In early 2021, Nathaniel Eliason quit his job in marketing to pursue a career with a bit more risk: cryptocurrency.
He was tired of the 9-to-5 grind when all around him, “young people were circumventing the system to amass huge amounts of money, enough to live off for years, even decades,” he writes in “Crypto Confidential: Winning and Losing Millions in the New Frontier of Finance” (Portfolio), out July 9th.
But as he soon discovered, this strange new world of digital investments had the potential to either transform him into an overnight millionaire or reduce him and his young family into paupers.
The learning curve was considerable, and at least in the beginning, Eliason had trouble taking any of it seriously.
“This felt more like one of those video games where you click buttons to earn ‘gold’ or ‘gems’ as fast as possible,” he writes.
But with the help of crypto insider friends—some of whom promised him “it’s like the financial Wild West right now”—he began figuring out the rules and making real money.
It became an obsession.
“My laptop came to the gym, to dinners, to happy hours, everywhere,” writes Eliason. “I didn’t want to miss out on any potential earnings.” It was a financial roller coaster—at one point, his crypto net worth “was fluctuating by over $1 million a day,” he writes—which was almost derailed by everything from hackers to bad investments to the IRS.
Eliason’s rules for thriving in the crypto world mostly involve knowing when to get out.
Or as he calls it, “Indications that the mania might be over…and you should take your winnings and leave.”
Warning signs include when family members or celebrities start showing too much interest (“Mark Cuban talking about DeFi? Sell. Lindsay Lohan doing an NFT drop? Sell.”), and the biggest sign of trouble, having too much confidence.
“When you think you’ve figured out the game and you’re about to get insanely rich,” Eliason writes, that’s when you’re about to lose it all.