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Sun, Nov 16, 2025 | Jumada al-Awwal 25, 1447 | Fajr 05:16 | DXB 
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Finding purpose in finance: Why crypto feels like a 'calling'
The almost spiritual compulsion that drew me from traditional finance into the complex, volatile world of crypto and blockchain
In my early days learning about crypto, I am sure I annoyed everyone in my inner circle by talking about it. I know I annoyed my late father. I figured that as an accountant, a former CEO, and an all-around successful businessman, and someone who managed his finances traditionally, he’d be excited about it. It took me several attempts to get the impression he was not interested. And then when he said pointedly, “I do not want to talk about Bitcoin”, I knew for sure.
I mentioned this to a neuroscientist friend and she said kindly, “You need to stop.” She explained that as engaged as my dad was in the world, he was in his late ’70s, and the idea of a new kind of money was too much for him. What I was witnessing — and causing — was the distress of an intelligent person whose brain was short-circuiting with a concept he couldn’t comprehend.
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Her counsel taught me a lot. I still annoyed everyone else, I am sure, by talking about this new blockchain space. But over time, I’ve stopped doing that. Around this time, I saw a crypto influencer from the Philippines address this phenomenon. I am paraphrasing his TikTok: ‘You tried to tell your friends about this opportunity, and they wouldn’t listen and you don’t understand why. That’s because they haven’t been called. You have. So just focus on that.”
The idea of being “called” to invest in Bitcoin and other cryptos was fascinating, because honestly, that’s exactly how it felt. How else would you explain a Canadian in her late 40s who left most of her financial decisions to financial adviser middlemen, getting into something so technical, complicated and seemingly impenetrable? The only way this makes sense to me in a non-metaphysical way is that I have long been a trend-watcher and early to new things. But that usually extended to lifestyle, health, fitness and pop culture. I always longed to understand the world of finance better, but it would be several years before I set about educating myself about it.
I was just talking to an old friend who confirmed that it is a highly odd thing that I would first spend so much time on it, develop so much conviction and then actually write a column about my experiences! As I told her that it became something I wasn’t able to avoid, she said: “Ah. Someone was helping you.” In one of my online communities, someone said, “God told me to buy XRP.” It stopped me in my tracks, because I wasn’t going to buy any XRP, but something (or someone) told me to get some back when it was under 50 cents. And recently, I’ve joined a community of women investors in crypto, led by an engineer in the US who has created a whole ecosystem for us. On my welcome call with one of her associates I told her nothing about me getting in so deep in this space makes any sense. She said: “Some members of our community say that this is a calling.”
The more I hear this, the more it makes sense. Perhaps it’s the result of quantum entanglement enhancing my conscious experience, maybe even with a future version of myself who knows how it’s all going to work out. This is the sort of forward-looking research in physics I like: that we may be living in a subset of different realities our linear brains struggle to understand. Any way you slice it, I am a lone wolf in my world. I just know I had to do it the way I have been compelled to do other things: like taking time for a breathwork session in Dubai last weekend that I didn’t have time for, or selling my home and packing all my belongings into five suitcases to board a plane to Abu Dhabi in 2008. I haven’t regretted those decisions. And deep in my bones, I know I won’t regret this either.
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