My Crypto History: How I Made Money, How I Didn’t Make Money, and Who I Trust Now

This is actually the hardest and most important question in all of crypto:

How do you know who to trust?

Before you decide what to buy, you have to know how to judge the information you are getting. I have been in crypto since 2017, and I have listened to a lot of different people since then. The space has changed completely. What started as an exciting, geeky world full of technology, possibility, and strange brilliant people has turned into a minefield.

So, to cut to the chase: I really do not trust anyone completely.

There are people I think are more honest than others. There are people who seem less influenced by paid sponsorships, grants, or pumping their own bags. Pumping your own bags means promoting a coin because you already own it and want other people to buy it.

I understand that temptation because I have been a minor crypto influencer myself. When you own something and you want it to do well, it is very tempting to talk about it in a way that benefits you. I am guilty of that too.

I am going to tell this in a story way because the backstory matters. You can know where I am coming from, and then you can decide whether you agree with me or not.

Here is my disclaimer: I have not followed crypto news closely for about two years. I realized that nobody really knows what is going to happen. My basic accumulated knowledge of crypto is enough for me to have a strategy now, or at least enough to keep me from doing something completely stupid.

If there is one thing I have learned, it is that nobody knows all of the truth. If one person really knew everything, we would all be rich by following that person. Also, someone can be great for a while and then not great later.

When I First Got Into Crypto

When I first got into crypto in 2017, I found Ivan on Tech. He was young, funny, very smart, Belarusian, raised in Sweden, and a great communicator. He was a tech nerd, but he could explain complicated things in a way that made you feel excited instead of stupid.

Back then, I think of crypto as being in a kind of golden age. Ethereum was big. Smart contracts were new. NFTs were new. DeFi was new. Everything felt new. We were all geeking out on the technology, the teams, the protocols, the tokenomics, and the possibility of making real money.

I subscribed to Ivan’s first list, and I made very good money. Later, I found out that Phil may have been the person putting a lot of that information together behind the scenes. I do not know where Phil is now, but he seemed like one of those quiet people who really understood what was happening.

Back then, people could still talk to teams directly. People were on Telegram and Discord discussing what each coin could do and what each protocol could provide. It was not just gambling. A lot of us were genuinely interested in the technology.

I also listened to Altcoin Daily all the time. Ivan and Altcoin Daily were so bullish that they made you feel okay about having every penny you had in crypto. That mattered because crypto is scary. At first, you do not really know how it works, and you do not know what could happen. There is always FUD, which means fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

I was not technical at all. I am an artist. But for some reason, my brain loved being completely dumbfounded and trying to figure it out. The spark of the obsession was that I made money in a way I had never made money before. It was good money. So I thought, if I dedicate myself to this, maybe I can have money for the rest of my life.

Crypto and My Brain Injury

In 2020, I had a terrible brain injury. I honestly believe crypto helped my brain. I know that sounds strange, but I mean it. Crypto forced me to use parts of my mind I had never really used before.

I am going to get some dates wrong. I have never been good with dates, and during my brain injury time I could barely remember passwords. I am 100% an artist. But I made a huge effort to activate my left brain so I could understand crypto and make money.

It was exciting and fun, and I enjoyed that time with the crypto bros. I still do, in a way, but less now.

I went back to painting during this bear market because we were all expecting another huge altcoin season like 2021, and it did not happen the same way. But back then, I had coins I bought for $50 that went up to $5,000. So I had real motivation. It was not just greed. It was fun, futuristic, and optimistic. We all believed in what could be built.

The Early Money Made Me Overconfident

I spent every last penny I had on very small hidden-gem coins in the early days. Many of them did blow up. They made real money. That made me overconfident. I started thinking maybe I was just a genius.

Then I spent a few years trading meme coins, doing DeFi liquidity, and making all kinds of moves that did not really make me much money. I did not lose as much as many people did, but I also did not make what I thought I was going to make.

That is one of the first big lessons: you can be right early, make money, and then think you understand everything. That is dangerous.

The 2021 Mania

In 2021, Ethereum Layer-2 projects and altcoins started to pump. Layer-2 means technology built around Ethereum to make it faster, cheaper, or easier to use. Everything was going up. We were making so much money.

Everybody started talking about Bitcoin and crypto. Uber drivers, friends, celebrities, and random people all wanted in. Huge influencers came out of the woodwork. Famous people started offering crypto groups you could join so you could supposedly get rich.

Now we know that when everyone suddenly wants in, the market is probably getting ready to crash.

Bitcoin recovered and held its value better than most things, but a lot of those coins are gone forever.

At one point, I was up $100,000 in one month. I was able to buy stem-cell therapy for my brain and spine injuries from being a violent crime victim. I bought all new clothes. I was even thinking I was going to start buying property.

But I did not know anything about taxes, negotiating numbers, buying property, or handling that kind of money. I was nervous and unprepared.

Then the market crashed. Like most people, I was down around 70%.

A lot of those coins are still in profit for me because I bought them very early. Some of the coins I bought that still did well are AAVE, TRON, NEXO, ETH, and Bitcoin. Some others are not completely dead and may come back, like MakerDAO, Chainlink, Polygon/Matic, XRP, VeChain, Polkadot, and Avalanche.

This is not even about meme coins. That is a whole separate group of coins from that period.

Why I Did Not Lose Everything

The good fortune was that I always needed to cash out crypto to supplement my bills. I am an artist, and if it were not for crypto, I would have been very poor. I still did not pay off all my credit cards, which I should have done, but pretty much everyone in the 2021 crash was in the same emotional boat. We thought we were going to be insanely rich.

It was an incredible high. The numbers were going up so fast.

At the same time, all kinds of charlatans were coming out of the woodwork. I also started realizing that showing off crypto wealth was a security risk. Some people were getting kidnapped. That is one reason I mostly went quiet.

You may want to show off your crypto skills and your OG status, but it is not wise. It is foolish. A lot of influencers also exaggerate their wealth because that is an easy way to get people to watch them. But it is also a good way to become a target.

My Strategy Was Not Fancy

I am going to be honest about my strategy. I do not really do math. I do not even know how many coins I have. Writing these blog posts is going to make me go back and look at what I bought and how my DeFi positions are doing.

I am usually running forward fast.

I did not understand taxes. That is one reason I did not sell enough. I still do not understand everything perfectly, but I have a much clearer plan now if I ever start making that kind of money again.

I was not prepared.

