The Rise and Fall of a Crypto Trader: Lessons Learned from Zhi Ko | Digital Social Hour #4

Welcome back to the Digital Social Hour, guys.

I'm here with my co-host, Charlie Cavalier, and our guest today is Eco.

How are we doing?

Good, man.

Everything's good.

You just moved out to Vegas, right?

Yeah, moved out to Vegas about six months ago.

From Cali?

Yep, from Orange County, California um came out here to be close to my girl and um kind of settled down a little bit yeah so what do you like uh more orange county or here to be honest i i mean i kind of like orange county because i am like very close like the water i like doing a lot of water sports so i haven't had that chance out here

but um i do like vegas for business right i will say like i've met some very very like like-minded individuals that are very like motivated and that's helped me out a lot right yeah because everyone comes here for the conferences, for networking.

Exactly.

And, you know, meeting guys like you, it's been, it's been good.

Yeah.

Charlie's out in Nashville.

Oh, cool.

They're trying to convince me to move to Vegas.

I love Nashville, but you're totally right.

Like all the networking that happens here, you know, I always meet more people here than I do probably in any other city.

Miami's the only one that kind of rivals it in terms of the events, the networking.

New York for a different way from the business networking stuff, but never at like fun events like Vegas and Miami do it.

Correct.

Yeah.

I feel that.

So let's dive into the tennis stuff.

So you were a pro tennis player.

Yep.

You were ranked top 300 at one point.

Yep.

What was it like just spending your whole life dedicated to tennis?

So

it's interesting, right?

So tennis growing up was second nature.

It was actually like sports before school.

So I went to Sports Academy when I was growing up, Nick Balteri Academy up in Bradenton, California.

I'm sorry, Bradenton, Florida.

And then now it's called IMG Academies.

And I just pretty much played six to eight hours a day.

I mean, this is like wake up at five in the morning, You're on the court You did two hours of school and you're back on the court and you're doing conditioning and the whole nines Wait, you only did two hours of school?

Yeah, I barely went to school.

Yeah, that was like that was pretty much I growing up and then I when I moved to bokeh I also went to another sports academy and Everett tennis academy and we did like four hours of school I didn't know these sports academies only did two to four hours.

It's like it's nothing so IMG does two to four hours of

back then IMG yeah I don't know how it is now I'm sure they've gotten some backlash on that right but it's definitely been

it was definitely not like geared towards like studies.

Because those guys are training to become pro athletes.

Correct.

Yeah.

So we had like other like pro

soccer players that were there, golfers that were there, and they all did really well.

Yeah.

But yeah, it was definitely sports first.

Yeah, they have a lot of good basketball players too.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's crazy.

So then you ended up getting a lot of injuries from tennis.

Correct.

And that shifted your path.

Exactly.

So when I was growing up, I played a lot of international tournaments all around, pretty much all around the world, specifically in France.

Two years in a row, there's a tournament called Lepetite over there.

It's like when I was like 14 and 15 years old.

And

I twisted my ankles both times on their clay courts because we don't have their kind of clay here in the United States.

It's like very fine clay.

So I just was not used to moving like that.

Twisted my ankles terribly.

And since then, I've always had

bad ankles.

And then when I went to college,

that escalated.

Like those injuries escaped because I didn't stop stop playing, right?

I was still training five, six hours a day.

Um, as much rehab as I did, I never really rested it.

And I was doing corisol shots, which are terrible for you.

And yeah, I mean, it just went rapid.

Uh, so where did you play in college?

University of Miami.

Miami.

So you were doing singles?

So I was doing singles and doubles, correct?

Singles and doubles.

Correct.

Yeah, I played singles and doubles.

And yeah, I trained there.

What was your best game, singles or doubles?

I would say I was definitely more of a singles player

just because I think I I don't know I just always vibed more with singles I would say like I'm I guess I'm selfish on the court I would say but towards the end because I think that my body was sort of shutting down a little bit when it came to like my mobility that I sort of gravitated towards doubles a little bit more right how much of tennis is a mental sport because some games you're out there four or five hours like do you get in your own head definitely so

i'll tell you a funny story um i actually played this one guy from Uganda.

I remember I was a young kid.

