The Pomp Podcast - Dan Conway, Author of Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: Betting his Savings, his Marriage, and his Future on Crypto

Episode Date: September 27, 2019

Dan Conway is the author of Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire: My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. In this conversation, Dan and Anthony Pompliano discuss his backstory, the process of writing the book, the ups and downs of crypto market volatility why Dan cashed out $13 million in January 2013, and what he's doing from an investment standpoint today. BLOCKFI-----BlockFi allows you to keep your crypto, put it up as collateral, and receive a USD loan funded directly to your bank account. They do loans ranging from $2,000 to $10,000,000, and they're perfect for helping you reach your financial goals of all sizes. Visit BlockFi.com/Pomp to learn more about putting your crypto to work without having to sell it. CRYPTO.COM-----Crypto.com is a pioneering payment and cryptocurrency platform that seeks to accelerate the world's transition to cryptocurrency. With the vision of "cryptocurrency in every wallet", the Crypto.com App offers a full range of financial products with competitive pricing, well designed UX and high security. It is the best place to buy, sell and pay with crypto. COINMINE-----The Coinmine One is like an Xbox that turns your electricity into Bitcoin. You just plug it in, connect to wifi, and tap on the crypto you want. It’s so easy anyone can do it. Everything is controlled from the Coinmine mobile app and the Coinmine keeps getting better with over the air updates that add new coins, features and services to your Coinmine.  Visitcoinmine.com/pomp to get a Coinmine and earn crypto for powering a new world. ETORO-----This episode of Off the Chain is sponsored by eToro, the smartest crypto trading platform, and one of the largest in the world. Join 11 million other traders and create an account at etoro.com and build your crypto portfolio the smart way.

What's up, everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to Off The Chain, simply the best podcast in crypto. Let's kick this thing off. Dan Conway is the author of Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire, My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. In this conversation, we discuss his backstory, the process of writing the book, the ups and downs of crypto market volatility, why Dan cashed out $13 million in January 2018 and what he is doing from an investment standpoint today. I really enjoyed this conversation and I hope you do as well. Everything you could want at Crypto.com.

Go help your boy out. Tell him Pomp sent you. Download the app or visit Crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and Wi-Fi. All you got to do is go to CoinMine.com.

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tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software just you're updating your coin mine consumer mining made easy that's right go to coinmine.com tell them pomp sent you and thank me later. As many of you know, crypto investors store their digital assets on exchanges or in cold storage for long-term safekeeping. However, this strategy doesn't help them grow their investment holdings or build overall wealth. With the new BlockFi interest account, users can now securely store their Bitcoin or Ether at BlockFi and receive 6% annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency. 6% is an absurdly high rate. It's the best rate in the industry. I highly suggest you go check out BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Again, that's BlockFi.com slash Pomp to sign up and

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I've got a very special guest here today, Dan Conway, the author of the new book, Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire, My Unlikely Escape from Corporate America. I'm super excited to have this conversation. He's got a wild fucking story. I'll just give you a little teaser from the back page of the book. It says, when the Financial Times interviewed Dan Conway for a story about cryptocurrency millionaires.

He told them the unvarnished truth. Quote, I invested because I wanted the underdogs to win for once, losers like me who didn't make the rules and didn't have the money. We'd been forced to tweet corporate philanthropy hashtags and we weren't going to take it anymore. Bang, bang. All right, man, thanks so much for coming in and doing this.

How are things going so far? It's going great. Thanks, Pom, for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity. So things are going great so far. The book has been, you know, well-received. I spent two years on it trying to capture everything that happened to me and try to make sense of, you know, the 2015 through the beginning of 2018. And so I'm happy to hear that readers are responding to different aspects of the story.

That's good. You don't want to write a book for two years and everyone says it sucks. So hopefully, knock on wood, that's not the case yet or hopefully ever. For sure. So let's start with your story, right? kind of, let's go before crypto, what was going on and kind of what were you doing? And then we can get into some of the corporate America issues. Sure. So I was working at a big company, which for legal reasons, I call Acme in the book. And basically it was one of the largest corporations

in the world. And I had worked my way up. This was like my big break. I started at this company when I was about 40. I think I was 40 exactly. And so I'd worked my way up for 20, 18 years in corporate America. And I had found myself in a sort of a lower executive rank, you know, where that's where the big money is supposed to be. And finally, I was going to, you know, be able to make it. I lived in Silicon Valley and my wife and I were raising three kids. So we were not poor by any stretch, but we were financially stretched for sure. After the 2008 Great Recession, we lost our equity line on our home. We were kind of like using credit cards some months to get by. So again, most people on the planet would want to be in my position, but the strains of working in a

corporate job that I soon found I was sort of ill-suited for were really growing on me. For sure. And so we were talking beforehand about this idea of, you know, some people just aren't cut out for the corporate executive world. Maybe talk a little bit about some of the things that you realized, you know, over the years and, you know, some of the personality stuff as well. Yeah, you know, so when I finally got into this, what I considered like, you know, fairly high up perch, I was still basically a middle manager, but I could, you know, call myself an executive and I, you know, primped and preened my LinkedIn profile and all that. The problem was once I got there, there was this thing you needed to stay and thrive in your position and especially to rise up further. And it was executive presence. You know, Acme, like many companies, they believe in kind of what I've called like the cult of the leader.

