‘I went from minimum wage to six figures in 90 days’

This Gold Coast mother was earning “barely above minimum wage” when she decided to turn it all around by doing this one thing.

“I just kept looking at the wealth ticker on my phone growing and growing,” recalls Gold Coast mum Sydel Sierra of the moment she realised her bank account was about to reach a figure she’d only dreamt of.

“I just kept thinking – is this too good to be true? But it wasn’t.”

Just months earlier, the then-receptionist who was working for what she describes as “barely above minimum wage” had been pondering the question of how to boost her finances long-term.

“I remember a very specific moment where I was sitting there thinking, how do people go from this to financial freedom?” the mother of one explains.

“I know it was maybe a mature question to ask in my twenties, and I know it’s something perhaps a lot of people think about later in life, but I was sort of thinking: ‘how am I going to turn around what I have now?’ I was working for less than a grand a week, even working seven days a week, and I just couldn’t see how I would build that up.”

She’d begun hearing about cryptocurrency – specifically Bitcoin – and seeing people she looked up to start considering it as an investment vehicle.

“This was in 2016 that I’d begun hearing about it, and [I] invested for the first time in 2017,” she explains.

Sydel Sierra is a crypto multi-millionaire. Picture: Glenn Hampson

$900 parlayed into $110,000

Sydel decided to pool some savings and invest in a number of cryptocurrencies.

“That was a huge amount of money for me at the time,” she recalls.

“I was so nervous.”

But within a few months, Sydel’s earnings made her $3000 investment look like a drop in the ocean.

“$900 of that initial investment had turned into $110,000 in 90 days,” she reveals.

“We were at the beginning of what we call a bull cycle – all the cryptos I had in place at the time just started to go parabolic. And it was the most euphoric rush of my life.”

The savvy investor then made another profitable decision, and cashed out that $110,000 into 26 bitcoins.

“That was one of my first leg-ups, and then from there, I just kept going,” she reflects.

She was a multi-millionaire within two years.

Continuing to invest in new technology and cryptos, as well as Bitcoin and Ethereum, Sydel rode that first bull cycle to dizzying heights.

Financial freedom before 30

“When Bitcoin Ethereum would go really high, I would sell and then move all that profit over to what’s called alt coins, which are coins other than Bitcoin and Ethereum. From there, 1 was able to really take some serious cream off the top,” she says.

Sydel was able to retire at the age of 30, travel the world and splash some serious cash on a few luxury items, though she admits it took a while to fully sink in.

Sydel was able to retire at the age of 30 due to her earnings. Picture: iStock

“There are a lot of learning curves for someone who comes from moderate living to switch suddenly to being able to afford luxury,” she muses.

“I think it wasn’t until after that first cycle, when my portfolio went up to seven figures or even eight figures that I realised, wow, this is completely locked in. This is generational wealth-level money.”

One of the first major splurges that crystallised Sydel’s new reality was being able to take her entire family away for her mum’s 60th birthday.

“We went to Longitude 101 at Uluru and shouted the whole family. We booked a bunch of the villas and it was just so special to be able to do that,” she recalls.

“And then there was the Aston Martin,” she chuckles, “and the Louis Vuitton day bag.”

‘The time is now’

These days, along with raising her infant daughter with her partner, Sydel runs Digital Wealth Group, providing personalised training for people looking to get into cryptocurrency trading.

The business, established alongside her brother when the pair managed to retire to live off their crypto profits, was born out of being asked for tips on how they did it.

“People started asking us, very naturally, how and what we were doing,” she says.

Gold Coast crypto queen Sydel Sierra listed the $6m Hinterland retreat she bought with bitcoin. Picture: Glenn Hampson

Sydel has helped other people, too. Picture: Supplied

“So we started helping people, very informally – meeting up in the back of libraries, or the top floor above the pub. We had this little cult movement going on. Bitcoin was only about $1500 a coin at this point, and we were telling people how it was going to be the next big thing.

“We’ve created several multi-millionaires, people that have created over $2 million in wealth through the program. We’ve got about 50 or 55 people in that category last time we counted. “We’ve got a goal to help 30,000 people achieve financial sovereignty. We’ve helped about 10,000 already.”

And while anyone can sign up for Sydel’s program, she offers this next tip free.

“We’re at the start of another bull cycle, which is why I always tell people, now is the time to buy,” she says.

“Right now we’re at the bottom of what we call that ‘hockey stick’ growth, or that ‘banana zone’. Crypto runs in cycles, and we’re right on schedule for this one. Investors have waited years for this moment that we have now in the market, and a year from now, we’re going to be sitting at the top of this bull market, with the expected peak to be late Q4 of next year.”

Bek Day is a freelance writer