Dude, just dump all that profit into BTC and focus on your studies. Alts have had an absurd run-up while BTC is down. Just buying and HODLing BTC means you can totally ignore all the day to day time sucks of crypto and still potentially have a great year financially.

OP, you rode a wave, it's highly unlikely you have any edge trading this, take your profit and go do something else, don't chase the dream.

Stay in school, bang alot of girls, and pick a few cryptos to hodl long term. You can still follow balina and luckbox into a good ico.

Don't say I have my mind made up, the reason why is made this thread, as I stated, is to get arguments in favour and against. Believing in the dream is great, until it shatters to pieces. The point is to find out how likely it is that my dream will shatter to pieces.

Didn't expect such an overwhelmingly negative response tbh. But I think there is definitely value in what your guys are saying. Changing degrees has indeed been on my mind for a while. I think what I'm taking out of this so far is that, if I were to take a risk like drop out of university, having a back up plan (ie degree) is more important than I would've liked to accept earlier.

I think the main disagreement between me and most ITT is about how long and how legit this opportunity may be (if you agree to call it an opportunity at all). Another thing that I sometimes think about, and that this thread is reminding me of, is this:

I still think this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to get set for life. Although I'm moving more towards the side of not overthinking and just hodling coins next to studying.

This seems like a good alternative to dropping out. My current programme doesn't allow it, which is why it hadn't really crossed my mind at all, but I see value in trying this for 1 year or 1 semester, and then reevaluating. Seems quite a bit less risky than dropping out altogether.

You admittedly under-performed the market. Meaning you could have just bought a handful of coins and held and done better. You're assuming you winning money means you have some special talent. All of us just luckboxed our way into some decent profits here. Trading requires special talent to outperform the market, you haven't shown any ability to succeed at this yet. I would keep trading on the side if you enjoy it and stay in school.

This is coming from someone that finished college while making mid-high 6 figures/yr at poker during the boom, btw. I went part time the last 3 years and it ended up taking 5 years to graduate. I also saw a bunch of people drop out of college to pursue poker full time and end up mediocre. Some were successful, sure. The ones that were successful while dropping out are mostly the people that could likely have just done what I did and gone to school part time while working full time at poker. School actually becomes a decent change of pace and enjoyable when you're going part time and spending all your time grinding away at a computer.

When the time comes where you've gotten a proven strategy (like minimum of 1-2 years of outperformance of just holding the top 5-10 coins with a market weighted average), it may be worth quitting college then.

This is the problem. You are far to young, naive, & inexperienced in the world of cryptocurrency, investing, tech, and even life to be able to accurately make this judgement with any degree of certainty to make a life changing choice.

It's not though. You've been through the best bit of the bubble.

undergrad isnt even that time consuming. you will never work less then you are right now.

That's one bad read already, lucky it didn't cost you money.

Best advice you will get.

I know how you're feeling. I was in my junior year and knew I crush big time at poker if I dropped out and focused on it full time. My major was good and I still struggled with what to do. If it wasn't for my parents potentially killing me I likely would have dropped out. I didn't do my summer internship with Wells Fargo Advisors and grinded (gf and parents were pissed). I ended up making 100k that summer. I made a compromise and took less hours and grinded as much as I could.

Looking back I'm happy I stuck with it. Ended up making a lot from poker and don't need to work but if I ever want to that degree is something that will help me. I guess it's an accomplishment that I've grown to appreciate but was hard to back in the day doing BS assignments when I could have been printing $.

I would recommend staying in school, changing majors if you really think yours is ****, perhaps lowering hours, and devoting your other time to crypto. Don't stay if you're going to tank classes, but success can be had in both. And social life! Just have to learn to manage time well that's key.

Also, 100k is a tremendous head start to your life--don't underestimate that. Your classmates would lose their minds if they knew you've made that so early. Be humble in the crypto environment, don't risk everything you've made--put 50k or something away. Constantly define where your edge is coming from.

Yeah, you're going to be a big time winner with an attitude like that.

As for me on crypto, my two "strong buy" recommendations on crypto were at $250 on bitcoin in 2015. Made no others, apart from getting bearish at $6000 but reversing and getting bullish again at $6500 when the CME news came out. I'm a long term bear on bitcoin, agnostic about the other cryptos and the space generally.