you know, there's these people with these great leadership qualities that will drive organizations and lead us all to greater wealth and happiness. And I just could not do it, man. I could fake it well, but when you get to that position that I was at, I needed to, I didn't have the skills to maintain it. So I would, you know, I would crack a bad joke. I'd get insecure, get quiet in a meeting or else I get, you know, kind of manic and speak a little too much. Nothing extreme, like no one was going to call the hospital and take me out on a stretcher. But when there's that very narrow window of, you know, where you need to show your leadership qualities, I just couldn't seem to hit it. I just kept bouncing off of it. For sure. And I think that a lot of it probably

is, you know, it's personality driven, but it's also people get bored, right? There's a lot of folks who, I call it the trap, right? And the reason why I call it the trap is I talk to people on an almost daily basis who work a corporate job. There's people who are listening to this right now who are in this situation and they are, you know, late 30s into their mid 40s and sometimes even into their 50s. And they're sitting there saying, you know, how the hell did I get here? Right. I'm married. I got kids. I work in corporate America. And this is not the life that I had dreamed of or envisioned. And they feel trapped. And the risk is if they make some big move or some big decision, it could not only disrupt their lives and potentially be detrimental,

But they've got to worry about their significant other, their kids, kind of all these things that, you know, again, they trap you into a certain life. Yeah, that's exactly right. And I'm not like an overly literary guy, but there's one quote by Thoreau that always stuck with me. It's men and women living lives of quiet desperation. And that's the way I felt in corporate America. And, you know, especially after the Great Recession, we were all just happy to have a job. But if you take a step back, all the studies show that I think it's like 75% of people are unhappy with the teamwork and the experience at their job. And I have these stats in the book.

And we've kind of accepted that as like sort of a deep sliver in our heel. And I'm at the age now where like late 40s, sadly, like people are – like very few people, outliers are starting to drop off from cancer and brain tumors and stuff. You know, that's one of the blessings, curses of Facebook is, you know, like people in your outer circle suddenly. And you just realize, like, you know, you only I mean, it sounds corny, but you only have one life. And if you're sitting behind a desk doing something you're miserable, miserable at, even if you have enough money to take your family out to dinner on the weekends, you know, is it worth it? And that was kind of where I was at. For sure. And so let's dig in a little bit on the on the crypto Bitcoin and Ether stuff. When is the first time that you ever heard of Bitcoin or Ether?

And so I first heard about Bitcoin in like 2012 or something like that. And like many others, I thought it sounded like total bullshit. And of course, I was just like working my – trying to make it still at this company. And the handwriting was on the wall and I didn't see it. But it was when I was really having problems at my job, it was a period in 2015 that I came across an article on Bitcoin. And Bitcoin was about 300 then. And it was just simply the thought, what if it goes up again? And it was pure greed, pure investment, speculative energy that got me kind of going and learning about crypto.

And I loved Bitcoin. And the thing that just blew me away, in addition to the spy novel stuff like Satoshi, No One Knows Who He Is, Worth Billions, all the Darknet stuff and Silk Road stuff was a big part of the story back then. still a part of the story today. But it really just got me. And then I quickly learned about, I always loved Bitcoin, but I quickly learned of Ethereum. And the thing that became really interesting once I learned about Ethereum was two things. One is, Ethereum hadn't popped yet. I think when I first learned about Ether, it was at about $3 or $4. So it was like this new emerging coin. And, you know, back then, of course, everyone thought, well, we all missed Bitcoin. So, you know, at 300, 400 bucks, like too late for that one.

So it drew me in my speculative side to Ether because it hadn't popped yet. But then and then this was like what made things really interesting was it was also the promise of decentralization and the idea that and folks in Ethereum were talking about this more than Bitcoin. how Ethereum and smart contracts and decentralized blockchains could disrupt the court, could disrupt, disrupt centralized corporations, centralized organizations, things like that. And, and, you know, no one was saying it was going to happen tomorrow, although they tried to do it, um, almost relatively tomorrow, uh, with the Dow, which we can talk about, but it was that concept. And then I started to go deep, deep, deep down the, you know, the rabbit hole.

And it was like, I was fueled by both the speculative, you know, greedy guy. And also, though, this guy that was like struggling in his career. And I like immediately saw the potential benefits of decentralization in terms of like wiping away the bureaucracy, the chains of command, the bullshit, phony corporate culture. And, you know, I wasn't naive to think it was going to happen tomorrow. But I saw that with Bitcoin working, you can never un-invent blockchain. And so that's why I started to go so deep on Ether because of sort of that promise of decentralized organizations. and and what's interesting to me is you know as part of the story and in the book it's not like you were sitting around with millions of dollars in cash and you made a decision hey i'm gonna put

one percent of my net worth into uh the speculative asset and let's see what happens maybe talk a little bit about um you know kind of where you were financially at the time what decisions you made and and you know what the thought process was leading up to those decisions yeah i mean so So the book, the book's titled Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire, as you know, and it's got a kind of a clickbaity title, but that tested better than anything else. And it's the thing that I'm hoping brings mainstream people in to learn about, you know, the deeper the deeper goals and of blockchain and where the movement and what's happening with all of it. But the so where I was at, where I was at basically at the time that this all happened was was I was we were we were just just making it financially. We were doing fine. And then the reason why I mentioned that about the title was that, you know, it's it's the book is not meant to be a rebuttal to people to say I got lucky. Not at all. It's a response to it, though, because something like this doesn't just happen for no reason.

