Autor Cointelegraph By Elias Ahonen

Kieran Warwick created the play-to-earn game Illuvium with his brothers Aaron and Grant — all siblings of DeFi maverick Kain, the founder of Synthetix. He shares his alpha on how NFT game mechanics can be designed in such a way that playing them can be fun and profitable in the long term.Warwick entered the retail world right out of high school, eventually becoming an online shopping entrepreneur. He got his start in the crypto world at brother Kain’s company BlueShyft, which first made Bitcoin and crypto exchange payments available over-the-counter at more than one thousand physical retailers around Australia in 2015.Kieran Warwick is riding Illuvium until 2032.Years later, with a number of business projects under his belt, Kain encouraged him to reenter the space, which led to the creation of Illuvium, a Pokemon-like play-to-earn NFT game. Unlike contemporaries such as Axie Infinity, which experienced dramatic in-game inflation, Warwick believes Illuvium will have a decade of staying power. In June 2022, the game brought in $72 million through the sale of 20,000 plots of NFT land, laying the literal groundwork for what Warwick envisions as a longstanding playing field.Designing deflationHe explains the setup of Illuvium. When players first arrive or “crash” onto the planet, they find out that “there’s this society that’s been built, and it’s your job to be a hunter and to go out and catch creatures known as Illuvials.”Like Pokemon cards, these Illuvials, which live in certain regions of the map, are limited edition. And much like the original 1999 Charizard or Pikachu cards, Genesis Illuvials are no longer available. Whenever a new set of Illuvials becomes available, they get progressively more difficult to find and capture based on a bonding curve comparable to the one that governs Bitcoin’s halvings and makes Bitcoins progressively rarer and more difficult to “capture” by way of mining. “That’s what makes them valuable,” Warwick notes.Artwork from Illuvium. Source: TwitterIn addition to being limited in “mintage” and increasingly difficult to “mine,” Illuvials are deflationary due to a game mechanic termed “Fusing,” which consists of destroying lower-level characters to create higher levels.Three level-one Illuvials can fuse into a single level-two version, whereas summoning a level-three Illuvial requires a sacrifice of three level-twos, equivalent to nine basic creatures that are forever removed from circulation.Warwick is quick to note that the capped and deflationary nature of his Illuvial game pieces makes Illuvium the polar opposite of Axie Infinity, whose native Axie characters are created through a mechanism called breeding that produces an ever-inflating pool of characters within the game universe. A single Axie cost hundreds of dollars in mid-2021 — to the extent that individual gamers often rented them from owners and split their earnings but have now crashed in value to almost nothing. This price plunge can be explained by the runaway breeding of more Axies, which also caused possible earnings per Axie to fall.Warwick is not surprised by the downfall of Axie Infinity’s game economy. “I’ve been calling this for 18 months now,” he says, explaining that he believes the game was doomed from the beginning, as its economics were unsustainable. The model attracted many players who worked full-time to extract value from the game, while few added any, he asserts.“Many people are finding that these games are smoke and mirrors. We are not that — we are here for 10 years at the least.” RetailHaving held an interest in business from a young age, Warwick, now 32, reasoned that he wanted to start earning money right out of high school in 2007 and decided to skip college in favor of Australian retailer Harvey Norman, where he eventually became a franchisee responsible for running a store.After leaving in 2012, he founded Audio Invasion, a competing online retailer for music and computing goods with his brother Kain and a mutual friend who’d recently begun mining Bitcoin as a hobby. Around this same time, he dabbled in a business selling online tutorials.“That was the first I heard of Bitcoins — he had hundreds of BTC,” Warwick recalls, adding that the friend who introduced him to Bitcoin had tragically passed away in a biking accident, taking his private keys to the grave with him, like so many other early adopters who met untimely deaths.[embedded content]When Audio Invasion ran out of money in 2014, Warwick worked as head of marketing for BlueShyft, a financial payments and retail network he founded with his brother Kain and billed as the “first in the world” over-the-counter exchange, which saw over 1,000 retail locations around Australia becoming outfitted with an iPad, with which customers could directly purchase BTC in-store. In short, anyone could walk in with cash and have BTC deposited to the address of their choice. In addition to the retail business, the company today operates bitcoin.com.au, billing itself as the fastest way to buy Bitcoin in Australia.In 2017, Kieran’s brother Kain, who is nine years older than him, founded Synthetix (originally Havven) — an Ethereum-based DeFi platform. Kieran helped his brother raise money for the project. Around this time, Warwick started investing in Ether and other cryptocurrencies back when the price of ETH was in the single digits.