💰 My Investing Story · Toa collective HQ

💰 My Investing Story

For the first 3 to 4 years of my working life, I did not respect money at all.

I was earning from a young age, but most of it disappeared into drugs, cars, partying, bad habits, and things that gave me short term excitement but did nothing for my future.

I did not understand assets.

I did not understand long term wealth.

I did not understand how hard money could work for you if you gave it a job.

At 18, my mum told me about crypto.

That conversation changed the way I looked at money.

I started searching online, watching videos, joining communities, and putting money from work into crypto. At first, I had no idea what I was doing. I made money. I lost money. I chased hype. I got excited too quickly. I made emotional decisions.

But I was hooked on learning.

I started investing into coins like BTC, ETH, XRP, Cardano, Polkadot, XLM and Doge. Some were smarter decisions than others, but every mistake taught me something.

In 2021, everything changed again when I got introduced to NFTs.

I joined Discord communities, sat in voice chats all day, met people from around the world, and started learning how online communities, hype, marketing, and digital assets worked.

This was also where I started building my first real online connections and side hustles.

One of my biggest wins was Hape Beast.

I got selected for whitelist out of thousands of people during peak NFT hype. Their Discord had around 500K members at the time, which was crazy back then.

I minted for 0.3 ETH and later sold for 8 ETH.

That was around $40K at the time.

I was 18 making that overnight.

At my peak, I had around 25 to 30 ETH and over $150K to my name.

But I also learned the hard side of investing.

The market changed fast.

The bull market turned into a bear market.

I got scammed multiple times and lost over $10K.

I invested into the wrong projects.

I held things too long.

I got greedy.

I watched money disappear because I did not fully understand risk management.

Eventually, my portfolio dropped back to around $70K. I cashed a lot out, bought computers, TVs, furniture, and upgraded things around the house. Then I stepped away from crypto for a while and went back to work.

Later, when I moved to Australia, I started investing again with a much smarter mindset.

This time I focused on foundations.

Stocks.

ETFs.

S&P 500.

Property.

Crypto.

Business.

Myself.

I started to understand that real investing is not about chasing quick money.

It is about building income, buying assets, staying consistent, and letting time do the work.

Stocks and ETFs taught me patience.

Crypto taught me risk.

Property taught me leverage.

Business taught me cash flow.

Investing into myself taught me that skills can create the biggest return of all.

I also invested into social media equipment, cameras, education, systems, and tools that helped me build income online. Those investments helped me grow my brand, create content, build businesses, and make more money.

Today, I own crypto, stocks, property, and businesses. If I liquidated everything, I would be sitting at over $300K.

I have made money.

I have lost money.

I have taken big risks.

I have made stupid mistakes.

But every lesson made me sharper.

My investing approach now is much more simple.

Build strong income.

Keep expenses controlled.

Invest consistently.

Dollar cost average weekly or monthly.

Hold quality assets.