Are We Still Early In Crypto?

 Are You An Early Adopter of Cryptocurrency?

So a common topic of discussion or question that pops up in the world of crypto is the topic of "Are We Early Adopters?" "Are We Early to Crypto?" This topic comes up a lot on forum and Sub-Reddits like r/Cryptocurrency. Now let's start by saying the crypto space has a lot of excitement and a lot of comradery. It's not like a typical investment, people don't get excited about stocks in the same way as they do about crypto. That's changed a bit in recent years with r/WallStreetBets and a lot of the excitement about Gamestop and other MemeStocks, but generally speaking crypto has a much stronger community element.

At times however it can turn into a bit of a circle jerk, hey were early, were all gonna get rich, we're going to the moon. So in today's post I wanted to discuss this topic of are you early to crypto? At the time of writing this post it's December 11, 2021. When discussing whether you're "early to crypto" it's all relative and it's important to state what we mean by early. When you say are we early to crypto do you wonder if you're an early adopter? What does being an early adopter mean? Are you asking if you're early enough to become a millionaire off a $100 investment? I want you to think about what you actually mean when you ask this question.

In my opinion, and again this topic and question really comes down entirely to opinion as this question is all relative and even asking if you're early can mean different things. In my opinion if you weren't around for the 2017 bull run you're not early, and even those who got in that year, the year of 2017, even they weren't early when compared to someone who was in the game in 2010 or 2012 who was getting 5 Bitcoins a pop from a Bitcoin Faucet. In my opinion however 2017 was kind of a turning point of Crypto being taken somewhat seriously, prior to that it was fake internet gold used to buy weed on the darkwebs or some crazy fake currency you earned playing video games. There was no institutional involvement, there was no defi, no NFT's, and going back a few years there wasn't even regulation or legitimate exchanges so it was a completely different world than you can imagine today when Bitcoin and crypto is talked about in newspapers, on mainstream news, by your peers and co-workers.

I think a good way to judge whether you were early to crypto is if you were into crypto at a time when a single paycheck could buy you a whole Bitcoin. Now obviously even this is relative as some of you maybe earn $1,000 a paycheck and others of you may earn $10,000 per paycheck, but I think this is a good measure of whether or not you were early to the space. Being early in my opinion means you had an opportunity to collect a significant amount of Bitcoin. If a Bitcoin cost you a full paycheck, even with bills to pay and such, you could conceivably over the course of a month to say three months have stacked and collected a full Bitcoin. If you're coming into the space when Bitcoin is at 60K, I mean that's several thousand Dollars over the average American income and you consider people have bills to pay how many years would it be for the average person to save up their yearly salary in liquid cash, for some people that's 5 years, for many that may be a decade or longer, so the idea that someone coming in today with an average income could even get themselves a whole Bitcoin is a pretty impressive feat. Again though, many people believe Bitcoin will one day be 500K or even better a Million Dollars and if that's the case even having 0.1 Bitcoins is significant. 

When it comes to considering yourself an early adopter, there's a bit of confirmation bias going on. First off we want to believe we're making the right decisions, if you don't consider yourself early you likely consider yourself late and you probably don't want to think that. Also, if you're late why are you investing in Bitcoin and Crypto in the first place? 

At this point I maybe have you feeling a bit negative, maybe realize even according to your own definition you're not early. Here's the good news however, every investment and every industry changes over time and new opportunities are popping up everyday. There's always opportunity. Elon Musk was not early to the automobile industry, Hendry Ford built the Model T in 1908 or there abouts, where as Elon Musk formed Tesla in 2003. That said Elon Musk become one of the richest men in the world despite being 95 years late to the industry. 

Take Mark Zuckerberg for example, Facebook was formed in 2004 and rolled out to the public in 2006, but Zuckerberg wasn't early to the internet, the internet was created prior to even 1970 and became commercially viable and somewhat popular in the early 90s, Mark Zuckerberg was over a decade late to that game but he's doing pretty good for himself today, money wise at least, by all accounts he's a pretty terrible person though. My point is you don't have to be early to do well in an industry or a space.

Crypto has changed a ton over the years, back in 2017 and before there was no staking, there were few to no exchanges to buy crypto from, there was no Defi, there were no NFT's, those things have really only gotten big within the past year or so and a ton of people have done really well in those areas. Even something as simple as buying and holding crypto, there's a guy and probably many people who bought $1,000 worth of Shiba back in 2020 and less than a year later that investment is worth over 50 Million Dollars. Now I'm not encouraging you to run around buying low cap shit coins trying to become a multi-millionaire, more often than not that's not going to end profitably or well, but my point is it does happen and even if you don't hit a 100,000x banger, if you can spot some good projects when they are outside of the top 100 or top 200 coins and use some of your crypto passive income from staking or defi that's just profit to throw into some of those projects maybe one of them hits. 

So I'm a blogger, affiliate marketer, make make money online guy and I often hear about the "Made For Adsense Days" or the "MFA Days" when people were throwing up one page websites and getting Adsense checks for 100k a month. I often wish man I wish I had been around a few years earlier, I was late to the game when it came to that. But fast forward 15 years later and social media exists which it didn't before and Influencers are putting up those kinds of numbers with Influencer Marketing Deals, so there's always opportunity. 

Would it be cool to have bought 200 Bitcoins for $200 to buy some weed online back in 2009, spent $150 of that and forgot about the other 50 Bitcoins you had sitting around and wake up a decade later, remember and wake up to find yourself 3 Million Dollars richer? Sure it would but that ship has sailed and there's still plenty of opportunities out there for you today. 

I saw someone online commenting recently that they felt bad because they're late to crypto and are a student and don't have a lot of money to throw in. I commented to them that back in 2010 some broke sucker who didn't have money to start a business or invest in the stock market was sitting around getting 5 BTC a pop at a Bitcoin Faucet and feeling bad for himself but that would be worth a fortune today. Now I don't know that these projects or coins will workout but today you can blog on Steemit and earn STEEM and SBD. You can blog on Hive Blog or LeoFinance and earn coins. You can comment on Reddit and earn Moons. You can mint NFTs for free on a platform like AlgoGems.IO. 

You're not early to crypto in some ways but you're earlier than the guy getting in 9 years from now in 2030. You're not an early Bitcoin adopter but Crypto Gaming is in it's infancy, as are Defi and NFTs. The chances of you getting filthy rich off your $20 weekly DCA investment probably isn't going to happen but you might get airdropped some NFT that winds up becoming worth 700k. 

Spend less time focusing on topics like this, I get it, its fun to daydream about but it's not productive. Find an area of the crypto space you want to focus on and become an expert in that area, try to spot opportunities and things should workout for you pretty well.