Confessions of a Crypto Millionaire

by Dan Conway

  “So, you guys are facing a decision. Which of these scenarios lines up with what you want to do?”

  I had to figure out how to balance what I thought Eileen might want with my own still-murky exit plan and these perfectly crafted options that Sean had just explained to us for ten minutes.

  “Well, we are in a good spot, clearly,” I said. “There are just some questions we still need to think about, and we also need to think about what might happen next. I’ve always wanted to stop working, and so does Eileen…” Blah, blah, blah.

  I wasn’t making much sense. The contrast between Sean’s verbal presentation and my own was extreme. This was like a meeting at Acme. I started to feel a physical aversion to sitting in this room with these people. Sean seemed so in control. He said the right things, his people respected him, he was able to share a joke and then smoothly transition back to the work at hand. I thought of the time at Acme when I told a joke during a critical meeting with a bunch of executives, then forgot to show the final slide of my presentation because I was so caught up in the laughs.

  I just wasn’t good at this stuff. But now I was sitting in this room because I’d done something Sean would never do. I’d identified something and had the guts to go all in. Flip Side and me were aligned, and it was beautiful. Sean was a fucking bean counter, and I was a bandit, a revolutionary, an icon. We’d made $300,000 between waking up that morning and sitting with him and his perfectly manicured team.

  Eileen was hanging on his every word, throwing me sideways glances at any mention of the stakes.

  Flip Side had heard enough. He leaned into my ear and said, “THIS IS AN INTERVENTION. GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.”

  I interrupted Sean. “Wait a minute, I got here first. I’m not going to give it all up now!”

  The room fell silent. Eileen was looking at me, actually leaning in my direction. She said, “But Dan, isn’t that the point?”

  And like that, I’d been outplayed. The point was to become financially independent and keep a meaningful amount of ETH for the long term. I’d made that clear. As risky a play as that had been, at least it was a measurable goal. And we had basically achieved it. We could walk away right now with financial independence and at least a thousand ETH. But I seemed to be moving the goalposts, and I couldn’t or wouldn’t articulate why.

  “Ok, let’s continue, and we will have to think about all of this,” I said.

  For the rest of the meeting, I kept my cards close to my vest and didn’t let myself show enthusiasm or anger. As we were leaving, Sean tried to pivot back to friendly ground.

  “I was telling the folks here about that movie we saw. What a trip!”

  A few weeks before, Sean and Cathy had joined Eileen and me for a movie that was kind of crappy and also gory in a funny way. But I wasn’t willing to go there.

  “Yeah, that was a trip,” I said.

  Eileen picked up the banter, and then we left.

  A couple of days later, I was greeting parents who were picking up their kids after a sleepover at our house. One of the moms who knew I was into crypto asked, “What do you think about all of this mania?”

  “Well, there is mania, and it’s getting pretty extreme. But that’s not surprising. Crypto is the first decentralized technology to make it—it’s a game changer.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said. “Wikipedia is decentralized.”

  “Nope. Wikipedia is crowdsourced content. It is still run out of centralized services controlled by a few people.”

  “Listen, Dan, I’ve been working in tech for a long time, and I can tell you, it’s decentralized, and there are others. All of these tech bros getting rich is amazing, though.”

  I’d heard enough of this bullshit. So many people who’d missed the boat were ready to curse crypto without understanding it. Ethereum was bigger than these people could comprehend. But the fantastical price increase had opened it up for attack. Crypto was suddenly like an overexposed celebrity, and everyone was rooting for it to fail.

  I looked her in the eye, without a hint of a smile. “You’re dead wrong.”

  A couple of days later, she posted something on Facebook mocking all of the crypto zealots and complaining about how dealing with them was such a pain in the ass. I almost added a snarky comment but thought better of it. I actually like her. And I’d been an asshole. I should have just laughed it off when she mentioned Wikipedia.

