 This is the second episode of Crypto Stories, a series where we explore the ways crypto has changed people's lives. Check out our first one. Today, we're bringing you three tales in one video. Hit the like button and share this with your friends. Make sure to subscribe and turn on that notification bell to keep up with our interviews, reports, and documentaries on all things crypto. Now, let's meet Timofey from Russia, Brain from Nigeria, and Jack from Singapore. Here are their stories. First of all, I would like to say that I'm a complete amateur in cryptocurrencies. For a long time, I was not connected with such area in any way, but I have heard a lot about it from my classmates, from my friends. I studied a lot of humanities, botany, ancient philosophy, film drama, film directing. In 2019, I invested my grandmother's gift in cryptocurrency and it was only $100 from her pension. This is a gift for my birthday. I bought USDT, then I bought Bitcoin, Ethereum, only with the help of my friends because this area is very hard for me. I didn't understand it at all. I wasn't going to trade because it's difficult. I invested this money in a money box, I think. Of course, I didn't tell my grandmother how I spent her gift. I need you to understand that she doesn't know anything at all about internet, about cryptocurrencies, of course, and also about directing. The only thing is that one day I will be on TV like an actor or a singer anyway, I love her so much. Then I forgot about my invest, I stage a play, I listen a lot of lectures. When it came time to shoot a training film, I took out part of her gift, which has already grown a little by that time and I invested it to my first film where actually my grandmother was a main producer. Then we make a movie. The money was only for food, travel and some equipment rent. The whole team worked for free 14-15 hours a day, it was very hard. But then my student film entered Switzerland Worldwide Film Festival and was shown in Moscow at Museum of Modern Art and as for me, of course, this is a living dream because I didn't count on anything. Then I thought that in Soviet Union, the film process was controlled by totalitarian government, in World Cinema by authoritarian producers and for the first time in history of cinema, in my case, with cryptocurrency and of course by my grandmother. I would like to say huge thanks to Traderlyze and Cointelegraph, it is an honor for me to take feedback from such platforms. This episode is sponsored by Traderlyze, a global ecosystem for crypto trading and investing. Check out their platform using the link in the description. It's just my uncle and his friends. So it was his friend who convinced him about the cryptocurrency, about the Bitcoin. On 2014 was the year he did the investment, he invested $2000. My uncle, before he made that investment, he himself really did not have knowledge on cryptocurrency or Bitcoin and when he made the investment, he did not really took the investment seriously. Fortunately for my uncle, the private laptop computer he used, his personal or not the bank phone that he used for his work right now, that was what he used in the registration of the Bitcoin. So after OY, he said one of his nephew, his name is Kelvin, living also in Lagos States with him, the boy was in the university. So he needed a computer for his work in school. He met with my uncle and my uncle thought of instead of giving him money to buy a new computer, he has a computer at home that he is not using. So he felt okay, the boy should take the computer, use it for a while and the boy should bring back the computer when the boy is still using it. There was this very big reception in Nigeria and banks started laying out workers. Thousands of people were unemployed and he was affected. He was a banker. At that point of his life, when he was laid out, he had theories of loan, he took maybe for his car, the house he was living, his kid that was in school, the business and he opened for his wife and some other loans, those things were on his head. And you know, here in Nigeria, it's not like other countries where you have this is like insurance plan working for you. Yeah, things like that don't work, you just stay on your own. Here about he met with a friend who as he was discussing and the friend talked to him on a cryptocurrency and how Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are doing well in the market. So my uncle, according to him said he remembered he had invested back in 2014. He invested up to $2,000 back then. I believe at that particular point in time, he was a little bit happy. Meet with his nephew, Kelvin for his private computer and Kevin had to tell him that the computer was bad and he was looking for a better one on Kelvin, which was his nephew. He took the computer to the computer market. He had to sell it, adding money to it to get a new one, not informing my uncle. So hearing that