Senior Liam Sweetman has a crippling obsession of investing in cryptocurrency.

Since the beginning of his crypto journey, he has learned the inner workings of this complicated field, but more so, he has learned from his mistakes.

“I have lost a lot of money, to be honest,” Liam said. “I made a lot of money, then I got into the NFT space. I did not do my research; I watched one TikTok video for thirty seconds and dumped a ton of money into it—big mistake; I lost, but I learned from these mistakes.”

However, despite this fault, Liam has done his research and has become what one might call a cryptocurrency expert. Today, Liam is positive in gains from crypto and NFTs.

Thanks to fellow senior Cooper Dlugos for informing Liam of a singular coin he saw on TikTok last year, Liam has grown to become a huge crypto investor and contributor. Liam can give other thanks to social media for making him aware of crypto and its benefits. 

In his rookie days, he was able to make substantial returns by investing in different crypto coins. For instance, he put in $75 dollars and was able to buy 250 million of an altcoin.

“The price started blowing up on TikTok because people were getting introduced to crypto at this time,” Liam said. “So I was like, ‘You know what, there’s a lot of money we made in this place, so I’ll start looking into it more.’ I was kind of just sitting on the line. I started seeing huge moves by companies we revolve our lives around nowadays, so I [thought] this looked like something I could use in the future. I’m a huge tech guy; I want to get into coding of some sort—so this is perfect.”

Liam has found success in investing in a certain type of crypto: Cryptojanky. Currently, they have a partnership with Gucci, making for gargantuan investment opportunities. While holding one, he became a part of something called a down, which are certain companies built on the blockchain. Only 9,240 Cryptojankies will ever exist, so this is a great accomplishment for Liam.

“I had one named glitch.eth,” Liam said. “Glitch is a rare word, kind of technology-based, so I was like, you know what, it might be big. And for being an early supporter, I was gifted their governance token. I was given this for being an early supporter; I was given 12 of their tokens. That was a huge investment for me; I made a lot of money off of that because, at the time, they were selling for a lot. And recently, last week, I was gifted even more for being earlier.”

Liam enjoys investing in blockchain technology so much because he believes it is paving a way for the future of technology. With a background in coding, taking multiple high school computer science courses, Liam has already discovered a love for this field, making involving himself in cryptocurrency that much better. 

“A lot of companies, nowadays, are going to blockchain technology,” Liam said. “My biggest investment is something called the Ethereum Name Service, which is something built on the Ethereum network—the most popular of the blockchain. It basically creates domain names such as youtube.com, amazon.com, google.com even. Those domain names are one of a kind. They can never be copied, and those domain names go for a lot of money because they’re so famous.”

Through Liam’s experience in comprehending the fundamentals of crypto and therefore excelling in it, he has realized the true worth of some aspects of technology. For example, Liam deems spending money on advancements in video games to be ridiculous; however, he wouldn’t have this mindset if it weren’t for the intelligent touch he has with the web. 

“People spend money on games all the time—Fortnite for example,” Liam said. “I know people who have spent thousands of dollars just on skins; it’s literally just pixels pasted over your character. When it’s pasted over that, you just gave money to a multi-billion-dollar company. You just lost money for a couple [of] colors.”

NFTs allow for people to have control over their assets, such as these Fortnite skins. In doing this, people will be able to trade them in the future—that’s what keeps their worth. 

Although investing in cryptocurrency may be risky, Liam has discovered many benefits—not even benefits regarding money, rather benefits in the sense of him learning new things every day.

Liam does indeed see a future with him and cryptocurrency. He has a passion for coding and technology, which is helping pave the way for his career path. Right now, he’s indecisive as to whether he wants to pursue software or hardware development; however, when he was college touring, he found something that had a huge influence on this indecisiveness. 

“There are two ways: I could either get into mechanical engineering that has something to do with coding, or I could go straight to software,” Liam said. “I would really like to work in the blockchain department. When I was visiting [the University of] Michigan, I was checking out their blockchain technology club. I searched up their website, and they said they’re here educating people on the blockchain and anything about technology. So I was like, ‘This looks awesome.’”

Just recently, Liam found out that he was accepted to his top college choice; he will be attending the University of Michigan College of Engineering in the fall. Furthermore, he received the HAIL scholarship—a scholarship that only 1,000 people have been awarded since 2017—one that offers him four free years of tuition. 

With the high hopes of tackling software as a career, Liam sees his future in blockchain technology. And there’s one thing he has picked up on while tampering in investing in cryptocurrency, and that is decision-making skills. 

“If something is promising, if something has a future to it, then people will invest,” Liam said. “The value is behind the company and technology that they create, so that’s what all this revolves around: technology.”

For Liam, his biggest hobby at the moment is this very process: investing, waiting, and winning. And while this enjoyment developed sometime last year, Liam plans to carry this craft from his senior year to his freshman year of college. 

Knowing he’s capable of winning big, Liam strongly believes that investing in cryptocurrency is all futuristic; therefore, he plans to continue doing his thing for as long as its relevance prevails.

“I’m eighteen now,” Liam said, “so it’s a lot easier to do stocks. Investing is a very good thing to start early, so I guess I’ll see where life takes me. If companies start developing off this, it’s going to be something that’s existing in our lives in the future. There’s no point in dropping off now.”