a central hub. Which would allow the drivers to make more money by cutting overhead costs. It also would help create the next evolution of the internet, one which wouldn't be reliant on servers."

So, there you have it. A 12 year old boy from Idaho takes Grandma's gift of $1,000 and turns it into over a million dollars by the time he is 18 years old. 

All the while dropping out of high school and not going to to college. 

Overall, I would say he got pretty lucky and this outcome is likely not the norm for the kind of risks he took. However, good for him that he was able to chase his dreams and make them a reality.

I wouldn't take this as an endorsement to drop out of school for all you youngsters out there. Remember those commercials... Stay in school!

Perhaps the message to be taken from all this is to take some risks on the side and to not always follow the status quo. 

Stay informed my friends!

Sources:

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/20/bitcoin-millionaire-erik-finman-says-going-to-college-isnt-worth-it.html

Image Sources:

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/12/bitcoin-boy-erik-finman.html

http://notsosimplehousewife.blogspot.com/2011/06/schools-out-forever.html

https://www.inc.com/bill-carmody/how-to-make-the-impossible-possible.html

Follow me: @jrcornel

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That is some great stuff right there! I am helping my niece who is 12 and already has a YouTube channel to get set up on steemit. It's these type of obscure challenges that our current education system does not currently fulfill. While education is important for my niece, I know she will learn a lot from this, good or bad! Thanks for sharing @jrcornel

Indeed! Lots of people are afraid of the uncertain, the unknown. Thats why crypto in general gets frown upon. But when one really believes in something, its important not to listen to naive outsiders and follow your instincts. Luckily I didnt listen to my friends when I told them I was buying ETH a year ago (at $12). I strongly believe that with conviction, good energy and hard work almost anything is possible. Dont let them fool you!

Hell yeah! Thanks for the motivation!

I recently just moved the largest portion of my crypto investments from Ether to Steem. Not that I feel ethereum will not do well or am trying to cut and run, but I feel that Steem is such a great platform, that I am a part of and truly believe in its success. Also, ICN finally hit a massive heater, so I felt good reallocating some resources.

That's great. Plus with steem you can earn it just by posting and interacting. Likely more of it the more SP you have. It just mostly sits there in Ether.

Exactly my thoughts!

My pleasure! Good luck in your Investments :D

Thank you sir. You as well.

Great points. I have heard a lot of that myself, unfortunately most of the times they were right in telling me to cut and run instead of believing. Live and learn. Are you still holding Ether?

I am !! Not a great day to be a holder today, but if I zoom out the charts, I got in at $12 , so $320 is not a bad deal. I try to see it that way so It bugs me less when I see ETH tanking.

Oh yea, you have held through many ups and downs to get to where you are now. It has a lot of big financial institutions backing it. It's on my short list of crypto winners in the long run.

That's fantastic! Let me know when she puts up a post. I wish her the best of luck :)

Thank you very much. She would love that! I screenshot a picture of this and sent it to her, gotta motivate these kids. lol

Don't put all your eggs in one basket. But the majority of your eggs should be BTC & ETH! And don't sell any of your hardly earned steem and don't power down!

Sold some Steem (but not all) to boost my rather scarce stash of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Was not planning on it. Sick GIF btw!

The most valuable education is hardly in schools anymore, not that there isn't a lot of good stuff in the schools.
I think it's​ awesome every time I​ see someone like you that's​ willing to spend time to help a younger soul to show them so many valuable things that they can actually use in the real world.

Yeah, she is an amazing kid. I think I get more out of it than she does.

I remember botangle! I was among the first tutors on the site! Hahaha i remember when the site had like 1,500 visitors a day! Then it was featured on business insider and it blew up! All over sudden the teaffic was almost 20,000 then fiddled out over time! I later joined udemy... Well the rest is history. I will look it up!

That is amazing. I had never heard of it before reading this story about Erik Finman. If it was that popular he probably wasn't able to sell it anywhere near it's peak if he was only netting around $100k.

So basically, he could have sold his Bitcoins at $1200, used that $100k to buy 500 Bitcoins when it dropped to $200, and made even more money while still attending school and setting himself up to have a regular job and continue increasing his income. Now he's worth over 1 million, but has to start from scratch to earn a regular income beyond that. 1 million won't take him very far in today's world.

1 million won't take him very far in today's world.

While this is true, the HUGE majority of people in the World don't manage to generate 1 million dollars in decades, including all past and present expenses and all.

Good point. Although if you read up about him, he has quite a few irons in the fire. He is extremely tech savvy. Has some interesting ideas for new apps...

Admittedly, I hadn't even heard of him until I read your post, so I'm definitely not read up on him. I hope he continues to do well, but I won't be encouraging my children to follow in his footsteps. Once they graduate and leave my home, they're welcome to do as they please, but while they're under my roof, they're finishing highschool, lol.

He used my math. By transferring from Bittrex to Steemit I lost out on a higher % obtained through Blocktrades due to the current arbitrage pricing from Polo.

I was actually reading about this lucky kid the other day.

HAHAHAH, funny thing now is that dropout can go and buy a Mcdonalds.... what now teacher hahah.

^^^UPVOTED^^^

Haha yes that is ironic isn't it?! Thanks!

I was having a bad case of FOMO after reading that.

'FEAR OF MISSING OUT'....I kept banging my head on my desk after reading that one. "why didn't I just invest a little?"

I hear you. Feeling the same way...

Maybe in 5 years when bitcoin is at 100k we will all be millionaires :)

What a great story. As you said, there are probably several stories out there like Erik's. I imagine we will hear more of them as bitcoin reaches $10,000 and $100,000 range.

Yep, we probably will. :)

Jeeneymacarooney, that would be nice wouldn't it!!!

Maybe one day a dream will be a reality :)

Yes it would. Perhaps one day steem will be trading in the double or triple digits. :)

And we are among the first to experience it :)

(Why he didn't take the $100,000 cash and then just buy bitcoins with it is beyond me. You would think he would have been able to amass more than the 200 he was getting, but that is a question for another day I guess)

Well he clearly wasn't the businessman I want to work with lmao...

Haha me neither. I wonder what his rational was for that? Probably just didn't even think about it until after he already made the deal...

Perhaps the reason was trust. The Bitcoin would have been immediate. The $100,000 could easily have been a pay as you operate the business deal, which is quite common. But you dont always get all your money. So it could actually be an early case of someone having more faith in digital currency than paper.

Cool post! 👍

I just got my son started on Steemit and teaching him about cryptocurrency. He did his intro post here.

It is amazing to think now we can teach them about cryptocurrency as they learn about fiat money! 💰

That is fantastic! I just gave him a nice little upvote ;)

Love it! Thanks!

Wow, I had heard the first part of this story but I hadn't heard the second part. That is crazy and makes me feel like a chump. In some respects him dropping out of school is kind of a double edge sword in some ways. I don't know what kind of social interactions he had with other kids his age. It is a very important thing in life. I feel that home schooled kids never completely develop their social skills.
But in a game of just money this kid is killing it!

Very good point. I hadn't thought about that. I think I learned more at recess and lunch then I ever learned in the classrooms. :)

Great post, thats crazy someone so young can amass such success. I recently wrote a post on how everyone can become a millionaire, check it out if it interests you! Following, hope to hear many more great stories

Interesting. What are the secrets? :)