On top of learning the language, John Bonavia visited Mt. Gox, the world leader in Bitcoin exchange at the time. Inspired, he got back to playing with the golden crypto-coins but intended to save as much as he can.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to keep bad luck away.
In 2012, John Bonavia ran out of dollars and decided to get back to work, but his job hunt took longer than expected. As a result, the young software developer sold most of his remaining bitcoins at the available rate — which was a tiny $5 per coin.
In total, John Bonavia blew 55k bitcoins worth a total of $2.2 billion as of January 2021. Though he secured an apartment and kept some crypto-change in his digital pocket, it was nowhere near enough to make him a millionaire over the years.
Bonavia mentioned he is happy with the modest gains he’d made and shared a few lessons he’d learned. Below, I listed Bonavia takeaways and backed them up with insights from other sources.
1. Value is shifting
Yuval Noah Harari defined money as “anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things.”
When you look at dollars and bitcoins, remember that both currencies are representations of values. John Bonavia misfortune shows that the financial value of the digital world is exceeding that of the material one. Read that again.
2. “Money matters: more is always better than less.”
We can easily agree that Bonavia’s words make sense, but why exactly?
“ [Money] is an all-purpose tool, which means: it’s much more like a resource than a tool per se,” wrote Roy F Baumeister from Psychology Today. “Money thus makes the person less dependent on the goodwill and social approval of others.”
Whether you’d like to f-bomb haters on social media using Ferrari pictures, build a stupid $42 million clock, or spoil your loved ones, money gives you freedom.
More money, more freedom.
3. “You don’t need to be rich to lead a perfectly good life.”
This second phrase from Bonavia seems to contradict the first. Except, it doesn’t.
‘The more money, the better’ works to a certain point. Psychologists tried to calculate that certain point and found that a yearly income of $95,000 in the US provides a good amount of emotional wellbeing and satiation. Obviously, these numbers are scalable and vary from one person to another.
Maybe you want more, maybe less. The point is: pick a number and chase it but don’t forget to actually live while doing so.
Because hey, what if you die today?
4. Still — Save, please
In 2012, the year Bonavia ran out of cash before finding a job, he was sitting on 10,000 bitcoins. That’s $400 million today. Gone.
The idea isn’t to swing pieces of wisdom with the luxury of hindsight. Rather, the idea is to learn from people’s experiences, so you might want to listen to Warren Buffet.
“Do not save what is left after spending, but spend what is left after saving.” Because hey, what if you’ll also live to be 90?
5. Mistakes are also an investment
Bonavia story reminded me of a movie titled 21. Here’s the plot. Brilliant student Ben met the requirements for Harvard Medical School but couldn’t afford the $300,000 tuition. John had two options. One: get a prestigious scholarship where to get selected, he needed to dazzle the director.
Except, John had nothing to impress with, let alone dazzle; that’s why he went with option two.
The kid joined a group of fellow math geniuses who excel at cheating in Blackjack. Together, they hacked a casino and looted tons of cash before a mistake backfired and took away every cent they’d won.
Though the young gambler ended up broke, his crazy story did dazzle the scholarship’s director.
Just like John’s misfortune got him a free ticket to Harvard, I’m sure Bonavia’s loss will also bring him something — if it didn’t already.
Mistakes are also an investment.