Wealth comes in many forms, but there is always a common thread running through them all. No matter what form of wealth it takes, there is one thing that connects them all:
Time.
If you manage it carefully, it will continue to grow and generate compound interest. In the crypto space, it is also important to make sure you don’t lose money, which I will mention later.
The following 10 pieces of advice are based entirely on my personal experience. They are absolutely true and completely genuine.
- Invest in hard assets early
When I first bought gold, the price was around $1,600. Today, that price has more than doubled. When I first bought Bitcoin, the price was around $700. Now, it has surpassed $100,000. These are hard assets: they cannot be diluted or arbitrarily increased. They possess scarcity, high market demand, and are difficult to replicate.
Working or earning a salary will never create wealth like investing in hard assets. Gold and Bitcoin both fall under the category of hard assets. Regardless, start investing your spare cash in hard assets.
This also includes purchasing index funds like the S&P 500 or real estate in prime locations with consistently high demand. Then let time do its work—in 5, 10, or 20 years, you’ll be pleasantly surprised!
If you never invest in hard assets, it is almost impossible to become wealthy and accumulate wealth. When viewed from a decades-long perspective, even investing $1,000 today can make a significant difference. Do not delay; start planning and taking action as soon as possible.
- Do something with growth potential
This applies to any field, and I have discussed similar ideas before. Examine your current skills and passions, and imagine that 100,000 people could see the content you create. Even if only 1% of them recognize your value, that means you have 1,000 potential customers, fans, subscribers, or supporters.
Take bold action. If you don’t take the first step, you’ll never know the outcome, and it often brings surprises. Few dare to do this, but those who dare to try always receive some reward. Though it takes time to build, you will eventually break through.
When I started, I had zero followers and no community foundation. So I began to work hard. By consistently producing content every day and giving it my all, people will eventually notice your brilliance. Once you earn your first dollar online or generate any income through entrepreneurship, the door to success will fully open.
The beginning is the hardest part, yet few people take action.
- You can never be richer than your true self.
Your current wealth level reflects your current level of personal development.
Therefore, if an ordinary person suddenly wins $1 million in the lottery, they will almost certainly squander it all within a year. The reason is that their personal qualities are far from sufficient to manage such a large sum of money.
Stop relying on others to act for you. If you don’t invest in yourself, no one else will. Knowledge is now widely accessible; as long as you have internet access, you can explore any field. With artificial intelligence, you can even have a personal mentor to guide you at any time—provided you’re willing to invest the time.
No excuses needed.
Hone your skills through practice (see point two). Even if your current abilities are limited, consistent practice will eventually lead to improvement. Take action first, and time will bear witness to your transformation—this principle sounds like investing in Bitcoin.
- Overestimate yourself appropriately
Maintaining a positive feedback loop is crucial. When you assess your own value slightly higher than your current skill level, you will continue to pursue improvement.
Even if you have achieved nothing today, believe that you deserve more and will eventually succeed. Changing this mindset may have a significant impact on your future self.
What you do today shapes who you will be tomorrow.
- Money isn’t everything
Gold or Bitcoin can be purchased. However, you can’t buy a family on Amazon or find a place to call “home.” These forms of wealth cannot be measured in money or sold anywhere.
On the path to pursuing material wealth, don’t forget what truly matters.
Failing to build a family or cultivate meaningful relationships may come at a high cost in the future, with depression, a midlife crisis, or an identity crisis potentially following—all of which are as important as holding Bitcoin.
Material wealth is often meaningless if there is no one to share it with. Ultimately, what humans value are various experiences, and more wealth can indeed provide more experiences. However, some of the most profound experiences are almost free.
- Embrace challenges
If you’re afraid to buy Bitcoin, that’s often a good sign that you should buy it. Fear often prevents you from trying new things. But to enhance personal growth (see point 3), engaging with new things is crucial.
These experiences may be painful, pleasant, or mundane. If you stop labeling them and instead view them as new experiences for personal growth, you can quickly move on to the next stage.
As you go through this cycle repeatedly, success and failure will alternate. The difference lies in: if you invest excess energy into tangible assets, each fall will be from a higher point, and each climb will be faster. Success will also come sooner, and the rewards will be more abundant.
- Learn to reset yourself
People are born here and have never left in decades, with the environment remaining unchanged. While this situation is acceptable, you must be cautious not to allow your environment to restrict your personal growth.
If you possess the mindset described in Point 4 (i.e., placing greater value on self-worth), you will be able to keenly perceive this. As you continue to grow personally (see Point 3), the things that bind you will naturally become apparent. At this point, you must make a decision, and this decision may trigger the psychological reaction described in Point 6 (fear).
Break through the limits or give up and turn back? This might be your breakthrough to wealth.
- Avoid falling into traps that reduce wealth
The typical example in the cryptocurrency space is altcoins. The entire cryptocurrency space has only one hard asset, yet it is filled with thousands of traps. Every time you spend money on altcoins, the opportunity cost is that you could have purchased Bitcoin instead.
This simple decision can result in significant financial losses over a 5 to 10-year period. The same principle applies if you choose to buy a car instead of investing the money—any consumption comes at the expense of investment opportunities.
Approach consumption and investment rationally, and be wary of lifestyle inflation. If you are not using your income for investment, correct this issue immediately.
Once you have accumulated a certain amount of wealth, keep it private, avoid showing off, and refrain from posting on social media. Doing so may attract individuals with ulterior motives, which may include relatives or friends attempting to sell you “investment” projects.
- Never sell your hard assets
One of the biggest taboos in cryptocurrency investment is exchanging Bitcoin for altcoins. Anyone who does this will eventually pay a heavy price if they wait long enough. While altcoins may occasionally outperform Bitcoin within a six-month to one-year cycle, if you look further ahead and measure over a span of several years, this has never happened.
The second issue with selling hard assets is that there are no better alternatives to purchase. If you sell Bitcoin to buy gold, you are still holding hard assets, albeit with different risk-return characteristics.
Whatever you do, ensure you are not trading hard assets for inferior assets. If you do decide to do so, calculate the risks and keep them to a minimum, ideally no more than 5% of your total wealth. The returns from taking such risks must be asymmetric and should allow you to purchase more Bitcoin in the future.
To accumulate and preserve wealth, hold onto hard assets tightly and never sell them.
- If you succeed, be prepared to be targeted
All success attracts criminals, in the crypto space as in any other field. Last year, after downloading malware, I was hacked and lost $50,000, with my hot wallet assets wiped out in an instant. I couldn’t believe I fell for such a simple scam.
I should have anticipated this, but before the RAT Escape incident, I had never stored large amounts of assets in a hot wallet. Once the price of Bitcoin surges, hackers come swarming in. That’s why, as soon as you gain any public exposure, you inevitably become a target.
(Note: The author created RAT Escape as an experiment in November 2024, and within three weeks, the token’s market cap surged to $16 million.)
Worse still, even if you’re not a public figure, you can still become a target, as platforms like Ledger and Coinbase have all experienced customer data breaches. Just yesterday, one of our members fell victim to a social engineering attack by scammers posing as Ledger customer service representatives, who demanded his mnemonic phrase to “protect” his account security.
They knew his name, email, phone number, and address—enough to forge a credible identity.
