Happy Birthday BowTied Golem!
A Year In Review: Joining the BowTied Jungle, Crypto Twitter & Discovering NFTs
Gm fam!
Today marks 1 whole year since @BowTiedGolem was born on August 17th, 2021.
So, without further adieu…
Happy Birthday to BowTied Golem!
What a crazy, eventful, and utterly life changing year it has been.
When I first created this account, I had no idea what direction it was going to take.
All I knew was that I believed in crypto/web3 and I believed that the BowTied Jungle—started in April 2021 by @BowTiedBull—was the perfect place for me to find my feet.
I agreed with the ideology of the BowTied’s, the motto of “equal opportunity, unequal results” strongly resonated, I could see high quality people building up great brands from 0, and most important of all, everything was anonymous.
In the BowTied Jungle I saw a potential home on the internet, surrounded by like-minded, hardcore individuals who would stop at nothing to boldly move forward into the future.
Joining the BowTied Jungle was one of the best decisions of my life.
Looking back, I can hardly believe my good fortune to have found such an incredible community to join and I am thankful everyday that I decided to take the plunge and dive in, even though I wasn’t sure what I was going to focus on or what value I could provide to my fellow BowTied’s.
Having had the most experience in the health/supplement space in my previous life, that was what I wrote about at first on Twitter, connecting with @BowTiedOx to talk about supplements or health/diet/training related topics.
(Golem’s first thread below)
I didn’t know what to write about on my Substack, so my first two posts were about powerful lessons I had learned in the past and how I was applying those lessons directly in creating my new persona, BowTied Golem, on the internet.
See my first post below:
I was deep into crypto at this point having spent the first half of 2021 learning about anything and everything in the wild world of crypto.
I was DCA-ing into big coins, I was flipping meme/sh*t coins on Uniswap, I was farming on DeFi platforms and everything in-between.
It was all incredible and interesting but it wasn’t until the week before I created Golem that I really found “MY PURPOSE” in crypto.
NFTs.
Something about NFTs “clicked” in my brain more so than any other branch of crypto had before.
It was a new technology birthed by the blockchain that relied more on empathy than analytics.
To put it simply, feelings > math.
What I mean by that is, up until the rise of NFTs, crypto was a landscape that was absolutely dominated by quants and analytical people.
People that could code, write trading algorithms, study the charts and create financial models with probabilistic outcomes of where the price of coins would go.
Look at most of the OG’s in the space that came up from 2013-2021; nearly all of them are mathematical geniuses and/or extremely smart quants.
The ones who aren’t spend many, many, days/nights learning trading philosophy, psychology, and TA* (Technical Analysis).
Before NFTs, everything about crypto relied on the charts.
Which makes complete sense as from its birth until 2021 crypto was a financial infrastructure first and everything else second.
But with the rise of NFTs, things started to change.
NFTs were not fungible like computer coins.
They were limited/exclusive collections that acted much more like the collectibles/sports trading card market then cryptocurrencies or the stock market.
It combined the best aspects of collector culture, video game loot, cryptocurrencies, prestige, art, and so many other things—all wrapped together in a nice little JPEG.
NFTs are not just numbers on a screen.
NFTs represent peoples identities, communities, and cultures.
NFTs represent art, taste, refinement, prestige, and degeneracy.
NFTs represent the convoluted, crazy, emotional, illogical, and insane world that human beings have created.
NFTs represent the future.
I remember last August when I had the realization about what NFTs were and how they were going to impact EVERYTHING in the future—I had what many OG’s lovingly refer to as their “aha!” or “Finding Bitcoin” moment.
It’s the moment that every OG crypto trader has had when all of the stars aligned and for a brief moment, everything made sense, and they could see how this technology was going to completely change the world.
NFTs were that moment for me and continue to be that source of inspiration, entertainment, stress and fascination ever since.
I would be remiss to not give a wholehearted and loving shoutout to @GaryVee, who was an internet mentor of mine who not only had helped me tremendously in the past with my entrepreneurial/personal growth ventures but was also the person who FIRST got me into NFTs.
The FIRST NFT I ever minted, when I literally had no idea what an NFT was, was a VeeFriend series 1 on May 12th, 2021.
I minted it for 0.5921 $ETH with a 0.111 $ETH gas fee for a total cost of 0.7031 $ETH. The price of ETH at the time was $3,811.29, so I paid ~$2,679.71 for my first NFT.