“I was a little skeptical of crypto — I had lost $30,000 margin trading ETH, which left a bad taste.”Instead of flipping crypto, the younger Warwick tapped into his taste for burgers in 2016 to create the Burger Collective, described as an “app made for burger lovers” that hosted reviews and discounts to nearby restaurants. With 200,000 users, the app experienced initial success and an imminent integration with DoorDash, before the COVID-19 pandemic caused restaurants to close for in-person dining. “Our product was all about going to the store,” Warwick explains regarding why the company had to wind down in May 2021 after running out of money.It was while his burger app was beginning to fail that Kain peer-pressured him “to get back into crypto,” even loaning him $100,000 to do so. “I ended up making a whole bunch of money — 10x in six months,” Warwick recalls. In June 2020, he had the fortune of learning about the play-to-earn game Axie Infinity, which fascinated him.“They branded it as a Pokémon-like game, and I am an avid Pokémon fan,” he notes regarding the initial appeal, which led him down a rabbit hole of learning about NFTs, upon which the game was based. Describing himself as a gamer, Warwick came to the view that “this is exactly what the mainstream gaming world has been asking for decades.” “What if we made a AAA Fortnite-like title? That’s exactly what gamers have been wanting!” Warwick opined, a realization followed by what he describes as “a couple of weeks” of deeper research into the technology and possible game functions.Art from Illuvium. Source: TwitterWhat goes into designing a game? Designing game characters seems like a natural place to begin, so Warwick went to work to convince his more artistically inclined brother Grant to help out with design. Getting Grant on board was no easy task, however.“Nah man, I won’t go into crypto — it’s all scams, so I can’t put reputation on the line,” Kieran recalls of his brother’s protests. He eventually relented and agreed to design five characters.Five designed characters do not a game make. Though Warwick imagined himself capable of raising money and running the business side of things, he knew little about how to build a game — a task that involves much more than mere artistic design.The answer came in the form of yet another member of the Warwick clan, Aaron. He’s an accomplished game designer and was next in line to join the team. Aaron brought new ideas to the table, preferring “more team fight tactics, League of Legends-style.”“Being brothers, we just couldn’t agree on game mechanics — we were arguing for 2–3 days until Aaron designed a beta version. That’s how Illuvium came about.”“We’re a game with Crypto elements rather than gamified crypto. The result of that gaming DNA is high quality gameplay that feels no different to the best of traditional gaming,” Warwick explains regarding the resulting first-hand gaming experience.How to earnThere are a number of ways by which players can earn while playing Illuvium. The first of these is through capturing Illuvials in the wilderness, which can later be sold for a profit. This process is not without expenses, however, as players must expend in-game “Fuel” to travel into a specific region where Illuvials might be present and, upon encountering one, expend a shard in order to facilitate the capture. There are several tiers of shards, which cost progressively more, and the capture of a highly ranked Illuvial with a low-level shard is statistically unlikely. “Fuel is what powers the entire economy in Illuvium,” he says.The tradeable Illuvials are very Pokémon-like. Source: IlluviumThere is also Illuvium Zero, a “mobile companion game,” which Warwick describes as a “city builder with NFT land.” Owners of the land can earn Fuel, which is linked to the Illuvium economy as an integral resource needed to effectively play the game. According to Warwick, land owners make 5% of in-game revenue in this manner. As of writing, the cheapest individual land plots trade for close to 1,000 USDT on the in-game marketplace.Ranked battles are a driver of the demand of captured Illuvials, where they can be battled in order to climb the leaderboards and earn ILV governance tokens, of which 1 million are set aside as rewards for achievements such as tournaments. In these cases, the DAO that governs the game takes a small percentage. With a market capitalization north of $100 million, ILV sits in the top 200 cryptocurrencies. In addition to the governance-focused ILV token, which is in some ways comparable to Axie Infinity’s AXS token in terms of function, there is sILV2. Illuvials fight on a virtual battlefield. “SILV2 is our in-game currency, but it’s finite as well,” Warwick says, explaining these tokens are commonly used to buy the all-important Fuel. The “2” in the name is the result of a January 2022 incident, in which the currency was exploited by a hacker just prior to launch. “Their plan was to wait until the game started and have an unlimited amount of SLV,” Warwick explains, saying that the brothers decided to relaunch the token and make victims whole by personally putting up about $450,000. It was really Warwick’s money, however, as “the other guys aren’t liquid yet, but they said they’ll pay me back,” he says.Warwick has a wider vision for the future of blockchain gaming. “I think most games will migrate to Web3,” he says with confidence, explaining that the advantages of the new paradigm that is “giving power back to the players” are so numerous as to make it a necessary upgrade due to consumer demand. Unlike in most mainstream games where players cannot generally sell their in-game items or monetize their achievements, Web3 gaming means that “consumers have a choice.”“It’s the beginning of a new cycle, and consumers will have the power in this 10–20-year period.”

