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A Penny For My Thoughts Essay

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A Penny for My Thoughts About four years ago, I sat in front of a computer screen quietly chuckling to myself as I opened a financial news article with a headline describing what would be considered my “worst case scenario” a month prior. Mt.Gox, the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, had filed for bankruptcy after a multi-million dollar hack, illegally drawing millions upon millions of dollars into the wallets of shady individuals. The price of bitcoin would fall dramatically over the next few weeks to a shadow of it’s former glory, but at this point I could not have cared less. Just three weeks before, I had chosen to end my single year of drone-like, nearly obsessive bitcoin mining, pooling, and trading and decided to cash out at …show more content…

Casual, joking lectures about Buffett’s investments and “American” capitalism became commonplace, and my impressionable mind seemed to overlook how a civil engineer could provide such sound analysis about market trends and consumer beliefs. Needless to say, my dream had begun to take root, surrounded by a slurry of half-baked investment advice and the looming, satirized visage of Warren Buffett. My “fascination” for material wealth however, in particular the process in acquiring it, manifested for the first time during a hot summer in Toronto as the entire fourth grade class became aware of the hottest new trend: Pokemon cards. I had no large interest in the cards, nor the arbitrary pieces of paper used to buy them. However: I did want to prove that I could make money like Mr. Jobs or Mr. Gates, the larger-than-life idols of my youth. Armed with construction paper, white glue, and a cadre of seven year old graphics artists, I began to take upon the momentous task of undercutting Pokemon’s market share by simply manufacturing my own knockoffs. And, in line with my capitalistic standards, we would sell them. We made 300 cards over a span of week and sold them for a nickel each to the primary school class, selling about 4/5ths of our inventory for a small fortune of twelve dollars, of which I took six. I felt a bit like Steve Jobs already, challenging the consumers themselves to seek something different. My Chinese-Canadian-American dream was coming to fruition.

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