And here is the truth:

If you do not cash out, you did not make the money.

Meme Coins and Memecoin Revolution Day

Of course, meme coins are brilliant.

I coined May 1 as Memecoin Revolution Day. I went to grad school in Mexico City, so I was a communist for a while. All communists know that May 1 is a celebration of the proletariat and the people’s Labor Day. So I thought it was hilarious to have a meme coin revolution day, which is really about making money.

But it is also about people having capitalism in their own hands.

I learned a lot from Ivan. He talked a lot about money, having come from a communist country. Before getting into Bitcoin, I did not know anything about money. As a female artist and a spiritual person, I thought money was something for other people to understand.

Once I understood money, I realized that money is one of the most important things governing our day-to-day lives. It allows or disallows many things.

Pepe made me understand that there are economies within economies happening online. We can create our own economy on the blockchain anytime we want.

I am not a crypto bro. I am an artist and a visionary, and sometimes I understand the really big picture.

What I Actually Did

I was broke from being an artist for so long, and then I was injured, so I literally put every penny I had for a long time into Bitcoin and a few other coins. Then when Bitcoin went up, I used some of that to buy smaller coins with bigger possible upside.

A lot of people did not hold onto their small coins when they were down 75% to 95% from the top. I still have many of mine. Some are still in profit because I bought them at the very beginning.

My philosophy is that if a coin has survived for years, then it may have a better chance of doing well in the future. Especially now, with so many rug pulls and charlatans, I think some older, beaten-down coins may have more credibility than shiny new projects. When big corporations really start using blockchain, they may prefer older blockchains that have already survived.

Most people in crypto, at least during most of the time I have been in it, are in their twenties. They are often very good at making money and understanding technology, but they do not always have long-range thinking.

Also, I did not have the time or math skills to move everything around constantly.

Why Selling Is Not Always Simple

There are a lot of variables when you cash out coins.

One is fees. Another is liquidity. If it is a very small coin and no one is trading it, you may lose a lot trying to sell it. On decentralized exchanges, you are not trading directly with fiat currency like dollars, euros, or yen. You are usually trading with Ethereum, stablecoins, or other crypto.

It would have been better if I had sold more at the beginning of the downward curve, or even when things were only down 40%. But for me, it was easier to keep my coins. I did not see the point in selling them when they were already so far down.

I had a brain injury. I have so many coins in so many wallets that I still do not know where they all are.

My thinking is that it only takes one coin to go up 1,000% or 10,000% to make real money.

Eventually, I decided to go back to my art career to make cash so I could buy more Bitcoin.

You MUST to Take Profits

To wrap this part of the story up: Bitcoin and crypto changed my life in many wonderful ways.

A lot of people lost a lot of money. The reason I did not lose everything is that I took profits.

You have to take profits when things go up.

I did not take enough profits to become rich, but I took enough that I did not lose money overall. I made some money, survived, and still have coins left.

I did the same thing in the meme coin era. Some of those meme coins still have to come back, or maybe I will have lost money on that part. But I am pretty sure I broke even because I did not put a lot of actual cash into meme coins. I mostly traded one coin for another and added very small amounts of cash.

If you are a Bitcoin Kindergarten reader, you may have no idea what a meme coin is or what meme coin trading is. It was all the rage around 2023. The problem was the same thing that happened in 2021: influencers came out of the woodwork.

People you once trusted were now buying a coin and then trying to get you to buy what they had just bought. Then they would take profits, or they were using everyone else as exit liquidity. Exit liquidity means you buy near the top while the bigger players cash out and leave you holding the bags.

That became too common after 2022.

When It Stopped Being Funny

The same kind of thing happened with Ivan, in my opinion. He started selling his Money Line, which seemed to me like basically the RSI line, and getting people to pay monthly for a course. He promised to show up, but often did not. The course was not good. There was some guy from China who was awake while we were asleep, buying coins and then telling people to buy them.

There were horrible coins, and Ivan kept insisting people should buy more. I watched people lose money. A lot of young crypto bros believed these people and lost thousands of dollars.

It was not funny to me anymore.

I realized people can destroy their lives over this. People can lose marriages, homes, and their mental health. That did not happen to anyone I personally know, but anyone who has been in crypto long enough knows this is not just a game.

We were like embattled warriors. We understood this was high risk, and it was easy to get rekt. It was fun. We had our own language. We kept trying harder and harder to find that way to make big money.

But I also spent years doing that when I could have been working on my painting career. I probably would be doing much better now if I had.

But alas, hindsight is 20/20.

A lot of this happened during lockdown. A lot of it happened when I was injured. It was a great way to pass the time, learn new things, and meet people from all over the world.

Risk Management Is Everything

After being in the trenches for so long, I feel like I can walk away and still understand how the market works. I also understand, at least to some degree, how to know who I can trust and who I cannot trust.

There is a great book called Turtle Trader. It is old, but the number one important thing in crypto or stock trading is still the same:

Manage risk.

You do not just put all your money in and hope for the best.

In Turtle Trader, if something starts going down a lot, you need to sell. I had too many coins, too many wallets, and too much going on, so I did not actually do that. That is the problem with trading strategies. You can have the best strategy in the world, but almost none of us actually follows the strategy perfectly.

When the price is going through the roof and you are making so much money, you get euphoric. You feel like you are going to keep making money forever. You start thinking about champagne and Lamborghinis.

That is greed.

There is even a Crypto Fear and Greed Index because fear and greed are real forces in the market.

Now we are competing with Wall Street traders, AI bots, and people with massive amounts of money. I do not think it is wise to trade against these people unless you have some rare insight about a coin.

Because I had read Turtle Trader, I understood something about the psychology of trading. One idea helped me a lot: do not think of it as your money going up or down. Think of it as numbers on a screen.

I adopted that mindset, and I have rarely been depressed about crypto. I think that is my greatest strength: I am not too afraid and not too depressed.

Looking back, I probably should have been depressed, but I was too dumb and too optimistic. LOL.

But you do have to have a mindset.

Most People Cannot Handle Volatility

I got a lot of my friends into crypto, and the vast majority of them would panic sell.

You cannot panic sell.

I had friends who would call me after hearing some FUD and want to sell everything. I definitely believe there is a lot of market manipulation going on by banks, Wall Street, and powerful people who would prefer to use regular people as exit liquidity.

I used to urge all my friends to put money into Bitcoin so we could all be rich in the future. That is when I learned that the average person cannot handle the volatility.