Scott Melker, better known as The Wolf of All Streets, is a trader and crypto advocate who is far more approachable than his online handle might suggest. A former DJ, Melker operates a small crypto advocacy empire spanning YouTube videos, podcasts and a popular newsletter.Scott Melker is open about his initial intentions in the crypto industry. “I simply came to trade and make money,” he admits, getting involved after hearing friends go on about the gold-paved streets of the blockchain world where 100x weekly returns were common. Being familiar with the more conservative movements of the stock markets since childhood, Melker was lucky to learn proper trading before entering the unregulated crypto casino.“XRP was like a penny or something then,” he recalls. Crypto was also popular in the DJ community, something Melker attributes to the community’s risk-taking nature. He attributes his success to lucky timing in early 2016, soon cashing out his initial investment to play with his winnings.“There was this sort of groundswell in the DJ community. They understand technology, and they’re kind of wild and speculative. That’s how I first discovered it.”The crypto beats stopped soon enough. The 2018 bear market meant that “If you wanted to stick around, you really had to justify it to yourself, and you probably went way further down the rabbit hole to understand the importance of the movement,” Melker explains. He began to truly appreciate Bitcoin’s fundamentals and “understand the purpose of individual altcoins.”Melker has long been a favored commentator with Cointelegraph. TradingThough Melker has invested in hundreds of tokens over the years, he believes that “Bitcoin is the most important asset ever created” and that everyone should strive to have some exposure to it. Ether rises nearly to Bitcoin’s level of importance and may well have more upside, he says, while altcoins are akin to individual speculative technology investments.Soon after changing his Twitter tune from music to crypto in 2017, Melker connected with Christopher Inks of TexasWest Capital, who became a mentor to him. Melker became something of an analyst for Inks’ fund, sharing charts and trading ideas. He clarifies that he did not trade anyone else’s money, and lacks licenses to do so.The Wolf emphasizes that trading is not easy, whether in stocks or crypto. “To trade full time for decades, you are like a unicorn,” he explains, adding that the crypto markets are especially brutal because they operate 24/7, without pause, meaning that traders don’t have an opportunity to recharge while markets are closed. Of course, you don’t need to trade all the time — Melker himself uses leverage to trade Bitcoin only two or three times per year.A curious aspect of trading is that as one’s portfolio grows, so do the sizes of bets one should make to remain profitable — doing otherwise would be akin to taking out $10,000 in casino chips only to spend all evening making $1 bets.“When your portfolio reaches a certain size, you have to be willing to ratchet up the size of your trades as a percentage — and those numbers can start to become uncomfortably big.” Melker as a DJ in 1998.Learning to failMelker is quick to point out that the odds are stacked against day traders. “95% of traders fail — they go bust quickly,” Melker states, explaining that those aspiring to be serious traders need to be prepared to lose their invested assets several times over. “Most don’t have the time or capital for that,” he says. In 2012, Melker invested his entire portfolio into ARYx Therapeutics, which went to zero. Despite such setbacks, Melker counts himself lucky for “learning the hard lessons before crypto.” He finds that most who first discover trading via cryptocurrency tend to lose everything to leverage.“You have to be able to learn on the job and go broke multiple times and still stick with it.”Though “Investors almost always do better than traders,” Melker strongly recommends those determined to trade study up on risk management. Long-term profitability, he explains, is not about selling tops and buying bottoms but rather “the way that you protect your capital and allow yourself to hit home runs.” He uses the example that a trader can be right less than half the time and remain wildly profitable if they know when to cut their losses. Even one win out of 10 can be a recipe for success.