On How I Got Into Finance

The story of how I got into finance is probably a lot different than most.

No, I did not have helicopter parents that pushed me into doing something lucrative. No, I did not have rich relatives that helped me by exposing me to their well-placed contacts. No, I wasn’t a math whiz kid.

I mean I definitely attended some math competitions in my day. But calculus… The struggle was real! There’s only so many times you can fling a big, heavy textbook across the room before you start thinking, “How much longer do I want to do THIS?”

The story of how I got into finance is probably a lot more similar to the stories people from my generation like to tell when they give their reasons why they DON'T like finance.

Despite our best efforts, it seems to me like we are all still living in the shadow of September 15, 2008. For those of you who forgot, were too young to care, or just plain don’t want to remember, here’s a little reminder:

At that time, I had been running a small real estate investment operation. We hadn’t been doing well. Obviously. I was trying to flip houses in the middle of the subprime mortgage crisis. What was I thinking?

Well, I certainly wasn’t thinking the way a well-trained “finance guy” is supposed to think. In a classic misunderstanding of how to achieve an appropriate level of diversification in one’s portfolio, in addition to my small real estate investment operation I had also invested in a few real estate investment trusts (REITs).

Why not? After all, I was an “expert” at this real estate stuff, right?

You should know how that story ended.

Not well.

At that point then and there, well not really at any particular point per se, but whenever the accumulation of financial loss caught up with the lizard part of my brain that just keeps on truckin’ — eating, drinking, and farting away — that lizard must have some thick skin because it seems like it took a while for things to get to that “point” — about as long maybe as I am taking to get to my point here — at whatever that point is then and there, I decided to seek out a world-class education in finance and investment theory.

I am still learning finance today because if there is one thing I have learned in 40 years it is that once a subject has chosen you — and really that’s how it is, you don’t choose it, it chooses you — it’s a part of your everyday life forever. You have to live and breathe the stuff, remain humble and constantly seek out more knowledge.

That’s what I do.

So THAT’s how I got into finance.

To find out what the hell went wrong back then in 2007, 2008, and 2009. Because to me it wasn’t a “panic,” as former Fed chief Ben Bernanke once put it...

It was a disaster!

All I know is that whatever THAT was back then, THAT was NOT RIGHT.

The academic pursuit of finance, and the wider finance industry itself, should be laser-focused on understanding, preventing, and safeguarding against the inevitable next economic crash. Bitcoin was born in the same fire. It is a potential solution to preventing a Great Recession that it is bound to be even worse than the first.

So if you are working in the finance industry, studying finance at university, trading shitcoins on your phone, or playing the leveraged ping-pong game on margin trading sites like BitMEX... ask yourself:

Do you feel the same way about finance and cryptocurrency that I do?

Because if you’re just trying to “make a bunch of money” and then retire when you’re young, I’m sure there are some other professions you could go into that would make that aspiration more attainable.

That way the rest of us can focus on building, creating, supporting, and educating our youth about the financial and technological innovations that will transform our global financial system into an inspiring, equitable, and sustainable one for generations to come.