I sold my first company at 17.
Then I made 800+ investments and lost millions figuring out what nobody told me.
12 lessons that would've saved me years:
1. Your first $10,000 is the hardest money you'll ever make. Before it, everything is mental. After it, it's mechanical.
2. Stop waiting for the million-dollar opportunity. Build the $1,000 skills that make the million inevitable.
3. Working brutally hard doesn't prove you picked the right path. Most of the time it means your strategy is broken.
4. Proximity is power. I've never found an opportunity at the bottom of a to-do list.
5. Distribution beats product. You can build something brilliant and still die because nobody saw it.
6. MVP means Minimum Viable Proof. It answers one question: does anyone care enough to pay or stay?
7. At the earliest stage, the founder is the product. People fund the person they want to bet on.
8. Forget the fund's name and pick the partner. My test: will they pick up the phone at midnight?
9. Irritation is the smoke before the fire. When everything and everyone starts annoying you, you're exhausted.
10. Money behaves like weather. I lost $4 million in one evening when a single token fell 90%.
11. The only thing my first million bought me was time. Time to learn, travel, think bigger and build the next company.
12. Happy birthday, every day. I say it to my friends all the time.
"It's not my birthday."
"It is now."
Money only matters when it turns into memory.
I'd rather live richly than die rich.
Which number did you learn the hard way?
Save this for the day you need it.
On my youtube channel I will be covering some of the tokens on $XRP Ledger... Let's keep building the ecosystem.... $FUZZY $ARMY $XYZ
DROP etc. join me here: https://t.co/L0N9dTsVwf
@seilerjoko@bgarlinghouse because the "payment system" with XRP is obviously not in live production yet. ? the only answer I know. But XRP is not the only standard. There are other projects being built we don't know about yet. More centralized... so controlled by gov.
$XRP will solve a global payment problem.... Watch this video by @bgarlinghouse#XRP Will Connect The World Of Payments! Bank of Ripple
https://t.co/Cf4lk6WyPT
After years in crypto, the harsh reality becomes obvious: 99% of "utility" tokens are pure money extraction, from teams to pay salaries etc.
Strip away the fake paid partnerships, "trillion-dollar" promises, and paid press releases (no one is reading), and almost nothing is left with real token value except a few:
โข ETH: Real users paying real gas fees for blockspace.
โข $HYPE: Real trading volume funding actual token buybacks, not VC unlocks.
โข Stablecoins: The only crypto product with undeniable global product-market fit. $RLUSD $USDC
+ a few others that are still in building mode... IYKYK
Everything else is mostly ghost chains with $2M in TVL paying their bills by dumping unlocked tokens on retail.
If a protocol doesn't generate real fees today, you aren't investing, you are the exit liquidity.
Show me a real utility token with real usage.
$XRP will solve a global payment problem.... Watch this video by @bgarlinghouse#XRP Will Connect The World Of Payments! Bank of Ripple
https://t.co/Cf4lk6WyPT
Which meme token will experince highest growth on $XRP Ledger - Onchain $YELLOw Pro: - @YellowProHQ https://t.co/udWFryT1J2 in 2026?
$ARMY $FUZZY $XYZ $DROP Add your own favorite below poll.
Yellow Onchain is now live inside @XamanWallet as an xApp ๐ก
Trade XRP Ledger DEX markets with limit orders, right from the wallet you already use. Every order waits for your OK.
Open it in Xaman ๐ https://t.co/6L9w74CaO6