and there was like a lot of factors that, that, that, that occurred in my life that allowed this to happen. And, and a lot of people out there, probably other listeners have similar factors now and they might in the future, but I just find the whole thing interesting. Like how to normal people, quote unquote, normal people like go so deep in this stuff. And at the time though, when, when I got in, um, we, one of the big blessings was we had a windfall. Um, you know, we were basically my mother sold her house and gave us 50 grand. My wife's startup got bought by Microsoft and she lost her job, but she got like 25 grand. And then at my company, I had some options that finally vest and I had like another 20 or 25 grand. So we had like a, like a hundred grand

total. And it was like right around the time that I was starting to, to like spend four or five hours a night, like no joke after work, after the kids were asleep, listening to podcasts, reading on Reddit, on Twitter, just like trying to soak it all in. So I had a decision to make about, you know, about what I would do with this money. And, you know, the other thing we haven't mentioned is, you know, I like I'm an outlier in a lot of different ways. One of them is that I have a massively addictive personality. And I had been recovered at the time that we had this hundred grand and I was deciding whether to invest it. I had been recovered for, let me see, three years from pills and alcoholism. And I got deep into oxys and Vicodins and I was leaving my

corporate job and going to pill Hill and the tenderloin and buying these pills. Um, and you know, I was clearly unhappy and combined with the addictive personality at the time. But anyway, I say that because, um, I was in charge of our investment investments for me and my wife. My wife doesn't like to talk about money. Um, you know, they just don't talk about it in her family like most families. So I had, in my mind, I convinced myself that I sort of had the ability to take this money, which we were using as a security blanket, because my job was shaky, and do something, you know, to make a plunge to, so to speak. For sure. And so when you're sitting in that seat, and you're kind of doing all this research,

you know, there's an element of, okay, I'm going to invest in this. Here's why I want to do that. And again, you know, I always caveat these conversations with none of this is investment advice. None of this is a suggestion for anyone else to go do something. I think this is just your story, right? You literally wrote a book on it and kind of as to, you know, what your decision making was. But describe kind of what happened, when exactly you invested and then what transpired in the months afterwards. So I don't know the exact moment, but there were a flip switched in my head. I had a tipping point and it was like, you know, during some crappy meeting on a Tuesday morning.

and I just I just I just knew I was ready. So I folded the papers in my in my coat and I walked down to Wells Fargo, the bank that had pulled our equity line eight years before. And I walked in and I started a wire and I wired one hundred thousand dollars, all one hundred thousand dollars to Gemini. They were like the first big one to offer Ether. And that was the coin that I was most interested in. And so, you know, I just decided I was ready. I was making the plunge. You only live once scared, but excited. And I looked down at my phone and there's a text from my wife and it said, what the fuck is this? And it was an alert, obviously from Wells Fargo, letting her know that all hundred thousand dollars was being sent to something called Gemini, which she had

never heard of of course so the rest of that day sucked and uh and we went home and we talked about it and then i you know she was mad obviously we spent a lot of time on it um she was not at all interested in it in the least um she did later say she noticed that i had changed you know i'd kind of been you know just sort of slumped over for even though i'd gotten sober and was healthy i was just so miserable she she humored me a bit and then i go into the book we made a deal that um that shows, you know, that shows we have a good marriage and it's weird and it's interesting like most marriages. But, uh, ultimately I was able to put that a hundred grand in. So I, I proudly went, uh, down to the bank and it was early June, um, 2016 and I bought a hundred thousand dollars

worth of ether. And then on my birthday, uh, about two weeks later on June 18th, um, that's when the Dow hack happened and we were walking to the breakfast spot and my phone started blowing up because I had all these alerts for, you know, people I followed on Twitter and Reddit and all this kind of stuff. And we eventually lost a large part of our stack. I tried to make a disastrous trade. I thought, okay, this is clearly going to go lower. You know, I wasn't even worried that ultimately it would be okay. I was such a true believer. I mean, I just, I was certain. I don't know, you know, that was just how I felt at the time. And so I thought I could, you know, just like a famous mistake. I just had a lot more at stake. I just thought that I could, I could sell

and buy back lower. And you know what happened? Like right, right when I sold, it started going back up. I panicked, buy back in, lost 25% of my stack. And then literally right when I got back in, it started to finally recover and go up. So I ended up losing like, it's in the book, like 35% of my stack, something like that, right off the bat. I mean, it's classic, right? It's the whole, people buy high and sell low when they should be doing the opposite. But it's also, I don't know a person who came into the cryptocurrency markets and doesn't go through some degree of what you're describing, right? It's a highly volatile asset. It is very news driven at times. And there's very easy access to buying and selling if you're already on one of these platforms. And so literally with

the click of a button, you can make an emotional decision, which leads to, in some cases, bad decision making over a long period of time. That's exactly right. And it reminded me of being at a blackjack table where you have 18 and the dealer gets 21, or you have a 12, you know you're going to get a queen when you hit. I mean, just like trading crypto for me, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know TA. And more importantly, though, it was stupid because I was really a long-term play. I mean, I never, I figured in a few years, once, once there's mainstream use for Bitcoin and ether, um, that at the time was my calculus, like this stuff can't be uninvented. I mean, just like it is today, you see how much development's happening. And I figured that it