Bitcoin and other cryptos go up dramatically and crash down dramatically. Crypto people understand the four-year cycle and believe it will likely go back up again. But most people panic sell. Most people get depressed when the price is down. That is human nature.

You do not want to be the person who buys high and sells low.

You want to buy low and sell high. Or at least, you want to buy low and take profits when things go high.

In crypto, we have terms for this. Paper hands means you sell too easily. Diamond hands means you are strong enough to hold through volatility.

I feel sad about how much Bitcoin I had to sell to pay my bills over the last few years, but I am also grateful that I could pay them.

What Crypto Taught Me About Money

Once you make money with crypto, your whole thinking about money changes. You start to understand the possibilities. You start to understand money because you start to understand blockchain. You start to understand why Bitcoin was created and why it matters.

For me, that was wonderful.

In university, I basically learned that artists do not care about money. We should just be communists and hope the leader looks kindly upon us. So it was empowering to understand money.

Even today, if I worked hard enough, I could probably make money in crypto. But I realized my real calling in life is to be a painter, and I could probably make just as much money if I fully focused on that.

There are people who drove Uber for two years, put all that money into Bitcoin, and are multimillionaires now. There are many great crypto stories.

Once you understand that fiat currency is constantly losing value, you understand why people do not bother saving it. It becomes worth less and less. Then you understand that Bitcoin, and probably a few other coins, may have long-lasting value and the ability to increase greatly over time.

For me, crypto was a window in time when I could make some money and change my life. So I did that.

Why its still Early

I still think crypto is very early. I still think there is a lot of money to be made there. But right now, I have a much more conservative philosophy.

People do not understand that you can invest $5. I did that many times. A lot of how I accumulated crypto was in very tiny amounts.

Once you realize you can make money in the future, you stop wasting money on things like restaurants and random stuff. Your money becomes more valuable because it becomes part of your future.

Crypto changes your mindset.

Crypto people are optimistic and futuristic. I think a lot of that is because we understand the FUD from banks and mainstream financial people. They say quantum computing is going to destroy crypto, or that Bitcoin is dead, or whatever the fear story is at the moment. I believe a lot of that fear is spread so powerful people can buy crypto cheaper.

The Crash and the Bigger Game

In March 2020, when I had my brain injury, I was in a daze and could barely do anything. I would go make a fire in Rock Creek Park and just sit there all day.

One time, I heard what felt like a voice in my head. It was not in my ears, but it said:

“They’re going to crash the market on purpose.”

Then I asked myself why, and I understood: so they could buy assets cheap.

When you have cash during a crash, you can buy a lot of things. Bitcoin went very low during that period and then went dramatically higher years later.

I am probably one of the more conspiracy-theory, paranoid people in the market, but I do not think all of this is organic. That is why it is very hard to find an influencer who is not corrupt, stupid, or selling something.

I come from old-school South Carolina Presbyterian people. We are honest to the core. We would never try to get you to buy something that was not in your best interest. I realize now that this is a rare way to think.

Crypto bros are often really good at making money, but many of them have a different moral compass. They are playing a game, and the game they play works. Crypto has different parameters, and it is important to understand the parameters of the person you are listening to.

The Banks Were Never stupid

I paid attention when top crypto influencers went to Davos around 2018 and 2019. These young guys who were the top YouTubers were there, and I think that mattered. They thought they were smarter than the old financial people, but they were in their twenties and had grown up in middle-class families. They did not know what they were walking into.

It is very easy to influence and entice someone.

We all thought we were on the cutting edge of a new world with freedom money that was going to equalize the playing field worldwide. In many ways, crypto does do that.

Crypto cannot see if you are from a tiny town in Africa. It cannot see if you are a woman or a man. It cannot see your credit score or your work history. Technology is wonderful in that way. Crypto is wonderful in that way. It has leveled the playing field, and it has taken some power away from banks.

But the banks are not stupid.

A lot of the same institutions that acted like crypto was ridiculous were also positioning themselves around crypto. In my opinion, they pretended to be against it while preparing to benefit from it.

There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Think about how many millionaires there are in the world. Most of them do not have one Bitcoin. Corporations, ETFs, banks, and even countries are accumulating Bitcoin, so there is not that much of it freely available.

That is one reason the price holds up better than many other things, even when the rest of the market crashes.

We thought we had freedom money. Maybe we do. But the financial system is powerful, and they are not stupid.

Many Bros don't realize that they have the top of brilliant financial people in their inner circle. It is true that many bankers are not smart, along with many economist many lower level people, but at the TOP levels where all the money is. They have the top brilliant minds working for them. They know everything about everything

Why This Is Bigger Than Day-to-Day News

If you only watch mainstream news about Bitcoin, even top financial news, you are not going to understand the big picture. You might hear day-to-day information, but what is really going on is a huge shift in the way we do business.

We did get the freedom money.

But the banks are constantly wrestling us for it.

Stablecoins and Bitcoin made it possible to send money across the world quickly and cheaply. The writing was on the wall. Banks could not keep total control over our money forever while charging high fees for everything.

They are trying to prolong their control as long as they can, but crypto has changed the situation permanently.

What I Would Tell a Beginner Now

If I were advising someone new to crypto, I would tell them to be conservative.

Something like:

• 60% Bitcoin

• 10% Ethereum

• 10% Solana

• 10% Hyperliquid

• 10% high-risk small caps

That is not financial advice. That is just how I think about risk now.

You can cash out of Coinbase and have money in your bank pretty quickly. So for me, sometimes I use crypto almost like a savings account, except it is a very volatile one. I hope it gives me gains, but if I need money for bills, I can cash some out.

I try not to cash out at a loss, but sometimes you have to. Hi frame it in my mind that 'It is money I probably would have blown on Amazon if I had not bought crypto with it'. It's OK to sell at a small loss.

MY COINBASE REFERRAL LINK

Who Do I Trust?

I started this post to tell you which influencers I trust and why, but the story got too long. So that will have to be the next post.

For now, my answer is this:

I do not trust anyone completely.

I listen. I compare. I notice incentives. I ask: what does this person own? What are they selling? Who pays them? Are they explaining risk, or are they just making me feel like I am going to get rich?

