My Best Friend Dumped a Bitcoin Millionaire. Here’s Why.

The unexpected truths of going from minimum wage to retired multi-millionaire by age 22.

Mandy went from living in a van, parked illegally along a trash-filled Venice Beach alleyway, to jetting off to Paris, Rome, Milan, New York…all over the world (literally — they took a trip around the world). She stayed in five-star hotels, wined and dined at the Nobus of the world (and the actual Nobu of New York and L.A.), and tried to quell the untamable anger boiling up inside her with each spoonful of caviar she jammed down her throat as Jon’s eyes remained glued to a 7-inch screen, scrolling for his next supercar purchase.

Jon wasn’t just a millionaire.

He was a tens-of-millions millionaire, and he had the garage full of neon-colored supercars to prove it, valued at about 5% of his total net worth. Jon was an aspiring actor, a 22-year-old retiree, and a recipient of the early adopter award for his Bitcoin investment of about $10k on his 19th birthday.

Jon was so rich that his wealth manager (the guy who made sure Jon didn’t lose those tens of millions by making another risky investment, like playing the Bitcoin lottery twice) had assured him he would be a billionaire by the time he got to regular retirement age (~65), solely through his nest egg’s compounding returns.

This story isn’t really about Jon. Unfortunately, I’ve never had the pleasure of meeting Jon or riding in any of his supercars.

This story is informed by Mandy’s point of view, as the closest person with a direct window into Jon’s mind and emotions post-millionairedom. I met Mandy on the very day she broke up with Jon.

Since I know you’re all waiting, I’ll just tell you Jon’s secret millionaire strategy right now:

• He invested in Bitcoin.
• He invested early.
• He invested a lot at a time when few others would.
• He also got out at the right time.

Moral of the story: Jon took a risk, got lucky, and decided to take his gains before he pushed his luck too far.

If you want to be Jon, rewind the clock about 10 years, take 90% of the money in your savings, dump it into this obscure thing called Bitcoin, and hope for the best. Check on it in three to five years and be pleasantly surprised.

You didn’t and you wouldn’t. To be honest, most smart, risk-calculating investors likely wouldn’t take that kind of a risk either, so you’re in good company.

However, Jon did and it paid off.

Also, as for Jon’s impeccable credentials and educational background, he had saved up that initial $10k from working at Subway, didn’t go to college, and was kind of flailing around in life…enter Bitcoin millionairedom!

Now that we got that out of the way, let’s talk about what matters:

Post-bitcoin Jon.

When Mandy met Jon, the bitcoin had already been converted to cash, and those USD had already hit his bank account. Jon was loaded and ready to show Mandy the best year of her life. After all, he was a carefree multi-millionaire, ready to make his mark on (or buy his way into) the entertainment industry, living in oceanside Southern California paradise.

And Mandy was ready for a life of fun, success, and adventure. Who wouldn’t be?

Here’s the timeline of the Jon and Mandy relationship:

• Month 1: Jon meets Mandy. Instant mutual infatuation.
• Month 3: Mandy quits her job to travel around the world with Jon.
• Months 4–6: The global couples retreat ensues, and the cracks begin to form…
• Month 7: They return from their whirlwind trip around the world, and mutual loathing might be a fitting descriptor for the state of the relationship. It wasn’t dead, but perhaps too far gone to save.
• Month 12: Mandy dumps Jon. A showering of expensive tech gadgets follows, as well as the promise of a beachfront house, circa $4–5 million. Mandy doesn’t budge; it’s over.

Oh, poor Jon…he had the world at his feet, all the money he could ever want or need, and the life of his dreams.

Oh wait, he still does.

And he had the girl of his dreams.

How and why did things go so south, so quickly, and what can we learn from the failure-turned-success-turned-sadness that is Jon?

I’ve contemplated if I’d like to be Mandy and if I’d make the same decisions she did. I know I wouldn’t make the same decisions as Jon; I’m a bit too risk-averse for that.

