Funny story but last cycle a bunch of my IRL friends managed to flip a couple hundred dollars into a few million each.
They achieved everything most people spend their whole lives wishing they could, being financially free and being able to do whatever they liked. Ironically though, most of them consciously decided to return to the wage cage; working low-end dev jobs and stacking shelves at local supermarkets.
Why? For some of them it wasn't a choice. For the others it was a total psychological malfunction after achieving what seemed to be the ending point they were so fixated on. Their brains were so disconnected from reality that they did not know what to do with themselves, what to spend their fortunes on, what to learn, where to go. Returning to normality was the only thing that could keep their psyche grounded.
The lesson is that money as a means to an end is a direct betrayal of our evolutionary programming. The human mind is not designed to have a final "complete" state, as if achieving a set of arbitrary goals will somehow grant a sense of fulfilment and emotional enrichment. It was built to survive, and survival is an infinite struggle in pursuit of an impossible goal.
The soul needs purpose—and the soul finds purpose in struggle, in acquiring knowledge, in mastery, in chasing a vision—in creating a legacy.
Ultimately, beyond covering necessities and a comfy standard of living, wealth means nothing without a mission. The best missions are often those that allow you to create wealth as a byproduct of pursuing greatness. Every man needs his roman empire.
Anyway, to reel it back and complete the story, most of my friends roundtripped their millions all the way back down to zero and the remainder who were more risk-averse got completely rugged by FTX. Stacking shelves, in the end, wasn't a choice for any of them.
Dude is living the dream but still bored. Men need an expedition