would be a play for two or three years. So I ended up getting fired from my job and, and then, um, and I, you know, document that all in the book. And then I, um, and then, and then I started a PR practice in crypto. And I worked with companies like BitGo and some other projects. But at the time, Ether and crypto in general and Bitcoin and all the rest had not recovered yet. And so I was wondering, okay, I'm going to try to make it as a PR person here. I'm not sure if this investment is going to pay off anytime soon. And it was becoming a bit of a strain. Do you want me to mention what happened then? Of course. So things were going well in crypto and the deeper I got into it, I was brushing up against people like Eric Voorhees and Andreas Antonopoulos. These

were like superheroes to me. You know what I mean? Like I just knew them from the virtual world. And so I was having a blast, obviously. You know, listen, I'd never been on the cutting edge of anything. I'm like, you know, I'm like a fine individual, but I was like 45 years old and working in a corporate job. And, you know, it felt very much like if you read a story about Steve Jobs and Apple in the Valley. And people would see him at different places and have breakfast with him and all these, you know, Scott McNeely, all these big Titans, like before they were big and not just them, but their whole, their industries were so small. You could, you could like become involved and work with and collaborate with these people before they became

kind of like legends of business. And, you know, I'm a Homer for the industry. I absolutely believe that that's going to happen. And in some ways it already has. So it was super fun for me. And The thing about it, though, was that I was spending so much time in the industry, and I was trying to work the numbers on my investment, which at this point, by the end of 2016, was down about 65%, 70%, I think. Again, I have all the exact numbers in the book. But I became convinced. I became convinced. I document how this happened, but I really kind of went off the deep end. And like Pomp said, like you said, dude, don't do what I did.

um this is this is my story is meant to give people an idea about how they handle risk um it's a fun read i think um it's and it also is a way to learn about the industry but it's not like a how-to guide but for better or not um i went i went way deeper i went and i um my wife by the way had did not want to talk about crypto anymore it's like literally all i talked about and so and so she said well just do what you want and so i ended up going into our home equity line And we had gotten that back from Wells Fargo a year or two prior. And I put another $250,000 into Ether when it was about $8, $9, $10, $11. I had to buy slowly.

So now I was in $350K at the end of 2016. And so for those that don't know, Ether specifically was kind of what's called $5 to $10. And it continued at that kind of price and pace for a while. Um, and then in, I think it was like March of 2017 is, um, I remember vividly cause I was really paying attention. It went from 10 to 30 to a hundred by like the end of May. Right. It was almost like a 10 X in a very short period of time.

Crazy started in February and really picked up in March and we were on a trip. So part of the deal by me with my wife was, um, we won't, we had to take, we, we, we, we had to take all these family vacations. like, like extravagant family vacations. Like that was her part of the deal. She was focused on the family. And so we were, we like went to the Alani in Hawaii. Um, we went to, uh, Porta Vallarta. We went to Cinque Terre, Italy. We went to Costa Rica. I mean, I'm not kidding. And it was, it was insane. At the same time we had this big investment. It was not a smart thing to do, but I would have, I would have done anything, anything to buy crypto at that time.

I would have agreed to anything. So basically we were in Puerto Vallarta and we were at this disgusting resort. It was actually like beautiful views but horrible food. And there was this fajita bar and they had like – you had to scoop your own meat, like your raw meat onto your plate and then you give it to them and they cook it. It was like totally disgusting. And so that night I was – I woke up at like 11 p.m. I was like foaming at the mouth. I was puking.

I had never been this sick. Like I thought I was going to die. I could not stop puking. So I ended up like by myself jumping in a cab at like three in the morning in Puerto Vallarta and going to downtown Puerto Vallarta to buy Dramamine. And that's when that's when F started to pop. And when it started to pop, it was like it was like seeing Santa Claus in the flesh. Like I thought it would happen. I knew it was going to happen, but it was it was so crazy how quickly that it went up.

I mean, you know, this is a crypto listenership. People know they live through it. And I believe it's going to happen again for sure, by the way. but it was crazy. And I, I remember that time being like, I was in the cab, like wanting to puke and I was going to like puke all over this guy's cab. And I didn't know like what the situation was. He was like going to kick my ass or something. I don't even know where I was. I was like in some back alley of Puerto Vallarta, but I didn't care because I'd made like, by the time I got in that cab, I'd make like $70,000 or something insane like that. And it was just this feeling

that like, holy shit, our life is going to change. And it was mostly euphoria, but there was also this like underlying like tension, anxiety and fear. And I've talked to a lot of people who have been through this and it's a very common feeling because your whole world is shifting.