However, to be Mandy, with a proposal on the horizon, a free key to any and every gate in my chosen career (Mandy was an aspiring actress, and Jon literally bought his way into movies), and a life of financial mega-security with a fine partner like Jon, it kind of seems like she hit the jackpot. Would I really give all that up over a few personality imperfections?

To be honest, I wanted to be Mandy. Heck, I wanted to be Jon! Jon was my idol; successful, young, and free to live a life of no consequences.

Jon could try any and everything he wanted, and who cares if he failed? He didn’t need professional success for a resume. He didn’t need a job for financial security. He didn’t need to do or prove anything to anybody; he had already made it. Jon had won in my book.

And that is exactly the problem.

When there are no consequences, there are no consequences.

This is what led Jon into the hopeless, unmotivated cycle of depression that eventually resulted in Jandy’s (Jon + Mandy) relationship demise.

Here are the unintended and unexpected consequences of financial success for the accidental millionaire (as illustrated by Jon):

• Great becomes the norm, so great becomes good. Once “great” becomes good, good becomes okay. Once “good” becomes okay, okay becomes terrible. Now every piece of mediocrity in your life feels like a massive failure of disastrous proportions.
• Entitlement sets in and gratefulness (if you ever had that) disappears.
• You start to contemplate life on a larger scale. Once you’ve achieved everything you thought you wanted, and your ambition has been depleted (or was never there to begin with), everything starts to mean nothing.
• You try to distract yourself with things. It works until it doesn’t. Maybe you should have bought a puppy, perhaps that would actually help? Depending on the size of your wealth, your lack of motivation, and the amount of void-filling purchases you’ve already partaken in, even the puppy may not be able to restore your zest for life.
• You’re bored. As a result, you start to bore the people around you.

That very last bullet is exactly what happened with Jon and Mandy. Jon experienced a culmination of all those unfortunate accidental millionaire side effects, but the boredom is what really killed it for Mandy.

The interesting thing about Jon, though, is that even though it appears he changed, he may not have changed that much at all.

Mandy met Jon at a high in his life, fresh off the printing press of success. However, had she met Jon five years earlier when he was hopeless and depressed living with his parents, debating working at Subway or attending community college (neither really piqued his interest), she might have seen a very similar Jon to the guy she broke up with in the end.

Here’s the question to consider: does money change people, or does it simply revert them to the “them” they always were?

They say money only amplifies a person’s natural characteristics, good or bad, and this could perhaps be true. However, I wonder if money also allows people the lack of consequence and judgment to return to their true selves.

There’s no longer the need to put on a facade for an employer.

There’s no need to conform to the socially-accepted norms, whether that pertains to human interaction, personal hygiene, career ambition, or anything really.

You can be as great or as unimpressive of a person as you truly want to be.

It won’t matter. You’ll be fine either way.

• You’ll still have more money than the hard-working lawyer who suits up to go into the office and pour over contracts for 16 hours a day.
• You’ll still have more freedom than the strangers who rush past you on the street, tethered to some appointment or obligation and subsequent expectation.
• You’ll still have the brazen confidence to give your relationships far less time and effort than they deserve since these too can be bought in some form or another.

So there, that’s exactly what accidental millionairedom can do to a person. It can give you the freedom to be exactly who you want to be or exactly who you always were.

If you were a go-getter, ambitious, full of energy and excitement to achieve your next big milestone, be that running a marathon or writing a novel, you’ll go do that.

If you were a researcher, unquenchably curious and inquisitive about life and the world around you, you’ll go find those answers you’ve always been seeking.

And if you truly, in your heart of hearts, never really cared about personal goals, relationships, or the world around you, maybe you still don’t care. Your excessive money just gave you permission to embrace it and let it show.

All that being said, it begs the question: how would (or will) extreme and unexpected success change you?

P.S. Mandy’s and Jon’s names have been altered to protect their identities.