I was 17 years old.

I was playing one of my first pro tournaments.

I thought I was hot stuff.

And this guy from Uganda comes in and

it's like 105 degrees in Florida.

I'm playing on Stadium of Court.

All the sun's shining.

It's so hot out there.

This guy brings out a hot jar, like Costco-sized jar of pickle juice.

And he just drinks it in front of me and just stares at me.

And like right there,

this is like the third set.

I'm like dying out there.

Like right there, I knew like, I was like, oh man, this is like bad.

This guy is not going to give up.

And this is about to be like a five-hour match.

Wow.

And that just like psychologically like shook me.

I remember that exact day for sure.

And that shook me.

Wow, he got in your head.

He got me in my head.

Yeah.

I was 17.

I and I kind of, you know, really kind of, I mean, not sobered up, but I definitely got like a slap of reality.

So why pickled juice?

The sodium content, you know?

That's just his way of getting sodium.

Interesting.

Yeah, he just didn't cramp, man.

He was just out there grinding, and I just, yeah, I couldn't keep up.

Wow.

How much camaraderie is there on tour?

I know with a lot of team sports, right?

You go back into your locker room, you have your, you know, your guys that are in the locker room with you.

They're on your team.

But with individual sports, right, like tennis, golf, whatever it might be, everybody is your competition.

Nobody technically is on your team.

So what kind of camaraderie is there on tour amongst all the professional players?

So there definitely is

some,

yeah, right.

There definitely is some animosity, right, towards, towards you know your fellow player to some degree even if though you like grew up playing each other definitely is like that rivalry for sure um

but i think there is some

i guess there is some like friendship when it comes to the struggle, I would say, because we all didn't have any money.

We were all traveling together.

We're all like trying to save costs, staying four or five people to a hotel room.

So I think that's where you would see some of that like closeness, that bonding.

But at the end of the day, it is a single sport.

So on tour as well as on juniors, it's very much you yourself, right?

In college tennis, because you are a team and you are trying to win in a unanimous fashion, that is a little bit more,

I guess, yeah, that's a little bit more close.

I feel that.

What's some advice you could give to an upcoming tennis player looking to go professional and make a living off it?

You know what?

I would say definitely take care of your body.

I know

it's tough to understand that when you're a younger person, when you're in your teens, when you're in your 20s, you know, you can do whatever you want, you can get away with it.

But that definitely does play a role in the future.

I remember talking with my doctors when I was younger.

My doctor's like, look, at your current pace, you're going to have arthritis all over your body when you're 30s.

And I didn't believe it, right?

I was 16 years old.

I was like, no way.

Like, I'm top stuff.

I'm definitely feeling it now, now that I'm in my 30s, right?

But definitely take care of their body.

And

mental conditioning, right?

There's definitely a huge psychological play when you're a single sport, you're out there by yourself, and there's no one else you can blame, right?

You're looking at yourself.

When you lose a point, it's all on yourself.

There's nothing you can really blame out there, right?

So it's very psychologically taxing.

And I think that's really important to be aware of that.

I feel that.

Do you still watch tennis?

Not so much.

You know what?

Not so much, man.

It's tough.

It's definitely tough.

It's like a long match.

Yeah, it's a long match.

Yeah, it's a long match.

And I never really enjoyed watching watching tennis, to be honest, growing up.

I enjoyed playing it and seeing my friends play.

But now that I'm sort of out of touch, I don't really watch it.

I feel that.

Yeah, it's like a 50-50.

Some of my good friends that are still really close in a tennis scene watch it all day long.

Yeah.

I'm on the other side.

I feel that.

Who's your goat in tennis?

I mean, for sure.

I mean, originally when I was growing up, Pete Zampras.

He was my favorite by far.

And then,

you know, Roger Federer.

Federer.

Yeah, Roger Federer.

I feel like that's becoming more of a rare answer now that Jokovich is just dominating.

Yeah, yeah, Roger Federer for sure.

We had some pretty cool instances.

Like when I was playing in college, we had a lot of pro players play in Miami.

So we had like Andy Murray, Jokovich stopped by the Serena Williams Venus.

They played at our facilities.

That's sick.

