Fear of missing out, or FOMO is a remarkable, terrible and awesome thing at the same time. It all depends on how you see it, and which side of the fence you are. The term is usually reserved for those who spend everything they have to buy the latest thing or experience without any regard for their financial future. I recently stumbled across something I wrote back in 2016, about 2 months after I had joined Steemit.
One thing lead to another..
- I checked my history.
Before going into that though, I want to elaborate on certain things and I want to share a little bit of my background story as it will give you a better understanding. I am a former freelancer who started to provide various services on different marketplaces in an attempt to earn something extra. I was looking for a way to earn money online, and as a former salesperson, Fiverr and SEOClerks eventually brought my attention. My journey obviously contained trial and errors but I quickly adapted and I could rather easily implement some of my skills. It didn't take long before I started to have decent results and this went on for several months.
As time passed by, I learned new things and I could offer more services. Orders started to pour in and I quickly leveled up on both marketplaces. Even though I haven't been active on any of these marketplaces for more than 3 years, I am still the proud owner of Level 2 accounts on Fiverr and a Level X account on SEOClerks. That's a level you reach by being picked manually by the staff, so I was obviously rather good at the things I did. Long story short, I started to focus on SEOClerks instead of Fiverr and I decided to try something entirely new. I launched a brand building business which became so successful so I started to work full time and I also published a handful of different ebooks/products to generate even more leads and sales.
While this might sound like something truly life-changing, it was nothing like rainbows and sunshine on a daily basis. It was hard work, stressful and lots of anxiety. To work without any form of safety net such as a monthly paycheck is horrifying. I had to rely on incoming orders to afford to live, and even though some months were greater than others, it was also rainy days so to speak.
However, due to this experience and due to how I had to work for a living, literally, I ignored everything I had heard about cryptocurrencies. I made business with money. Real money I could spend in a store or money I could pay my rent with. Some bogus toy-coin wasn't something I had time to play around with.
Fast-forward a few short years and I eventually stumbled across Steemit. A co-worker of mine told me about it and as someone always interested in making something extra, I dived straight into it.
- Steem, SBD?
- Crypto?
This was definitely not my cup of tea, but I knew how to make posts. I had done that for years and if I could earn something extra for sharing stuff on Steemit... Well, why not?
I won't go into any major details about this, but one could say that I had great results. I was lucky when I joined Steemit in 2016 and as someone who had zero interest in crypto, and someone who loved hard cash, real money, I obviously cashed out more or less everything I earned. I used Bittrex and sold whatever I could. Anything I earned made my life easier in some ways, so I didn't care about the price or value of the tokens. I cared about having more money in my bank account, and I was eager to cash out as much as possible before this whole thing eventually vanished..
Yeah, I was certain of the fact that Steemit would crash and burn because how on earth are people willing to pay me hundreds of dollars for a single article? - That's literally the mindset I had. I didn't understand how things worked and I was not about to find out either, because I loved the fact that I could use my earnings in real life. I could treat myself with something extra in my daily life due to the money I made off of my content on Steemit. I was not about to miss out on that opportunity...
This Is What I Want To Talk About:
I joined Steemit in July 2016, I was lucky and I cashed out more or less everything I earned. What I noticed when I looked at my history on Bittrex earlier, was that I had cashed out more than 5 bitcoin between 2016/07/22 and 2016/09/21. That's 5+ BTC in 2 months.
I couldn't find all the transfers but I found some of them:
I sold my BTC through some weird anonymous website where I sent BTC and got money to my PayPal account after several hours. I had no idea what I was doing but I didn't care. All I cared about was to up my balance on my bank account. The amount didn't matter, as long as I managed to increase my balance.
- Which I did.
During that time, around late July, Bitcoin was worth about 650 USD. I later on realized that the place where I sold my BTC for money to my paypal account was some sort of "fraud", even though I never got scammed. I always got money for my bitcoins, but I didn't receive the full value for it. I could obviously not do anything about it at that time and I actually didn't care much about it, as I still was able to get money for content I always had been sharing for free elsewhere.
The taste of free money is awesome, but then I realize that I would have had more than 5 BTC today if I had kept my cool, done some research and if I had not ignored cryptocurrencies to begin with. I don't even have to spell it out for you.. You know what BTC are worth today.
If I had sold those BTC today, I would've had 75% of the money that is required to be a millionaire in Sweden. That would've been life-changing in my world.
For How Long Will You Hold?