A DeSci Millionaire in Three Days? This Guy Did It

The crypto community likes to promote the DeFi sector as the holy grail of money-making opportunities. Many think they can just stroll into DeFi projects with some spare dollars, then out a few days later with a retirement fund for their entire lineage. This is not typically the case.

Unresearched crypto trading is more akin to running blindfold through a minefield with a bag of cash. While you might get to the other side, you’re more likely to get blown up instead. This is why the expression DYOR (do your own research) is so important.

It’s rumored that over 4,000 new tokens are created each day. However, most of these “projects” are outright rug-pulls and other types of scams, which catch people unaware. There are also fewer whales in crypto than the industry would have you believe, sitting around 172k crypto millionaires at last count. Not a bad number, sure, but given that around 560 million people use crypto globally, this actually accounts for only about 0.03% of investors. This is a far cry from how some promote crypto as a “get-quick-rich” opportunity.

Long story short, crypto can certainly make you money — and quite a lot of it too, if you know what you’re doing — but it’s not going to make you a millionaire in a few days.

Unless, of course, it does.

An Instant DeSci Millionaire?

There is always an exception to the rule, and that’s the case with one whale who dove into the fast-emerging decentralized science sector by accumulating two connected DeSci tokens: $URO and $RIF. Lookonchain — a popular on-chain analytics platform — reported that the individual laid down a total of 80 SOL ($17.2k at the time) and turned the combined tokens into an unrealized profit of over $1.5 million in just — you guessed it — three days.

First, it’s important to note that 17k is a lot of money to have on hand to throw into an investment. This implies that the individual was already fairly wealthy. However, this could also be a case of high risk-taking combined with a very astute analysis of the market and trends.

That’s because this kind of explosive investment growth does happen in a sector when individuals catch onto emerging Metas at the right time, coupled with good research. (And, no, Meta here doesn’t refer to the Facebook rebrand and online dystopia that the corporate overlord Zuckerberg tried to push on everyone a while back. Rather, Meta is a Web3 term that represents a cultural narrative that quickly becomes a valuable investment niche).  

DeSci: Profiting in Real-World Solutions

DeSci is one such Meta experiencing a lot of attention, praise, and trading volume right now, and deservedly so, because it can fix real-world problems.

In a nutshell, ​​decentralized science wants to overhaul a broken scientific research paradigm, which like so many other industries, is plagued by corporate overreach, siloed progress, and a lack of collaboration. Instead, DeSci uses the decentralization aspect of blockchain technology to allow for more community-driven scientific research and partnerships.

The movement essentially believes that scientific knowledge should be available to all, and research transparent for equitable analysis — a pretty noble aim. Researchers can do far more when they’re not hamstrung by corporate interests, too, such as raising funds, sharing true and unbiased data and insights, and experimenting freely in areas they are passionate about. 

DeSci is already creating genuine change in the world. For example, Sci-Hub recently received a hefty charitable donation to make over 88 million scientific research papers and journals available to all for free. AxonDAO’s recent projects, A+Voice and CureOS, now enable users to create and own their biodata. So, it’s understandable that a shrewd investor would see emerging DeSci projects as great early investment opportunities.

And that’s probably what happened here.

In a growingly popular niche of the Web3 world, there will probably be plenty more millionaires made from finding golden DeSci projects. The subsector has long legs and a bright future. However, for every millionaire made, there may be countless more who lose their rent for the month. “Never invest more than you are willing to lose” is not just a statement; it’s a mantra that those in the industry should live by. 

Still, becoming a millionaire in a few days is pretty darn cool.