This is a great question. The shortest answer is because I want to help you. If you are looking at this now, before most of the global society, and before most of the corporations have bought Bitcoin, you are ahead of the pack and can expect outsized returns if you buy and hold. I have been a practicing board-certified Emergency Physician since 2005, but computers were really my first love. My training in medicine is to take in data, and find the most likely outcome/explanation for the patient's symptoms. I applied that same sort of understanding to learning about cryptocurrency and the current state of money in modern society (2021). One of my ER doc partners once told me that I was the most inquisitive person he'd ever met. I will definitely chase down information to learn about new topics. Cryptocurrency has certainly scratched that itch.
To show my 'digital age' I ran a bulletin board system (BBS) in high school, was the first among my peers to get an email address, the first to create a website, and I have always loved learning about how digital technology can help our lives. Although I first learned about Bitcoin in 2013, I didn't have the time to devote to learning about it enough to commit some capital until 2017. In 2013 I thought, "$250 per coin? That's so expensive, too much to take a gamble on without researching it." I heard about the Silk Road when it traded around $1100, and then in 2017, I looked again and saw it was up to $4,000. That appreciation in price, in only a few years, made me take a look at it. Thankfully for my net worth, I bought before the 2017 run-up, and I held through the 'crypto winter' of 2018. In 2017, I was afraid of deviating from the establishment/accepted financial traditions of investing in the stock market to put in more than 1% of my net worth. Bitcoin was so new and risky, I shouldn't risk anything more than 1%, right? Of course, this 1% is an easy recommendation for a financial advisor...If you loose it all, you don't really feel it. Conversely, if you hit it big, and double or triple your investment, you don't really feel it too much either. Traditional finance people will probably find it easy to recommend a 1% position...it lets the investor feel like they are participating, and it doesn't really help or hurt your overall portfolio. However, the SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has changed the game. At the beginning, I anticipated an impending economic collapse, and I knew it was now or never and that I needed to take a big bet on Bitcoin or that I was going to regret it forever. I was wrong about the economic collapse. I did not foresee the helicopter money from the global central banks to prop-up the economy. I didn't go 'all in' in 2020, but I took a big bet, and I wasn't wrong about the Bitcoin price appreciation. I am getting to the point now that my crypto earnings are beating my medicine earnings, and am working towards a new goal in life of spreading the gospel of crypto.
So, I want to commend you for taking this first step in your journey of education about cryptocurrency. This is a brand new (since 2009-ish) field, and there is a LOT to learn. Not only is there a lot, but the body of knowledge is growing and changing very fast. This is a paradigm shift, so give yourself some time to wrap your head around this. I am going to try and start simple, and work up to the bigger concepts. Because this is new, and somewhat of a foreign idea, there is a tremendous amount of information about this on the internet. I am definitely not the first to try and share the knowledge of bitcoin. You can search on your favorite streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime to watch a documentary about Bitcoin, and many YouTubers telling you about their favorite crypto and why it is the best thing ever and the one you should buy (beware of these people and their channels). But, to start, we need to start at the beginning: Bitcoin.
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