When I was a kid, I didn't know that I was ambitious. I didn't really care much about my life. I was naughty, picking fights, and was even the head of a gang. I just played football, I wanted to be a professional player.

I only started to get serious after finishing high school in New Zealand with NCEA level 3. I couldn't apply to a university in Thailand because my grades weren't good enough. I began to regret and berate myself for not studying well.

Then I started to change, to become a better person. I first studied hard when I was in my 1st year of university. I felt I had been reborn. I sacrificed everything to ensure nothing haunted me as I grew older. I wanted that time to be memorable, so I could look back with pride.

I studied for 10-12 hours a day. I didn't party or date anyone. That was a huge sacrifice for me at the time. I was aiming for a greater goal.

I had a module in Economics called Evolution of Monetary Policy. It tells us the history of money. Later, I realised that money changes every 50 years.

That, coupled with a period of work in Shanghai, was how I was introduced to Bitcoin before anyone else. The price shot up from 11 to 1,150 dollars. That's 10,000% in a short span of time. I became interested and read up on it.

It was a random blog by Marc Andreessen. I didn't know who the guy was. The title of the blog was "Why Bitcoin Matters". That shed light on another angle of Bitcoin. I saw how it would change the financial sector. A smartphone with internet access can become a bank for the whole world. This was another experience that made me become confident in Bitcoin.

I then left to work in San Francisco for a bit. With help from a friend, I met Dan Schatt, an executive of PayPal. The first question I asked him was, "Dan, what do you think about Bitcoin?". He said that Bitcoin would change the world. The original vision of PayPal was not to become a payment gateway. It was to create a digital dollar.

That was one of many encounters that contributed to my trust in Bitcoin, ahead of others.

CI Talks.