Not unlike when you win the lottery, people say it's very destabilizing. Look, and the crazy part to me of this whole thing is, you know, you kind of made an early bet. you actually failed to some degree, right? You lost some of the investment. You doubled down. The Ether price starts to explode. Newsflash, it went all the way to $1,400 at one point. So from $1,010 to $1,400 is a pretty big increase there. What was the journey from pre-February, March 2017 all the way to the top of that price point of $1,400? And what did you do

along the way want to know who has the best url crypto.com that's right crypto.com they're a crypto platform with one goal mother mass adoption that's why we're all here we're trying to get crypto in every wallet crypto.com is helping people do that through buying earning lending and card payment everything you could want at crypto.com go help your boy out tell him pomp sent you. Download the app or visit crypto.com. Pomp's got you, always. Ever wanted to get into mining and didn't know how? Don't worry, your boy Pomp's got you. Everybody got some electricity and Wi-Fi. All you got to do is go to coinmine.com. You buy a CoinMine. It's like an Xbox or a PlayStation that helps you turn your electricity into Bitcoin. That's right. You purchase it. It

shows up at your doorstep. You pull it out of the box. You plug it in, connect to your Wi-Fi. five minutes or less you're mining bitcoin all you have to do is control it from the mobile app they provide and then you receive over-the-air updates that add new coins and new features on a consistent basis kind of like how tesla does over-the-air updates and updates the car software just you're updating your coin mine consumer mining made easy that's right go to coinmine.com tell them pomp sent you and thank me later one more word from our sponsor blockfi their new interest account allows you to securely deposit your bitcoin or ether at blockfi and receive six percent annual interest paid monthly in cryptocurrency this rate actually compounds so

you receive a 6.2 apy which is very attractive given the alternatives so you can actually take your bitcoin you can deposit it with blockfi and get paid an interest rate of six percent in return. Go check out BlockFi.com slash Pomp. Again, BlockFi.com slash Pomp to sign up and start earning interest on your crypto today. What was kind of the journey from, you know, pre-February, March 2017, all the way to the top of that price point of $1,400? And what did you do along the way? Yeah, it was, you know, it was like the year of magical thinking. I mean, it was, it was, I had like zero frame of reference to handle what I went through. Uh, zero. It was, um, you know, like some days I would, I would like, there were days where I was up like a

million dollars, you know? And, and, and it was, it was like, there was like half days where I was up a million dollars. And, and basically, um, I, I became like this profit in the community for crypto. And, you know, I talk about my flip side in the book and that's what didn't let me succeed in corporate America. It's part of me and it's insecure. And it's also has illusions of grandeur and, you know, say the stupid stuff. And, and, you know, it's just like the reason why I never had executive presence, but, um, it was a part of that, that part of my personality, that addictive, greedy kind of like chip on your shoulder guy was a part of, was right there with me, right along with the, like the smart, like inspired side, the part that could see the future,

this kind of thing. So I was like the perfect communicator. I mean, it just seeped out of me And I'm sure, Pomp, you recognize some of this, too, just from talking crypto. But when it's in this kind of a bull run, man, like people wanted to hear it and I wanted to talk about it. And it wasn't my intention to get them to invest, but I was just like the perfect communicator. I would share anecdotes about my story. I would talk about projects. I would talk about price movement. Like one good example of what it was, and this wasn't just a reflection of what was going on with me.

But at the time, I mean, it was all anyone could talk about was crypto. I mean, people were making millions, millions, millions with the news cycles. Now we forget so soon, like not we, the crypto folks that are on this podcast, but, but people like, um, in the general population. But like, I met with my tax guys, like 71 years old, you know, I had this guy, he was a great guy, like family friend. Um, and he started off the meeting. He had heard from my brother.

I'd made a bunch of money. I think I was up like $900,000 or something at that point. And, um, and, and he had started off the meeting. I had this guy, he once invested in this watch company and the guy said he'd make millions and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. When it was my turn, I just like stood and delivered, man. And by the end of the meeting, he told me he was going to put in 10 grand into Ether. He called me the next day to say he put in 20 grand. And it was just like, I had people like literally knocking on my door. I had people like hitting me up on Facebook,

twitter reddit and the problem was there was a lot of ups and downs during that year and uh i thought i got hacked twice um i i uh you know i i we didn't get out there's just ups and downs i mean during that period people forget during 17 it crashed down like 60 and i hadn't taken out much of my investment and so it was like i was on this drug i mean it was the most powerful drug i had ever been on um and i've been on oxys and booze um and and when when the price dropped even if I was up on paper, it was like this sudden, brutal withdrawals. It was completely insane. And again, this is something I have a bunch of early readers. And this is something people can relate to, too. It was just a phenomenon that is hard to, it's, there's not a lot of examples of

it. You know, it's such a new thing, these crazy crypto bull runs. So I got to ask, though, I think that a lot of this, you know, we sit here and we're enjoying the story because it ends well, and we'll get to that in a second. What do you think is the risks? Or if you look back, you're like, look, it was insane for me to do X and Y or Z and kind of what's your advice to people today as they look at this and, and realizing it's a highly volatile asset and some of the challenges that come with the market. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a really good point. Again, I'm not a financial advisor and all that. But, but basically what I, what I tell people today is, first of all, I tell them like, I'm kind of like Rip Van Winkle, as I mentioned,

you, Pomp, earlier. I got out 70% of my stack in early January 2018. Lucky as hell. Fortunate. I talk about how that came about. I had a financial advisor, a family friend, and he helped me through it because he was kind of my straight man. But for me, it was more than an investment. It was like an identity. It was a lifestyle. I finally won. Do you know what I mean? All these crazy things that aren't going to show up in Peter Lynch's investment book or Warren Buffett's scribe at the beginning of the year or whatever. So what I tell people is, A, you need to be comfortable with risk. Those people that don't do an eight or a nine on the risk factor, the Charles Schwab or whatever, be very careful about investing in