WHAT'S in it for me (NFTEVE) ? For a while, I was on TikTok shilling Ivan on Tech's program because I still believed in it and then I realized I could make videos about small meme coins, and pump them and there's all kinds of ways to make money around crypto. I have a lot of followers on TikTok so I thought it would take advantage of it but everything turns sour the last few years in crypto that's one reason the market is so down there's just so many Charlotte attends on so much bullshit everywhere and even I was selling a product that probably most people would not have been good at using. That's when we thought thought the alt coin season was coming back, but it didn't. Anyway, Ivan's product was total crap anyway.. so I decided not to do that and also I don't want to be a public figure in crypto I think it's a security risk people think you're a billionaire and you get targeted a lot.

My plan for creating this website is one to help my friends. That's why I start my YouTube channel back in the day. All of my friends were getting scammed. But I can't afford to work for free so my plan for this website is to put annoying add sense ads. That way I don't have to work too much and maybe I make a few dollars. Of course, I will always be shilling. Hawa Cat and my art. I have been a speaker at several conferences so maybe one day in the future I will be a paid speaker. And I might get a few dollars from referral links, but frankly, most referral links never get you your money.. I'll keep it simple and just put some adsense widgets on here. I apologize for the hoagie stuff that it's going to try to sell you. I was offering to do phone calls to help people out. I can do that if you find my email or better yet find me on X. Oh, it just charges certain donation to give you my unprofessional yet expert advice.

The whole crypto world was on Twitter. I think it's now X, YouTube and LinkedIn. I'm sure I will shill my eight minute abs program here. It's fantastic.. so that's how I'm gonna make my money.. when the bull market comes it will probably be irresistible to not shill and pump my own bags. I'm only human and we get very excited about points sometimes or maybe I'm making my own coins who knows. I will definitely make my own memecoins in the future. But I promise not to rug pull . However, somebody could buy a huge percentage of my memecoin easily, when it is first introduced to the public, and then they could rug pull it. It's crazy out there and there's a lot of ways to lose your money. This is a super fun ecosystem and I'm enjoying making this post and remembering so much high energy excitement, and the agony of defeat at times.

I am a small crypto influencer and I'm member of the GBA. We are going to be doing certifications to become a NS an auditor through the creation of standards for Blockchain products. So I would be a professional working under that organization. But I'm a painter and so it's probably gonna be a long time before I finish those certifications. I am an ambassador for them so I need to get them to make me a new affiliate link. It's a great organization.

I think it's good to know a lot about crypto because there are a lot of careers opening up and in the future where this is going to help you greatly. Even though I see Ivan on Tech as a charlatan now, he completely changed my life, and he used to say 'whatever you do do it in crypto' because crypto the future. You can use crypto and Blockchain interchangeably. It's not always about money. It's about the technology..

Conclusion

Crypto and blockchain are a completely different paradigm and it takes time to get your head around the vocabulary and the mindset.

Please email me any questions, and I will try to answer them. Especially if you think they're dumb questions because that's who these website is for. When I was learning crypto it was all devs and I really couldn't understand most of what they were saying..

👉🏻 NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. I am one person with one point of view.

Glossary

• Smart Contracts – Computer programs on the blockchain that run automatically when certain conditions are met. Smart contracts are the revolutionary invention of Vitalik Buterin's Ethereum. Bitcoin is mostly used as a store value, but with smart contracts there is no end to the use cases that can be created.

• NFTs – Non-Fungible Tokens. Unique digital items stored on a blockchain, often used for digital art, collectibles, or membership access. It means you can put one specific object or file on the Blockchain, and it stays on the Blockchain forever, and only one person can own that particular one. That's what nonfungible means. https://hawacat.com/ Hawa Cat was first an NFT. You can still find some Hawa Cat NFT's here on Opensea.io when you get into crypto a little bit, it's very good to buy an NFT the process that you have to go to in order to do that we'll teach you a lot. And then you'll see why it's fun and why people do it.

• DeFi – Decentralized Finance. Financial services like trading, lending, borrowing, and earning yield without using traditional banks.

• Tokenomics – The economic design of a coin, including supply, distribution, incentives, and how the token is supposed to gain or keep value. In kindergarten terms: it's all the ways that a cryptocurrency functions and are different ways of working than stocks or other money. It's how the technology of any given Blockchain or protocol works. In economics, you can find out what percentage of people are the highest holders of a coin. The level of decentralization., the fees, how the coin works and often there's a roadmap over time with different things will happen in this coin. For example, in bitcoin it's programmed in the tokenomics In Bitcoin, about every four years the “halving” cuts the reward miners receive for creating a new block in half, so mining does not become 50% harder — miners just earn 50% less new Bitcoin for the same work. That is the reason the price goes up so much overtime. You can find. mining in the dictionary page at some point.

• FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Negative news, rumors, or narratives that scare people into selling.

• Bear Market – A long period when prices are down and people are pessimistic.

• Altcoin Season – A period during the bull market, when all of the small coins are making more money than the bitcoin. We had a historic alt coin season, but the next bitcoin cycle we did not have it, but we did have a meme coin season.

• Hidden-Gem Coins – Small, less-known coins that people hope will rise dramatically.

• Meme Coins – Coins created around internet memes, jokes, culture, or community energy. They can go up dramatically, but they are usually very risky.

• Providing Liquidity in DeFI -Providing assets to a decentralized finance platform so other people can trade or borrow. You can earn fees for providing liquidity.. –Each block chain has to have liquidity in order to function. That means there has to be a reserve of the coins so that people can trade and borrow and lend. That's liquid liquidity. I created a few memecoins, but they had zero liquidity so they are worthless.

• Layer-2 – Technology built on top of another blockchain. It uses the original Blockchain as the engine, but changes it into a completely different use. This is like if you had an airplane engine, but then you used it for a rocket engine. The rocket would be layer 2.

• Altcoins – Cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin.

• Pump – When the price of a coin goes up a lot, sometimes naturally and sometimes because of hype.

• Pumping Your Own Bags – Promoting a coin you already own so other people buy it and the price goes up.

• OG – Someone who has been in a space for a long time. In crypto, it usually means an early participant.

• Meme Coin Trading – Buying and selling meme coins, often very quickly, trying to catch huge price moves.

• Blockchain – A public digital ledger that records transactions without needing one central authority.

• Rug Pull / Rug – When creators or insiders sell a project or drain the money, causing the price to collapse. Or I could shut down for another reason. But it's not very nice.

• Liquidity – How easy it is to buy or sell an asset without causing a big price change. It means that how many coins does the exchange have available

• Decentralized Exchanges – Exchanges where people trade through blockchain technology instead of using a centralized company. A centralized is one where you connect your bank account. Decentralize you're gonna be trading with Ethereum or stable coins usually.

