How I went from zero in 2015 to very comfortable in 2025 In 2015 I realized I needed money to live the life I wanted. Fresh out of school I took the first job I could get making sandwiches. I looked at this dark period in my life as a major turning point because the disrespect food service workers receive is unacceptable. That's when I was going to level up. Started taking on any extra jobs/side hustles I could find. Eventually had decent side income that paid for my living expenses. Finally I was able to start saving. I got to $10k pretty quick, my first milestone achieved. I was proud. With the extra money I had I started investing in stocks. I didn't look at charts or anything, I just bought large tech names. Everything I bought slowly went up, the stock market finally made sense to me. Still 2015 into 2016. Shortly thereafter I was given an opportunity to interview for a wholesale position at a decent-sized corporation. My first and only "real job." This job plus my side hustling meant I was saving a lot of money every month now. I lived in a crappy apartment with a roommate and pocketed 75% of my income. This is the real alpha that CT never says. I built my first nest egg slow and steady via income and then investing. INCOME INCOME INCOME. Late 2016 I bought my first ETH stack. I very quickly left traditional finance focus to venture out into crypto. Mid to end of 2017. The majority of my expendable income went into ETH and some alts. Crypto surged late 2017 and I thought I had finally made it hitting six figures for the first time. The first half of 2018 was a massive alt season post-BTC top, this is when I really got hooked on trading. I ran up a lot of alt trades only to roundtrip it all in later 2018. Around mid-2018 I started trading on Bitmex, this was my introduction to derivatives. Things seemed to be going well at first but then November came and BTC broke down from 6k to 3k. I was long for this move and almost got liquidated (-8.3 BTC). My derivatives trading was going terribly and my portfolio was down 75%. November 2018 was when I decided it was time to level up again. No longer would I be the emotional trader slow bleeding, I'm going to have an edge and outtrade others. Going into 2019 on my grind, all I did was work my job and work on my trading. Believe it or not, I learned a lot. I started to feel like I knew what I was doing. Almost five years in I finally was getting good. Had some monster trades on things like Chainlink and Silver. "I'm quitting my job next year." Going into 2020 I was feeling good but that was about to change. February 2020 I quit my job to trade full time, I had built up my capital and it was time. I couldn't deal with my bosses at work anymore. March 2020 was an event so earth-shattering you really had to be there to understand. My traditional finance and my crypto portfolio got nuked and on top of this I traded it poorly -65%. In April 2020 I had to pick up the pieces and decide if I was going to commit or quit. I thought about this for a couple of months and I'm not going to lie, I was really upset about all this. I don't remember what clicked but one day I said fuck it, I'm getting rich or dying trying. I was down bad but not out of the game. The BTC macro situation was turning positive for the first time in years with 10k macro resistance flipped to support in the Summer. DeFi Summer popped off but I was on vacation sorting out my life so I missed it. I was scared but I bought more BTC and ETH, then started buying into the DeFi blue chips my friends were printing with during the summer. BTC started to heat up into Q4 2020 with the macro uptrend starting. DeFi was the best sector to bet on during this risk phase so I was positioned perfectly. My portfolio grew so quickly during this period. Q1 2021 was unlike anything I had ever experienced. So much money coming in I felt like a god. I was rotating around in alts a lot feeling like I couldn't miss. Not too long after the market humbled me again (May 2021). May 2021 was when I really learned to protect my gains. May -40%. As we traded into the Summer lows the next narrative to follow DeFi came, Metaverse. I was lucky to be early to plays like Sand etc., did +800% in three weeks. After the Metaverse narrative, came crypto gaming. Every now and then I see a project and just know it's going to pop off, like DeFi Kingdoms. Going into October and November 2021 things started to change in the space. The bull momentum was dying. In November 2021 I saw very concerning signs in the flows so I made the decision to hedge my stack (66k) and then shortly after sold all my spot holdings from 64-59k (BTC and alts). Going into 2022 I was in a position of strength short from the top watching everyone else round trip. But it wasn't going to be all sunshine and rainbows for me. Even though I traded 2022 near perfectly it was a rough year between: -January 2022 hacked (low six figures) -2021 taxes -Later 2022 FTX stealing a quarter million. Going into 2023, there was a faint sense of optimism. The echo bubble narrative made a lot of sense so December 2022 I made plans and started positioning for this setup. In 2023 I made the correct bet to structure my portfolio around BTC & SOL not ETH this time around. 2023 & 2024 were good years. My portfolio was in a good place with BTC/SOL carrying and I was still trading the market well. Here we are now in 2025, I couldn't have asked for things to work out better. I trade because I want to now and that's a freeing experience. Closing Thoughts: Took me over 5 years to go full time, slow and steady wins the race my friends. Income and Capital gains. "Income will make you rich but capital gains will make you wealthy" -Robert Herjavec. I skipped a lot of my trading and experiences when writing this because it would have to be a book to fit everything. I've always been open and honest about my ups and downs. Trust me I have downs. So how do you win? You aren't going to save your way to wealth, you need to earn it. So make more money. -Keep expenses low. -Max income. -Max capital gains. -Optimize taxes.