So I'll give you some arguments then. They're not for you, you can't tell crypto from cheese or a trade from a transexual, but I'll clear up some common misconceptions in case others reading find it useful.
Your belief that the degree is worthless is not based in fact. There are a large number of desirable career paths open to degrees (even joke degrees like yours) that aren't open to people without them. You think a degree is worthless? What about a high school diploma, then, which will be your highest qualification?

A generic degree is worthless in separating yourself from the pack of people with degrees. But not worthless in the way you think. Try going for nice career jobs with a high school diploma. A degree is a substantial leg up. On top of that, some cultures (such as America, not so much in Europe) are full of blindly bigoted dumbasses who think a degree puts you in a higher social class...not having one will affect your social and dating prospects as well as your career.

It's not the be all and end all, and it matters less the more talented or intelligent you are, but both your social prospects among worthwhile people, and your job options, are substantially lessened by not finishing your degree.
This is an irrational take away. "I lost money at trading this year, but that's a GOOD thing because I can do better if I learn more AND it means there is even money out there than what I made".

That view is simply wrong. The large majority of traders are failures because they have no edge. An edge is not an easy thing to get. You are a huge dog to gain an edge over the market, for a number of reasons, and those reasons are very strong in crypto. Most people trading most things are big dogs. In stocks for example, which have far more tradable edges than crypto due a richer information flow, the data from large brokers shows conclusively that the more you trade, the more you under perform the market. This is true for >95% of traders, which is a pretty shocking statistic giving that these are all people who thought they were clever enough to beat the market.

So let's look at you and see where you fit in the pack. Do you:

- Have evidence of a good mind? (no, you're doing a cuck degree)
- Have evidence of unusual drive? (no, you're doing a cuck degree)
- Have evidence of high level analytical ability or unusual intelligence? (lol)
- Have evidence of solid rationality? No (see this thread)
- Have evidence of unusual insight? No (see this thread)
- Have evidence of market beating returns (no, you've underperformed)
- Have evidence of superior emotional control or wisdom (no, your post is full of wishful rationalizations and misconceptions)
- Have special technical knowledge in the domain you want to trade? (no, not even close)

Why would you be anywhere other than the money losing pack? Looking at yourself objectively, you have absolutely zero that recommends you as a winning trader of any kind, and everything that doesn't.
And what if crypto isn't a thing to "get good at"? There's no evidence of profitable crypto trading that I can see. Fees and spread are enormous, available information is low, and you're a huge dog to big money as well as people plugged into the non-public information available in exchanges (signups, etc) and manipulators.

You cite one big winner who was in the papers. But so what? What would the market look like if if it consisted of monkeys throwing darts are a coin board? It would look no different. You would be celebrating Chimplina in that case, the amazing dart thrower. Your view that you have a decent probability of making out like the guy they did the profile on is irrational. May as well follow slots or roulette winners.

Anything consisting of a mix of investments that are up 30x - 10,000x is going to have big winners purely by random chance. There's no evidence that anything other than that is occurring here.
Again, see above...you're completely wrong on a degree being worthless.

What seems "real" about it? You have no evidence of an edge personally and no evidence that an edge even exists for a retail trader. For what possible reason would yo believe an edge exists in trading crypto? State your evidence or rationalizations in detail, if you have them and want to be taken seriously. Putting your ideas and spidey sense feels out into the light of day is a very helpful thing.
This is where your lack of wisdom and life experience and general intellectual curiosity is showing up. You'd be far better, lifetime money wise let alone in any other way, reading books in your spare time rather than trading crypto. Had you read more of the classics and understood their content, you'd realize the above is lol.

Your view that you can "go back to uni" in a year or three as if nothing has changed isn't based in reality. You'll be older, seeing it through different eyes, not able to fit in as easily or as naturally given the age gap, and the quality of the friendships you form as a result will be lower. You are also quite likely to have enjoyed the freedom of a do-nothing life. And if there are emotional/confidence impacts from failure, you'll probably view the world differently as well. It's not easy to go from riches to rags without spite and bitterness and loss of confidence and ----EV shot taking to get back to where you were. This is the path that most losers end up on. The worst case scenario is FAR worse than you believe it to be.

Entering the workforce, you'll start several years behind your peers with a non-traditional background, part of which includes dropping out of university.

