How I Held Through a 75% Bitcoin Crash — From CPA to Crypto Believer

What we talked about.

In this episode, Sunny Ray talks with Troy, a Vancouver-based chartered accountant turned full-time crypto professional, about his journey from studying business at UBC and working in junior mining and private equity to becoming an early Bitcoin believer. Troy explains how learning about sound money and gold led him to Bitcoin in 2013, when he bought his first coins at the world's first Bitcoin ATM in Vancouver. He recounts holding through an 80 percent price crash without ever selling, driven by conviction rather than short-term price watching. The conversation moves into monetary theory, with Troy breaking down the difference between consumer price inflation and asset inflation, and why he believes money printing has disproportionately inflated housing and stock prices. He also shares his perspective on the stock-to-flow model, why he views Bitcoin and Ethereum as fundamentally different assets, his early brush with Ethereum co-founder Anthony Di Iorio, and his cautionary take on inexperienced investors chasing altcoins instead of simply holding Bitcoin long term.

A Vancouver CPA explains how he held Bitcoin through an 80 percent crash and became a full-time crypto believer.

The questions, and the answers.

What's your background and how did you first get into Bitcoin?

I'm from Vancouver, went to UBC for business school, and became a chartered accountant. Around age 26 or 27, working in junior mining, I started studying sound money and gold, then heard about Bitcoin in 2013 when it was trading around 30 to 40 dollars. After a US Senate hearing signaled it wouldn't be banned, the price shot up 10x in weeks. I bought my first coins at the world's first Bitcoin ATM, which opened in Vancouver with a line around the block.

Did you hold through the crash after buying near the top?

Yes, I entered right at the blow-off top in 2013 and subsequently lost about 75 percent of the value, but I never sold any. I was more of a passive investor, not deeply involved in the ecosystem since Vancouver didn't have the meetup scene Toronto had. I just tried not to look at the price, kept my allocation, and got re-interested again when things picked back up in 2017.

What's your take on the stock-to-flow model for pricing Bitcoin?

I think it makes sense to some extent, even though it's essentially numbers pulled from assumptions about annual production divided by total supply. What's interesting is it tracks the price surprisingly well. Bitcoin already behaves like a global commodity with real users and utility, similar to how you could model Facebook's growth. Once an asset hits things like 100 billion dollars in market cap with no clear competitor, you can start modeling its growth.

You mentioned inflation is really a form of invisible taxation. Can you explain that?

Traditional economists focus on consumer price inflation, a basket of goods like tomatoes and oil, but they ignore asset inflation. When you print money and lower interest rates, that capital flows into assets like real estate and stocks rather than everyday goods. A single detached home in Toronto has gone from around 500,000 dollars fifteen or twenty years ago to two or two and a half million now, which is real inflation even if tomato prices barely moved.

How did your career move from private equity into working full-time in crypto?

When the price came back I kept dollar cost averaging in and got increasingly excited about the industry. I realized big companies aren't set up for fast career growth, you show up, don't get promoted much, and stay in your role. To grow quickly you need dynamic, disruptive environments like startups, so I left my private equity job, started attending networking events, and found where I could add value, which is how I started my company.

What was your relationship with Ethereum and its early founders?

I actually had a Skype call with Anthony Di Iorio, one of the co-founders, back when he was meeting everyone pre-Ethereum. It was my own fault I didn't stick to my convictions, I went the conventional route of working a normal job instead of pursuing that opportunity closely. I think Ethereum is highly experimental with a completely different investment thesis than Bitcoin, and I don't think the two should really be in the same conversation.

What's your view on newer investors buying altcoins?

A lot of new investors open a Coinbase account, buy some Bitcoin, then ask what else they should buy and start going down the list into altcoins. I think unsophisticated investors should not be investing in those projects, they should just buy Bitcoin and sit on it. I've seen people sell Bitcoin for Ethereum, then sell that for random tokens, and lose a lot of money chasing hype.