Martin* is a 24-year-old graduate currently serving his country. After making millions in the Web3 ecosystem and losing it all to bad investments and “new money” habits, he talks about starting over from scratch and finding the stability he lacked at 20.

As Told To Boluwatife

In late 2021, I was a 200-level student just coming out of the pandemic lockdown. My financial situation was manageable; a polite way of saying I was at the bottom of my family’s very long list of priorities. 

I come from a family with 11 children. My dad did his best to make sure all of us had an education — we even went to private schools —  but after fees were paid, there was nothing left for an allowance. I survived uni by taking random ₦10k -₦30k freelance writing or social media gigs.

Then, a friend of a friend introduced me to a DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation), which is essentially a blockchain-based community.

I started as a social media intern, earning $300 a month. Within a month, I was promoted to team member and also joined their ambassadorship programme. Ambassadors used platforms like Discord to find and pitch our services to other decentralised organisations and startups.

My pay jumped to $700. But the real money came from the quarterly bonuses. We were building infrastructure for other crypto companies and had goals to hit. When we hit those goals, we got payouts every three months. 

I made my first million easily. My first two payouts were ₦700k each. Soon, I was seeing bonuses between $2,000 and $5,000 every quarter. I was a 20-year-old student pulling in millions of naira. 

I adopted a new lifestyle

When you go from managing to having everything, your brain does something funny. It convinces you the tap will never run dry. And it wasn’t just me. 

My girlfriend and some friends worked at the same company, and the new inflow changed how we thought about money. We started making questionable financial decisions.

I completely overhauled my life. I lived like a king. First, I paid two years’ rent upfront for a new apartment. I gave my old laptop to my brother and splurged ₦350k on a new one. Then I changed my entire wardrobe. 

Also, my girlfriend, my friends, and I bought enough food and supplies to last six months. We bought a fridge, a freezer, and furniture.

I became the family bank. I started receiving payouts from the company in November. By December, I made sure I spent a lot of money to make Christmas special for my family. Beyond that, I was gifting money like nobody’s business. I sent money to whoever asked me for it. It was crazy.

Next, the partying started. I didn’t really want to party all the time, but the thing about being in a friend group is that you can’t just back out of something everyone else is doing. I had fun sometimes, but most of the time I felt iffy about partying. 

Every time I tried to convince my friends to sit out a party, they’d be like, “Let’s do it.” In the end, I’d think, “What the hell? I might as well.”

While I was being unnecessarily generous and partying regularly, my girlfriend’s income (which was more than mine) mostly went into dealing with black tax. We lived together, and I knew she was constantly sending money to her parents and feeding her household. To cope with the stress, she bought things on impulse. Every day, delivery riders were at our door to bring clothes she didn’t need.

The 60% mistake

My life wasn’t just a big blur of spending sprees. I also tried to make what I believed were sensible financial decisions.

Instead of saving, I thought it was better to invest. All my friends were experts in Web3 and cryptocurrency, so I followed their advice and invested in crypto.

I put 60% of everything I earned back into crypto — Ethereum, my company’s token, and a few other promising coins. I thought I was being smart. 

But 2022 arrived, and the crypto winter hit. Everywhere turned red, but I kept hoping the value of my assets — about $8k in total — would go back up. At the same time, infighting started at the company. Everyone wanted to be at the top of the food chain for the biggest bonus allocations. The toxic energy at work bled into our friend group. We went from supporting each other to competing.

By August 2022, the company collapsed.

I didn’t know how to stop spending

You’d expect that I’d adjust when the money stopped flowing in, right? Unfortunately, my girlfriend and I had gotten so used to a lifestyle, and we didn’t know how to pump the brakes.

I got another job earning $150/month at a startup almost immediately, but it was a drop in the ocean. My girlfriend started taking out loans to maintain our lifestyle. We fell into a classic debt trap: we’d borrow money to survive the month, get paid, use half the pay to settle debt, and then run out of money by the middle of the next month. The cycle repeated until there was nothing left to borrow.

Maybe things would’ve been better if we’d managed the limited resources we had better. My girlfriend was still impulse buying and taking on family responsibilities. I can’t put the full blame on her, though. I should’ve also tried to regulate our spending.

I eventually had to sell my crypto investments. I sold them for less than half of what I bought them for to clear our debts.

By November, everything was gone. My relationship ended, and my friend group fell apart. I also lost the new job because the startup didn’t even have an official operating license. 

I had to leave the apartment and move back into a school hostel — an eight-man room packed with 30 people. Imagine going from living under 24/7 AC to that kind of room. I couldn’t handle it and kept falling sick. Eventually, I ran away from the hostel to squat with a friend. 

Starting over

I spent 2023 and 2024 rebuilding. I took a PR internship that paid ₦40k, then moved up to ₦100k after about a year. I also took on a social media gig for a Web3 company for ₦150k. I was hungry sometimes, and I often had to do the one thing I didn’t really want to do: ask my parents for an allowance. They were surprised since I never ask, but they tried their best to send me money

Today, I’m 24 and serving NYSC. I don’t have a high-paying job right now, and I don’t have any investments yet. But I have something I didn’t have at 20: Sense.

I realised that my friends and I failed because we didn’t have anyone older to guide us. We were just a bunch of 20-year-olds with too much money and zero financial literacy.

My plan for the next time the millions come? No more 60% crypto bets. I’ll put 10% in ETFs and stocks. I’ll also look into real estate, something tangible that won’t disappear when something goes wrong.

I’ll prioritise financial stability over splurging. I have a passion for music that I’d like to explore, but I know I need a financial foundation first.

I don’t regret it, though. I must have made over ₦10 million in the year I worked at the DAO. So, I guess I made a ₦10 million sacrifice to learn how money actually works. I’m a lot less naive now. If I made all that money once, it can happen again. This time, I’ll be ready to keep it.

*Name has been changed for the sake of anonymity.

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