Episode #4: Overcoming the Fear of Investing in Crypto w/Keith
On today’s episode of the Accel Defi Podcast, we interview a member of the Accel Defi Team, Keith (known in the community as Wolfgang Regem), as we discuss Keith’s cryptocurrency journey, involvement with Accel Defi, and how he overcame his fears of investing in crypto.
For more information on Accel Defi, please visit www.acceldefi.com or our Link Tree:https://linktr.ee/AccelDefi
For educational resources related to Accel Defi and Crypto in general, subscribe to Accel Defi University on YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJDNIqPTp9kjsMPmPo119Zg
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[Scott] On today's episode of the ACCEL Podcast, we interview a member of the ACCEL team, Keith, as we discuss Keith's cryptocurrency journey, involvement with ACCEL and how he overcame the fears of investing in crypto. As always, my name is Scott and Hi, I'm Eric. I'm Alex. You're listening to the ACCEL Podcast, Accelerating Your Crypto Investments, one podcast at a time.
[Alex] Welcome, everyone. Today we have a really special guest for you, one of my favorite team members. Everyone, please welcome Keith, aka Wolfgang.
[Keith] Hi, Alex. Thank you for having me.
[Alex] Thank you for coming on. Can you introduce yourself to listeners? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell us about your biggest accomplishments in your career thus far.
[Keith] Well, let's see. Probably 60 years old, which basically means we've made it through life pretty well and have been working in crypto since 2017. Been involved with this project since the start. I'm an avid researcher. I'm an avid writer. I'm a film buff… golfer. Those are some of the fun things. And as far as accomplishments go, right now, I only deal in the present, and it's the fact that I've even gotten active in crypto at my age.
[Alex] Tell us a little bit of how you got involved with cryptocurrency.
[Keith] 2010, one of my friends called up and said there was this coin and started talking about digital currency called Bitcoin. And I ignored the heck out of them. And then in 2017, after things started picking up a little bit, it was actually Christmas of 2016. I bought into three or four different cryptos and then did the smartest thing I'd ever thought about, which was forgot them. Fast forward 2000 and $2400 turned into a little over $50,000. And I thought, wait a minute, I need to learn something here.
[Alex] That's awesome. So we all start off very Rocky. What's one thing that you wish you would have known starting out in crypto?
[Keith] Don’t day trade. Very simply, that three year period, three, four year period that while it was out there, I didn't look at it. I didn't pay attention to it. It did its own thing. Then when I started trying to trade it, I almost gave everything I had made back. So DYOR, do your own research and don't day trade.
[Scott] I think that's a big thing that you see nowadays in crypto is a lot of people try to come in and they think that first move should be to try to day trade. And a lot of people come in and like you said, they don't do their research, and it makes it hard on them because then you're kind of just closing your eyes and shooting at a target, and it makes it tough. Crypto is one of those spaces where just like anywhere else, when it's innovative and booming, you have to make sure that you're doing your research or you're going to be one of those guys that get left in the dirt. I think that's a big part of it and I think a lot of people miss that. They just want to hop in and not do their due diligence and think they're going to make a ton of money. So a question for you, Keith, is being in the space, being a little older, what kind of drew you towards ACCEL and what exactly do you do? I know you're kind of a Jack of all trades, working in a whole bunch of different departments for us.
[Keith] It's also awkward. Guys, if you want to refer to me as Wolfgang or Wolf or Wolfie because that's, hey, it's Crypto. Everybody has an alternate name and it's actually interesting with ACCEL. Just what I know about the project and the people involved in the project. I don't feel like I need to hide behind an alt name anymore. I'm kind of proud to be able to come out go, hey, look, this is who I am and who I work with and what we do. As far as getting involved with ACCEL, I was really lucky. A few of the team members were already involved with the project and I approached them because I didn't see them where we were before. Just said, hey, Where'd you guys go? You disappeared. And after a little bit of prying because they didn't want to recruit not just me, but anybody from other projects did a little bit of digging, a little bit of prying, saw what it was. And everybody that I liked and got along with was in this project. So I figured I'd jump in.