• Fiat Currency – Government-issued money from a centralbank like dollars, euros, or yen.

• Stablecoins – Cryptocurrencies designed to be pegged to the value of the dollar.

• Exit Liquidity – the concept like when a project is built up gets tons of people to buy into it and then they rug pull. That means they exit and take a big proportion of the money, causing the value to plummet.. the plebs are left holding the bags. It's something like if your friend convinces you to go on a vacation and drive them there or pay for the tickets. Then when you get on vacation and have some stupid excuse so they can leave you all alone and go out and have fun at your expense. You paid for a fun trip and now you're just out of money.

• Bags – The coins you are holding. Any coin like my Solana is called my Solana bags, bitcoin, bags, Pepe bags

• RSI – Relative Strength Index. A trading indicator people use to judge whether something may be overbought or oversold. It's just a line to let you know if money go up or money go down. It's a line used in trading and investing..

• Rekt – Crypto slang for getting wrecked financially and losing a lot of money.

• Fear and Greed Index – https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/fear-and-greed-index/ A market sentiment indicator that tries to measure whether investors are very afraid or very greedy.

• AI Bots – Automated programs that can trade or analyze markets much faster than humans. We can buy and sell and take profits.

• Four-Year Cycle – The 4 year cycle connected to Bitcoin halving events.

• Paper Hands – Someone who sells too easily when prices drop.

• Diamond Hands – Someone who holds through big drops and does not panic sell.

• Freedom Money – it's bitcoin and crypto, and it means that you don't have to rely on a bank to take care of your money. Many places in the world and many people have had banks take their money.. the Fiat system is a high control system. They can create a whole bunch more money and then your money's worth less and you're screwed.(inflation)

• Plebs- the commoners! regular person in the community — not a whale, not an expert, just a normal person stacking sats or learning Bitcoin. In Bitcoin circles it can be affectionate or humble.

• ETFs – Exchange-Traded Funds. Investment products that let people buy exposure to an asset through traditional financial markets. So you can buy crypto with an EFT and you're not actually buying the crypto you're buying a stock that holds the crypto(suposedly). It's how big banks do crypto at this point.

• Shilling- a term for when we are promoting our own coins or NFT's or anything chilling just means selling. It seems derogatory but it's not.

My Crypto History: How I Made Money, How I Didn’t Make Money, and Who I Trust Now

👉🏻 Italic Termsin Glossay Below

This is actually the hardest and most important question in all of crypto:

How do you know who to trust?

You need to know how to judge the information you are getting before you can decide what kind of information it is. I have been in crypto since 2017, and I have listened to a lot of different people since then. The space has changed completely. What started as this exciting geeky world full of technology, possibility, and strange brilliant people has turned into a minefield.

So, to cut to the chase: I really don’t trust anyone completely.

There are people who I think are honest, or at least more honest than others. There are people who are not as easily swayed by paid sponsorships, grants, or pumping their own bags. Pumping your own bags means promoting a coin because you own a lot of it and want other people to buy it. For example, if I am promoting Hyperliquid, part of the reason may be that I own it and want it to do well.

Having been a minor crypto influencer myself, I understand that temptation. Pumping your own bags and becoming popular so that people give you crypto is almost irresistible. I am guilty of it too.

I’m going to tell this in a story way, because I think the backstory matters. You can know where I’m coming from, and then you can decide whether you agree with me or not.

Here is my disclaimer: I haven’t been following much crypto news for about two years. I realized that nobody really knows what is going to happen. My basic knowledge of crypto is enough for me to have a strategy for making money, or at least for not doing something completely stupid.

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it is that nobody knows all of the truth. If one person really knew everything, we would all be rich by following that one person. Also, someone can be great for a while and then not great later.

When I First Got Into Crypto

When I first got into crypto in 2017, I found this amazing young man named Ivan on Tech. He was in his twenties, Belarusian, growing up in Sweden, and he was this techy nerd guy who was funny, smart, and a great communicator.

Back then, what I call the golden age of crypto was happening. Ethereum was huge. Smart contracts were new. NFTs were new. DeFi was new. Everything was new. It was exciting because we were all geeking out on the technology and also on the possibility of making a lot of money.

I subscribed to Ivan’s first list, and I made very good money. Later I found out that Phil was probably the one putting a lot of that together behind the scenes. I don’t know where Phil is now, but he seemed like one of those quiet behind-the-scenes people who really understood things.

Back then, people had access to the teams. People were on Telegram and Discord talking to each other. Everyone was focused on the technology, the tokenomics, and all the different things a coin or protocol could do.

I also listened to Altcoin Daily all the time. Ivan and Altcoin Daily were so bullish that they made you feel okay about investing every penny you had in crypto and not being too scared about it.

Crypto is scary because you don’t really know how it works at first, and you don’t know what could happen. There is always a lot of FUD, which means "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt".

I was not technical at all. I am an artist. But for some reason my brain loved being completely dumbfounded and trying to figure out what was going on. The spark of the obsession was that I made money in a way I had never made money before. It was good money. So I thought, if I dedicate myself to this, maybe I can have money for the rest of my life.

Crypto and My Brain Injury

In 2020, I had a terrible brain injury. I’m sure that if it wasn’t for crypto, I would be really dumb right now. I know that sounds funny, but I mean it. Crypto made me use parts of my brain I had never used before.

I’m going to get some of the dates wrong. I’ll try to go back and adjust them later, but I have never been good at dates, and during my brain injury time I could barely even remember passwords.

I am 100% an artist. It’s just that I made a huge effort to activate my left brain so I could understand crypto and make money. It was exciting and fun, and I enjoyed that time with the crypto bros. I mean, I still do, but less now.

I went back to painting during this bear market because we were all expecting a crazy altcoin season like we had in 2021, and it did not happen the same way.

But back then, I had coins I bought for $50 that went up to $5,000. So I had real motivation. It was not just about greed. It was also fun, futuristic, and optimistic. We all believed in what could be built.

The Early Money Made Me Overconfident

It is true that I spent every last penny I had on very small hidden-gem coins in the early days. Many of them did blow up. They did make money. That made me overconfident. I started thinking maybe I was just a genius.

Then I spent a few years trading meme coins and doing DeFi liquidity and all kinds of moves that really did not make me much money. I did not lose as much as many people did, but I did not make what I thought I was going to make either.

That is one of the big lessons: you can be right early, make money, and then think you understand everything. That is dangerous.

