It’s not a toll-free number from some infomercial. Or not yet, at least, infomercials are expensive.

But think about those old Billy Mays commercials, for a rag that can clean up countless spills or a super-powerful blender.

They called them infomercials because more than just selling a product, they wanted to give you information about a new way of doing something that would render what came before it obsolete.

Information. That’s what I want to give to you. And the best way to take on lots of new information is through education.

1-800-Bitcoin is an educational resource to teach you the ins and outs of crypto and have you trading like a pro.

I want to be your constant teacher, your guide, and your mentor. I’ll be there through the good times and the bad to help you become fluent in the finance of tomorrow.

Now, there’s an old saying that, “Those who can’t do, teach.”

And I want to be modest here, but my crypto tale isn’t a tragedy. In fact, it’s a hell of a lot closer to a fairy tale.

I’m going to start my tale where all stories should start: At the beginning.

That entrepreneurial spirit I mentioned? The one that’s driven me throughout my career?

It was there even when I was a kid. I know it sounds a little strange for a child to be “business-minded,” but there’s really no other word for it. Ask my mom.

I grew up in Buffalo, New York as one of ten siblings.

When your family’s that large, it means not a lot of parental attention and a lot of potential partners (employees).

We didn’t have much money, but as long as I can remember, I’ve been interested in making it.

Throughout my childhood, I created enterprise after enterprise. Some more successful than others.

And we’re not talking lemonade stands here. I created Bargainballs.net, a service that would sell discount, used golf balls that my sibling and I would scavenge from a course in a nearby neighborhood.

There was also Doodyfree. Me and my brother would go door-to-door cleaning up dog poop from our neighbors’ lawns.

Our slogans? “Got poop? We scoop!” or “We’re #1 in #2!”

But there was one venture that stuck with me, that was more formative than any other in creating the businessman I am today.

My younger brother, Jared, was a truly gifted RuneScape player.

If you’re not familiar with RuneScape, it’s a massive multiplayer online roleplaying game created in 2001. It’s sort of your traditional fantasy setting with knights, orcs, and treacherous dungeons.

My brother was so good at RuneScape that he was making more gold, the in-game currency, than he could ever possibly use.

And neither of us could help but notice the constant, in-game attempts by sellers offering in-game gold for real world currencies.

Jared and I partnered together to begin selling his excess RuneScape gold to American players.

In no time, our business blew up. I was barely a teenager and thousands upon thousands of dollars were being deposited into my PayPal account every week.

That was, until I was served with a cease and desist by Jagex, the multi-billion dollar publisher behind RuneScape.

They alleged that our side hustle was violating intellectual property laws. This was a massive video game company bringing a lawsuit down against a pre-teen.

And though I was able to avoid my day in court, I was permanently locked out of my PayPal account, a ban that I’m still enjoying to this day.

Being served by RuneScape’s publisher was a hard lesson, but an important one.

It created a fire in me, a lingering outrage that a massive company could stop a child from making money off its product from an innovative, secondary market.

Now, we’re going to jump ahead a couple years to my undergrad days at University of Buffalo.

I was working hard and studying hard. I sat in the front of every lecture hall. I made the Dean’s list.

But I was miserable.

It was becoming increasingly clear to me that college was just a pipeline to becoming another cog in the machine.

I was in UB’s business school and when I took a class on “Building Your Resume,” something snapped.

I shouldn’t be taking a class on how to build a resume, I should be actually building one.

There’s nothing to be gained from passively studying, taking the tests, and ending up with just another entry-level job at whatever company was in the mood for UB business school grads.

Rather than having college make money off me in the forms of food, housing, and tuition, I started thinking, “How can I make money off college?”

That entrepreneurial spirit was back and burning brighter than ever.

I identified a niche. I noticed that college students had trouble finding a place to store their stuff during long trips, summers away, or semesters abroad.

I created Campus National Storage. I linked college students to storage spaces and the money started rolling in.

What started at UB expanded to Syracuse, Colgate, Hamilton, and Boston College. At its peak, 25 colleges across the east coast were participating in Campus National Storage.

I was a freshman in college and I was making as much money as my father.

But you can bet I wasn’t on the dean's list anymore. I was throwing everything I had into my growing business.

My first semester at UB I had all A’s, my second semester I had mostly F’s.

But it grew too big too fast. I was forced to shut the business down. I lost almost all of the money I had earned and I had to drop out of University of Buffalo.

My parents didn’t know any of this. I didn’t know how to tell them and I needed to buy myself some time.

When I returned home that summer, I reached out to extended family, and secured a job working for my uncle’s imports/exports business in Budapest, Hungary.

I went to Europe as a college drop-out with only a few bucks to my name.