What the value of money really is - Bird Lovegod

Then last week I decided to expand my holdings into some of the lesser known cryptos, Ripple, Litecoin, Bitcoin cash, Ether, and one called Stellar. Some of these are like ‘Penny stocks’, Ripple and Stellar are literally pennies to buy. But, my thinking goes, it doesn’t matter what it’s worth, it’s what it goes up by that’s important.

And it’s probably more likely that a 10p coin will become worth 20p than a £12,000 one will double. So I spread my investment, now £2,500, across a range of these cryptos. And I watched the value rise to £3,300 as Ripple and Stellar went up by 30 per cent in a single day.

This is easy, I think, checking my account compulsively, like a social media addict, every few minutes, every time I looked at my phone, perhaps 50 times a day.

I didn’t have a plan as to why I had even bought the coins, in my thinking it started as a long-term investment, but with these volatile penny coins that obviously wasn’t the case. I didn’t realise it, but I had become a compulsive gambler starting with £100 and going to £2,500 in a month.

Was I going to be keeping them for years? If I’m not going to sell I don’t need to care what they’re worth. And If I’m looking short term, if £500 or £700 isn’t a big enough profit, what is?

If I cash out too early I could miss out on huge gains, if I don’t cash out, I could lose the gains I’ve made. Clearly this isn’t my area of speciality. Watching numbers increase and decrease and deciding at which point to convert them into other more stable numbers.

Amazingly this is the obsessive focus of many peoples lives. So, anyway, and predictably, after a few days, I check my account in the morning and I’m back down to £2,600. I sell everything and make a profit of £75 after fees. And I feel like I’ve lost £500. Even though, actually, I’ve made £75.

So I was experiencing a few notes of regret, but this clarified into feeling that I had had a close call, because it was actually insidiously compelling and addictive gambling, which is what it is.

And it gave me insight into the mind mechanics of the global economy, a game of distraction, whereby the ‘winners’ take from the ‘losers’, and billions live in poverty, and men in women in suits stare at screens and are obsessed with hoarding digitised numbers that have no true value and can never be enough to satisfy them or anyone else. Just addicts feeding an addiction that has dominated them.

I feel like I’ve been taking a dangerous drug for a week, and snapped out of it, come off it, just as the addiction started to kick in. A close call in heading down a wrong and very toxic path. And now I feel deep relief. And I put £500 into the Good Deed Fund of EthicalMuch, as a gift, and a reminder of what money is for. To heal lives. To save lives. That is all it is worth.

Bird Lovegod is an independent fintech consultant

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James Mitchinson