The 10 Hidden Rules of DeFi Wealth: How Time and Compound Interest Destroyed My Bitcoin Portfolio — And Why You’re Missing Them

The Silent Engine of Wealth

I didn’t get rich by trading. I got rich by not trading.

At Columbia, my professors taught financial models. But in DeFi, the real alpha isn’t in APs or smart contracts—it’s in silence. Time compounds when you stop checking your wallet. Every time you refresh your portfolio, you lose a fraction of its potential.

I bought Bitcoin at $700 in 2021—not because I was ‘bullish,’ but because I understood scarcity.

Gold is the original hard asset; Bitcoin is its digital twin. Both cannot be inflated. Both are finite.

Buy Hard Assets—Never Rent Them

Most people invest in tokens they can delete with a tweet.

Real wealth is what survives devaluation.

If you buy an NFT for dinner, you’ve already lost the game.

Hard assets don’t need marketing—they need time.

The First Move Is the Hardest—Then It Vanishes

My first trade? A failed API call on Coinbase. I thought ‘getting in early’ meant buying everything. It didn’t. Start with one hard asset—and then do nothing for five years. The market rewards patience like gravity: invisible, relentless, inevitable.

Never Overestimate Your Skill—Underestimate Time

You think algorithms beat markets? No—they just delay them until you panic. Your skill matters less than your stillness. The best quant doesn’t run trades—he watches them sleep through cycles of fear and greed。 And he never posts about it on Twitter.