Why I walked away from a position I’d held since 2016, and what the decision actually looked like from the inside.
I’d been in crypto since 2016.
I checked my portfolio a hundred times a day — the charts, the green candles, the red ones, the narratives, the what-ifs, the price-hike-right-after-I-sold and the dip-right-after-I-bought. It was exciting. It was, if I’m honest, a casino I happened to be good at sitting in front of.
And a couple of months ago, I quietly sold 98% of it.
Some friends congratulated me. The ones who knew how deep and how long I’d been in were stunned.
So let me walk you through what actually went into the decision — because “I sold my crypto” isn’t the interesting part. The reasoning is. And the reasoning is the part you can actually use.
It wasn’t fear
The easy assumption is that I panicked — saw a crash coming and ran.
A little, maybe. But not really. Anyone who’s been in crypto a while gets numb to 80%+ drawdowns; that’s just the weather. I didn’t lose faith in the technology either. I still think broad adoption is close to inevitable — I half expect it to end up sitting inside the S&P one day, with higher highs still ahead of the crashes. And I didn’t get scammed out of it, which in the wild west of crypto is its own small miracle.
So it wasn’t fear, and it wasn’t disillusionment. It was a question.
The question I couldn’t shake
I’d been praying and thinking through the next season of my life — money, business, family, health, all of it — and one question kept echoing:
Is your crypto portfolio aligned with what God has actually called me to build?
That one stung.
It wasn’t a snap decision. It was a big move, and I needed to sleep on it — to pray on it, to sit with it. But the longer I sat, the more the answer settled into something quiet and clear. I felt a nudge to take the money out of the casino and put it into something that would build.
Specifically: to buy the first commercial unit that my physio business, PHOENIX REHAB Physio & Hand, would operate from.
The operator logic underneath it
Here’s the part worth slowing down on, because the principle outlives the trade.
My crypto wasn’t just speculative — it was expensive in attention. It paid me in dopamine, not freedom. A hundred glances a day is a hundred small withdrawals from my focus, my presence, my work.
So I moved the money from a speculative asset that drained me into a productive asset that compounds — and not just any productive asset. A unit my own business runs out of.
Two things happen the moment you do that:
- You stop paying rent to a landlord and start paying it to an asset you own. The business funds the property; the property secures the business. You become your own landlord.
- You de-risk the thing you’ve already built. No more rent hikes you can’t control. No more lease insecurity. The ground your business stands on is now ground you own.
This was a move I’d been circling for a while — what I think of as “McDonald’s-ing” the business: own the real estate the business operates on, so the operation and the asset feed each other. Crypto could only ever go up or down. This does both jobs at once — it builds wealth and it strengthens what I’d already spent years building.
“The plans of the diligent lead surely to abundance, but everyone who is hasty comes only to poverty.” — Proverbs 21:5
I’m not anti-crypto. I kept a small 2% in, mostly some Solana memecoins, and I still think the space has a long runway. If God’s called you into fintech and crypto, go all in on that. But for me, the call was to be anchored — not tossed around by every wave of hype. We’re meant to steward what we’ve been given. Not gamble it, not hoard it, not cling to it out of fear.
What was on the other side
I expected to feel some loss. I did — a little melancholy, some withdrawal pangs. Crypto had been a companion for years.
But two gifts showed up that I didn’t fully see coming:
I got my sleep back. I no longer wake in the middle of the night to check prices. I no longer glance a hundred times a day. I’m freer, and far more present — with my wife, my kids, myself, and the business.
I got my focus back. With my attention no longer parked in the casino, I can see my business clearly again. I’m already leveling up Phoenix’s offerings and mapping the next five years of growth — work that simply wasn’t getting my best attention while crypto was eating it.
The quiet point
The most powerful moves usually aren’t the flashy ones.
They’re the slow, deliberate ones — the ones that serve your family, your team, your calling. The ones that don’t just grow your portfolio, but grow your legacy. You don’t have to chase the latest trend to walk in provision. You just have to be faithful in the small.
“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.” — Luke 16:10
So here’s the question I’ll hand to you, the same one that found me:
Is there a position in your life — a holding, a habit, a pursuit — that’s paying you in dopamine instead of freedom? Something you sense you’re meant to redirect out of the casino and into something that actually builds?
Sit with that one. Sleep on it. Then move.
Afternote, for the crypto faithful: we used to joke that the market only booms once someone finally capitulates and sells their whole bag — so from the looks of it (ETH ran from ~$1,400 to ~$2,700 after I sold), I’m the sacrifice. You’re welcome.
Jokes aside — on timing, I have zero idea. There’s probably a bull run coming; when, I couldn’t tell you. I’m just going to keep relying on God and keep building.