A crypto YouTuber with more than half a million followers shares his crypto story of one of his biggest regrets.

Nicholas Merten, also known as DataDash, found Bitcoin (BTC) when it was $3. But like many people at the time, Merten was very skeptical about crypto and found it crazy that people were buying what he thought was “fake internet money.”

Merten’s story starts with a hint of inspiration from a conversation with his teacher back in 2011. At the time, he believed he had no passion; but one day, a spark was lit after his social studies teacher encouraged him to watch presidential debates, where he saw politician Ron Paul share various views on the topics.

“This event sparked a dopamine rush in my head,” said Merten. He was inspired and became interested in foreign policy, economics and finance, studying the topics. From there, he went on to learn about the 2008 global financial crisis and how inflation works. He knew that with the way things were going, there was a need for a way to hedge against inflation.

As he continued on his journey, Merten opened a brokerage account with the help of his dad and was able to buy his first stock. Eventually, he dived further into finance, from buying penny stocks of marijuana companies to investing in solar companies stocks. He then found a video explaining Bitcoin, and while it was interesting, he couldn’t fully understand it. Merten skipped out on buying BTC at $3 and couldn’t understand why people would buy it.

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However, he realized it had become his most expensive mistake when he saw the price going to an all-time high of $1,200 per BTC. Learning from his blunder, he set off on his crypto journey and started to buy crypto, analyze the markets, and uploading crypto-focused videos to his YouTube video.