Why I moved everything out of an asset I couldn’t govern — and into one I could.
A few years ago I sold all my crypto at what most people would call exactly the wrong time.
People who knew told me I was crazy. Some of them were right about the price. None of them were right about the decision.
The part that matters has nothing to do with the chart.
Let me start with the default — the one most of us are handed without ever choosing it. The default says wealth is a number, and you reach the number by timing things well. Buy the right thing at the right moment, sell higher, watch the scoreboard climb. That’s the whole game.
I played it.
For a long time….I thought I was decent at it…but looking back, I think, God protected me. I’m much much better in managing business and growing systems, vs playing crypto and stocks. Plus I was early, so when one is early, it’s sort of easy to think that cos of the capital gains = made money = I’m smart and good at it.
I was plain early and lucky, and God helped protect my capital. Seriously.
But somewhere in the middle of it, two things landed on me at once.
The first: I was tired of waiting. Crypto is a long bet on someday — someday it moons, someday the thesis plays out, someday the number is finally big enough. I had real, hard-earned money parked in a someday I didn’t control, and I was done holding my breath for it.
The second, underneath the first: I didn’t control a single thing I owned.
Not the price. Not the supply. Not the rules. Not the timing of the next crash. I was a passenger in every asset I held, telling myself I was the driver because I’d “done my research.” And money I’d worked hard for was riding in the back seat with me.
You cannot steward — or safeguard — what you cannot govern.
That reorganised how I think about money.
Because here’s what I actually want money to do. I don’t want a number that might go up someday. I want an engine — something that produces now, that I can run, that throws off cash whether or not I’m watching a screen, that I can hand to my children and that still works in their hands.
Crypto produced nothing. It only rose if someone later paid more than I did. Strip away the language and that’s the whole mechanism — and “someday” is doing all the work.
So I moved the money into something I could build on and control: commercial property.
Not glamorous.
Not a story anyone reposts. But look at what it actually does. It produces rent. It produces fees. It pays now, not someday. I set the terms, I run the upkeep, I govern the thing instead of praying over a chart.
That’s the inverse I built. Speculation → stewardship. A bet I watch → an engine I run.
Now, the timing.
Yes, I sold “early.”
Yes, by the chart I left money on the table. I genuinely don’t care, and here’s why: I was never trying to win the exit. I was trying to stop playing a game I would never control, and start building something I could.
Conviction over timing. Nearly every important financial decision I’ve made looked wrong on the day and right over the decade. If you wait for the market to validate a decision before you make it, you’ll be a passenger your whole life.
There’s a quieter reason underneath all of it, and I’ll say it once.
None of this capital is ultimately mine. I’m holding it for a season — for a family, for a purpose larger than my own lifetime. And a steward’s question is never “how high can I push the number.” It’s “what have I been trusted with, and can I be trusted to govern it and pass it on intact?” Speculation can’t answer that question. An engine can.
So here’s the principle, if you take nothing else from this:
If you can’t govern it, and it doesn’t produce, you don’t own wealth. You’re holding a bet and calling it an investment. Stewardship is the deliberate inverse of speculation. I sold the bet. I built the engine. And I’d do it again at the “wrong” time, every single time.
If you can’t govern it, and it doesn’t produce, you don’t own wealth. You’re holding a bet and calling it an investment. Stewardship is the deliberate inverse of speculation. I sold the bet. I built the engine.
And I’d do it again at the “wrong” time, every single time.