[Eric] Wolf that’s dynamite, I'm glad to hear that you were in the project early on. One of the other things in the crypto space, we know there's a lot of common myths and misconceptions and they can all very easily be debunked for you. What do you think the biggest one was?
[Keith] Well, two things actually. I mean, in crypto, what you don't know is going to cost you money. And I'm older and being a little bit on the older side, you're hesitant to learn new things, to step into new spaces. And when it involves your money, it really ups the pressure, it amps the pressure like 100 times because you're thinking, oh my God, I'm literally putting my money into outer space or the crypto space or whatever you want to call it. And then overcoming that was just not having a fear of the unknown. And actually I got thinking about stock certificates. Strangely enough, when I was talking to some of my friends, my peer group has a big just hesitancy to get involved. And I asked them about their stockholders. They said, well, that's not throwing your money out to nowhere like you are. We have stock certificates. I said, no, you actually hold them. Well, no, the broker does. Well, to me it's the same thing. They're out there somewhere. You just don't know where it is.
[Alex] So touching on what you had just mentioned. How is ACCEL removing some of those barriers for your peer group?
[Keith] Without a doubt, Alex, the educational process, that's part of what drew me to this project. Anybody that gets involved in crypto at the very beginning, if you don't do your homework and do your own research, you're going to end up getting rugged in something. And one of the things I admire about ACCEL is that this whole project is about taking away the mystery, so to speak, removing the illusion and actually educating people as to what they need to be doing and what they need to be learning. I remember when I first bought back in 2017 into crypto, the whole process was so confusing. I had to have a flow chart. And that's what I love about this is we literally have how to videos everywhere. So I'm loving the fact that ACCEL is removing those barriers.
[Scott] So, Keith, I know we just got to talk about some of the positives of ACCEL DeFi University and how it just kind of creates that environment to allow you to grow as an individual. What are some of the other resources and advice you can kind of give to someone that are looking to join the ACCEL community to really help grow their knowledge and experiences in the space?
[Keith] I love that you're the person asking that question. Moon, you're one of my resources and it's really been funny. At 60, you expect to be the elder mentor and you step back and you lecture all the young people on your life lessons. And here you have to kind of put those things aside because you guys are just light years ahead as far as the knowledge base goes. But what's really great is that you guys share this freely. I mean, all you have to do coming on here is asking for help. I mentioned the videos and things before, but the main resource for me has been the people. I mean, you look at Mad or Jovan, you read these guys their CVs and see what they've done and what they do. And you think, okay, I'm not going to ask questions because this is going to be like a foreign language and they're not like that. They simplify it. And I think that's been for me, it's been a great thing because I've been able to come in and just say, hey, I don't understand this part. Can you explain it to me? And they talk. So far, everybody I've interacted with in the community talks to you, not at you. And it's made things so much simpler as far as learning. And if there happens to be something that we haven't covered at the University, then everybody's always quick. They have a resource ready to go. Okay, we'll take a look at this area. Take a look in this area. And I'm cracking up now because you guys talk really fast and I'm trying to talk fast to keep up.
[Eric] Wolf, that's all great stuff as you speak about the space and how you've connected to it. And I know as we speak specific about ACCEL. So now that you're on the inside and you have a position within the company and you kind of see the inner workings from your perspective, from your standpoint of all the products and all the utilities and everything that going on that happened in ACCEL to you. And you probably can't just give one specific. But what are the things that excite you most just knowing from your position, from where you stand in your vantage point, what ACCEL can do?
[Keith] You know, Eric, it's funny, but my situation there is purely from a selfish aspect. And it's just getting a chance to work and learn with the people that I have a chance to interact with, not only on the team but in the community as well. I think when you get a little bit older, in my case, I was furloughed without pay. They hired somebody else. And this has given me a place to belong and to continue growing. Now the products, of course, my first thing is going to be the education, the University. I just think that is reaching out and giving something back. I'm excited about the UnRekt platform. I'm excited about launchpad. There's so many things. But to me, it all comes back to the education. That's something I hope to work with because I know what I'm experiencing with my friends and my peer group that I don't want to do that. I don't want to try this. I don't want to learn this. I'm afraid I'll lose my money. And it's kind of become a calling for me to say, wait a minute, there's no reason for you to miss out on this. There's no reason for you to step back and oh my God, I can't do this. You can do anything. You set your mind too, especially with the education. And yes, it takes me back to the University.