  A few weeks later, The New York Times published an article, “Everyone is Getting Hilariously Rich, and You’re Not.” It profiled a host of people who had made millions. They were described as douchebags. The article summed up the philosophy of these people:

  “Over long hours in anonymous group chats, San Francisco bars and Settlers of Catan game nights, they talk about how cryptocurrency will decentralize power and wealth, changing the world order.”

  Amen. They might have been douchebags, I might be a douchebag, but this was worth fighting for, especially since it was making us so hilariously rich.

  ***

  One would expect that Eileen and I would have had a big conversation after the meeting with Sean, before she left for Boston with the kids for their annual Christmas trip. But we didn’t, even after I seemed to be unwilling to list an amount of ETH I was determined to hold onto. It’s hard to believe, but I’ve confirmed with her that this was the case. She simply had an amazing ability to compartmentalize the crypto stuff and block it all out, no matter how good or bad the news seemed to be.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Now

  A few days after Eileen and kids left for Boston, ETH started shaking upwards again in great bursts that temporarily froze the exchanges due to all of the money flowing in. It was like a 9.0 earthquake with an infinite number of 9.0 aftershocks. On January 3, it hit $900.

  I received an email from Sean.

  There’s a sudden sea change on crypto. Our clients have been vaguely interested for awhile. Today I took *three* calls from clients, the type of client who generally has little interest in the details of investing, asking about bitcoin. Then we got publicity photos taken (we have a new analyst who started this week) and the photographer told us he’s going to stop shooting photos because he’s day trading crypto and he’s made $2 mil this year. Then I went to a prospect meeting with a pair of 80 year old clients. Their first question? What do you think about bitcoin.

  Never before in my career have I seen this level of interest in a rapidly increasing investment. And never has this sort of interest been a good sign.

  I’d be derelict as your advisor to not pass this on to you. If these 5 people all turn out to have been right about wanting to buy crypto now... I’ll be shocked. But in the near term it can of course keep rocketing higher.

  Oh, shit. That morning I’d gone for a run, and now two hours later, I was still sitting on the couch in my sweaty clothes. I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t even gotten coffee yet.

  These interactions with Sean were starting to feel like the ominous warning signs before a tsunami. Hey, the ocean is receding, what do you think that is all about? Hmmm, I wonder why that flock of six million crows is flying over our resort toward the mountains? I loved movies like that, but it felt bad to be the lead character and not know if I was saved or dead.

  There was movement in my rational brain. It was trying to wake up, dammit. Flip Side was having none of it. He didn’t want to go back in the closet, especially after all he’d done for me. He’d taken me this far. What the fuck was my problem? If $10 million felt good, how fucking great would $50 million feel?

  I willed myself to pull my computer out of my bag and fire it up. I told the dog, who had been barking, to shut the fuck up. I was trying to figure out if I could do something that I didn’t really want to do. I was ripping my two personalities apart. It hurt.

  I meant to click onto Gemini to check the price and orderbook. Twenty minutes later, I found myself on r/EthTrader, high on crypto again. There was a full orgy going on. The main feed had
fourteen hundred comments that morning, an all-time record.

  This is amazing. We are history, people. Congratulations!

  Who wants to predict when we will breach $10,000? My bet is June 2018, once we pass bitcoin.

  This is only the beginning, everyone is just getting here. Hold onto your butts.

  I forced myself to log into my Gemini account. I sat perfectly still, a storm of possibilities swarming in my head. The anxiety reminded me of what it felt like going to Pill Hill.

  I looked up at the clock on the mantle. Propped up next to it was one of our family Christmas cards. It’d been returned because of a bad address. I saw Eileen’s handwriting, her smiley faces and the picture of my kids jumping on our bed, the annual back-of-card shot. Danny was so big now that he almost got a concussion on the ceiling when he executed his usual bed-jumping pose. I’m not particularly sentimental, but the whole thing, the whole family thing, was pretty much the best thing that had ever happened to me. No matter what passion I was following or demon I was attempting to overcome, Eileen had always kept the family running and the kids happy. I’d also take my share of credit. Together we were doing a great job, but especially Eileen. Maybe that was why she wouldn’t allow herself to go down the same rabbit hole I’d been living in since I discovered crypto.