Here’s the transaction:
(Address & Token ID deleted because…you know the reason. Also value $ is set to “estimated on the day” the txn happened.)
Which, at the time, was an incredibly large amount of money for me to spend on anything crypto related at once.
I think that before that, the most I had ever spent was like $1,000 at a time buying BTC or ETH on an exchange like Coinbase.
I was spending like half a month’s paycheck on a JPEG!
Insanity.
But I did it was because:
1) I believed in Gary Vee and I knew that if he said he was going to make something his life’s work, he meant it
2) I really, really, wanted to go to VeeCon which is what the purpose of these NFTs were and considering that going to an exclusive, incredible conference was a few thousand dollars normally, it made sense to me
3) I figured that with Gary’s audience/reach that I could always resell it for what I paid because there was only 10,000 of them and Gary’s fans are worldwide and in the 10’s of millions at this point
But this was not my “aha!” moment.
That would come later.
I was however intrigued by these new things called NFTs so I started doing research on them.
I found an NFT collection later that week called “Cryptorares” that was an attempt to make Runescape inspired collectables that you could attach to your NFTs, like Cryptopunks.
Having been an avid Runescape player in the past, this made sense to me so I minted one of those too.
This time it was only 0.035 $ETH with a 0.023 Gas fee, so about $100 in total, which was far more palatable than the $2.7k I spent on the VeeFriend.
Needless to say, cryptorares died shortly thereafter.
Meaning that with my first 2 purchases with NFTs, I minted 1 Bluechip and 1 Rug. lol.
Then in May of 2021 I watched as the crypto markets absolutely NUKED.
We went from a high of $4,380 per $ETH to $1,730 in 2 weeks!
We lost -60% value in 2 weeks and my VeeFriends purchase that I paid $2.7k for was worth around $1,000 2 weeks later.
Not only that, but since I was heavily in alt coins at this point, I watched in horror as I had my first ever 6-figure loss across my portfolio.
All of the time, energy, and dedication I had spent from January - May building up my positions was essentially wiped out in the course of 11 days.
Needless to say, I quickly fell into a bout of depression and forgot all about NFTs while I licked my wounds for the next 2 months.
Fast forward to July 2021 and I was back in the game.
I was digging deep into some DeFi protocols and making the most I could out of the cheap $ETH sitting around $1,700-1,800.
It was totally not intended, but I managed to actually buy the dip and rolled into August feeling fantastic as I loaded up my $ETH bags around $1.8k and in under a month we were back at $3k eth.
It was just around this time that I noticed NFTs again.
A new collection had minted called Pudgy Penguins and I kept seeing big influencers I followed in Twitter all rocking their new Pudgy Penguin pfps* (aka profile pictures).
I remember when I first looked at them, they were trading around .2-.3 eth floor. I really liked them, the art just slapped so I really wanted to buy one. But, still not really knowing what I was doing, I held off.
Within a few days however, that floor price had skyrocketed all the way up to 1 ETH!
After kicking myself for not acting sooner when I clearly saw the trend a few days before, I FOMO’d in and bought my 3rd NFT.
A cute Pudgy Penguin for 1.19 ETH on August 10th, 2021.
While I wasn’t as early as I had liked, I watched in fascination as Pudgy Penguins quickly took over Twitter and only 3 short days later after purchasing for 1.19 ETH the floor for Pengu’s was sitting at over 3.5 $ETH!
Talk about fast cash.
I saw my purchase go from 1.19 $ETH in value to around 3.5 $ETH—turning roughly $3.7k → $11k in 3 days.
Also, at the same time, my Veefriend had appreciated a lot in value, going from 0.59 eth to roughly a 10 eth floor in the span of 3 months. In that instance, I had turned $2.7k → $33k in 3 months.
Suddenly the only thing I wanted to do was learn more about NFTs.
2 days after purchasing the Pudgy Penguin, I found out about the NFT for this really cool and ambitious game called Treeverse that was marketing itself as Runescape for the blockchain.
The inner-gamer in me couldn’t pass that up, so I purchased that as well, this time for 0.398 $ETH and watched in fascination again as within 2 weeks, the floor for Treeverse had skyrocketed to over 1.5 eth and I was up 3x again!
I was in awe.
It felt like I found an infinite money printer glitch in real life.