Basically, you're young, you only have the experience of life being handed to you on a silver platter, of everything being provided for you, of opportunities being endless and unchanging, and of failure not mattering. How could you possibly have a reality-based of the "worst case" scenario? You don't know anything about yourself or about how people go off the rails. You don't know if you'll be able to quit once chasing the win is hardwired into your brain by spending 10 hours/day doing it for months. You don't know how your emotional range will change living such a one dimensional life, how your perspective will change in subtle ways, how your drive toward achieving in and tolerance for unpleasant high effort low-reward situations (i.e. life and most of its rewards) will change.
Considering the above, I think you're way out of your depth and don't have a clue of even the shape of the outcome here.

I travel the world, live in beautiful places and trade weekly expiring stock options. Before that I ran a couple of small businesses which I built up. I started off poor. I'm neither averse to risk nor want a regular life. And I think you're so far out from having a clue that the best thing for you is to stay in school. Failure and underperformance is actually a very easy thing to have happen. It's the norm when you get off the beaten path. Humans are basically horrible at achieving anything on their own. The normal paths in life are set up to guide you away from failure; any deviation from them is highly -EV unless you have high level skills, which you clearly don't.

As for comparisons, quitting uni to play poker back in 2005 is a world away in terms of risk/reward from quitting uni to trade cryptos. And even then most people wished they hadn't, or had done it part time rather than full time.

You're welcome.

OP, this thread is a little ridiculous but I am interested and sincerely want to help.

Your situation feels similar to mine, I am bout 10 years older than you. And while I will not tell you what you should do, I will tell you what I would do if I were in your shoes but had the wisdom and experience that I now have.

W/ roughly 100k USD, EUR, or similar valued currency, I would:
10k in gold
10k in crypto
10k for poker
20k for trading
10k in fixed income
10k in equities
30k in the bank

And I would graduate with a double major. If you want a good job, a real job, one major should be computer science. The other major should be something that interests you, math, economics, biology etc.

If you can make an investment in a piece of real estate that is financed a fixed rate for like 30 years and that cash flows (or at least pays for itself), skip the fixed income, equities, and or trading.

If you don't know how to play poker or trade I suggest you learn slowly.

So, you would double-major (including at least 1 non-trivial major)

+

Devote enough time/money to playing poker to win at non-trivial stakes in the current bleak environment that's only going to get worse

+

Devote enough time to the crypto market to not be a total fish

+

Devote money and time to learning to trade profitably, an endeavor many intelligent people try and fail at even when it's their #1 priority in life.


Not sure what could go wrong.

OP, I just bumped a thread rand made a few years ago about how the stock market was about to collapse. Whatever you choose to do, make sure it isn't based on any credence given to rand. (And I'm amazed he's only 30—I always pictured some 50-year-old, Alex Jones type hunt-and-pecking on his keyboard.)

For the record, I played a varsity sport, double majored in finance and econ (lots of overlap so this was relatively easy), and minored in political science. While earning over $200k playing poker (this was before helicopter Ben BTW).

So it is possible. But my grades really suffered, especially senior year when I (incorrectly) started to view the opportunity cost of class time to be a about $1k.

But I would not recommend this to anyone. Given your post, I see how my post was unclear because I didn't mention anything about time or priorities.

The first and perhaps most important thing that I can to college kids that find themselves with some cash is to slow down. The odds are good that you lack perspective.

Straight As can be a real *****, but I would prioritize school and be sure that I graduated with at least a 3.0 (in the US).

After that I would prioritize poker and play a few times per week. Then the trading, if you have discipline I would trade one vertical once a week. But honestly the trading could wait until after school.

I am not recommended poker or trading as a career. I am recommending poker because i think the skillset you learn / need to succeed is valuable. I am recommending trading because I think it is important to understand how the markets work.

Lol yeah, definitely don't major in computer science..

Somigosaden, (btw what is that name from?) I think much of your objections about that thread were addressed in that thread. Obviously the bull market has continued. And obviously this is an exciting time to be an in investor, the dawn of the information age.

But, don't let yourself be fooled. Buy and hold is like by definition, for the fish. The wise guys get on at the bottom (08) and out at the top (now or two years ago). Lol, or they arbitrage time...

The stock market is full of federal reserve hot money, banks are or were rigging things like libor...market signals for every are pretty broken.