So because they were all, you know, Florida-based, Florida is the largest, pretty much like hub for tennis in the entire United States.

Really?

And America just dominates when it comes to tennis programs.

So

Florida just was just a huge hub for it.

That's sick.

It's interesting.

You said America dominates when it comes to tennis programs, and we haven't had a U.S.

men's number one in, I mean, you know a lot, but how long has it been?

It's been a long time.

I mean, really, Pete Sampras, Andre Agassi, those were like the golden years of U.S.

tennis.

Besides that, I mean, there's been some top players that have come in, like Isner and so forth, but no one really at that top number one spot.

You're correct.

Roger Federer, you know, Jokovich Nadal, they've been the dominant factors and the European players.

Right.

How did you translate tennis into your business life?

I think it's more of a mental discipline aspect, right?

Waking up in the morning,

growing up, especially at Nick Bolateri's IMG Academies.

Nick Bolateri himself, he just recently passed away, but he had a thing where if he saw you yawn on the court at 5.30 in the morning, you're a kid.

He saw you yawn, he's sending you home.

Whoa.

And you're on scholarship and like that's reported to like your coach and so forth.

So it's a very bad look.

Yeah.

And you know, know, especially when you're a kid, like you take everything like really seriously.

It's like, oh my god, I got attention.

It's a big deal.

So he would just send people home.

And it didn't matter how good you were.

Did that happen to you?

Yeah, yeah.

It happened to me twice.

It happened to Maria Sharipova, who was like a big name back in the day.

Yeah, they were, these guys were all playing there at this facility.

And

it didn't matter how good you are.

He was very straightforward.

He didn't care about egos.

He didn't care how good you were.

He had a certain set of rules.

That's crazy.

So that definitely translated to a business sense, right?

Like being able to wake up in the morning, get it going,

not stop until something's done.

Yeah.

Wow.

So let's dive into the business side of things.

You've made over eight figures in the crypto space.

Super impressive.

How did you learn about that whole space and really grow your company there?

So I got into crypto in 2017 in March.

And before that, I was working at Disney.

I used to be an engineer, civil engineer at Disney.

I was doing sustainable construction as well as alternative fuels in Disney.

So then one day, a guy actually, one of my, I guess, guys that digs holes, a construction guy, told me about Ethereum.

And I didn't really think anything about it, to be honest.

And I probably should have because I could have gotten even cheaper.

But then afterwards, like two weeks later, my buddy from Wall Street, who's just like kills it, he called me and was just like, hey, man, like.

take as much money as you got and put it towards Ethereum.

I didn't think anything about it.

I didn't have very much money to do it.

I put, I think, like $3.5,000 into Ethereum and then it started skyrocketing.

And I was like, wait a minute, I just weighed, I just made more money in like the last like two weeks, like than my entire like engineering like career like in like the year, right?

Like saved up.

So I was like, where is there like more of this?

And then I discovered there was a whole market to it.

I started buying some, you know, altcoin, started diving into it.

I was reading Reddit and I just kind of fell in love with the space and got really addicted to it, to be honest, from a financial financial standpoint.

I never want to like pretend like I'm the most knowledgeable person from the tech standpoint.

It was very monetary for me.

Right.

Yeah, and fortunately for my job, I was a project engineer.

So I got to manage a lot of construction sites.

And as long as my construction sites were on

schedule, I could have like all the time in the world to look at my computer, to read what I wanted to read.

No one was really telling me what to do.

As long as I was on schedule, I met my meetings and everything was gravy.

What year was this?

This was in 2017.

Wow, you were early.

Yeah, 2017, I got into Ethereum.

Ethereum was like,

I think like then Ethereum was $90.

Jeez, I wish.

Yeah, $90 Ethereum.

And that's when I started diving in.

But, you know, I mean, first year, I wrote it pretty much up.

I made my first seven figures in 2017 and then I lost a lot of it.

You know what I mean?

I'll be honest, I lost a lot of it because I was believing the tech.

I started believing and started not concentrating so much of of the money, thought it was going to go up.

Greed kind of got the best of it.

It got emotional.

Exactly.

And that's where, you know, I started like seeing like the losses.

Right.

I was part of that 2017 roller coaster also.