The 2021 Mania

In 2021, all the Ethereum Layer-2 projects and altcoins started to pump. Layer-2 means other protocols built with Ethereum blockchain. Everything was going up. We were making so much money.

Everybody was talking about Bitcoin and crypto. At Thanksgiving, Uber drivers, friends, and random people all wanted to get in. Huge influencers came out of the woodwork. Robert Kiyosaki, some guy from London Real, and all kinds of famous people came out with crypto groups you could join so you could supposedly get rich.

Well, now we know: when that happens, the market is getting ready to crash.

Bitcoin recovered and has retained its value, but a lot of those coins are gone forever.

At one point, I was up $100,000 in one month. I was able to buy some stem-cell therapy for my brain and spine injuries from being a violent crime victim. I bought all new clothes. I was even thinking I was going to start buying property.

But I didn’t know anything about taxes, negotiating numbers, buying property, or handling that kind of money. I was nervous about it.

Then the market crashed. Like most people, I was down about 70%.

A lot of those coins are still in profit for me because I bought them very early. Some of the coins I bought that still did well are AAVE, TRON, NEXO, ETH, and Bitcoin. Some others are not completely dead and may come back, like MakerDAO, Chainlink, Polygon/Matic, XRP, VeChain, Polkadot, and Avalanche.

This is not about meme coins. I have another whole group of coins from that period.

Why I Did Not Lose Everything

The good fortune was that I always needed to cash out to supplement my bills. I am an artist, and if it wasn’t for crypto I would have been very poor. I still did not pay off all my credit cards, which I should have done, but pretty much everyone in the 2021 crash was in the same boat. We thought we were going to be insanely rich.

It was an incredible high. The numbers were going up so fast.

All kinds of charlatans were also coming out of the woodwork. For me, I started to realize it was a security risk. Some people were getting kidnapped. That is one of the reasons I mostly went quiet.

You want to show off your crypto skills and your OG status, but that is not wise. It is foolish. You also learn that a lot of influencers greatly exaggerate their wealth. That is the easiest way to get people to watch your YouTube channel, but it is also a good way to become a target.

My Strategy Was Not Fancy

I’m going to be honest about my strategy. I don’t really do math. I don’t even know how many coins I have. Just writing these blog posts is going to make me go back and look at what I bought and how my DeFi positions are doing.

I am usually running forward fast.

I didn’t understand taxes. That is one reason I didn’t sell enough. I still don’t fully understand all of it, but I have a very clear plan now if I ever start making that kind of money again.

I was not prepared.

And here is the big truth:

👉🏻If you don’t cash out, you didn’t really make the money.

Meme Coins and Memecoin Revolution Day

Of course, meme coins are brilliant.

I coined May 1 as “Memecoin Revolution Day.” I went to grad school in Mexico City, so I was a communist for a while. All communists know that May 1 is a celebration of the proletariat and the people’s Labor Day. So I thought it was hilarious to have a meme coin revolution day, which is really about making money.

But it is also about people having capitalism in their own hands.

I learned a lot from Ivan. He talked a lot about money, having come from a communist country. Before getting into Bitcoin, I didn’t know anything about money. As a female artist and a spiritual person, I thought money was for other people to understand.

Once I understood money, I realized that money is one of the most important things governing our day-to-day lives. It allows or disallows many things.

May 1 was the day Pepe was born, and I realized that there are economies within economies happening online. We can create our own economy on the blockchain anytime we want.

I am not a crypto bro. I am an artist and a visionary, and sometimes I understand the really big picture.

What I Actually Did

I was so broke from being an artist for so long, and then I was injured, so I literally put every penny I had for a long time into Bitcoin and a few other coins. Then when Bitcoin went up, I used some of that to buy smaller coins for bigger possible profits.

A lot of people did not hold onto their small coins when they were down 75% to 95% from the top. I still have many of them. A lot of those coins are still in profit for me because I bought them at the very beginning.

My philosophy is that if a coin has survived for years, then in the future it has a better chance of doing well. Especially now, with so many rug pulls and charlatans, I think some of the older, sad, beaten-down coins may have more reputation and reliability. When big corporations really use blockchain, they may prefer older blockchains that have already survived.

Most people in crypto, at least during most of the time I have been in it, are in their twenties. They are very good at making money and understanding technology, but they don’t always have long-range thinking.

Also, I just did not have the time or math skills to move everything around.

Why Selling Is Not Always Simple

There are a lot of variables when you cash out your coins.

One is fees. Another is liquidity. If it is a very small coin and no one is trading it, the fees can be higher on decentralized exchanges. A decentralized exchange is an exchange that is not a centralized company. You are not trading directly with fiat currency like dollars, euros, or yen. You are trading with Ethereum, stablecoins, or other crypto.

It would have been good if I had sold some coins at the beginning of the downward curve, or even when they were only down 40%. But for me, it was easier to keep my coins. I don’t see the point in selling them when they are already so far down.

I had a brain injury. I have so many coins in so many different wallets that I still don’t know where they all are.

My thinking is that it only takes one to go up 1,000% or 10,000% to make some money.

Eventually I decided to go back to my art career to make cash so I could buy more Bitcoin.

You Have to Take Profits

To wrap this part of the story up: Bitcoin and crypto changed my life in many wonderful ways.

A lot of people lost a lot of money, and I could never fully understand how until I watched more closely. The reason I did not lose everything is that I took profits.

You have to take profits when things go up.

I did not take enough profits to make tons of money, but I took enough that I did not lose money overall. I made some and survived.

I did the same thing in the meme coin era. Some of those meme coins still have to come back, or maybe I will have lost money on that part. I’m pretty sure I broke even because I didn’t spend a lot of actual cash on meme coins. I also traded one coin for another and only added very small amounts of cash.

If you are a Bitcoin Kindergarten reader, you may have no idea what a meme coin is or what meme coin trading is. It was all the rage around 2023. The problem was the same thing that happened in 2021: influencers came out of the woodwork.

People you once trusted were now buying a coin and then trying to get you to buy what they had just bought. Then they would take profits, or they were using everyone else as exit liquidity. Exit liquidity means you buy the coin at the top while the big guys cash out and leave you holding the bags.

That became too common after 2022.

When It Stopped Being Funny

The same kind of thing happened with Ivan. He started selling his Money Line, which seemed to me like basically the RSI line, and getting all of us to pay monthly for this course where he promised to show up but often did not. The course was not good. There was some guy from China who was awake while we were asleep, buying coins and then telling us to buy them.

