Callum Carver changes uni to cryptocurrency. The 18-year-old Briton, whose confident demeanor and commanding tone belie his boyish face, has already abandoned the dreaded 9 to 5 path his peers gravitate towards. Instead, over the past ten months, he has slowly accumulated wealth through investments and taught others how to do the same.
His journey began with a book called Rich dad, poor dad Robert Kiyosaki and Sharon Lechter. After reading a 1997 bestseller on the importance of entrepreneurship and “financial intelligence,” Callum began researching crypto and building his investment portfolio from the savings he had. “If I hadn’t read this book, I have no idea where I would be right now. Probably at uni,” he laughs.
An avid reader, Callum has written a series of articles on his tiktok dedicated to the bestseller by Robert Greene, 48 laws of power, whose teachings on manipulation earned him the nickname “The Psychopath’s Bible”. Callum created his TikTok account in January of this year to share how this book has changed his life, as well as investment strategies, explanations about the world of finance, and general advice on developing a so-called “growth” mindset. Ten months later, he amassed over 270,000 followers on the platform, where he identified himself as “Money Man.”
Callum is one of many teenagers who have created big platforms by turning complex financial advice into 60-second videos. Under hashtags like #teen entrepreneur (163.2 million views), #makemoneyasateenager (40.2 million views) and #tininvesting (2.8 million views) A special type of financial influencer (or “financial leader”) flourishes: a young teenager who shows which stocks are best to invest in and predicts which cryptocurrencies are likely to rise or fall in value. Video titles range from “The exact steps to be able to invest $1,000 a month as a teenager”To “How to start making money trading cryptocurrency as a teenager”To “I’m going to show you step by step how you can invest £300 a month at 18 and have $1.7 million at 50.”
It is clear that there is a demand for such content. An April survey by investment bank Piper Sandler found that almost one in ten teenagers in the US said they traded cryptocurrencies. The “meme stock” phenomenon, including the January 2021 GameStop trading frenzy, appears to have had a significant impact: Recent Poll Wells Fargo showed that 45% of teenagers said that the GameStop saga got them interested in finances.
This side of TikTok, which uncritically praises and encourages participation in the world of finance, goes against the socialist ideals often attributed to Generation Z. In fact, a July 2021 survey by the Institute of Economics found that 67 percent young Britons want to live under a socialist economic system, becoming disappointed in promises our current system as wages, opportunities for social mobility and chances of ever making it to the wealth ladder continue to decline. But on FinTok, teenagers worship the altar of the free market and enthusiastically embrace the “fuss”.
There is a widespread belief on this side of TikTok that money is only a matter of attitude and discipline, wealth is simply a matter of identifying the right opportunities. This assertive mentality is a source of pride for many of these teenagers. “I want to inspire kids to follow their dreams in life because I truly believe anything is possible with persistence and hard work,” says 18-year-old Aaron, known to his 39,000 followers as @thatkidcrypto.
Serafino, 18, known on TikTok as @realtalkstocksThe fuss started early. “I almost always wanted to build a business,” he recalls. “I had lemonade stands, I installed them myself and then hired friends to help me, and I started a clothing brand in eighth grade.” Investing was the obvious next step for him, he said.
Serafino now has over 100,000 subscribers posting in-depth informational videos about NFTs, Forex trading, and even tax write-offs. He has over $11,000 in crypto wallets, but that’s not all of his assets. While studying finance at the University of Florida on the Gulf Coast, he combines multiple sources of income along with his trading activities, including two clothing brands, a live streaming partnership with Twitch, and a social media management agency.
Serafino began amassing his fortune at a young age, though not immediately through cryptocurrency trading, which in most countries is only available to those over 18 years of age. Abdi Orr and Brendan Jensen, two 17-year-old co-founders of the CryptoTitans platform, which promises teenagers “4-5 digit turnovers” through crypto investments on both. Instagram And tik tak – are an exception. They started getting into crypto when they were only 15 years old, albeit without any clever strategy of their own.
They just live in Australia, a country that allows apps without parental controls like Coinspot to run. Abdi believes that these platforms should be available everywhere. “Why limit teens to part-time jobs and reduce income opportunities for them?” he is asking. “Limiting children to one path destroys their dream.” For Abdi, the prospect of going from 9 to 5 is heartbreaking, but not inevitable.
Individualistic visions of self-improvement, like those promoted by teenage cryptocurrency influencers, promise freedom—from the system, from dependency on the next paycheck—to those who subscribe to it. But, ultimately, these notions simply reiterate the idea that a person’s intrinsic worth is tied to their performance, and that whether a person ends up in extreme poverty or rampant wealth is simply a matter of personal choice. It obscures the real mechanisms by which wealth accumulates in the hands of a few and avoids the concept of collective responsibility for pressing issues, not to mention climate catastrophes. which cryptocurrency plays a role in recharge.
Indeed, these teenagers’ content is symptomatic of a potentially toxic obsession with “hustle” and a simplistic view of many predictors of financial freedom. But they do not think so, claiming that they just want to “help”. “A lot of people buy crypto without really understanding any of the technology behind it, and that’s not a good thing,” says Serafino. “What I do on my platform is try to educate people as much as possible rather than just telling them what to buy.”
The vast amount of information about cryptocurrencies circulating on the Internet can be disorienting. Besides, “There is a lot of pure scam out there, and it’s easy to make a good marketing move for someone who doesn’t really have a clue about cryptocurrencies or how money works in general,” says Aaron.
Often, young people hear about huge returns on investment and believe that this is the norm rather than the exception. “I think our generation is programmed to want something instantly, but before you can run, you need to be able to walk,” says Callum. “It’s important to learn the basics of financial literacy before you just delve into what is essentially gambling.” But considering TikTok video hosting reputation that promote volatile investment in cryptocurrenciesbad advice can be hard to avoid.
Even though FinTok is a dark world, the popularity of Callum and his colleagues’ platform continues to grow, indicating the prevalence of a “hustle culture” even among “socially conscious” generation. No matter how reliable the financial advice offered by these accounts may be, everything contribute to the erroneous belief that capitalism is the path to security and freedom.
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