5 Ordinary People Who Are Now Crypto Millionaires
Of CNBCTV18.com IST (published)
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Here is a list of five common individuals and how they became crypto millionaires over the past decade:
We’ve all heard stories of the rich getting richer through Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. In some cases, these digital assets have even turned millionaires into billionaires. However, reports of normal people finding their way to big money are not that common, but they do exist. And to prove it, we’ve rounded up five ordinary individuals who are now millionaires, all thanks to smart investments made in the digital asset space. Let us begin:
1. Glauber Contessoto:
Also known as ‘SlumDoge Millionaire’, Glauber Contessoto’s rags to riches story is the kind that draws people to crypto. Contessoto comes from a humble background. His family moved to the United States from Brazil, and he said he was “really poor” in an interview with CNBC. Before becoming a millionaire, Contessoto worked in a music company and had also dabbled in stocks for a short period.
In early 2021, Contessoto heard about Doge and decided to get behind the meme coin. But without any disposable income to start investing, he sold almost all his shares and even borrowed money (in the form of a margin) from the Robinhood app to buy Dogecoin. Then tweets from Elon Musk sent prices skyrocketing, and just over two months later, Glauber Contessoto was a crypto millionaire.
2. Erik Finman: In 2010, Erik Finman was 11 years old and hated going to school. He had big dreams, but his teacher believed he would never “accomplish anything more in life.” One day he accompanied his older brother to a protest in Washington DC, where he saw a man wearing a Bitcoin t-shirt. When he asked his brother what it was, the brother said, “It’s going to end Wall Street.”
He was inspired, and in 2011 he took $1,000 that his grandmother had given him and invested it all in Bitcoin, which was trading at around $10 at the time. We all know how Bitcoin has zoomed upwards in the last 10 years, making Finman a crypto millionaire. At the age of 15, he sold $100,000 worth of BTC, started an education platform called Botangle (inspired by his negative school experience) and sold it for 300 BTC a few years later, further expanding his bitcoin holdings.
3. Rachel Siegel: Today, Rachel Siegel is a well-known personality in the cryptosphere. She is a Bitcoin millionaire and the founder of Crypto Finally, a platform working towards mass adoption of blockchain technology. But things were not always so good.
In 2017, she was only a substitute teacher, living “paycheque to paycheque” in a dark apartment in New York. However, her life changed after she attended the after party of a cryptocurrency conference. From then on, Siegel decided to put the remnants of her weekly paycheck, about $25, into cryptocurrencies. Over time, her holdings grew in value, reaching the low seven-figure range in February 2022.
4. Kane Ellis: Kane Ellis is now a Bitcoin millionaire and even owns a Maserati. However, his fortune did not come from investing. Instead, he took the back door and made his money through mining. In 2011, Ellis was an 18-year-old high school dropout who learned about mining through his IT job. While he was out working, his computer kept mining BTC.
Initially, he only earned about 4 BTC per day, equivalent to about $8 at the time. This was a decent passive income, but Ellis foresaw how lucrative it could be in the future and it worked perfectly for him. With his BTC earnings, he started CarSwap, a leading global platform for trading/selling/buying cars. And his Maserati, it bears the license plate “BANKRPT”.
5. Tommy and James (last names withheld for privacy): Last year, CNN Business carried a story about two brothers from Westchester, New York, who went from nearly unemployed to overnight millionaires. They were both interested in wedding photography and filming, but with COVID-19 lockdowns in place, it was difficult to get work.
Then, in February 2021, a friend told Tommy and James about Shiba Inu, a coin that could one day make money. They rolled the dice on the meme coin, thinking of it as “a lottery ticket that wouldn’t expire”. First, the brothers managed to scrape together $200 and bought a ton of SHIB, which was worth a fraction of a cent at the time. After a few weeks, their investment had grown 300 percent. Encouraged by this growth, they got their mother and sister to invest as well, and two months later they woke up as millionaires.
While these stories might make you want to buy crypto ASAP, it’s important to remember that things don’t go the same way every time. On the flip side, people can even lose their entire savings overnight on cryptocurrencies, or any type of investment for that matter. Therefore, before you try your hand at crypto, do your research and remember to invest only as much as you can afford to lose.