There were horrible coins, and Ivan kept insisting people should buy more. I watched people lose money. A lot of young crypto bros believed these people and lost thousands of dollars.

It wasn’t funny to me anymore.

I realized people can commit suicide over this. Lives can get ruined. Marriages can get ruined. That did not happen to anyone I personally know, but anyone who has been in crypto long enough knows this is not just a game.

We are like embattled warriors. We understand this is high risk, and it is easy to get rekt. Rekt means you get wrecked and lose your money.

It was fun. We had our own language. We kept trying harder and harder to find the way to make that big money. But I also spent years doing that when I could have been working on my painting career, and I probably would be doing much better now.

But alas, hindsight is 20/20.

A lot of this happened during lockdown. A lot of it happened when I was injured. It was a great way to pass the time, learn new things, and meet people from all over the world.

Risk Management Is Everything

After being in the trenches for so long, I feel like I can walk away and still understand how the market works. I also understand how to know who I can trust and who I can’t trust, at least to some degree.

There is a great book called Turtle Trader. It is old, but the number one important thing in crypto or stock trading is still the same:

Manage risk.

You don’t just put all your money in and hope for the best.

In Turtle Trader, if something starts going down a lot, you need to sell. I had too many coins, too many wallets, and too much going on, so I did not actually do that. That is the problem with trading strategies. You can have the best strategy in the world, but as human beings, almost none of us actually follows the strategy.

When the price is going through the roof and you are making so much money, you get this euphoria. You feel like you are going to keep making money forever. You start thinking about champagne and Lamborghinis.

That is greed.

There is even a Crypto Fear and Greed Index. That exists because fear and greed are real forces in the market.

Now we are competing with top Wall Street traders, AI bots, and people with massive amounts of money. I do not think it is wise to trade against these people unless you have some rare insight about a coin that may go up.

Because I had read Turtle Trader, I understood something about the psychology of trading. One idea from the book really helped me: do not think of it as your money going up or down. Think of it as numbers on a screen.

I adopted that mindset, and I have rarely been depressed about crypto. I think that is my greatest strength: not being too afraid and not being too depressed.

Looking back, I probably should have been depressed, but I was too dumb and too optimistic. LOL.

But you do have to have a mindset.

Most People Cannot Handle Volatility

I got a lot of my friends into crypto, and the vast majority of them would panic sell.

You can’t panic sell.

I had friends who would call me after hearing some FUD and want to sell everything. FUD means fear, uncertainty, and doubt. It is negative information or rumors that scare people into selling.

I definitely believe there is huge market manipulation going on by BlackRock, banks, Wall Street, and all kinds of people who would prefer to use you as exit liquidity.

I used to urge all my friends to put money into Bitcoin so we could all be rich in the future. That is when I learned that the average person cannot handle the volatility.

Bitcoin and other cryptos go up dramatically and crash down dramatically. Crypto people understand the four-year cycle and that it will likely go back up again. But most people panic sell. Most people get depressed when the price is down. That is human nature.

You do not want to be the person who buys high and sells low.

You want to buy low and sell high. Or at least, you want to buy low and take profits when things go high.

We have terms for this. Paper hands means you sell too easily. Diamond hands means you are strong and can hold your Bitcoin no matter what happens.

I feel sad about how much Bitcoin I had to sell to pay my bills over the last few years, but I am also grateful that I could pay them.

What Crypto Taught Me About Money

Once you make money with crypto, your whole thinking about money changes. You start to understand the possibilities. You start to understand money because you start to understand blockchain. You start to understand why Bitcoin was created and why it matters.

For me, that was wonderful.

In university, I basically learned that artists don’t care about money. We should just be communists and hope the leader looks kindly upon us. So it was empowering to understand money.

Even today, if I worked hard enough, I could probably make money in crypto. But I realized my real calling in life is to be a painter, and I could probably make just as much money if I fully focused on that.

There are people who drove Uber for two years, put all that money into Bitcoin, and are multimillionaires now. There are many great crypto stories.

Once you understand that fiat currency is constantly losing value, you understand why people don’t bother saving it. It becomes worth less and less. Then you understand that Bitcoin, and probably a few other coins, may have long-lasting value and the ability to increase greatly over time.

For me, crypto was a window in time when I could make some money and change my life. So I did that.

Why I Still Think It Is Early

I still think crypto is very early. I still think there is so much money to be made there. But right now, I have a much more conservative philosophy.

People don’t understand that you can invest $5. I did that many times. A lot of how I accumulated crypto was in very tiny amounts.

Once you realize you can make money in the future, you stop wasting money on things like restaurants and random stuff. Your money becomes more valuable because it becomes part of your future.

Crypto changes your mindset.

Crypto people are optimistic and futuristic. I think a lot of that is because we understand the FUD from banks and mainstream financial people. They say quantum computing is going to destroy crypto, or that Bitcoin is dead, or whatever the current fear story is. I believe a lot of that fear is spread so powerful people can buy crypto cheaper.

The Crash and the Bigger Game

In March 2020, when I had my brain injury, I was in a daze and could barely do anything. I would go make a fire in Rock Creek Park and just sit there all day.

One time, I heard what felt like a voice in my head. It was not in my ears, but it said:

“They’re going to crash the market on purpose.”

Then I asked myself why, and I understood: so they could buy all the assets cheap.

When you have cash during a crash, you can buy a lot of stuff. Bitcoin went down to around $3,000 at one point. Years later, it went dramatically higher.

I am probably one of the more conspiracy-theory, paranoid people in the market, but I don’t think all of this is organic. That is why it is very hard to find an influencer who is not corrupt, stupid, or selling something.

I come from old-school South Carolina Presbyterian people. We are honest to the core. We would never come out and try to get you to buy something that was not in your best interest. I realize now that this is a rare way to think.

Crypto bros are often really good at making money, but many of them have a different moral compass. They are playing a game, and the game they play works. Crypto has different parameters, and it is important to understand the parameters of the person you are listening to.

The Banks Were Never Stupid

I paid attention when top crypto influencers went to Davos around 2018 and 2019. These young guys who were the top YouTubers were there, and I think that mattered. They thought they were smarter than the old financial people, but they were in their twenties and had grown up in middle-class families. They did not know what they were walking into.

It is very easy to influence and entice someone.

We all thought we were on the cutting edge of a new world with freedom money that was going to equalize the playing field worldwide. And in many ways, crypto does do that.

