At 22, having a net worth of 10 million dollars — this is the story about myself
Flowing water does not compete to be first; what it competes for is the continuous surge.Written by: Vida
Compiled by: Shenchao TechFlow
A 22-year-old KOL, Vida, posted a lengthy tweet on Twitter detailing his story of making 10 million dollars in the crypto market.
Success in wealth is no accident. Persistence, intelligence, execution, and staying on top of trends provide valuable insights from Vida's journey of wealth accumulation.
What does it feel like to have a net worth of 10 million dollars at 22? This is my own story.
First, how did I accumulate my wealth? I started my internet business at 14. From 14 to 19, I made money by setting up game servers and selling products from the West to the East or from the East to the West, which I call geographical arbitrage.
There has always been an information gap between China and the West. For example, labor costs in China are typically 1/7 of those in the West. The latest technologies in the West are more advanced than in China; for instance, everyone in the West knows about ChatGPT, but most people in China do not.
The outcome was that by the age of 19, I had accumulated 500,000 in wealth, and then I entered the cryptocurrency field. I heard from one of my Chinese clients that he made millions through cryptocurrency mining and online gambling with cryptocurrencies. In 2020, I became a holder of ETH and BTC.
An inexplicable issue arose: my father, a trader (who made 2 million dollars in real estate and stocks), unfortunately believed that cryptocurrencies were in a bubble in January 2021, so he urged me to sell my holdings of ETH and BTC. At that time, my portfolio was only 3 times, and selling my ETH at 969 dollars was a huge mistake.
But it was still enough; by the age of 20, my net worth was about 1 million dollars. There were also setbacks along the way, such as when I shorted BTC at 32,000 dollars and got liquidated after Tesla accepted Bitcoin, losing 50,000 dollars at that time. That might have been my largest loss in percentage of net worth.
However, that event made me think: Retail investors buy after Tesla's news; if I could get this news first, buy, and sell to those retail investors, I could profit from it.
So, in March 2021, I seized the opportunity. Whenever Elon mentioned Doge or dog-related keywords on Twitter, the price of Dogecoin would rise. At that time, I had my developers create a monitoring bot to track every tweet from Elon. Then, when Musk tweeted, I would manually purchase.
I had some successful attempts but later realized I needed to automate trading to be competitive. Therefore, in April 2021, my developers created an automated trading Dogecoin bot based on Elon's tweets for me. This was a huge success, and I made at least 500,000 dollars from that bot.
I made several successful trades but later realized I needed to automate this event to remain competitive. So, in April 2021, my developers created an automated trading Dogecoin bot based on Elon’s tweets for me. This was a massive success, and I earned at least 500,000 dollars from that bot.
In 2021, whenever Elon tweeted, I bought Dogecoin and then sold it to retail investors a few minutes later. The same went for other mentioned coins, such as $SHIB and $PEOPLE, earning at least 1.5 million dollars just from Elon.
By the end of 2021, I discovered that not only Elon's tweets could drive the market, but also announcements from certain exchanges, especially the top three. If I could be the first to enter during these specific events, I could achieve 100% profit. Thus, I began to build the infrastructure to capitalize on these events.
Eventually, in 2022, I had one of the fastest bots in the market. I believed my business was similar to MEV, I profited from people's mistakes, desires, and inefficiencies.
Through the bot business, in 2022, at the age of 21, my net worth reached 4 million dollars, and I had 4 developers working for me.
During the bear market of 2022, I continuously improved my latency advantage. At that time, I set a goal for myself: "Work hard in the bear market, then reap in the bull market." I worked an average of 10 hours a day, building new bots, optimizing latency, and participating in trading significant events like the FTX-Binance acquisition.
In 2023, my efforts in optimizing bots, building infrastructure, and trading skills paid off. I made a lot of money through bots from token mining and news like Elon's tweets. I also manually traded some significant events, such as the SVB federal rescue, the XRP case victory, Ethereum ETF, and Grayscale's victory.
After trading the Grayscale victory event a few days ago, my net worth exceeded 10 million dollars at the age of 22.
Reaching this net worth is a milestone in my life, but I believe this is not my limit. I still work until 4 AM, optimizing my bots to stay competitive.
I know that reaching this net worth at my age comes with risks of laziness, arrogance, concentrated portfolios, and gambling. Just look at those unfortunate examples on Coinfessions. I will not make the same mistakes as those people.
I spend very little time on entertainment, dedicating most of my time to hard work or learning new technologies and knowledge.
I know there are people better than me in different fields, so I enjoy associating with excellent individuals.
Besides cryptocurrencies, I also engage in traditional finance to diversify my assets.
60% of my assets are in cryptocurrencies, and my current crypto portfolio includes 90% USDC and USDT because I need stablecoins for bot trading and news trading, along with 10% Bitcoin spot holdings for long-term holding.
40% of my assets are in traditional finance, including 10-30 year US bonds, Chinese indices, Vietnamese indices, Chinese tech, US tech, and a small portion of the S&P 500 index. I am generally optimistic about emerging markets and technology in 2023 because I believe the high interest rates in the US will not last long.
For me, I do not like gambling, but in cryptocurrency trading, gambling and trading are human nature. So whenever I want to prove that I am right in uncertain trades, such as shorting $CYBER and buying PUT options for $NVDA and $COIN, I will test it with 1-10,000 dollars to see if I am right or wrong.
My advice to young people:
Find your passion and work hard; you need to work harder than your competitors to surpass them.
Look for arbitrage opportunities based on information gaps; there are many opportunities here.
Outsource unimportant tasks to people who are cheaper or more skilled than you.
Communicate more with people who make money and stay away from certain ordinary communities like specific coin holders.
Do not gamble or blindly follow trends like ordinary people; focus on the certainty of trading.
Discover market efficiencies and take advantage of them.
Flowing water does not compete for speed; it competes for an endless stream.
