We all want to make money and get rich quickly. Still, some prefer to walk on the road less taken and end up with millions in windfall in unexpected and unconventional ways. So while the rest of us toil in our 9 to 5 jobs, these guys found a way to monetize their passion, saw the potential growth in an area before anyone else, or just got plain lucky. Here are five people who got rich through out of the box ways:
Vitalik Buterin
Vitaly Dmitriyevich “Vitalik” Buterin is a Russian-Canadian programmer and writer who is best known as one of the co-founders of Ethereum. Since its earliest days, he has been involved in the cryptocurrency space, founding the bitcoin magazine in 2011 and creating the Ethereum Blockchain in 2014 with Gavin Wood.
Vitalik is a voice of authority on all things crypto and heavily advocates for its widespread adoption. His net worth due to his investments and holding total up to somewhere between $16B-$21B.
Belle Delphine
Mary-Belle Kirschner, better known as Belle Delphine, is a South African-born English Internet celebrity, pornographic actress, model, and YouTuber. Her social media accounts feature erotic and cosplay modeling, sometimes blending the two. While Belle has been a controversial figure for long periods, she has a dedicated following. Her net worth figures are a little hazy.
Some estimate her net worth to be around $500,000, while others say she makes approximately 2 million GBP per month. Belle rose to prominence when she managed to sell her ‘bath water’ for £10Million.
Josua Hutagalung
Josua was a regular coffin maker in Sumatra, Indonesia. One day, Josua went through his routine and worked on a coffin next to his house when a 2.1 kg meteorite crashed through his roof got buried 15cm in the nearby soil. Now meteorites entering the Earth are pretty standard. Still, most of them burn up quickly in the atmosphere before they hit the ground, and those that do make it to the bottom are the size of pebbles.
The meteorite which destroyed Josua’s roof was estimated to be worth £1.4Million, making him an overnight millionaire. So the next time you’re walking on the road and kicking a rock, you never know you might be kicking millions of dollars away.
KSI
Olajide Olayinka Williams “JJ” Olatunji, better known as KSI, is an English YouTuber, rapper, and boxer. KSI’s youtube journey began by uploading clips of him playing Call of Duty, FIFA, and other comedy skits. He quickly gained subscribers due to his humor, over-the-top antics, public pranks, and loudness. KSI began filming gaming videos with his six friends.
The group eventually became the popular UK group ‘Kaji’Sidemen’The Sidemen’, reflecting the difference in subscribers between KSI and his friends who (jokingly) saw themselves as the lackeys. KSI used his youtube popularity to branch out into music, releasing his first single, ‘Lamborghini,’ in 2015. Since then, KSI has charted on the UK top 10 multiple times and has even gone platinum. He also kickstarted the Youtube boxing scene with his much-publicized fights with Joe Weller and then Logan Paul.
Ryan Kaji
Being a YouTuber is a pretty common thing these days. Most YouTubers are either gamers in the beauty or fashion space, tech reviewers, or react channels. Ryan Kaji, a 9-year-old, and his family changed the YouTube game. Now known on YouTube as Ryan’s World, Kaji reviews toys that garner millions of views.
Ryan has 30.1 million subscribers and has branched out to other genres like vlogs and challenges with his family. Kaji’s net worth is estimated to be around $32 million. Not bad for a 9-year-old kid, right?
This list is a mix of people who worked hard, persevered, got lucky, and found an opportunity in the market. At the end of the day, these opportunities always exist but are only visible to a few. Once someone sees a possibility, it comes down to hard work to monetize that opportunity, and of course, being at the right place at the right time is also crucial.
About the Author – Khushi Singh is a final-year student at Manipal Institute of Communication.
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