And this, you know, this 2022 situation or now 23 is giving me some of those same vibes.

Right.

A lot of people bought in at highs, not lows.

And now everyone's freaking out.

And crypto is almost getting a bad rap for

just doing what every market in the history of the world has done.

Do you see this current trend that we're in right now lasting for a long time?

Or do you see this being like a three, six, nine, twelve-month thing?

I think that it's going to be on a shorter scale this time.

I don't believe that this, like right now, we're in a bear market, right?

I don't believe this bear cycle is going to last as long as 2018 to 2020, like mid-2020, because that was a painful two and a half years.

I mean, a lot of us lost a lot, right?

I think that now because

we have so much money inside, we have, you know, true money, like true VC money.

You're starting to see like bigger banks talking about it, offering as like offerings to like their clients.

That I do believe that some sort of ground has been formed.

I don't think that we're just going to capitulate back down to like, you know, five-figure numbers anymore.

Right.

Or four-figure numbers, actually.

I just don't think that we'll see that.

Now, do I also, at the same time, because bigger money's in, also, I don't believe we'll see this giant monster run up as quickly as 2017 either.

I think that there's a balance between the two.

And to be honest, I think as a trader myself, those are the best conditions when you're actually seeing a slow grind up on Bitcoin.

Altcoins have a chance to breathe.

And that's where you can actually make some serious money.

Yeah, the altcoins.

If you time those right, man.

Correct.

I hit a few like 10Xs last time.

Oh, amazing.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

What did you learn from the Luna and FTX situation?

Oh, man.

You know what?

So I'll be very honest with you guys.

I mean, Luna, I lost eight figures on Luna.

I lost eight figures on Luna, guys.

And this was actually a big wake-up call for me.

I was out of control last year.

I was partying like crazy, out of control, pretty much a success story in crypto and was going down a really bad path.

I was in Miami for the F1 event.

And I had every single chance to get out of Luna.

I had not inside knowledge, but I had the guys at Jump Capital, which was the primary market maker in Luna that was like, hey, look, you know, we're actually going to punch the market back up.

I had every single chance to get out at the end of the day.

And I chose to stay and party,

be hungover.

I had a private jet waiting for me.

I ended up canceling my private jet

to come back to California to get my hardware wallet.

And

the next day I looked in, my portfolio was cut 33%.

I mean, sorry, 66%.

It was, you know, I was in primarily an anchor, which is a, it was, it was, give us a stablecoin farm.

Yeah.

It's giving like 20% of them.

I was in that one, too.

Yeah.

And I completely didn't get out.

And before I knew it, UST was pegged 33 cents to the dollar.

And so essentially 66% of my net worth was just gone.

And

you know what?

Like looking back at it, it was kind of like a blessing in disguise.

Like I said, I was going down a pretty rough path.

I was out of control.

I was just, yeah, out of control.

So it was kind of like a nice little wake-up call there.

Now for FTX, fortunately, I didn't have too much in FTX.

I still had six figures in FTX.

It was a little bit unfortunate because I actually just landed in Singapore.

I was on a vacation with my girlfriend at that time.

And first day in Singapore, landed in, FTX collapses.

And I'm just looking at them like, oh my God.

Like, what is going on right now?

That's probably ruined the vacation.

Yeah, I was like, oh, you know what I mean?

Thankfully, it wasn't too crazy of a loss.

I was able to like, you know, recover for the most part.

but it still sucked.

It still also sucked, like, hearing my friends who actually got hit really hard.

A few of my friends, like, definitely lost seven, eight figures on that, which was, which was tough.

And then I guess also like the portfolios that like I invested in, right?

I invested in a lot of other

projects that had their entire bank like holdings on FTX.

Because one of the things when Alameda invested into one of your projects, they encouraged you to put your holdings onto their platform.

So it was like their bank.

And,

you know, no one ever thought

the elephant in the room was going to collapse.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

I mean, to me, the FTAX thing kind of highlighted the going down the road of crypto being the same as a lot of the banking industries were

prior to the Great Depression.

And as a crypto native like yourself, I'm sure you would love to see anything but that happen.