“It’s a math game of taking small losses and big wins.”Another piece of advice is to never risk more than 1% of one’s portfolio on a single trade. However, this is far from foolproof. For example, 30% of a portfolio could be spread over 30 altcoin positions, all of which suffer when Bitcoin takes an unexpected dive. Ego is the enemy, and emotional attachment to positions is to be avoided — something that may be even harder when it comes to NFTs. “To stay profitable long term is largely a result of your risk management strategy,” Melker claims.Melker was featured in Magazine’s extremely popular — and prophetic — “How to prepare for the end of the bull run” series.DJ BitcoinMelker, 45, grew up in Gainesville, Florida, where his parents “hammered home the importance of financial literacy and investing and saving.” He began to experiment with the stock market at 13 when he bought stocks in Disney with his father’s help. He headed for the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, where he majored in anthropology. The school was very business-focused, Melker explains, with consulting and investment banking firms recruiting a large number of graduating students. The late ’90s, of course, coincided with the dot-com boom, and “It was impossible to avoid excitement around financial markets at school like that,” Melker recounts. He adds that there was an “up only” sentiment that is familiar in crypto circles.Apparently I once had a goatee. This was 2007. Steve Aoki took this photo. At the time, he was transitioning from being open format DJ Kid Millionaire to his present EDM identity. The first song he played that night was Sexyback. #TBT pic.twitter.com/9bN4n5bHbq— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) October 10, 2019Having taken piano lessons from a young age, Melker was consumed by music and began working as a DJ alongside completing his studies. This began with house parties, which soon led to him playing gigs at downtown nightclubs. In those days, DJing involved far more skill and investment than today, when someone can simply hook up a laptop to a sound system. “This was the full vinyl era. I had to have four friends travel with me anywhere I went to carry all the equipment,” he recounts. “Hot girls thought it was cooler than the piano,” he says with a laugh.Despite having the option to follow his peers into investment banking after graduation, Melker decided on the entrepreneurial route, founding nightlife startup Philly2Nite in 1999, which marketed events happening in the Philadelphia area. In 2001, he founded 101 Magazine, which he describes as a “lifestyle rag — a magazine for everything that was happening in Philadelphia, along with the sort of snarky content the likes of which I now post about crypto.” The magazine was a success and eventually merged into the larger Frank Magazine, which saw Melker move to New York as the firm’s global brand ambassador in 2003.He worked for various other companies, including as a music director and business developer and a short stint in marketing at Vice Magazine. Melker moved to Miami in 2012, where he worked as a realtor, only to return to Gainesville in 2017 to be closer to his parents after having children of his own.[embedded content]Throughout his career, Melker continued to perform and produce music under names such as The Melker Project,​ Funkontrol and MBS. Over the years, this resulted in him gaining a significant 40,000 followers on Twitter.“One day, I stopped talking about music and began posting charts and talking about magic internet money.”As he continued endlessly posting about crypto, he saw his Twitter following drop by half. But soon, new engagement began to appear. “When you want to go from one thing to another, people tend to dismiss it,” Melker states. He explains that in his early days of crypto, he faced mean-spirited comments like “Shut up, DJ” when he brought up crypto. That’s when Melker came up with his Wolf of All Streets moniker “as a message to people that you can be more than one thing.” The name stuck, and he takes care to point out that it was merely a play on words, that the real Wolf of Wall Street was a criminal and not someone he wants to emulate.$BTC DominanceHere is some Grade A China White Hopium.Every time RSI (which is a meme on dominance, really) has been this overbought on Bitcoin Dominance, we have a massive altcoin run.Not saying it will happen, just showing you what has happened in the same situation. pic.twitter.com/pog7VclA0K— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) May 28, 2022“I become hyper-focused on that thing, and everything else disappears,” Melker explains regarding his sudden turn from music to crypto. Like previous Journeys interviewee Carl “The Moon” Runefelt, Melker has attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, commonly known as ADHD. “There’s a lot of ADHD in crypto,” he says, explaining that he considers it a “superpower” because it allows him to place total focus on his passion.“I followed all the big accounts. I was trying to learn, I was commenting under their tweets, trying to engage with them.” This engagement could soon be seen in his follower count, and Melker grew more confident in sharing his ideas. Considering Twitter “very shorthand,” he started writing a newsletter, which soon came to resemble a full-time job. He was charging $15 per month and offering a limited free version, but he later made everything free because “I don’t want to monetize my audience in any way, shape or form.”By all appearances, Melker is driven more by passion than money. This did not, however, prevent controversy from blowing up last year amid a market downturn when he was criticized for deleting so-called “shill tweets” relating to low-market-cap coins whose price could theoretically have been influenced by a highly visible account like his. “My account has grown to a size where I cannot tweet about certain things,” he commented following the controversy. He says the blow-up resulted in threats against his family.I used to hang out with a lot of celebrities in my DJ days. pic.twitter.com/92ylU3d3Lz— The Wolf Of All Streets (@scottmelker) February 25, 2022The newsletter’s success prompted Jason Yanowitz, co-founder of Blockworks, to approach Melker and suggest he start a podcast. “I literally asked, ‘What’s a podcast?’ as I had never listened to one,” Melker recalls with a laugh. Today, he considers podcasting “the best job in the world,” partly because he feels he can get almost anyone onto The Wolf Of All Streets Podcast.With multiple sponsors, the show has become a business — but not one devoid of purpose. The overarching goal, Melker says, is to “create content for the next wave” of crypto investors, like grandma or the average person on the street. He sees himself as a crypto advocate, easily able to list the ways Bitcoin and crypto proliferation will benefit society. Considering the breadth of his YouTube channel, Twitter account, newsletter, website and podcast — which are full of thoughtful, measured commentary — it’s clear that new followers will have no shortage of support.“I wake up every morning at 4:30, excited to write the newsletter. I can’t sleep because of the thoughts that I want to get down on paper.”

In the space of a few short years, former high-school dropout cashier from Sweden Carl “The Moon” Runefelt has been transformed into a top crypto influencer who shares videos of his life of private jets, supercars and million-dollar watches that inspire his followers and annoy his critics. Drawing from quantum physics, he has an explanation for his unlikely success — the universe isn’t real but is merely a construction of our minds in which we are able to rearrange reality to match our wildest dreams. Despite critics and controversy, Runefelt continues on a mission to inspire his followers to live their dreams.Law of attraction“My parents told me that I should stop this bullshit. They said it was shady,” Runefelt recalls. Runefelt, 27, came across Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in 2018 while researching ways to make money to climb out of his lowly job as a cashier. He was quickly captivated, seeing large price swings and the fact that coins that had recently peaked at $20,000 were bought for mere dollars only a few years earlier. This path seemed promising, and he committed himself to learning. Can self-belief and determination take you to The Moon?Runefelt already had a YouTube channel, and very much like Gajesh Naik, the 13-year-old star of a previous Journeys article, he soon began making videos to explain the things he had learned, with a tutorial on CoinMarketCap’s site being among his first. People loved watching his videos, Runefelt says, and his fan base grew quickly. Soon enough, sponsors came knocking.“When you teach, you push yourself to learn. So, I started making videos, and my my channel grew very, very fast in the beginning, getting 1,000s of views per video.”First, the money started to trickle in via sponsorships and affiliate deals, where Runefelt would earn money whenever his viewers clicked a link or created an account on a certain crypto exchange or service. Though his parents were initially very worried, imploring him to finish his education or “get a real job” instead of sitting at the computer all day, their tune changed when Runefelt began making several thousands of dollars a month “just doing YouTube and crypto” — far more than he earned at the supermarket, a job he quit some months later in November 2018.Awesome to hear @TheMoonCarl share his crypto journey from cashier in Sweden to entrepreneur and top influencer and at his Dubai office @CointelegraphZN @Cointelegraph pic.twitter.com/eYJbzlGjpT— Elias Ahonen.eth (@eahonen) May 17, 2022Almost all the money Runefelt earned, he invested into cryptocurrencies and companies related to them. Though there have been many losses to scams on the way, overall, the approach has gone well, with Runefelt investing in 350 crypto startups and telling me he makes millions per month through liquidity pools and yield farming. While Cointelegraph can’t confirm the numbers, he certainly has an extravagant lifestyle befitting the newly rich.