Hi! I am a third-year undergraduate at Penn State University majoring in Risk Management and Economics. I fell in love with the financial markets the instant I saw different charts sprawled across the screen as I was shadowing a forex trader in the fall of 2017. The thought of taking in a huge amount of information, and then using that to compete with some of the brightest minds on the planet was simply fascinating to me.
My passion and determination took me through countless hours of online lessons during my three-month preparation period. And then, with 2018 quickly approaching, my new year resolution became clearer and clearer to me: apply the knowledge and open up my first brokerage account. That turned out to be one of the few turning points of my life. My insatiable interest encouraged me to move from trading stocks to options, futures, and even cryptocurrencies. In hindsight, all these tools I picked up along the way contributed greatly to where I am today.
Fast forward to the summer of 2018, I had landed an internship at a cryptocurrency start-up who took a liking to my experience in trading. Not knowing anything about cryptocurrencies and their underlying technology, I encountered an unpleasant surprise on my first day of job when my supervisor assigned me to the trading team that was more focused on the research of cryptocurrencies. And yet, little did I know that I was presented with another life-changing opportunity.
First week on the job, I was simply going through the motions with reading all the academic papers and news reports. They were mostly too technical for me to grasp their purposes. My enthusiasm remained low until I came across one written by a name that immediately stood out to me–Satoshi Nakamoto. Initially thinking that it was going to be yet another article I wasn’t able to understand, I was yet completely captivated by the vision of the author with a quite strange name. He claimed that he had solved the problem (“double-spending” problem) that plagued former online currencies and, even laid out a framework capable of changing the current financial system for the better. From there, I fell right into the “rabbit hole” known as the world of crytocurrencies.
Cryptocurrencies didn’t teach me how to code. They didn’t make me smarter or wealthier. They did, however, show me a different way of perceiving the world and how it could be changed. Looking back today, no matter how difficult or time-consuming it might be, the summer of 2018 is something I would cherish forever.
Here is a link to the Bitcoin whitepaper written by Satoshi Nakamoto if you find the topic interesting: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf.
And here also is a link to my resume.