What needs to happen moving forward to make sure that crypto and crypto exchanges don't end up just becoming banks 2.0?

So one of the things that happened after FTX was that there was an open ledger, right?

There was an on-chain open ledger where you could check most exchanges'

holdings, like true holdings, right?

You got to see how much money was actually in Binance, right?

I think Binance like showed that they had like $197 billion, essentially, like ready to go.

Yeah, like something crazy or something like that.

Like a ridiculous amount of Bitcoin, ridiculous amount of Ethereum, and a ridiculous amount of US dollar, USDT.

So they had this, like, they showed their holdings.

And from there, because they're like the big dog, all the other exchanges started, you know, following through and started showing that.

So, that's a good step, you know, that actual transparency out there.

But at the same time, you know,

you know, is that actually enough, right?

I think that there is a necessary need for regulations to come into the crypto space.

I'm probably gonna get a lot of hate for saying this, to be honest.

I agree with you a thousand percent.

Yeah, I mean, at the end of the day, there needs to be some accountability for you know, people's actions.

So,

how much accountability?

That's the big, that's the big question, right?

Um, I don't think that you want it to be like a Bank of America where, like, you have an SEC or you have you know, FINRA coming down on you, but at the same time, I think that there needs to be some sort of docket where you know there is some rules, there is some regulations.

Because you did see, for example, prior to the Luna crash, you did see, or sorry, after the Luna crash, you did see some of the biggest funds in crypto, like 3ac, collapse because they were so leveraged up on their assets that they, you know, when one thing dropped, everything sort of liquidated.

And that never happens in traditional finance.

You can't just 6X your entire holding on leverage on $16 billion.

It just doesn't, it doesn't happen.

Right.

There's regulations for that.

And, but in crypto, there isn't.

Yeah.

So that's what they did.

I also saw you were into esports.

Do you still feel good about the future?

Because I was looking at, you know, FaceTalk.

I saw a tank.

Do you think there will be a comeback in that industry?

Yes, I do.

So my thing about esports, so I used to own an esports team with one of the best esports players named Hai, but

that ended up not working out.

But I do believe esports is the future because of how accessible it is.

Unlike traditional sports, there's like two big issues with traditional sports.

Number one, genetics.

As much as it sucks to say, you know, if I was, if let's just say me and you were as good as each other as as is in basketball, right?

But you just happen to be so much taller, like I won't be able to compete against you.

It's just, you know, it comes down to really just physics and just physical prowess.

And safety kind of goes across most sports out there, especially like football and more of the contact sports out there.

With esports, anybody has a chance.

Any kid that grinds out has a chance to be there.

And now a lot of these top esports games like League of Legends, Counter-Strike, they've been around for so long that you can actually play them on a pretty high level you can actually play them on a not so good computer you can get a computer for 500 bucks 400 bucks and you can still play these games and that allows kids to now be able to compete and be able to train towards you know the future and then ultimately i mean if this is much bigger in asia but mobile gaming is huge in asia right when you go to japan no one's talking on the subways they're head down they're looking at their phone and you know most of the guys are on playing some sort of game and uh that's where like i think the money's at as well as that's just where um

i think that's where people are going towards wow that's awesome speaking of everyone staring at their phones because it's the same thing here but for social media reasons right obviously you played irl sports and you've done esports very much so How do we get attention spans to return back to in real life things and not just be about what's on your cell phone?

I think it comes down to health, to be honest.

You know what I mean, look, at the end of the day,

there has to be a health factor.

I mean, kids, you know, unfortunately, you know, the U.S.

obesity rate is continuously climbing up.

And it's something to really kind of focus on.

And I really think that as people starting, like...

You're starting to see the younger general generation talk about like, you know, biohacking.

You're starting to see the younger generation talk about, you know,

bodybuilding a little bit more opposed to the older generation.

And I think that that's going to be sort of the flip that it's eventually going to come in as like a cool trend again.

And I think that's the only re, the only real way to transfer that attention span to over to like in real life things.

Yeah, let's touch on health more because you and I are super passionate about it, obviously, into health hacking.

Charlie and I just took a blood test today.

Oh, very cool.

Yeah, I saw you take them every six months, right?

Yep.

Yeah.

