With bitcoin, I'm kinda sure there was never any certainty, only faith; for a few, that worked out very well. But bitcoin has always been a gamble, a very unstable and easily influenced investment product, with unsafe and corrupt trading platforms.
I didn't have any magical crystal ball, like no one else did. The key transition point was moving the Bitcoins into the Ethereum. For me, Vitalik's early posts convinced me that Ethereum wasn't just another altcoin and it had great potential.
I didn't have any debt at that point and the traditional model of saving portion of salary and getting 4% annualized growth wasn't going to achieve the wealth I had in mind. So cryptocurrencies seemed like it had the huge upside potential I wanted and the worst-case scenario would have been that I'd lose the initial 20k€. I'm fairly opportunistic and risk-seeking. YMMV.
Hard to say what the probability of failure (ie. Bitcoin collapsing or the value of Ethereum being far less than the pre-sale price) has been.
I generate a passive income through options trading. It takes a small amount of my time each week.
I have built up a wealth of knowledge through years of study. I have experimented with most forms of passive income over 20 years and found that most of them don't meet the requirements of "passive income".
When I was 25 I moved to London to work in another country, meet new people, have adventures ... live life. Prior to that, I was in a similar position to yourself. This was the best time of my life, and I'm glad I did it at that age. Most people wait until their midlife crisis to do those things, where it damages, or destroys, the commitments they have made.
Travelling is one of the most educational, rewarding experiences you can possibly have.
I would stash my earnings away into an investment, travel the world freelancing with my expertise, discovering new and amazing realities with which to live life.
P.S that's what I'm doing now, 20 odd years later. again.
The exchange of butter for chickens, and determining what exchange rate would be satisfactory for both parties, quite often does not take into account the effort, or cost, of producing the goods. Say it costs the butter producer 5 years of raising a cow, including the cost of grain and water, and also the processing costs, in the total cost of producing butter. Say it costs 6 months of very little grain and water to raise a chicken. Should the exchange rate reflect the "costs incurred" for production?
A market determines the value of these goods, as defined by the demand. That market value is explicitly defined by monetary value. In this view, money is simply a digital representation of the value of goods and services, allowing consumers and producers to more easily draw comparisons.
In many societies, a job in social services is valued much lower than say a job in IT. The effort involved might be identical, but the market determines the value of the occupation.
Give it an appropriate prioritization in your life. e.g. "This is more important than X".
And have in your mind the REASON why it is more important than X. The secret, that I have read, to success at difficult things is knowing your "why" - Why is this thing more important than X? What does success look like, and how does that compare to X?
Your "why" is what makes you get out of bed in the morning, makes you confront that issue you can't resolve, and to resolve it. If your "why" isn't strong enough, you will likely fail.
I read a quote a very long time ago that simply said "Imagine if man learned how to use all of that energy, that determination, all his resources that he uses for chasing women ... for something else more important?"
I was hoping he would post references as well. I think there are no literal "management design patterns", he just means there are "design patterns for management" in the form of "management best practices". So you would need to dig into each relevant area of management and read the materials on best practices; dealing with staff, customers, partners, boards, ...
My small amount of research discovered that you can live in a serviced hotel room for between 15,000 and 30,000 THB per month, which is $500 - $1000 USD. This was in Chiang Mai. I explored a couple of different hotels.
You can get serious discounts for booking a room for 3, 6 months. Combine that with eating out for every meal (instead of grocery shopping and cooking for yourself) and it's an incredibly cheap option. Meals are as cheap as $1 each.
The "tourist tax" is quite difficult to circumvent. The best way is to make close local friends and get them to do all your ordering or negotiations for you. Normally food and drink prices are clearly written and are not over-priced unless you're at a tourist destination. Taxis are meant to always take meter so you should never take cabs unless they go by the meter. Some tourist-congested places are notorious for this (i.e. Platinum Shopping Center and Chatuchak Weekend Market), but it's quite easy to walk a little further from the main location and grab a meter cab. (At these places they also try to over charge locals, so it's not really just tourists :P)
Now, there will be instances where even local friends can't help. Such as entrance fees etc, if you look obviously foreign, you're going to be hit with a tax no matter what, but these places are usually tourist attractions and you're expecting to pay those anyways.
