After joining this community for a while (not super long, just 3 weeks ago), I haven't made any proper introduction. Now let me introduce you to myself. I am Christopher Tahir, from Medan, Indonesia → a city cited as a culinary epicentrum of Indonesia. If you go to Indonesia for food hunting, this is one of the best, if not the best, place for you to feast!!!

How I get into the wold of investment

Let me bring you back to 2017, the reason I bring you back to 2017 is that year can be said as the start of my turning point. What happened back then? Let me bring you back to even longer to 2009. Back in 2009, I started my very first step to the investing world by investing in Indonesian shares in Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX), it was my second year in the university.

Back then, investing at uni age made me feel like the coolest kid in the school! The main reason was the minimum deposit was huge at that time, it required me to deposit around USD3500 (IDR50 mil) just to open an account. Just to give you a better perspective, back then the average salary of fresh grads was at IDR2mil per month (approx USD140). How can I have that money? I had a privilege to get a better career at that time that earned me around IDR10-15 mil a month. And at the photo, I was in South Korea in the so-called Kimchi School with my mom (don't ask me how to make onem, cos I have forgotten LOL).

Short story about my marriage

I finally met my love of my life in 2008 in the college as well, but we finally were in relationship in 2010. Fast forward, we tied the knot back in Jan 2015. As a person who would like to make my love happy, I tried as much as possible to make things more convenient for her. Unfortunately (brought you back to couple of months before our marriage), I had to declare myself bankrupt because I mis-managed my asset, I put my assets into a risky asset called Options on Futures (FutOpt), which eventually made who I am today. I could say that it was one of the lowest point of my life. But, as a Chinese, we have a tradition which I oppose which is to make the grand wedding (if you wanna understand how it looks, go search in Netflix Dream Wedding - a Singaporean movie), unfortunately, parents would like that to happen which eventually burn my pocket, accounts and all investments I had. Lessons learned and that one incident really changed me and made me a much better person.

Jump into tech world and cryptospace

Now, let's fast forward to 2017. I started to attend many seminars or sessions that talked about things related to tech and startup scene in Indonesia. And I have a friend (Danny Taniwan) who eventually become my partner in building a crypto community in Indonesia, called CryptoWatch.id (the main reason behind the name is to help the community to "watch" the so-called scam project, so basically we want to help people avoiding traps in scam projects, which is still true till today). He is also the person that dragged me into the cryptospace, by introducing ETH mining at that time. I mined for 8 months till ETH peaked on Feb 2018 and I sold all my rigs. And with the conviction that Bitcoin will change the world, I decided to take a leap of faith to translate Bitcoin whitepaper to Bahasa Indonesia to enable Indonesian understand Bitcoin with less language barrier. This voluntary work has finally made me known by mainstream media when talking about things related to the space.

In the community we created, we eventually be able to meet many amazing people both in tech and finance, including @evanstinger who leads the @splinterlands movement in the community, which I appreciate a lot. Not only leading the movement, but also guiding us including how to use tools like @peakmonsters. Finally I decided to make a Discord server to accomodate people from Cryptowatch Telegram to talk deeper about this gaming business.

Time when things started to take off

I personally like to write but sometimes time does not allow me to write a lot as I am still working as an employee. The year of 2019 was the time when things started to take off, people know me as a Bitcoin believer which is still true till today. But not only that, I am also known as a finance-savvy guy, so I can say I am in between #tech and #finance. With my knowledge and experience, eventually I am hired by a brokerage firm as their trainer, which I still do till today. You can ask me anything related to most financial instruments in the market, I can help you with that.

From the current job I have, eventually I was able to travel to some countries to train and speak about risk management, how to trade, etc. The photo attached was a photo taken at Bangkok, where that session was attended by more than 300 people. I can talk even more and deeper about financial instruments, introduce people to new instruments, etc. Basically I try to open up opportunities for people.

The pandemic

In 2020, when the pandemic started to hit, all business trips were cancelled by the company for our well-being and safety. Things started to change that I have to deliver things online, meet almost no people on daily basis (luckily I brought my family together with me, cos now I am living in Malaysia).

But there was a positive thing that happened, which was the beginning of me making content online. So I started a Youtube channel talking about personal finance, financial planning, crypto, etc, as I have extra 1.5 hours which I used for commuting before the pandemic. Now with that time, I can make contents and share with people all around the world. My channel is called Duit Pintar, which literally translated as Smart Money. Currently it is in Indonesian and I still have no plan to make the EN version, perhaps I may think about making subtitle in EN to test out.

Gaming

I open up possibilities to earn even more. Eventually I spare a bit of my time to learn about how games can earn you, when I did a podcast session with @evanstinger. For those who wants to learn, you can watch them here (in ID):

1. Part 1:
2. Part 2:
3. Part 3:
4. Case study #splinterlands :

I am not an avid gamer, I just play games casually. Usually I won't have more than 2 games in my devices, because I do not alloted too much for games. From this game, eventually I met some other people like @cicisaja , who is also a long time player of Splinterlands and also @crypstocks , who knows how to earn more in the game. Not to mention an avid writer @tedus for making some good piece of writings. And an avid coffee enthusiast @adrianleonardi

Final words

I guess everyone will have different story. I just want to tell everyone to keep learning and thriving as it will make you a better person in the future. Learning won't hurt you, learning will always open up opportunities that may be at the blindspot in the past. Thanks for spending your time reading a very long intro of mine. Peace out!!!

Here's a latte for you.
PS: I learned it during the pandemic as well :D
PS: I made this intro after looking at comments made by @indayclara @lovesniper at @kosada (another person I met in Cryptowatch community) post :D