[embedded content]Today, Runefelt sees himself as more a businessman than an influencer, managing his empire through TheMoonGroup, which he founded in November 2021. One of his primary entrepreneurial projects is Kasta, a payments app that he co-founded in early 2021. “Payments should be dead simple, like sending an SMS,” Runefelt says.Runefelt also has a non-crypto YouTube channel, called simply Carl Runefelt, which he describes as a “lifestyle channel” where he can be seen in videos such as “BUYING MY DREAM BUGATTI,” “I’M BUYING A MILLION DOLLAR JACOB WATCH!!!!!” and “I PAID $80,000 FOR THIS 8 HOUR PRIVATE JET FLIGHT!!!” to name a few recent titles. These videos lack the affiliate links of his crypto channel and feature an energetic and excited Runefelt presenting his luxurious Dubai lifestyle to the outside world.Why does Runefelt need to show off? Privately enjoying watches and sports cars and jets is one thing, but why post about them for everyone to see? What does he have to prove? Though it goes against everything his (and the author’s) Nordic culture taught him, Runefelt’s answer has an undeniable logic.“The only thing I want to do is inspire people to become as wealthy as they possibly can — just open their minds and show them that everything is possible. Stop limiting yourself and start realizing that you deserve your dream life.”It was only 3.5 years ago, after all, that Runefelt lived an entirely different life. Today, he sees himself as an example to other versions of his past self, who see little inspiration around them. “I was watching similar videos when unsuccessful,” he recalls, adding that if he could make it in such a short time, anyone can. The first step is to visualize goals and write them down.But why should people desire and work toward wealth?“It’s more about the freedom that you get from wealth. With freedom, I think comes happiness because you decide what you want to do with your own time. Time is the true wealth anyways. Money is just something that you use as a tool to free up your time. When you have all the time in the world, you’re the wealthiest person in the world,” Runefelt philosophizes. When he gets up in the morning, he does only the things he wants to — who can argue with that?The SecretHis philosophy, however, goes deeper and is weirder than that, with Runefelt using quantum physics to explain his outlook on life. The universe and everything in it, he insists, is merely a hologram. “It’s just an illusion. It’s just energy. Vibrational energy — and our consciousness is the only thing that really truly exists,” he explains with complete assuredness. Following this, it is via consciousness that reality is materialized using the Law of Attraction. To create an exciting reality, one must have the audacity to dream big. “I literally am shaping my reality because it’s all energy anyways. In quantum physics, we learn that everything that we perceive to be solid is in fact not solid,” he declares.Runefelt shares the secret with Cointelegraph’s Elias Ahonen, who has manifested you to read this article and click subscribe. Source: TheMoonGroupThis can lead to big changes, Runefelt assures. “Three years and BOOM, you can be anything you want — a famous musician, a billionaire. It doesn’t matter what you want to do, anything can be done with the right mindset,” he insists.“You can materialize anything in this world — whether it’s a Bugatti, whether it’s your dream life, your dream relationship, your dream business or your employees. Everything that I have today was intentionally put in place by me.”What Runefelt describes — give or take some quantum mechanics — appears exactly as the premise of The Secret, a 2006 Rhonda Byrne self-help bestseller, which claims that people can change their lives using thoughts. The idea is not new — Byrne herself was inspired by The Science of Getting Rich, published in 1910. This Law of Attraction, which many consider a revival of ancient philosophies, comes from the New Thought spiritual movement based on the mid-19th century teachings of Phineas Quimby.The Law of Attraction is, however, considered a pseudoscience for the simple reason that its effect cannot be scientifically proven due to survivorship bias and availability error, among other limitations. While many attribute their success to the system, there is no proof that it will work for everyone.Tricks of the trade“I don’t like making those thumbnails, but if I don’t, my channel dies,” explains Runefelt, whose YouTube videos feature thumbnails with comically exaggerated, open-mouthed expressions and all-caps titles followed by a half-dozen exclamation or question marks. This approach clearly differentiates him from Nicholas Merten, another Journeys’ crypto YouTube star, who made it clear that “the last thing you’ll find on my channel is me making a shock-face.” This is something Runefelt acknowledges but explains that “the YouTubers getting the most views all use clickbait,” referring to peers such as MMCrypto and BitBoy Crypto.