So what are some health hacks you've been doing lately?

So I saw you posted about the sauna.

The sauna.

So sauna, sauna's is the easiest one to hack right it's i do that right now i've been doing the sauna about six days a week nice i've been going above and beyond because you know stats are crazy yeah um the fact that he can you know drop um it just look at the end of the day from what i understand from biohacking i don't pretend to be an expert at this by any means but from everything that i've read it really comes down to seeing how much blood flowing blood flow is is happening within your body.

When you have elevated blood flow in your body, it helps your body recover.

It helps your body essentially get more oxygen in your body and you're just healthier overall.

The sauna allows that.

The sauna allows for your blood to flow faster.

You're getting more oxygen within your muscles and it just helps with just recovery in general.

I feel that.

So I think the sauna number one is the main thing I've been doing.

Number two, I just started cupping.

Cupping.

Yeah, so like cupping like massage therapy where they cut those things off on like, yeah, where they put those things in your body.

Only downside with that is that, you know, you get these crazy marks all over your body so like i have bruises all over my body

no not bad okay what hurts bad is um i forgot what the technique was called when they take like the iron rod and they scrape over your your scar tissue okay that is a bit crazy painful that's a bit crazy but it but it's great man it unlocks everything i've had really bad also shoulder issue just because of tennis and um To be honest, I've done this three times, three sessions, and

it has probably improved like 70%.

Really?

It's like that drastic.

Whoa.

The scraping or the cupping for the show?

Both.

So, like, they come in and they do like a, they go all in.

Like, you get 40 minutes into the place, and they just like go to work on you.

They like tell you to like, they do like an assessment, like movement assessment.

And they're like, okay, like, your left shoulder, clearly, you're tight here.

You're slouching a little bit more than your right.

You've imbalance here and there.

We're gonna go.

And they just do everything they can to unlock your body as well as balance it.

Is this in Vegas?

It's in Henderson.

Dude, take me there.

Yeah, I'm down to go next.

It's very affordable too.

Nothing crazy.

And dude, it's helped a lot.

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

What about on the diet side of things?

What are you eating?

So, diet side, I mean, besides like in the morning, so in the morning, I always do intermittent fasting.

I don't eat until about one o'clock in the afternoon.

First thing I do in the morning is I take the athletic greens drink.

I don't want to show a product over here, but it's pretty comprehensive.

I take it too.

It's pretty comprehensive.

It's a great thing.

I mean, whether you believe, whether it's working for you or whether it's a pseudo-effect, effect, just taking in the morning makes me feel accomplished.

So I'm taking that first thing in the morning.

And then in the afternoon, I have a meal plan service

that just right now I'm trying to gain weight.

So I've just been sort of eating everything.

But knowing that I'm eating from a meal plan service, I know that the ingredients are good.

I know that the ingredients are coming in from actual, like real food.

It's unprocessed.

It's properly done.

And I think that's like the biggest.

No seed oils?

Ah, that I need to ask on.

You should ask.

That's the big thing.

I know.

You guys got me.

You guys got me on it.

It was you and David.

You guys got me on seed oils.

And I went down a dark path, man.

Like, that night, I went down this rabbit hole.

I was like, oh, my God, everything is seed oils.

Yeah, every restaurant, man.

It's terrible.

It's horrible.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's absolutely terrible.

Well, I guess any closing thoughts and where people can find you?

Yeah.

So, I mean, most of my socials are, you know, Nako's Tech, N-E-K-O-Z-T-K.

I kind of just like, to be honest, like for Twitter, I post a lot of like my crypto thoughts, whether it's it's like analysis or whether it's like what I believe like the price is gonna be not financial advice of course yeah but you know that's that's number one and then on Instagram I just pretty much post um health stuff that's the only thing I've been posting is really my health hacks and then once in a while when I go out that's about it awesome yeah I actually cut alcohol for my life did you part of the reason so yeah thank you for that dude it's it's incredible yeah yeah it's a big big difference for sure um but I you know once again I think that it really comes down to balance.

I don't think that, I mean, just, yeah, just balance.

I think that's really the key right there.

Absolutely.

All right, guys, you heard it there.

Digital social hour.

I'll see you guys next week.