[Alex] Hey, Keith, I just want to take a minute here and switch gears for you, ask you a couple of questions where it's not so much question and answer type interview. One of the things for me was earlier you covered that you had forgot that you had purchased cryptocurrency. You open up your wallet, you opened it up and you had $50,000 from your original investment. What was the first thought that went through your mind there?
[Keith] My first thought was, okay, this is a mistake. Because what had happened is I had like a trillion of this token called ETH Lend. And all of a sudden I only had like 50 tokens of something called Ave. And I thought, well, they ripped me off. They took all my tokens. So that's where my research started. I had to go online and track back and find out what had happened, which was in stock terms it was reverse buyback. The company took them over and then did a reverse buyback. And in this, it was just they consolidated the tokens to get the value of. And I think I paid like two cent a token. And at that time they were trading at $400.
[Scott] I think there's always that crazy kind of entry point. Everyone kind of comes in at a different time. There are coins like that. A lot of people that came in on SHIBA, it's such a different experience. But I think one thing that me and you have talked about this before is I really do think that 2022 is going to be the year of the utilities. And I think it's something that we're going to see make a move. But being someone that's been around a little bit longer, what do you kind of think? What was your outtake on? We'll go a bit in the past and then talk about the main coins. What was your kind of thought on that? Did you get involved in those? Was it something that you kind of wrote off? I know I was a big Meme coin hater for a long time.
[Keith] I was lucky. I had actually stepped into a chance to moderate and become a part of YouTubers community. And he was very good at expressing, look, this doesn't have any application to it. This is just a picture. And people are buying this because it's a cute picture. And I was also lucky enough because I remember being exposed to DOGE way back when. Sounds so funny to say that about 2016, 2017 and remembering the guy that came out that said, hey, we invented this as a joke, but now that it's got something, let's get people to use this. And DOGE was a big education for me because everybody now if you go by what DOGE people talk about it's HODL. And the guy that was the co founder of DOGE in 2016 changed the number of coins from a specified number to unlimited because he hated the fact that people were HODLing this coin. He wanted them to use it and spend it.
[Eric] So that's funny that you touch upon that and you use the examples of DOJ in these coins and what started out as Meme coins. So I always try to correlate not so much the age disparity of what goes on now in the crypto space because we know the guys that are on his podcast, they're the younger cats. And then we bring in a guy like you who's a seasoned veteran. For me, Could you explain to me, because I know my steps into the crypto were a little meandered at the beginning and I basically took a beating, unlike you, who went in on the leap of faith and then just didn't look at it and came back and was absolutely startled that 400 times could grow at that tremendous rate. To your peer group, what would be your way to explain to them, hey guys if you're not in this you are absolutely missing out on something that is going to be the future of the way currencies economics money is moved.
[Keith] Back to education. When we fear something we don't know or we don't understand it so we fear it. And educating yourself and finding out this is going to be interesting to try to draw a correlation here but people my age tend to feel safer with their money in a bank and they don't realize that the banks are now utilizing the same technology that we are but they just happen to have a physical location that everybody feels secure in. So when I talk with my friends about it it's hilarious to me because they think I've become some kind of genius. It's like no you do your research and you learn and the things that you have questions about or the easy way that I didn't have available to me at the time is to get involved with someone like us at ACCEL because you're actually getting that chance to come in and say, okay, hey I don't know squat, what do I need to do? I was seeing this morning one of the team members spent like 2 hours on a phone working with someone helping them go from I don't know any of this to setting up their wallet to Loading their wallet to purchasing it's just the support that's here but get the education that'll take away the fear.
[Eric] So for all our listeners out there as you see and you hear what Wolf tells you speaking about ACCEL you can always go to our YouTube channel or you can follow along at any of our socials.
[Alex] Wolf, Thank you so much for providing such great feedback. We appreciate your time everyone. Please feel free to check the show notes for our link tree and as always sit back and ACCEL.
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