“When I make thumbnails and titles like this, I get always 50% more views,” Runefelt explains. Source: YouTube“I study what I need to do — don’t hate the player, hate the game,” he rationalizes, explaining that YouTube’s algorithm favors highly emotional expressions, capital letters and attention-grabbing punctuation. If he were to instead make a video with a “normal” thumbnail and descriptive title, “no one is watching it, even if it was the best video that month. It’s very sad that the world works like that, but it’s just how it is,” he admits.Though Runefelt is adamant that YouTube is today just a hobby, his team continues to spend time getting the titles and thumbnails just right to maximize views. Sometimes, this means changing the titles after publication in order to increase clicks, which he says has caused some misunderstandings. “We simply use whatever words are more likely to gain traction at any given time. The titles are meant to get clicks” instead of serving as recommendations or predictions. The purpose is to actually get people to watch the video itself, he emphasizes.He considers his Attention Deficit Disorder, which caused him to drop out of high school, an asset in his work today because “when you are doing something you really, really like, focus becomes a superpower — someone with ADD will have laser focus,” he explains.Though Runefelt has managed to channel a potential disadvantage into an advantage, his younger brother who suffers from Downs Syndrome and a myriad of other diseases, including two near misses with cancer, has been less lucky. “His hospital journal is, like, it’s one of the biggest ones that doctors have ever seen,” Runefelt describes, adding that seeing these struggles “led me to start my charity where I’m raising money for children with disabilities.” Racing4Charity is done through his Formula Two racing team.“I am giving $30,000 myself in Bitcoin every race weekend, and if my driver, Ralph Boshung, wins a race, I’m giving $100,000.” Along with a large image of Runefelt’s face, the car also features a QR code for Bitcoin donations.The Moon car, complete with an image of Runefelt’s CryptoPunk. Source: automobilsport.comBreaking the Law of JanteRunefelt grew up in Sweden’s capital of Stockholm, where he dropped out of high school due to an inability to concentrate because of his ADD. He describes the following years as ones of aimless floating and partying. Though he eventually settled into a job making $1,500 per month as a supermarket cashier, his parents remained worried about his future prospects. Runefelt was not satisfied and refused to accept his position in life. “I decided ‘I’m going to be rich; I’m going to be successful; and I’m going to shape my reality. I’m going to live my dream life.’ I started basically visualizing my dream life.”Imagining himself driving a Ferrari instead of catching the train to work in the mornings, “I said these positive mantras to myself every single day to condition my mind and my subconscious into actually believing that these things are true,” he explains. For the moment, they were patently false. “I am happy. I am successful. I love myself. I love my life. I’m living my dream life. My parents are proud of me. I’m proud of myself,” he lists. He even went through the motions of pretending to buy private jets and yachts, putting an image of a business jet as his phone background for encouragement. His peers couldn’t understand his mindset.TheMoonGroup has an office in Dubai Marina, where Runefelt manages his investments. Photo by Elias AhonenAs he read more about wealth, Runefelt came to the view that the entire banking system was “a big Ponzi scheme” because central bankers are “printing money out of thin air and then they have the audacity to charge interest on this money which doesn’t even exist.” At times, this inspired a certain nihilism to compete with his ambitions — if the world was corrupt, why feel bad about doing poorly in life? Beginning to research alternatives to the “stupid” system, he first encountered narratives around precious metals, which inspired him to use a lion’s share of his monthly savings to buy silver and gold.While these themes of dreaming big and distrusting the system are ones that American readers may find familiar and even unoriginal, it must be pointed out how culturally unconventional they are in his native Sweden. In fact, Runefelt’s behavior goes completely against The Law of Jante, a Nordic “sociological term to denote a social attitude of disapproval toward expressions of individuality and personal success,” whose overarching principle is that no one is to think themselves as better than others. “When I left Sweden, I had to give up 70% of everything I made so far with crypto, YouTube, and investments. That’s horrible — I think taxes are a scam.”This, in part, explains the country’s high tax rates and the fact that tax records are public in the country. Instead of wishing for private jets, Swedish society expects people to find peace with their lot in life and place their trust in the system, something Runefelt refused to do. With cryptocurrency itself billed as “trustless” and beyond “broken” governments, it is easy to see how the message gains little transaction in the Nordic countries where trust and transparency are the default and material success is something to be understated.“I’ll never move back,” declares Runefelt, who moved to tax-free Dubai in 2020. “People encourage success here — in Sweden people don’t like it so much.”