The Crypto Genius: Dadvan Yousuf
You don’t become a bitcoin millionaire overnight. At the age of three, Dadvan Yousuf flew from northern Iraq and started trading early.
His father was a Peshmerga soldier fighting for a free Kurdistan. Together with his family, including his son Dadvan, he had to flee from Saddam Hussein’s troops. In Switzerland, they were initially granted a temporary residence permit, but not full asylum. The family’s finances were not good either, and they had to draw social welfare. Today, Dadvan Yousuf, who was three years old at the time, is a Bitcoin millionaire, or to be more precise, a multimillionaire.
Bitcoin millionaire at 21: Dadvan Yousuf’s beginnings
Although Dadvan’s parents had limited means, they kept sending money to the rest of the family in Kurdistan. Much of it was lost in the form of expensive transaction fees. So when he was eleven, Dadvands started looking for alternatives online. He came across Bitcoin and started talking to people who questioned the banking system. He later spoke to the Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ) about this start-up and his path to becoming a Bitcoin millionaire.
Relatively quickly, he apparently fell for the idea of cryptocurrencies. Dadvan even sold his toys to raise money, which he then invested in Bitcoin using his father’s credit card. “It’s not like people really believed in me at the time,” he told NZZ. “For them, it was more of a game.”
Later, Dadvan verifies all of its crypto transactions back to the year 2012.
The young immigrant gained an extensive understanding related to the digital currency. He bought, sold and made huge profits from the volatile prices within a short period of time. In December 2012, he had paid about 11,126 euros for 1,000 bitcoin. In October 2013, the seventh-grader had sold the 1,000 Bitcoins for 134,404 euros.
From social housing to “perhaps the most famous five-star hotel in Switzerland”
Over the years, however, Dadvan has gained not only money but also know-how. “I now earn more when the bitcoin price falls than when it rises,” the northern Iraqi native told the NZZ. That, he said, is due to the algorithms he now uses.
The now 21-year-old only outed himself as a Bitcoin millionaire in 2020, when he cashed out for the first time since 2011. He moved out of his parents’ social apartment into the Dolder, “perhaps the best-known five-star hotel in Switzerland,” according to the NZZ. Still in the following year, he reported to the head of the social welfare office of Ipsach, his parents now no longer need social assistance.