crypto or only invest a very small amount. But if you're someone who likes risk, who's heavily into stocks, who might even have thought about like, oh, hey, let me put like 5% or 10% in something speculative like, you know, currencies or derivatives or, you know, stuff that you know more about than I do, Pomp. Like, it's hard for me to see how you wouldn't put 5% or 10% of your money into crypto because I just feel like, and again, this is just me. Listen, you heard my story. I'm a moon kid, right? And I am still to this day. But it's hard for me to see all these institutions, all the development, all the partnerships, all everything, and everyone's saying, okay, it's a volatile asset and not think that it's going to pop up again. There's just too much

happening. And, you know, while some of the stuff that people are working on, there's going to turn out to be impossible. There's going to be some stuff like that. I just have faith that the engineers are going to be able to pull it off and the UI folks are going to be able to pull it off where crypto, Bitcoin, Ether, some others becomes more mainstream. It's just hard for me to see how it doesn't pop. So if you have a high risk mentality, you know, I think it's a great asset to buy. And I have zero, I have zero concerns about crypto long-term. So if you're thinking about five or 10 years, it's especially in my mind, something you need to seriously consider. All right. So you hinted a little bit towards what ends up happening in the end.

What's kind of the end of the story here when it comes to the crypto investment? So it was, we had, we had ups and downs and then, you know, right around, let me just think, okay, it was fall 2017. And it looked like there for a few months before that, that, you know, ether and Bitcoin kind of leveled off. Then they started to fall. There was like a 40% decline. And so it might've been like, okay, this is that once in a decade bull run it's over, you know? And, and so let's wait for the next big round. Who knows when that'll be maybe five years, maybe 20 years. And, and then, and then it just like, it was, it turned out that was the eye of the storm and it just picked up. It was like, as I say in the book, it was like, uh, it was like a

9.0 earthquake with like an infinite number of 9.0 aftershocks. Like I had already documented, I was up like, I don't know, five or 6 million again, the numbers in the book. And, and then it like doubled in 30 days and then, and then it kept going up and I was up, I was up, uh, like $15 million. And, um, I, you know, I, I, I finally, I got a, I got a critical email from my financial advisor. Okay. My family was in Boston hanging out with my in-laws just by, by chance. It was early January. They'd been there for new years. It was early January. And I went for a run one morning, like at five 30, I couldn't sleep. I could hardly sleep during this period. And I got an email from my financial advisor who was also up early cause he's on

New York hours. I'm in the Valley. And it said, you know, he listened, he goes, something has changed in crypto. And, and, and in all my years of experience, this change cannot be good. He said today, I, yesterday I received two calls from 80 year old investors. They both asked me what I thought of Bitcoin yesterday. We also were going to get our photos done by a photographer for our new analyst, but he didn't show up. He got an, I got an apology email later saying that he had quit his job because he had made $2 million trading crypto. And it was a couple other examples. And he said, in all my years of experience, this can't be a good thing. He said, I would just be, he goes, you know, way more about it than I do, but I would

be not doing my duties as a financial advisor. If I didn't tell you my thoughts at this point, something started to click. And for me, it wasn't like, this was not based on my rational, it was partly based on my rational mind, but it was partially, I was finally kind of winning. And so it was, I went through this morning of like excruciating, excruciatingly trying to decide whether I was going to sell. Because I mean, at the time, here's the deal. We look back, oh God, yeah, January 2018, of course you got to sell. That's at the top.

No, no, no, no, no. I was, my subreddit at the time, ETHTrader, the ETHTrader subreddit, I mean, talk was $5,000 Ether. I mean, you know, even at that price, it wouldn't be as worth as much as Facebook. So it was not an easy decision. If I sold then, I'd be up $10 million. But, I mean, the addict in my mind said, how fucking good would $30 million be? I mean, and it was like, then you're talking like just some extravagant wealth.

And even though wealth wasn't necessarily what I was after, I wanted to quit my job. I mean, give me a break. $30 million. What, I'd buy a newspaper, start a foundation. I mean, it was, so, but thankfully, thankfully, I was able to pull away from that. And I was able to, there's like Christmas cards on my mantle, you know, um, and, uh, you know, that was, that was part of it. And also, you know, like, um, like I say in the book, like it was, it was not just about

my family and financial security at all. It was about me. I wanted to win. I was like Walter White and that famous scene from breaking, breaking bad, man, he wanted to win. And that was me, but I did sell and I sold third, uh, 70% of my stack. And I was sitting on the couch. I did it over the course of two or three hours.

Now, at that time, the Gemini order books, I mean, this was like full on mania. I mean, there was the green dot. It was full on mania, okay? I sold $10 million. Again, I forget about the numbers, but they're all in the book. I sold about 10 to 12 million, no, $13 million of Ether over the course of three hours, selling chunks of like 300 grand at a time. And that order book just gobbled them right up, gobbled them right up each time, gobbled them right. Each time I sold, it kept going up. Six days later, I sold at 9.15. Six days later, Ether hit 1,400.

