Taking a Fall by Investing in Digital Currencies

(Minghui.org) I felt that I had always cultivated well in regard to not being affected by worldly things or attachments. I felt that I didn’t really have any attachment to money or material things. Recently, however, I took a fall in this area because of other attachments, which led me to invest in digital currencies, more popularly called “cryptocurrencies.”

For many years, my brother, who doesn’t cultivate, and a fellow practitioner in a larger city in the U.S. had encouraged me to invest in Bitcoin, the most popular digital currency. Several practitioners also asked me what my thoughts were on Bitcoin. I thought that working hard and saving one’s earnings was the traditional way of making, saving, and investing money, and I saw Bitcoin as just another elaborate get-rich-quick pyramid scheme where the early investors make money off the later investors, but it was just cleverly disguised by technology and the Internet. I refused to invest and even discouraged my fellow practitioners and family from investing.

Then in 2017, the price of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies increased rapidly. I wasn’t that affected by reading all the articles in the regular media about people who got rich investing in Bitcoin, but then I went to this larger city on a trip, and I found that the practitioner who had been advising others to invest in Bitcoin was having a lot of influence on other practitioners in the city. I saw that many practitioners were following him, investing a lot of their savings in digital currencies, and that this practitioner even had a column in a practitioner-run media enthusing about how good Bitcoin was. (I want to clarify that I don’t blame the media for printing his articles, since all mainstream media were covering this topic.)

Several practitioners who were investing in digital currencies were talking about how great digital currencies were, how it was anonymous and decentralized, that they were not run or controlled centrally, how their value was only going to go up, how it was “breaking away” from the “mainstream currencies run by governments” and was “arranged for the future.” Many of them invested a lot of their savings in these currencies. Some practitioners who didn’t have enough money to invest were envious of those who were able to invest.

I saw that other practitioners, including veteran practitioners I had known for a long time, were starting to invest in Bitcoin; they looked up to practitioners who had invested early and looked down on me for not investing early and “not understanding digital currencies.”

I didn’t really care about making or losing money, but I had this fear of missing out on something that was taking off. So in January 2018, I put a few hundred dollars in Bitcoin and Ethereum, another popular cryptocurrency. By this time, the value of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies had already crashed (the crash started in late 2017, shortly after their values peaked). Thus, I thought that even if these currencies did not go up in value, they would not drop any further either.

Over the six months that followed, my cryptocurrency investment lost about 50% of its value. I didn’t really mind losing the money, but then I read the Minghui notice warning practitioners not to invest in cryptocurrencies and immediately sold off all my cryptocurrency holdings, losing about 50% of my original investment.

Master said in “Teaching the Fa at the 2004 International Fa Conference in New York:”

“Dafa disciples cannot do bad things. Pyramid schemes are not used in Western society anymore. That’s outright cheating people. It rips people off tier after tier, and the latecomers get exploited the most.

[You’re asking about] Dafa disciples getting involved in pyramid schemes? Is it right to be obsessed with making money off others? No, it’s not. If you do that, you are not doing legitimate business. There should be a loss for every gain, with commodities changing hands, but what are you doing? Racking your brain to rip people off. You can’t do that! I told you that long ago. You can’t get into pyramid schemes, and whoever does is wrong. Among the Dafa disciples in China, whoever gets into pyramid schemes is disrupting the form of cultivation that Dafa disciples do. They will have to bear all the consequences for that later on. (Applause)”

Master also said more recently in “Fa Teaching Given at the New York Fa Conference Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Dafa’s Spreading:”

“Disciple: Dafa disciples are not supposed to engage in multi-level marketing, but it’s hard to tell if the marketing of certain products is considered multi-level marketing. There is a product being promoted via WeChat that…

Master: Let me put it this way: today’s world is complicated, but Dafa disciples are to stay on a virtuous course. You can gauge the business with a cultivator’s standard and determine whether it’s ethical or if there’s deception involved. I think that if you really evaluate it with a Dafa disciple’s standard you will know the answer. Some people do know, but pretend to be confused and try to cover it up, as they want to make money. But isn’t it plenty clear what these things involve? You can see with a glance whether there’s any deception involved.”

In the past when I read Minghui editorial notices, I was always proud of myself for not falling into traps that other practitioners did. I even looked down at other practitioners who fell for things that seemed obvious to me, such as investing in pyramid schemes. I always wondered how practitioners could make a mistake on an issue that was so obvious.

Yet, in the matter of cryptocurrencies, even though I had been clear in my heart from the beginning that it was just another form of a pyramid scheme where the early investors get rich off later investors, I felt jealous of the practitioner who had made money through his Bitcoin investment. Even though I told others not to invest, I invested a small amount myself because of my own jealousy. I felt bad that other practitioners looked up to another practitioner and looked down on me, and I got caught up in the excitement and didn’t want to miss out on an opportunity.

I took a fall in this regard and hope that my sharing helps others avoid the same mistake.