Please allow me a moment to share some life advice with you.

I was once young. I was also born into poverty. I fully believed that hard work, loyalty to employers, smart work, innovation, and building valuable products and services would lead to growth in my career as well, and prosperity. That was the story that was pitched to me in my youth and early in my career. What no one tells you is having a great starting point, something above zero, and connections is key. Also, NO employers will tell you, "I'm in this for myself, you are a tool, and I will take ALL that you create, and return the bare minimum to you to hold you in place." I watched founding co-workers who spent their lives building a company get betrayed by the "owners", just so owners could avoid sharing any of the big paydays that came as they exited the business and retired. The owners made millions through the growth of the company, growth created by my elder co-workers and then myself. They took millions all along the way, paid just enough to hold onto staff, and then when the products and we built sold for many millions in the end, they cut out, betrayed us, never delivering bonuses or a fair share of the wealth we all created. Of the many millions, they gave one founding co-worker $5000. He died broken, in poverty, while the owners owned hundreds of acres of investment properties, multiple vacation homes, and lived in comfort and financial security. I was young then. I thought that might be an exception to business and how the world worked, it is not. Later, I also fell for it, again... and again. I watched executives and investors lie to us, promise options and equity, like dangling carrots, while we worked 60, 80, 100 hours a week to make them richer, and richer. On the first chance for their exit strategy, they ousted everyone, offshored jobs, raked in MILLIONS, tens of millions on what we built, and we were left to re-invent and start over again. Keep this story in mind. It's not unique. It's normalized, even applauded by many now. It's something of a cultural thing I suppose, that those born into wealth and power are entitled, exceptional, and deserve to exploit and take from those who create and serve it up. NEVER forget this story, you will experience it too, you'll experience it, you'll suffer from it, and learn fast that YOU need to own what you create. So at every step of your career, from your age forward, you need to be thinking, "How can I be the owner, the boss, the creator, the employer?" And for the love of all that is good and right, "How can I do better than the greed that has infected so many?" Figure those out, and then make the world a better place, not just for you, but others as well.

Now, here is another harsh reality check. Back in the day, we didn't have cryptocurrency and we didn't even have great options for investments if you weren't very wealthy. The very wealthy often had personal brokers and advisors. Working class and poor had... nothing. For a little while we had pensions, but those were eliminated, and instead we got 401Ks, and decades of evidence have now proven those are sorely inadequate. We have a looming crisis right now because of them. The rich like to blame it on the poor, "they just don't save", but it's hard to save when you barely earn enough to keep yourself afloat, and impossible to save when you are slowly drowning. And, about every 7 to 10 years, the government stimulates us. That is they rapidly devalue our wages, shunt our purchasing power over to the wealthy in the form of zero rate loans, and this also wipes out purchasing power on lifetimes of savings. In the past 3 years alone, we've lost 30% of our purchasing power on lifetimes of savings. Then they proclaim, "oh no, inflation [that we caused] needs to be reigned in" So, they jack up rates. The uber wealthy took those zero rate loans and insulated themselves from both devaluation of the dollar, but also from the known upcoming and now enacted market crash phase. How? The bought land, resources, and especially housing, rent-seeking housing, which is generally far outside the range of today's young workers and most of today's working class. (Unless you partner up with someone). Then they jacked up prices on everything. When the rate hike phase started, money, your earnings, stored in the market, in 401Ks got wiped down another 30%. Not as bad as the times before, but combined with 30% inflation/devaluation of the dollar, that is a roughly 60% loss of purchasing power on your past earnings, stored savings/investments. When the recession and job loss phase kicks in, get ready, people will be forced to sell off early, the rich will buy up everything at a tremendous discount, and the government will collect 25% on average of what you sell, but also an additional 10% early withdrawal tax, to pad their pockets. Older workers may never recover. For many of us, this is our third time experiencing this nonsense, that all stems from centralized currency, manipulated markets, and the tamperable value of our wages and savings, all defined in temperable dollars. THAT is why cryptocurrency was invented. It's also why many of us are migrating to it slowly, but steadily, and we don't consider it an investment, we have no intention of trading in and out of it. We fully intend, and will work for it, trade it for goods and services, and store our wealth/past earnings in it. It is a self-balancing, incorruptible, undilutable store of wealth, that rewards participants, automatically balances to maintain security and participation, AND it cleverly entangles itself, inseparably, as a platform of web services, commerce, trade, autonomous organizations, and the concept of a currency. WE are building on this. It eliminate the grifters and middlemen who have spent decades exploiting the working class.

Should you put all of your money in it. NO. You don't understand it yet. If you think you want to "invest" in it, then trade it later for deprecated, old money, then you miss the entire point of it all. Should you start to learn about it, technically and economically. Yes. Start small, stay focused, stay focused on Ethereum, but read about the history of Bitcoin, understand the pros and cons of just these two. When you have a solid understanding of WHY these things even came to be, then you can evaluate the FUNCTIONALITY of other networks, but that's a rabbit hole.

For now, the simplest and smartest thing you can do is drop about $10,000 of that into I-bonds, get yourself a 6.89% return over the next six months and learn about the traditional market AND crypto. Take your remaining $10,000 and invest in companies that are currently profitable, producing valuable and likable, quality products and services. You can't go wrong with Apple, but hey, I'm partial. Then, when you know enough about economics, crypto, and investing, begin to dollar cost average, buying just a tiny amount each week or each payday. Re-assess companies and financials and the market sentiment of all about once a month, and slow and steadily learn more and more.

IF you put all of your trust in anything, one job, one employer, one customer, one currency, one crypto, then you will learn hard lessons. Employers will betray you. Customers are fleeting. Centralized currencies are tools of oppression, and crypto is complex in technology and economics with a flood of noise to filter and digest and learn what is truly valuable and useful.

Oh, and do NOT just stick with the I-bonds, keep an eye on that, every 6 months the government will proclaim inflation is something different and the next period may not yield as much. If you'd raised this question just a few weeks ago, you'd locked in a +9% return.

Finally, setup tax deferred IRAs AND Roth IRAs. Balance your long term investments across both. You just can't predict how the government will tax your income in the future, but rest assured, they'll do what they can to take as much of what you save as they can, either with income tax or the clever inflation tax.