Crypto cannot see if you are from a tiny town in Africa. It cannot see if you are a woman or a man. It cannot see your credit score or your work history. Technology is wonderful in that way. Crypto is wonderful in that way. It has leveled the playing field, and it has taken some power away from banks.

But the banks are not stupid.

A lot of the same institutions that acted like crypto was ridiculous were also involved in companies and systems around crypto. Of course they pretended to be against crypto while positioning themselves to benefit from it.

There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoin. Think about how many millionaires there are in the world. Most of them do not have one Bitcoin. Corporations, ETFs, banks, and even countries are accumulating Bitcoin, so there is not that much of it freely available.

That is one reason the price holds up better than many other things, even when the rest of the market crashes.

We thought we had freedom money. Maybe we do. But the financial system is powerful, and they are not stupid.

Why This Is Bigger Than Day-to-Day News

If you only watch mainstream news about Bitcoin, even top financial news, you are not going to understand the big picture. You might hear day-to-day information, but what is really going on is a huge shift in the way we do business.

We did get the freedom money.

But the banks are constantly wrestling us for it.

Stablecoins and Bitcoin made it possible to send money across the world quickly and cheaply. The writing was on the wall. Banks could not keep total control over our money forever while charging high fees for everything.

They are trying to prolong their control as long as they can, but crypto has changed the situation permanently.

What I Would Tell a Beginner Now

If I were advising someone new to crypto, I would tell them to be conservative.

Something like:

• 60% Bitcoin

• 10% Ethereum

• 10% Solana

• 10% Hyperliquid

• 10% high-risk small caps

That is not financial advice. That is just how I think about risk now.

You can cash out of Coinbase and have money in your bank pretty quickly. So for me, sometimes I use crypto almost like a savings account, except it is a very volatile one. I hope it gives me gains, but if I need money for bills, I can cash some out.

I try not to cash out at a loss, but sometimes you have to. It is still money I probably would have blown on Amazon if I had not bought crypto with it.

Who Do I Trust?

I started this post to tell you which influencers I trust and why, but the story got too long. So that will have to be the next post.

For now, my answer is this:

I don’t trust anyone completely.

I listen. I compare. I notice incentives. I ask: what does this person own? What are they selling? Who pays them? Are they explaining risk, or are they just making me feel like I’m going to get rich?

Crypto and blockchain are a completely different world. I know it takes time to get your head around the vocabulary and the mindset. I may be missing important points too.

Please email me any questions, and I will try to answer them.

🚨NOT FINANCIAL ADVICE. I am one person with one point of view.

Glossary

• Crypto – Short for cryptocurrency. Digital money or digital assets that use blockchain technology.

• Bitcoin – The first and most famous cryptocurrency. It has a fixed maximum supply of 21 million coins.

• Ethereum – A major blockchain network that made smart contracts, DeFi, NFTs, and many crypto applications possible.

• Smart Contracts – Computer programs on the blockchain that run automatically when certain conditions are met.

• NFTs – Non-Fungible Tokens. Unique digital items stored on a blockchain, often used for digital art, collectibles, or membership access.

• DeFi – Decentralized Finance. Financial services like trading, lending, borrowing, and earning yield without using traditional banks.

• DeFi Liquidity – Providing crypto to a decentralized finance platform so other people can trade or borrow. It can earn fees, but it can also be risky.

• Meme Coins – Coins created around internet memes, jokes, culture, or community energy. They can go up dramatically, but they are usually very risky.

• Meme Coin Trading – Buying and selling meme coins, often very quickly, trying to catch huge price moves.

• Altcoins – Any cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin.

• Altcoin Season – A period when many altcoins go up faster than Bitcoin.

• Layer-2 – A network built on top of another blockchain, usually to make transactions faster and cheaper.

• Pump – When the price of a coin goes up a lot, sometimes naturally and sometimes because of hype.

• Pumping Your Own Bags – Promoting a coin you already own so other people buy it and the price goes up.

• Bags – The coins you are holding. If they went down a lot, people say you are “holding bags.”

• Hidden-Gem Coins – Small, less-known coins that people hope will rise dramatically.

• Rug Pull / Rug – When the creators or insiders of a project abandon it or drain the money, causing the price to collapse.

• FUD – Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Negative news, rumors, or narratives that scare people into selling.

• Crypto Influencer – Someone who talks about crypto publicly and influences what other people buy, sell, or believe.

• Crypto Bro – A slang term for the stereotypical aggressive, money-obsessed crypto guy. I am using it partly jokingly.

• OG – Someone who has been in a space for a long time. In crypto, it usually means an early participant.

• Tokenomics – The economic design of a coin, including supply, distribution, incentives, and how the token is supposed to gain or keep value.

• Bear Market – A long period when prices are down and people are pessimistic.

• Liquidity – How easy it is to buy or sell an asset without causing a big price change.

• Decentralized Exchange – A crypto exchange where people trade directly through blockchain technology instead of using a centralized company.

• Fiat Currency – Government-issued money like dollars, euros, or yen.

• Stablecoins – Cryptocurrencies designed to stay close to the value of another asset, usually the U.S. dollar.

• Exit Liquidity – When regular buyers buy near the top while insiders or big holders sell and leave them holding the bags.

• RSI – Relative Strength Index. A trading indicator people use to judge whether something may be overbought or oversold.

• Rekt – Crypto slang for getting wrecked financially and losing a lot of money.

• Turtle Trader – A famous trading book/story about risk management and trend-following.

• Crypto Fear and Greed Index – A market sentiment indicator that tries to measure whether crypto investors are very afraid or very greedy.

• AI Bots – Automated computer programs that can trade or analyze markets much faster than humans.

• Four-Year Cycle – The idea that Bitcoin and crypto markets often move in broad cycles connected partly to Bitcoin halving events.

• Paper Hands – Someone who sells too easily when prices drop.

• Diamond Hands – Someone who holds through big drops and does not panic sell.

• Blockchain – A public digital ledger that records transactions without needing one central authority.

• Freedom Money – A phrase people use for Bitcoin or crypto because it can be used outside traditional banking systems.

• ETFs – Exchange-Traded Funds. Investment products that let people buy exposure to Bitcoin or other assets through traditional financial markets.

• Solana – A fast blockchain network used for crypto apps, NFTs, trading, and meme coins.

• Hyperliquid – A newer crypto project/exchange ecosystem that some people use for trading and speculation.