My name is Muhammad Giza, a 19-year-old high school graduate from Northern Nigeria, and this is the story of how Bitcoin became a part of my life. I discovered Bitcoin quite late, around September 2019. I’d just got a phone and was surfing the net, searching for ways to make money because since I was a kid, financial independence was a goal I wanted to achieve. I came upon an ad showing a game that would pay you in bitcoin after you reached a required amount of time.
I tried it but was disappointed that you could only gain about $10 playing for five months. I moved on and kept on searching for free ways to accumulate bitcoin, which was not an easy task since I was still a student and stayed in a hostel where phones were not allowed. I couldn’t buy HODL because I wasn’t working and had no way to get money, so I gave up on bitcoin in 2020 and focused on my studies. This experience turned out to be a good decision because I managed to graduate from high school with flying colors.
As a graduate, I had more time to concentrate on my quest for financial freedom, and by this time, I had clearer visions of what I wanted to do, but “ideas without actions are like cars without tires.” It was 2021, bitcoin was more expensive, and I couldn’t work because I was not eligible and had strict parents. They still don’t know that I dabble in cryptocurrency because it would ground me for years if they did.
So naturally, I searched for free ways to earn bitcoin; this time, though, I was doing it in a frenzy. I now understood that bitcoin was the future and anything else is just an ancient relic. Bitcoin is just history repeating itself; cowries shells replacing trade and barter, coins replacing cowrie shells, notes replacing currencies, and now Bitcoin will surely replace paper money. Soon anybody without bitcoin as a store o will be no different from a stone-age man.
With this mindset, I set out again, and this time the obstacles were harder to cross. In Nigeria, cryptocurrency has reached a consensus of being banned, and no one would trust me because internet fraud had become an attribute associated with my country. I saved up some money and managed to buy about $200 worth of bitcoin from a “vendor” known in Nigeria; I invested it in a mining platform under “Chainmine” and made about $100 profit in a few weeks of mining.
Chain mine turned out to be a scam, and I lost my hard-earned money. The loss broke me, and I almost gave up, but I tuned in to a Twitter Space and heard some Bitcoiners speak of their experiences one morning. That Twitter Space gave me new zeal, and I felt luckier than other people wasting time on shitcoins. Now I have a new plan to finish schooling and get a job while learning and perfecting my trading skills.
I will then invest all my income into bitcoin and finally get the independence I dream of having. The funny thing is when I found out 1 Bitcoin is $46,000 and counting (about 18 million Naira), I thought no one could ever have more than 5 or 6 Bitcoins. Then I found out that people have hundreds of Bitcoin. I’ve promised to get at least one bitcoin in my wallet before this year ends to prove myself wrong. I hope whoever reads this story gets motivated and decides not to give up because if I haven’t, you shouldn’t either.