  If ETH tanked, I’d have to tell Eileen and the kids that Dear Old Dad had fucked it up. I hadn’t been able to secure their financial future, darn it. We’d had a lottery ticket, and I had squandered it. I’d tell them this would make a great story one day and then force out a laugh while I prepared for work at a job that would likely make me miserable. Eileen would have to go back to hustling for clients, which would be easier to do if she didn’t know for eternity that it didn’t have to be that way, that we almost had it all. But it had turned out to be a fever dream. Another one of my fucking fever dreams.

  But I can’t pretend that I’m a perfect television family man, immune from selfish passions. Of course there was another part of me that didn’t want to be wrong. Maybe this was even more important. I couldn’t imagine being a loser again. But still, Flip Side said there was more glory in our future.

  On January 2, ETH hit $900. It had doubled in value over the past thirty days. It was up 10,000 percent in one year. It was among the fastest rising billion-dollar-plus assets in history. That day, thousands of new people joined r/EthTrader. But I was there first.

  Watching the greedy masses pile into ETH reminded me of the famous battle scene from Braveheart. The hordes rush forward, lances ready. They are screaming, and their horses are at full sprint, snot shooting from their snouts. The defenders sit ready, not moving, calm, almost. They can’t raise their pikes and shoot their arrows until they see the whites of the barbarians’ eyes. They await the signal and want to die, because they might die, and why the hell haven’t they shot yet? Still, the attack moves ahead at full clip, deranged faces twisted with mania and fury, insanity bleeding from every murderous movement. THEY ARE RIGHT ON TOP OF US.

  Now.

  With the dog now asleep next to me, recovering from my verbal lashing, in the middle of the day, as hunched retirees walked by the front window and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid played muted on AMC, I sold 11,000 ETH, 72 percent of our remaining stack, at an average price of $915, netting $10 million. After paying taxes, with the amount we already had in our bank, we had enough.

  I couldn’t wait any longer. I’d done it cold-blooded, my rational brain in charge, no soundtrack playing in my soul, Flip Side screaming obscenities as I stuffed him back into the closet. I still had about 4,000 ETH, which we would hold for the long term. But I was no longer a whale, a beautiful maniac.

  Eileen was still in Boston with the kids. I sent her a text: We are done.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Water Colors

  In those days after the sale, before Eileen and the kids returned, I thought about my place in the family. I now entertained the idea that I was the most prominent person in my bloodline. It wasn’t so much that I’d made the money. It was how I’d done it. I couldn’t get over it. I recognized this thought as the first sign that I could become a serious douchebag. Maybe I already was one. It also made me think that I could blow it all if I wasn’t careful.

  I thought again about my grandfather, the man who’d died of a stroke at work. I’d always related to him, though he’d died twenty years before I was born.

  Leaving everything behind and going to a new country was a drastic move. Like mine, his big gamble paid off. He hit the jackpot. He achieved the American Dream, not a Kennedy-sized dream, but a pretty damn good one.

  My grandfather’s drinking had been a shadow over him all his life. He was able to abstain for long periods, but when he had the first drink, he might go on a bender and disappear for days.

  In America, he was sober for years. Then, at my aunt’s wedding, he decided to have a glass of champagne. That was it. His Flip Side returned.

  After he died, his obituary ran on the front page of the San Francisco Express. I don’t know much more about him because my dad couldn’t talk about his father without tearing up, taking a slug from his vodka soda, and changing the subject. It seemed to me that the two of them had unfinished business.

  I wonder if my grandfather had declared victory before taking that fateful celebratory drink. Unquestionably, his dreams had come true. He had a postcard life in America. He may have thought his demons were vanquished for good. The illusion must have been strong.

