If you ask me now, do I believe in digital financial technology?

I won't answer "yes."

I'll answer: I cannot imagine my life without that belief.

But trust me, I wasn't born this way.

I used to be the kind of person who was easy to fool. Not because I was stupid. But because I trusted people too much, and people, it turns out, can be incredibly good at lying.

The first time I got scammed, it came from someone I knew. An old friend who suddenly reappeared out of nowhere, asked me to grab coffee, talked warmly like old times. Then in the middle of the conversation he pulled out his phone and showed me glittering numbers. Investment. 30% return per month. Plenty of people were already profiting, he said.

I transferred the money. Of course I did.

First month, the profit came in. I was grinning to myself. Second month, it came in again. I started telling my family. Third month, silence. His number was dead. The office was empty. The WhatsApp group vanished. And my money, gone, along with the trust I had handed over so easily.

Apparently that lesson wasn't enough for me. A few months later, the second one came, more polished, more convincing, complete with uniforms, seminars, and certificates. I thought I was smarter this time.

I wasn't.

Fell twice. Got back up twice with anger I didn't know where to aim. And I made one firm decision for myself:

Never again. Done.

Then one afternoon, I saw a post on social media. A community was holding a meetup. The topic: crypto and blockchain.

I smirked.

"Here we go. The latest scheme."

But I showed up anyway. Not because I was interested, but because I wanted to prove I was right. That this was no different. That anything smelling of "digital investment" was the same theater in different costumes.

I sat at the very back. Arms crossed. Ready to leave at any moment.

The speaker was just an ordinary young guy. No expensive watch. No slides filled with profit projections. He was actually talking about something that sounded almost boring, blockchain, a digital ledger, decentralized transactions, code open to anyone.

I raised my hand, challenge in my voice.

" Who guarantees anything? If there's no boss, no company, who's responsible when something goes wrong?"

He answered calmly. One sentence that still echoes in my head to this day:

"Precisely because no single party holds control, no single party can betray it."

That night I didn't sleep.

Not because I was instantly convinced. But because something cracked inside my logic, and I couldn't ignore it.

I opened my laptop. Looked things up myself. Read the Bitcoin whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto. Nine pages. No brochure. No photo. No fancy office. Just an idea, proven through mathematics and code that anyone on earth could examine.

One sentence hit me square in the chest:

"What is needed is an electronic payment system based on cryptographic proof instead of trust."

I put my phone down. I stared at the ceiling for a long time.

All this time I hadn't been fooled because I was stupid. I was fooled because I had entrusted my money and my future to human beings, creatures with interests, egos, and greed. The conventional financial systems I had always followed, banks, cooperatives, officially labeled investments, all run by humans.

Humans who could be wrong. Humans who could run. Humans who could lie.

But code? Mathematics? Algorithms running on thousands of computers simultaneously across the entire world?

That cannot lie.

And from that night on, I never saw the world the same way again.

I'm not the kind of person who does things halfway once I believe in something.

I studied relentlessly. Read whitepapers until I had them memorized. Joined forum discussions until the early hours of morning. Learned how consensus mechanisms, cryptographic hashing, and public and private keys work, not to trade, but because I genuinely wanted to understand what I was putting my faith in.

And the more I understood, the deeper that belief took root.

This isn't about Bitcoin's price going up or down. It's not about who made a profit this week. It's about something far greater, a revolution in how human beings store, transfer, and trust value.

For thousands of years, humans have needed intermediaries to transact. Kings, churches, banks, governments, all holding control over our money. All capable of freezing our assets. All capable of printing new currency and quietly eroding the value of our savings without our consent.

Blockchain cuts that chain.

For the first time in the history of human civilization, someone can hold their wealth without asking permission from anyone. Can send value to any corner of the world without a bank, without bureaucracy, without business hours.

That is not merely a technological innovation. That is the most fundamental shift of power that has ever existed.

People around me sometimes shake their heads.

"You're too fanatical."

"Crypto is just speculation."

"It'll bubble and crash eventually."

I listen. I don't get angry. Because I used to think exactly the same thing.

But I know something they haven't had the chance to learn yet: this technology needs no one's permission to keep running. As long as one computer somewhere in the world is turned on and running a node, that network is alive. There is no off switch any government can press. There is no regulation that can erase mathematics.

I believe in this technology not because I'm naive. But precisely because I was once betrayed by a system that depended on human beings, and I found a system that depends on something far more reliable, Logic. Code. Truth that can be verified.

Twice I was betrayed by humans.

And it was those two betrayals that led me to discover something that cannot betray anyone.

The money I lost, I consider it tuition. Expensive, yes. But no school could have taught me the kind of conviction I carry now.

Because this conviction didn't come from a brochure. Didn't come from influencers. Didn't come from hype or fear of missing out.

It came from wounds. From anger. From nights spent reading until my eyes burned. From questions I forced myself to answer until not a single doubt remained.

And today, whenever someone asks whether I believe in digital financial technology,

I don't answer with words.

I show them how I live.

Because someone who truly believes doesn't need to convince anyone.

They simply stay consistent, and let time do the proving.

My Crypto Origin Story: There's No Going Back