The most I could get from the Thai embassy in Amsterdam was a double-entry visa. If I wanted a triple-entry visa (giving me 3x90 days or 9 months), they required me to have booked all my flights in and out of the country beforehand. That was a bit too much planning for me.
I believe there's education visas if you study Thai at a school for a year, but that seems like too much of a distraction while starting up a business.
Yes, I'm actually trying Phnom Penh in Cambodia in 2014. Cheaper, although internet connectivity might not be up-to-par and it's a lot less safe from what I've heard.
Not particularly unsafe, I live in PP. Lived in NYC previously and I liken it to that, just different things to watch out for. Mobile internet is good (Cellcard is the best), I think I've gotten up to 300KB/sec, though there is some lag connecting to, say, my Linode in NJ.. maybe a 1 second delay in the terminal. Anyway it's currently $1.50 for 7 days or 1 GB, whichever comes first, and I can reload if I finish early. I go to a coworking space (CoLab) for faster internet, all-day A/C, and a good quiet working atmosphere. I consider that membership part of my rent, though rent is cheap here anyway. Have a two bedroom, two bath, estimating 2,000 sq ft + a covered roof terrace, for $300 / month. And it doesn't get cold here =)
Why not. There's plenty of more detailed info out there, and I don't claim to be any sort of expert after mere two years, but here's two stereotypical extremes:
Tourist-eyes: beautiful beaches; nice weather; safe; cheap food; laid back, friendly smiling people -- PARADISE!
Live-and-work-there-eyes: rampant bigotry and racism (common to most SE Asia); dishonesty ("losing face" and all, again shared across SEA and not specific to Thailand); nothing ever gets done (the famous wait-for-crisis management aka the reverse side of the laid back culture); encouragement of keeping in line and professional mediocrity; (lack of) quality healthcare; dirt; systemic corruption and mafia; massive drinking in connection with ubiquitous handguns; relationships aka love the farang cash machine; farangs always 2nd class citizens no matter what (land ownership &c) -- BUSINESS OWNER'S HELL!
Now that's just to juxtapose two extremes, neither is "the truth".
When it comes to running a business, beware of that viewpoint #2. Freelancers who just hang out with other freelancers on the beach for a few months don't need to care, of course :) For serious business, Malaysia is much more organized and welcoming.
Hopefully I don't get downvoted for this paradise-shattering post -- I still have many Thai friends and I love the country despite all its problems.
I've spoken with a few of westerner businessmen in Thailand now, and they re-iterate much the same sentiments.
My view has become "go there as a tourist who happens to spend several months on business" as opposed to "go there with a view to doing business with the locals".
Likewise I have met some lovely Thai people. They are very caring and welcoming.
You're absolutely right on most of those points. With regards to the racism: I did experience it when I entered night clubs, and it felt weird I had to pay an entrance fee and the Thais did not. But on the other hand, I know foreigners (esp. Westerners, like me) simply cause a lot of trouble in night clubs and obviously hitting on their women. In a weird way, you pay that off with an entrance fee.
In my limited experience, much of the racism I saw Westerners deal with, was most of the times them behaving in a stereotypical Western way (loud, obscene and rude). I don't have a problem with that, but Thai do.
I've come very far by just being over-polite and friendly to everyone I met. Bowing a lot, smiling and always staying calm in conflict situations (e.g. outside at 4am with drunk people).
With regards to dating, I mostly dated hi-so girls, which in the end paid more for my drinks, than I did for theirs ;)
Yes, the law is not ready for this set-up yet. But as you mention, unless you cause trouble, it's not really in the Thai's interest to enforce that you might officially be breaking the law by working (even if it's for yourself).