  I’d have to be careful if I was going to survive.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  This is Spinal Tap

  Finally, after it was all over, Eileen caught ETH fever. The night she returned from Boston, we stayed up until two a.m. discussing the possibilities. We agreed to book a family trip to Africa. We considered the merits of buying a home in Santa Cruz. We discussed whether we should pay off the remaining $950,000 on our mortgage now or later. Life was suddenly off the hook. Every time we were on the verge of going over the edge and losing ourselves in this new wealth euphoria, the dog scratched at the door, demanding to be let in or out because we were making her nervous. Then we had to go to bed.

  A tribe of advisors was waiting to help us navigate the waters of new money. I received a text from Carl, an acquaintance who works for a big financial advisory firm. He’d heard from my sister Kathleen, who was an old friend of his, that I’d made a killing. He asked me out to lunch. As our salmon and brussels sprout salads were being prepared, I told him what happened, spilling my guts about the actual dollar amounts for the first time to anyone. Since he was in finance, I figured the rules of polite conversation pertaining to money didn’t apply, in the same way it’s ok to tell your plastic surgeon you want a smaller nose or bigger boobs.

  He hadn’t always been so interested in talking shop with me. The prior year, I’d spoken with him at a family party. Since I knew he was in finance, I had asked him at the time if he was interested in crypto before giving him an earful. Now, over lunch, he admitted that back then, he’d wanted to pivot the conversation back to the weather. Of course he wishes he’d listened to me, he said.

  Like the very best lobbyists I knew from my public relations days, Carl is a genuinely likeable guy.

  His charm and skills allowed him to rise to the top, where his attention is reserved for people like the current version of me and Eileen. He offered to help us figure it out. Sadly, he didn’t offer to pick up the tab for lunch. If that was “keeping it real,” I was disappointed. I wanted to partake in a Conway family passion: free food.

  It was time to pay off our house, so I walked the few blocks to Wells Fargo, where we’d always done our retail banking. This was where we’d gone to complain like peasants petitioning Caesar when they pulled our equity line ten years before. The teller’s jaw dropped when she opened our personal checking account and saw the twelve million-dollar balance. She asked if I had a private banker.

  “Isn’t that you?” I as
ked.

  “No!” she said, as if I was being preposterous.

  She disappeared and then ushered in the private banking manager, Gene, a petite, impeccably dressed, and overly polite man who took my hand and said we’d be working with him from now on. He was focused exclusively on servicing high net worth individuals. Unbeknownst to me, there was a separate space within the bank where I could now do my banking away from normal people.

  He gave me his support line which I could call at any time, night or day, if I was experiencing a problem or presumably if I just wanted to talk. I had a vision of calling him late at night and asking, “Hey, what do you think of all this fucking money we have?”

  We were now high-net-worth individuals and would be treated with proper respect and deference. He reversed the wire charges for some personal business we’d done a month before. I was thrilled and thanked him.

  “No, it is the least we can do,” he said.

  There was only one uncomfortable moment, which happened when I was sitting in the private banking lounge chatting with Gene while he finished updating our account. He said he had two simple questions. First, had this money come from drugs or any other illicit activity? And second, was I involved in money laundering?

  These rude questions coming when they did, as our conversation seemed headed toward Gene offering me a master-of-the-universe certificate, were jarring and unpleasant. I think Wells Fargo was employing the same strategy they use at my mother’s retirement community to weed out those with dementia. Residents are required to take an annual mental acuity test to determine if they are losing their marbles. The test is forty-five minutes long and spans four different competency areas. When the ordeal finally appears to be over and the resident exhales, the administrator says something like, “Great job! Now relax. I just have one more question. Can you help me out? Good! Here it goes. If you have a newspaper, what on earth would you do with it? Put it in the washing machine? Eat it for a snack? Or read it?” It’s one final question to see if they’ve gamed the system somehow. Wells Fargo wanted to know if I was a bandit. Of course, I told them I’d eat the newspaper as a snack, with a nice Chianti.