Let me tell you about the biggest regret in my life so far. The year 2009 seems so long ago, especially in the cryptocurrency world, but still hangs heavy in my mind. I was a pretty typical aloof high school student, no real deep passion or interest in anything at all. So of course when I chanced upon a technical white paper about this Bitcoin thing, that was difficult for a kid with no solid programming background to understand, written by some guy I never heard of, I didn’t exactly leap at the opportunity to try it out. It took more than 10 minutes to set up the mining client, which was 5 minutes longer than I had time for. My Bitcoin adventure began and ended in one evening sometime in the summer of 2009.

For those not in the know, summer 2009 was probably the earliest someone with no direct connection to the Bitcoin project or deep into cryptography would have most likely heard of Bitcoin. From what I remember, people were capable of mining hundreds of coins a week with pretty basic hardware. There wasn’t even a mining pool yet; there was no need for one. Two years later in 2011 I learned I could have been fairly wealthy just as I was graduating high school and trying to figure out how I was going to pay for college. The price proceeded to drop significantly shortly after, and I felt better about myself. Of course, it then rose to at the time unheard-of levels another two years later in 2013. None of this wholly convinced me to try and get back into Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency that appeared on my radar for years. I was way too busy working full-time to try and pay the costs of attending college full-time, and any spare time was spent with my family and friends. No money or time to pay attention to what some imaginary coin with an ever-changing value was doing on the internet.

Let’s bring this to the present. I have a bachelor’s degree in computer science, still no money, and a huge chip on my shoulder. Bitcoin is the highest it has ever been, Ethereum is the latest challenger to the cryptocurrency throne, and there are too many new coins and technologies to count. I have changed. I have watched the cryptocurrency space change dramatically. This is a renaissance for financial technology, and we are on the ground floor. Except for 2009, there is probably no better time to get in. And I want in.