How WallStreetBets, Dogecoin And Elon Musk Brought Out The Investor In An 11th Grader From A Remote City In India

Just a few months ago, if you had asked me about stocks and investments, I would have shrugged it off as a "not-so-interesting" topic. I lived a very ordinary existence of a good old student, trying to live up to the expectations built by the family regarding excelling in academics and then landing in a safe and risk-free career that would take care of me for the rest of my life.

But something exciting and interesting happened in the interim, that potentially has an implication for my life and future.

Enter Reddit: The first time I came close to anything related to cryptocurrency was through the recent WallStreetBets phenomenon that took over the internet by storm. The news that a bunch of retail investors were able to destroy these large hedge funds was very interesting and made me go further into it.

See also: How to Buy Dogecoin (DOGE)

Even though it was a huge event, most of my friends had no clue as to what was going on. Me, being bored of studies, took a look into stocks and researched everything I could about stocks. As I was researching, I could not find any broker which was allowing me to invest in U.S. stocks without an initial investment of $500-$1,000.

Doge Comes Barking: As I gave up hope of ever investing in these things, a new thing caught my eye during the starting of January. It was a meme coin, Dogecoin DOGE/USD.

Me as curious as I was researched everything about the blockchain and the way crypto functions. The more I studied about it, the more it fascinated me. I was thinking about the time the Indian Prime Minister demonetized all Rupee notes of denominations 500 and 1,000.

The fact that people can at a blink of an eye say that whatever fiat money you own has no value worried me very much. While studying cryptos, the selling proposition was its decentralized nature and the fact that it cannot be inflated, demonetized or changed. Its value boiled down to the basic economic concepts of demand and supply.

Need Capital: The next challenge was to ask for money from my parents, but the good news was I had already saved about 10,000 rupees. When I asked my mom permission to draw down from the savings by elaborating about the positives of cryptos and the prospect of Dogecoin exploding, neither of my parents agreed to it.

After a week of analyzing the Dogecoin chart, I was noticing an uptrend. Immediately, I ran out of my room and persuaded my parents to let me invest in DOGE. Finally, my dad budged and took my side and I was able to open an account with an Indian crypto trading platform. My mom parted with only 5,000 rupees but that was enough for me.

Buying In: As soon as I received the money in my account, I waited a bit to analyze the market. Due to my impatience, I bought Doge at a slightly higher price of 5.5 cents. It turned out that Dogecoin would dip a bit more all the way to 4.5 cents but I wasn't scared. I had faith in this meme coin, noticing the hype that was created around it.

Then something incredible happened. They say blessing comes in all forms, but for me, Dogecoin, and the Dogecoin community it came in the form of Tesla TSLA CEO Elon Musk.

Thanks to his repeated tweets on Dogecoin and the trust vested by the Dogecoin community, its price reached an all-time high of 8 cents. At that moment, I could have cashed out with a profit of 4,000 rupees. But I preferred to remain loyal to the Doge. I am long Dogecoin for the long run and is increasingly confident that the altcoin is going TO THE MOON.

Ashwin Manoj Felix is the nephew of Benzinga reporter Shanthi Rexaline.