My Bitcoin Journey

For those who do not know me, Bitcoin fascinates me. I see it not merely as an investment but as an idea and invention that can positively impact humanity. Through study, sanctification, and much personal struggle, God has laid upon my heart a conviction about what the Bible teaches regarding the morality of money. I hope my story can be a light to those who struggle with understanding money and economics, and be helpful to those who experience greed or frugality in their finances. Understanding the money we use now sheds light on the reality of Satan’s grip in this area—an influence I believe can be countered with something more aligned to Scripture’s teachings.

My first encountering with Bitcoin was sometime in early 2015. As I had turned 16 recently, my dad thought it would be a good idea to help him in running our nutrition store. I generally worked weekend shifts, so not to interfere with school and sports, and those weekends were generally slow. In order to ease my boredom when I had no customers and the shop didn't need any tending to, I scrolled through the shows and movies on the Amazon fire stick to entertain myself. I stumbled upon a documentary called The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin, and I don't know why I never decided to watch it. Over the course of many weekends, I fell into the same routine scrolling past it, however, the image of its cover stuck in my mind in the years to come.

In 2017, I began hearing more about Bitcoin through YouTube and Twitter. By that time, I was no longer working at my dad’s smoothie shop but had joined him at his security business, earning a modest $17 per hour. As I made money, I considered my parents’ financial principles, live below your means, don’t spend more than you earn, save some money on the side, and so on. However, I was drawn to the idea of digital assets. I decided to set up a Coinbase account and invested $100, which seemed like a significant amount to me at the time. I bought some Bitcoin and watched it almost every day. This was all new to me, and I really had no idea what I was doing.

A couple of months later, I learned about Binance, which marked the beginning of a long road of mistakes. I didn’t understand cryptocurrencies at all, but with some money left in my savings, I started day trading into the winter of 2018. I watched Bitcoin peak around $20,000 and then quickly fall to $6,000; of course, I lost money in the process. At that point, I decided to give up and focus on school.

After a year and a half of hard work and determination, I earned the CyberCorps Scholarship for Service from the National Science Foundation. I was ecstatic and grateful for this opportunity, as it lifted a burden and set me up for a promising career in cybersecurity. With this scholarship, I received $12,500 per semester and I had no idea what to do with the money. Thankfully, after some time thinking on it, I used part of it to pay off my student loans and the rest to open and max out a Roth IRA in December 2019. Little did I realize what was about to happen in a few months.

When COVID-19 was declared a pandemic, I was on a CRU Spring Breakaway mission trip in Brownsville, Texas. Watching my Roth IRA plummet honestly frightened me. Almost half of my net worth was gone in what seemed like an instant. After returning to South Dakota and hearing more news about the pandemic, I found myself pondering life. So much had happened in such a short time, and I wrestled with God.

Over the summer of 2020, to escape the reality of everything happening, I decided to train to become an Offensive Security Certified Professional. I didn’t pay attention to much else. My routines were the same each day, wake up, hack some machines, eat, doom-scroll on dating apps, go to church on Sundays, sleep, and repeat. Eventually, I took the certification exam and passed, but I was burned out. I had become addicted to an unhealthy lifestyle, and I suffered for it. When school started up again in August, I received even more money because it was my graduate school year; $17,000 was deposited into my account. This is when things really took a turn.

To add to my unhealthy habits, I decided to wake up early in the mornings to begin day trading stocks with real money. I fell into an addiction of looking at markets constantly every day. I studied patterns, trends, and market psychology in this time where assets continued to rise after the infamous 2020 crash. While I was going to classes, it was pretty much all I would think about. I even decided to buy $1k worth of dogecoin for the meme of it, before Elon pumped it. I honestly wasn't getting satisfaction out of any of it, I just wanted more money.

Later on, during the 2020 lockdowns, I traded daily and fell into a lot of sin through my obsession with making money. Admittedly, I did make a lot of money during the bull run of 2020–2021, until I started trading futures on leverage and trying to find “the next best crypto” to invest in. By May 2021, I had lost everything I traded and even had a friend lend me some money to get by. Soon enough, I lost that too by thinking I could trade my way back. I was in debt and lived off the little money I still had until I started my job in June 2021.

Once I started my job, I focused on normal investing again, but I was still struggling with this obsession of making money. Then, on October 31st, 2021, my lung collapsed randomly, and I was hospitalized for two weeks. I can only thank God for this moment of suffering, as it destroyed my pride and revealed my sin in many areas. I’m thankful that through the teachings at my church, God used that moment to show me I need to look at the world fully through a biblical lens.

My interest in cryptocurrency and money didn’t go away, but I decided to analyze things based on Scripture. I wanted to start from the ground up with cryptocurrency, so I began by buying a book called “The Bitcoin Standard.” After I read this book, I had so many questions. It wasn’t primarily a book on Bitcoin but rather a book on the history of money. It confused me a lot, but it revealed things I never knew about our U.S. dollar system.

Being the nerd and tech geek I am, Bitcoin fascinated me as a concept from a technology, currency, and network perspective. However, I wanted to test it against Scripture. I happened to find the “Bitcoin and the Bible” podcast in my search to see if other Christians had written anything about it. I am grateful to God for using the men on this podcast to share God’s truth on money. I was humbled in many ways and gained a lot of patience.

Since December of 2021, I decided to save all of my money in Bitcoin—not other cryptocurrencies—and dollar-cost average. This conviction continues to be a blessing for my wife and me, and thankfully for our community around us.

By learning about our current global financial system and Bitcoin, and testing both against Scripture, it revealed a lot that I was naive about. I am convicted that Bitcoin adheres to biblical principles better than any other form of money that exists. Sin has taken over our current system in many hidden ways, and I’ve opted out through biblical discernment.

I am passionate about this subject and believe Bitcoin to be a good thing for humanity, but I am more passionate about Christ and upholding the truth in His Word, as it is only through faith in Christ by His grace and mercy that we may be saved. Be aware of making Bitcoin an idol, as Satan will use everything to tempt us to fall away from the truth. Bitcoin is a tool for God’s kingdom in spreading the gospel, not your savior.

In no way do I claim to be an expert in this subject, nor is this financial advice, but I share this as an example of how Christ has worked in my heart. I pray it may be a blessing for those interested, and if you ever have questions or would like to meet up and chat, you can always reach out to me.

Thus says the Lord: “Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the Lord who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the Lord.”

— Jeremiah 9:23–24 ESV