It was late 2017, and I was scrolling through Reddit when I stumbled upon a random post titled:
“If you bought $1,000 of Bitcoin in 2010…”

I clicked it.

At first, I was skeptical. The whole idea of “internet money” seemed like a meme. But I kept digging. I spent the next few days reading everything I could — from Satoshi’s whitepaper to BitcoinTalk threads buried in the archives. I didn’t understand half of it, but something clicked.
Bitcoin wasn’t just digital money — it was a philosophy.

By December, I’d opened a Coinbase account. My first buy wasn’t Bitcoin though…
It was XRP.
(I know. Go easy on me.)

I chased a few pumps, lost money on a weird ICO, and fell hard during the 2018 crash. But I didn’t leave.
In fact, the bear market is what really made me a believer.

I started to understand:

    Why decentralization matters

    What “trustless” systems actually protect us from

    How Ethereum, smart contracts, and DeFi were rewriting the rules