A few months later, it was back down to 400. And of course, it hit a low of 80. And, you know, Bitcoin's mirrored that. Bitcoin's done a lot better. but but um but you know and then the other thing i'll just mention pomp since i'm going this far is a lot of people say like my friends like they they're like well how did you turn that money how they're like how did you how did you get that cash like how did you turn that into u.s dollars and like it couldn't have been easier it was right on gemini and by the way i have it

on the book i know people don't like to say what exchange they have or whatever but i'm doing it anyway i got lots of lots of security in place put it that way um but but basically i clicked the button, wired it to my Wells Fargo. And the next day I walked down to Wells Fargo and, and it was all, it was all right there. I mean, it was on the online that day. It was, it was like, it was unbelievable. I mean, that's a wild story, right? You essentially took what ended up being $350,000, turned it into 13 plus million dollars. And you did it with very little kind of traditional training in finance. You did it with very little, I think, experience in terms of investing, etc. And so it's funny to kind of talk about it now, right? Because you did win in that sense. But I

do think that there's a lot of people who will listen to this and say, you know, that's the one in the million story. And for sure, I think, you know, you and I would both agree that that's probably true. As you look at it today, kind of how do you think about investing in general, right? Do you still look just solely at crypto markets? Do you look at other asset classes or kind of that experience? How has that really guided you into what you're doing now from an investment standpoint? Yeah. And the thing was, before I got into crypto, I was heavily into blogging and I've always wanted to be a writer, always liked to write. So I kind of like was heads down for two years writing this book after I sold. And I was like, I threw everything I had

into this book and multiple professional edits and just like everything you can do to make a good book that people want to read. I've done that. What it meant though was that I was tracking crypto, but I wasn't like at all emotionally involved, even though I still have a pretty good stack. I sold 70%, so I still have 30% of my stack. And I was not at all emotionally involved though. And I, you know, I pop up with this book and I'm like going on some of my subreddits. Hey, everyone. Like I, you know, I, I like, I'm trying to make a, like a, a Reddit post that people like will, will click on. So I'm like, I made 13 million. Uh, I wrote a book about ether, like here it is about crypto and ether. Here it is. And like, you know, fuck off, fuck you go away.

Lambo boy, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, what, these are my brothers. What's going on here. and you know i just like totally misplayed where people were at in the market i knew it like at a rational level but intellectually i kind of forgot how hard it's been and i can't even imagine like i mean i felt it a little bit but not really nothing compared to what people what people have been going through so um anyway i just i just it just dawned on me how i had not been the level i was connected at before but anyway so excuse me so for me um i i'm holding uh i'm holding crypto long-term. If it goes, if it skyrockets again, I'll probably sell half. But I think like long-term is the real play. And then, you know, like before crypto,

my investments were like very conventional. I had like index funds and things like that. And they were like, you know, they were, you know, 70, 30 for stocks or 60, 40 stocks and bonds. And I'm pretty much back to that. I mean, it's like, you know, it turns in, it went from this like crazy and thing, insane thing that like took over my soul back to this little thing I manage on a spreadsheet. But, um, you know, I, I, I'm not so far as to think like the U S dollar or the traditional economy is going to collapse. I believe in crypto, but I don't believe enough to keep it all in crypto, obviously. I mean, it's not just me, it's like my kids and my wife and stuff, but, but, um, but I, I do think long-term it's a great play. And I just, you know, I, um,

I, I have a conventional investments otherwise, and they're managed by the same guy who helped me get out of crypto and he does well and it's ensemble um ensemble capital oh wait i sorry i shouldn't say any pitches here or whatever so i don't know what their financial rules are or whatever anyway but i mentioned them in the book just in terms of this friendship and guidance and all that you can shout out friends that's loud all right before we uh we wrap up i mean this is a wild story but uh what do you think is the uh the most important company in crypto today okay i don't have a solid answer here so i'll throw out a company that I think, um, that I think is important, but I, like I said, I have not been

studying as closely as I think Gemini, um, Gemini is, is important. And I think, I think even though we think we're like eons past, you know, the crazy, like everyone is associating crypto with dark markets and buying heroin and like a hit men and stuff on online. Um, we're, we're still not entirely past that, especially after 17. And there were so many scammers, so many lost so much money. And I just know, and you all probably know from talking to your friends, like people still think it's risky, it's dangerous. And it is in a lot of ways. So I like Gemini because even though they're kind of like squares in some way, you know, they're talking about like crypto needs to be regulated and stuff. And this is a lot of what Meserich talks about in his book. I still

think there's a need to like normalize this for the normal population. And I think those guys have shown like they know how to do it from a security perspective, from a branding perspective, like they're very like conservative for a crypto company, but, um, but I think that's what we need. I like to having like this blue chip, uh, company run by the Winklevii, you know, in, in New York. And I think it's good for the, it's good for the industry to have them. For sure. Um, so you're now, uh, writing and, um, the, the book is fantastic. So I highly suggest people go get it. Uh, what do you think is the most important book you've ever read? I would say, okay. I would say the most important book I've ever read is, um, there's a book called