Mr. Kola was dead, he could not trace the computer, he could not get it. He did not even have an idea on what password was used, an idea or the crypto wallet that was used in the registration. That was what happened. He came back and he was devastated and sadly he felt sick. The whole family ran around him trying to help but with Litu in our hands, we could not do anything. He had these pastoralities. He died 20-20 now. It was a very sad story for me. Who was his own family? As far as I could remember, he was having no humanness before he realized that he could not recover it anymore. So it came very fast and we could not even do anything about it because we had Litu. So as he passed on, to me I believe it was the frustration covering everything. He lost his job and an investment that would have helped him. For me, I felt like maybe he lost hope. To an extent, I trust cryptocurrency because I believe if my uncle had trusted it, he would have taken it very seriously. He would have been able to save the wallet remembering that ID writing it down to him and I believe it would have bring him out from the problem he was in. So to an extent, his mistake has even given me more interest in learning what a crypto world has to offer. So for me, I trust cryptocurrency. I believe it's a future that we are going into. I started trading stocks when I was like 14 years old. I didn't grow up from a rich family and my parents are always arguing about finances and money. I wanted to help out the family. That's how I got into trading at 14. I remember on CNBC seeing this crazy chart just going parabolic from like $60 to $1,200. And then very quickly after that, I think it was the Mt. Gox fiasco and Bitcoin prices started sinking. Everyone was worried, saying it's a big scam. But to me, if an exchange fails, it doesn't mean anything for the underlying technology. It doesn't mean anything for decentralized currency. I took that as a goodbye opportunity. I was much younger and didn't think very deeply about how this thing could affect so many aspects of the financial system later on. So it just seemed like a fun trading vehicle. In 2017, my now co-founder Mark sent me this white paper about a decentralized futures exchange. He was like, you know, can you help us raise money? So I said, sure, you guys are really brilliant. I'll just send it to all my friends and they will all invest, right? I can make an easy buck or two like that. We had a lot of hurdles to go through. No one really believed in the project in the beginning. Long story short, the first company that we tried to do within the crypto space wasn't, it didn't really take off. We quickly pivoted to our core strength of trading. Once we did that, it was a much easier path because we understood what to do every single step. But it was still very, very difficult to raise money. In 2018, you know, it was a fair market. Everyone had gotten burned in, you know, late 2017, mid-2018 on ICOs. So nobody wanted to invest, right? So we barely raised enough capital to get Krono's research started. You know, I was trading because we didn't raise that much money in the beginning. If I saw a good opportunity, I would jump on it and try to make money and not lose. So then, you know, I was on stage in Sydney, I think, or Melbourne, one of those two. After flying for like 20 hours or something crazy, you know, talking about Krono's and Retrade, then I saw like kind of all the all coins, you know, coiling up and about to break out. So, you know, I had to take that trade even though I was on stage. And luckily I finished my 20-minute talk so that I had time to do that while other people were talking. I try not to trade on my cell phone as much, but because I was traveling a lot in the beginning, and it's very, very difficult because you can only see a couple of things happening on a tiny little screen, right? And I'm used to having multiple like six, seven monitors, and now I'm sitting there with a tiny screen. You know, your attention is like 10 different directions. I think it was a few hundred thousand. It wasn't bad, especially our capital base was tiny back then. Mark and I, I mean, we basically didn't take a salary, maybe it was like a tiny salary like $3,000 a month for the first two years. I think it's okay that we talk about the nano situation now, but I definitely didn't want to talk about it back then, right? Like right after I made the trade or something like that. I think it's one of those things that I just had to do what needed to be done such that we can achieve the results that we have now. Sadness, joy, trial and success. What are these but elements of our common human experience brought together by the network of cryptocurrency? Do you feel inspired? Share your stories with me at Jackson at Cointelegraph.com. Together, we will tell them to the world. This is the fundamental virtue of crypto. It is for everyone. Thanks for watching.