THE world’s “youngest Bitcoin millionaire” didn’t stumble upon his fortune, but started building it himself when he was just 12 years old.
Erik Finman, 25, never liked high school and was determined to create a life for himself without traditional education.
7
7
7
7
The Bitcoin mogul invested £700, a gift from his grandma, and used the return to launch an EdTech startup that was later acquired.
He became the world’s “youngest Bitcoin millionaire” in 2017, aged 18, when Bitcoin’s value hit $27,000 ($33,190 or £26,380 today).
The “kid from Idaho” told the Business of Business: “I really didn’t like high school. People didn’t really get what I was trying to do, get what I was searching for or what I was dreaming of.
“I had one teacher tell me, ‘yeah, drop out, work at McDonald’s‘ since I’ll never amount to anything more in life.
Read more on Finman
“I dropped out of high school and made a bet with my parents: if I make a million dollars by the time I’m 18, I don’t have to go back to school or go to college.”
And that’s exactly what happened.
Finman was first introduced to Bitcoin at a protest in Washington, DC where a man was donning a t-shirt with the digital cryptocurrency splashed across it.
A group of protesters were running from police when Finman asked the man in the t-shirt what Bitcoin was.
Most read in Money
The millionaire said: “He was like, ‘it’s going to end Wall Street, bro,’ and ran off.
“That was how I found out about Bitcoin. I researched it as soon as I got back and just really saw how great it would be, saw its future.”
When he was 15, he sold his Bitcoin investment for $100,000 and used the earnings to fund his education startup, Botangle, and hire contractors, freelancers, programmers, and employees.
He sold Botangle at 17, became the world’s “youngest Bitcoin millionaire” at 18, created a prosthetic Doctor Octopus suit at 19, launched a satellite at 20, and built a multimillion-dollar cryptocurrency company at 21.
In 2018, Finman stirred controversy when he said “it’s your own fault” if you don’t become a millionaire within 10 years of investing in cryptocurrency.
He told Business Insider: “If you are smart about cryptocurrency over the next ten years, many people can build their fortunes even better than before.
“The area is still relatively small – the market capitalisation is just over half a trillion dollars.”
The risks of buying with cryptocurrencies
Investing and making a purchase in cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin is risky .
Their value is highly volatile and City watchdog the Financial Conduct Authority has warned investors should be prepared to lose all their money.
Investing in cryptocurrencies is not a guaranteed way to make money.
You should also think carefully about making purchases with a cryptocurrency.
For example, Bitcoin has had wild price fluctuations in recent months and the price can change on an almost hourly basis.
The price of a Bitcoin was at $40,258 on January 9, according to Coindesk, but fell to $34,214 just three days later.
That’s a 15% drop.
These price swings are risky for a business as you could sell an item for a Bitcoin at one price and the value may drop soon after, leaving you with less money from a sale.
Similarly, the price of Bitcoin has soared by more than 21% since the start of this week so it can be hard for a shopper to get an accurate idea of the price of an item if its value changes on a daily basis.
The prodigy is now worth an estimated $4million (£3.2million), and has used his fortune to jet to faraway places including Dubai, Hong Kong, Beijing, London, Prague, Sydney, Vienna, and Stockholm.
He said: “I’ve always kind of had a millionaire mindset, to sound super cheesy. I always felt like it was meant to be. If anything, it’s like, why am I not a billionaire right now?”
There are no statutory provisions prohibiting a person under the age of 18 from owning shares, according to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, but some companies do not accept minor shareholders.
Public companies ordinarily exclude minors from holding their shares.
Many cryptocurrencies have a short track record, making them difficult to understand and predict, and they are not protected by the regulator which means investors have no protection if things go wrong.
The UK regulator warned in 2021 that Brits risk losing ALL of their money if they invest in cryptocurrencies.
Anyone considering investing in any type of cryptocurrency should first do their research and only invest money they can afford to lose.
Now “tired of crypto”, Finman is trying desperately to pivot.
He said in 2020: “I’m sick of being the Bitcoin person, it’s really like if I hear the word ‘Bitcoin’ one more time, I’m going to smash my head against a wall.
“I care about building something much more than I care about just trading numbers on a screen. I’ve done Bitcoin, crypto trading, for six years.”
Read more on The Sun
In 2022, he revealed he achieved “one of the proudest things” he ever achieved when he helped launch a satellite to beam down crypto to an all-girls school in Ghana so they could afford wood.
He wrote on X, formerly Twitter: “It was an experiment that people said was impossible – but we got it done.”
7
7
7
This post first appeared on thesun.co.uk