I kept looking around at NFTs and digging deeper and deeper.
While I had made a lot of potential gains on my NFT purchases so far, I hadn’t sold ANY of them, so it was all “paper gains”.
Yes, I had turned 2.18 ETH into roughly 15 ETH in the span of 3 months, but I hadn’t sold any of it so I didn’t really “make” anything.
It was just imaginary numbers going up on a screen.
Then came the defining moment in my NFT career—the day that I sold my first NFT.
Shoutout to Alex Becker because it is directly because of him that I had my first HUGE WIN in the space.
I remember it so clearly.
It was August 21st, 2021; I had created BowTied Golem 6 days prior on August 17th.
I was trolling Twitter looking for alpha, looking for new collections, etc.
Then I saw that Becker had posted about a really cool black and white photography collection called “Black and White Knights” that he really liked.
When I saw this, a few things went through my mind.
Becker was on an absolute tear with art NFTs at that point and it seemed like everything he touched turned to Gold
He had a huge audience so I knew that if he showed interest in an NFT collection, people were going to blindly ape in regardless (it was simply the state of the market at that time)
So… after seeing his tweet, I immediately went to the collection, found 2 NFTs I liked, and tried to buy.
The first one failed because someone else had gotten there faster and their transaction went through before mine.
But the second purchase I made went through and I was hyped.
I ended up paying 0.03 $ETH for a 1/50 black and white art photography collection directly from the artist.
Within 5 minutes of Becker’s tweet, the collection sold out and the price started SKYROCKETING.
After 1 day the floor was 1 ETH
After 2 days the floor was 2 ETH
Then, on the evening of day 2 I said, “You know what? If this keeps going at this rate, I might be able to sell it for 3 ETH tomorrow.”
So I listed it for 3 ETH and went to bed, never expecting anyone to actually purchase it for that much.
The next morning I woke up to an email from Opensea…
“Congratulations! Your item sold!”
I was in shock.
From 0.03 ETH → 3 ETH in 3 days? That’s a 100x!
I had turned a $100 purchase to a $10,000 sale in 72 hours.
That was it.
That was the moment.
I was HOOKED on NFTs.
To Be Continued…
Hi fren, thank you for taking the time to read Golem’s 1 year Birthday Post/Origin story.
I hope it was as fun to read as it was for me to write it!
If you’re interested in hearing more about my story, please, leave a comment below or share this post on Twitter, I’d really appreciate your feedback!
The purpose of this Substack is to help you learn how to survive & thrive in this new wild-wild-west world of NFTs, the Metaverse, and Crypto gaming.
An old internet mentor of mine once told me that until you been pouring blood, sweat, and tears into an endeavor for 1 year you’re a faker.
On day 364, you’re not legit.
On day 365 you’ve earned your stripes.
Having first fully dived into the wonderful world of NFTs in August 2021, Golem has now crossed his 1 year anniversary.
Which means it’s time for me to get serious about helping you learn how to survive & thrive in the NFT space.
It is my firm belief that ANYONE can make LIFE CHANGING MONEY in the NFT space.
It is the newest, most volatile, highest risk & highest reward sector of crypto by a large margin.
That means two very important things:
The opportunity to make life changing gains is at their greatest point in history
The opportunity to get absolutely rekt is at the greatest point in history
Life is full of dualities.
You cannot have light without dark.
You cannot have the opportunity to get rich without the opportunity to lose it alI.
Which is why I am here.
To help teach you, guide you, and show you the way.
It is my utmost hope that by reading and learning from my experiences it helps you:
Avoid making the same mistakes that I have made
Prevent scammers from taking advantage of you
Helps you develop a wide variety of skills that help you survive & thrive in this new digital frontier
For now, this Substack is Free.
In the future, that will change, but for now I’m focused on building up a solid foundation of content before we get there.
The only thing that I ask is that if you find my words helpful, entertaining, or interesting, if you could please Subscribe & Share the article with a fren that would mean the world to me.
We’re building a community of winners from the ground up, word of mouth is how we will grow.
In-between posts you can find me on Twitter at @BowTiedGolem, where I write about this stuff & react to things in real-time.
Until next time.
Your Fren,
Golem
Cheers to one year!! I love your genuine enthusiasm for the NFT space and look forward to following (and hopefully profiting) along with you over the next year and beyond!!