The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. And I love Theodore Roosevelt. He was a moderate. He happened to be a Republican, but he was a moderate. He took on the corporations and was a monopoly buster. But this book documents how he got there. And it was like, he is just like the most amazing like young life. He grows like a sickly child and like one of his, I think his mother died or something like that. And he just like built himself through the years through study through physical labor through like courage and perseverance and and then and then then the second half of that book is all about like he was like governor at 25 he was and he was just like one of those people that like you know the whole famous question if

you want to sit down with someone at dinner who would you sit next to and he's just like a fascinating guy um but he was um he was self-built and um and he was very progressive uh meaning he was open to new ideas and that's like the thing i love about crypto is that you know this is like this is just like the conceptual stuff is so mind-blowing um and it's it's as much as the money and the greed it's what draws a lot of us into the space for sure what um what do you think in the book is the hardest part about writing it right so you spent two years writing this book like what to you was the most surprising or the hardest part I would say, yeah, it's, that's a, it's a, it's a very good question. Um, okay. I would say,

I would say this, that when you're writing a memoir, like, um, I, I, this is like my fourth draft of the book. And I, I, um, like deciding what parts of your career to mention are critical because books, good books are scenes and Meserech's books like this. And I've crafted mine that way. There's scenes and what scenes you choose to put in is, is, is indicative of what story you're trying to tell, what parts of your character you're trying to describe. Like I'm not, my whole essence isn't boiled down into this book. It's the essence that's most important to telling this story. But you know, as a writer of a memoir, you're, you're like pretty much blind to what is to what is most important. You have a good, you have some instincts, but you have to have an

outside reader because like I had scenes in this book. I probably have, the book is about 270 pages. I probably have another 150 pages of like polished, finished content that a good editor, like I really had a brilliant editor. She just convinced me like, listen, this does not tell the story. This is kind of funny. This is kind of interesting. Oh, you look kind of good here. Oh, this is kind of a sordid tale that would be, but it doesn't advance the story. And when you're writing a book, you're just trying to like, like I wanted to, I wrote this book so that it would be an easy read. You You know, I really, I knew, I thought crypto people would love it. And so far, so good.

It's been very well received. But I want mainstream people to read it. And to do that, you can't give them a bunch of technical crap. And you can't bury them in some boring parts of my early story. So I crafted all those parts of the story that had to do with me, but also I could identify to how I got into crypto, why I got into crypto, all that kind of stuff. I love it.

Before I end, I always let the guests ask me a question. And we talk about aliens. believer, non-believer? Oh, that's funny. I just heard that question. Um, yeah, absolutely. I mean, mathematically there has to be, there has to be aliens. Uh, and I, and by the way, I heard your Mesrec interview and that, I think that's why I was, that's what I was thinking about. That stuff that he talks about is fascinating that, that there's a lot of unexplained phenomena and all that. I can't remember the specifics, but yeah, absolutely aliens. And I also hope they don't come while I'm here. He, uh, he, he shocked me. I didn't realize that he had written books on

aliens yeah me neither i had no idea i was i'm tempted to go get it in fact i just you just reminded me yeah he uh he's fantastic um all right what uh one question you have for me to finish up what was your scariest moment in crypto scariest moment um i don't really have scary moments for me personally as much as uh many people who listen to podcasts have heard the story uh one of my partners got hacked um and uh or sim swapped and and um then there's a follow-up attack after he kind of corrected all of that um and it put up better security and he got a text message one day from somebody who basically said i'm going to kidnap your daughter unless you send bitcoin to uh this address um and you can imagine you know i don't have children but you can imagine

any father who who gets something like that um there's a bunch of emotions that come in both from, uh, fear, uh, from anger, right. All, all this kind of stuff all at once. Um, and so, uh, he screenshot it and sent it to me and basically was like, you know, what the fuck? Um, and, uh, and so even though, uh, you know, it was a situation where, um, it wasn't directly at me, right. Or involving me. Uh, it was somebody so close to me that, uh, that it was pretty nerve wracking, frankly. Well, we can't end on that. So what was a happy day in crypto for you? For sure. I got to say that when Bitcoin rallied, it wasn't one day, but when Bitcoin rallied from the depths of $3,100, $3,200 in December of 2018, back over $10,000, right? But that, to me, was 10,000 was a big psychological moment for a lot of people.

And I think it kind of reinvigorated people to, look, you can pay attention to these short-term price movements, but over a long period of time, this asset and this network have all the value and advantages and everything that we're all excited about. But to me, that was a really big moment because this was a big, big bear market for many people. the first um and so when they kind of see an asset draw down 85 like that you know it's natural to think hey we're going to zero yeah absolutely no that's that's a great one i agree so all right where um where can people go find uh find the book today it's on amazon today it's an audio book ebook and a paperback book and so it's confessions of a crypto millionaire my unlikely escape from

corporate america you can also find me on twitter at dan conway 650 all right man dan i appreciate it very much the book is uh fantastic i have a uh a copy here that is now inscribed on the front cover that says pomp i wrote this book for you you filthy animal so uh the rest of you filthy animals go pick it up and we'll have to do this again great thanks so much pomp hey everyone pomp here if you like this episode of off the chain and want to help us take crypto to the top of the apple spotify and other podcast charts please do us a favor and rate review and subscribe. To review, simply go to the Off The Chain homepage, scroll down until you see the five blank stars. Taking 15 seconds to fill those stars in and leave a quick review goes a long way

in helping us take the entire crypto ecosystem to the top of the charts. I appreciate you listening and see you next time on Off The Chain.