I really don't feel like getting into this again, but QE by definition misprices interest rates. Which means that just about all financial decisions are broken.

Who knows what the end game looks like, maybe there is enough apathy out there for this to continue indefinitely. But the student of history would say revolution and war are likely.

Is your motto, let them eat cake?

You know what would be a better skillet to learn than poker and trading? Ones that are related to the career path he chooses.

Everything is a learning experience if you do it long enough and go deep enough into it. Poker and trading, though... you'd get the large majority of the benefit (in terms of life skills) that's unique to poker/trading by taking a couple of upper year stats/finance courses. The only reason someone would give that advice is because it's something they did when they were younger, and they have an inflated sense of the value of their own life experiences.

No, the fish are the ones who're constantly seeing edges despite having nowhere near the depth of understanding to have any hope beating the market. They're basically at the mercy of chance. They're delusional people who have done well in some aspects of their life and assume that it'll carry over into other areas, and because they have such a piss poor understanding of how to interpret data, will always view their results through rose tinted glasses. This is a lot of successful people. Fortunately for them they actually have a real skill to fall back on, so it doesn't matter much if they BELIEVE that they're outperforming the market - the only cost to their delusion are the fees.

It's not wisdom alone that gave early adopter of crypto the ability to recognize what was coming. They had highly specialized knowledge of an industry in it's infancy.

If there's one thing you want to recreate here, it's to become highly specialized in a field and eventually maybe you'll become aware of a new product/service that others don't yet see value in, and you can be one of those early investors.

Personally I prefer:

0k in gold
100k in crypto + mortgage the house for a $300K loan for yet more crypto
0k for poker
0k for trading
0k in fixed income
0k in equities
0k in the bank

but each to his own

It doesn't matter what career you go into, money is relevant and important for your entire adult life.

You are wrong about poker. It is a fundamental skill. Game theory is more than relevant to:
warefare
business
genetics
international trade
gaming
sports
politics
...and whether or not to rat out your fellow prisoners (among others)

There is a significant difference between understanding something intellectually and actually understanding it through experience.

Further you learn a lot about people, self discipline, and emotional control.

Lol, who is that dude? I am glad you liked the allocation. Just trying to help OP out, it is more or less what he asked for.

Lol what is coming, a bubble? The situation is complicated but here is more or less what is happening:

There really is something fundamentally wrong with the currencies of the world. Say Chinese capital controls, Japanese inflation, w.e., it doesn't matter...

The relatively informed are aware of this, and they are looking for an alternative. The wise guys are aware of this awareness and exploiting it to draw in more FOMO fish.

BTC is as likely to go to (near) zero in the coming years as it is $100k. There is a small chance that it is the future of money. But what is more likely is that the hedge funds and traders are making bank while the buy and holders are left burned and holding the bag. The same goes for the equity markets.

There're an endless list of paths through which you'd learn all of those things, and i see no reason to believe poker is a particularly effective means to develop a mature understanding of any of them. Just because people have ideas floating around in their head doesn't mean they're good ideas, case in point: your "obvious to me, obvious to you?" thread.

The poker world is filled with people who've been around for decades who're good at the game and have horrible self discipline, emotional control, and are complete social ******s.

You forgot the largest and meatiest section here, which is wanna be traders who're getting eaten alive by transaction fees and winning only because cryptos are booming.

And if you're comparing a buy and hold strategy over any fixed period to entering and exiting while paying exorbitant transaction fees, the buy and hold is going to do better in all cases save for a tiny minority of people. But of course every single dullard believes with every essence of their being that they're among that tiny minority of winners.

Those rand posts have to be performance art. I honestly can't believe anyone could post that in earnest.

Many thanks guys, especially to ToothSayer for the extensive post. I may have understated how hypothetical this scenario would be, but that isn't important. What is important is that I have gotten some very strongly opposing views, which was the main reason to make this thread. Again, thanks for that. Studying while doing some crypto on the side seems like the best risk/reward proposition for the foreseeable future, until I have improved some of the skills ToothSayer listed.

Also thanks to Nick @TCfromUB, I think you approach this with the assumption that I (or others) can become good at something if they put in enough time and really want it, whereas ToothSayer just assumes I'm a lazy, worthless piece of entitled **** who will never get anything done. Not judging either of you, but both views are helpful.