I bought my first Bitcoin in 2013.

Of course, knowing what I know now, I wish I would have purchased it back when I was first interested years before. I didn't realize at the time it would be as valuable as it is today, but it is one of the best investments I’ve ever made. 

At the time, I was more interested in its utility. I found bitcoin while searching for alternative ways to avoid fraud. My company, Tripster (Reserve Direct at the time), was dealing with a ton of credit card fraud. For example, people were purchasing Disney World tickets with stolen credit cards and selling the tickets at the gate for cash. 

Of course, as soon as the fraud victim discovered the charge on the account and called their credit card company, their money was returned to them, sticking my company with the bill. We regularly had $50,000 to $100,000 a year of loss due to credit card fraud. For a modest company like ours, where our profit margin averaged 15%, that's a huge slice of our profits. And not only did we have this "expense," we devoted a ton of resources to mitigating these losses — customer service and development staff. And even though all of that time paid off by lowering losses, they were still significant and a major distraction to the business at hand.


Surely there had to be another way.

With Bitcoin, no purchase could be made without first verifying the funds of the buyer. No credit card company could charge it back, leaving us high and dry. But of course, it was a new technology, and only until recently do major companies even accept it as payment. 

But as I watched it over the years, I saw a whole suite of new utility cryptocurrencies emerging in the space. A ton of them were scams, but many of them (like Ethereum) showed amazing promise as both utility and infrastructure, but I will go into those in another post. 

The utility we are focused on here at Flywheel Systems is just one of many concepts spawned from the cryptocurrency movement — Decentralized Finance (DeFi). Staking your holdings in a DeFi platform is much like depositing your cash into a bank — except that with these platforms, you earn significantly more interest than any bank can offer. Plus, you can borrow USD against your staked holdings at interest rates that put traditional banks to shame. That’s pretty unicorn-ish, isn’t it?

At first, I thought it was too good to be true. But I researched the companies and the players and found the best platforms. I staked some of my crypto at first, saw the results, then added more. I have been earning between 4% and 12% on my holdings, depending on the coin. I've been doing this for a few years now, and I've since become a bit of an emissary for the concept. (Which is why I started Flywheel Systems).

I like the idea of making money while you sleep. That’s one of the great things about Tripster — as much work that it took to build and grow these last 19 years, and with all of the frustrations of building and running a business, people are still buying Disney World tickets and helicopter tours and vacation packages at all hours of the day and night. (Well, not as much in a pandemic, of course). It’s not quite passive income, but it’s a part of the energy that gets the flywheel going.

And that’s exactly what we’re all about here — utilizing cryptocurrencies to generate significant passive income. But people that don't understand bitcoin and cryptocurrencies tend to be afraid of them, noting their volatility. But there are digital assets that maintain value and are often more in demand than bitcoin and similar coins. Platforms pay generous interest for those deposits while they lend the funds to other borrowers. 

I'm pretty passionate about this. Since I started earning, there have been a lot of competition in the DeFi space, but a number of them are just playing the same games as traditional banks — charging fees and squelching your earning potential all while they use your money to earn big profits from other borrowers. I can help you find the best opportunities.  

If you're reading this, you're most likely skeptical as I was years ago. But in just a few years, this concept will be as common as your corner franchise bank, except those banks will start dying off if they can't offer this kind of interest and borrowing power.

But before then, Flywheel Systems will help you maximize your interest by finding you the best opportunities for return on your cash, giving you a true passive income stream.