While the term investing brings up ideas of stocks, Wall Street, and not something a student would do, it is a potential source of income available to teenagers as well. 

Rikhil Konduru, a junior here at Cupertino High School, began investing in sixth grade, but developed an unlikely interest early on when he was nine.

It all began when “…I asked my dad, “Can you buy me a Lamborghini and he said sure sarcastically.” 

When his Lamborghini never came up he was irritated. Taking matters into his own hands, Konduru initially discovered Bitcoin when “I searched on Google how to make money and I went on a sketchy website that said that people were getting rich off of something called Bitcoin.” 

This was late 2012 when Bitcoin was exchanging at around 20 dollars. 

When he asked his dad to buy him Bitcoin, his father dismissed since he was only nine at the time. Instead, Konduru used his birthday money and started buying stock in sixth grade. With the profits, he later bought Bitcoin when it was trading at around 1000 dollars. 

“I bought like three and a half Bitcoin. And I just like rolled with it, and I kept on trading until freshman year. And then at the time in total it was like around 5 to 6000 dollars.”

Once Bitcoin became more expensive, he asked his dad to join in. Using his profits, Konduru purchased Bitcoin miners, which work by verifying Bitcoin transactions or solving computational problems to “create” new Bitcoin and rewarding miners with Bitcoin. 

As Bitcoin’s price started to fall, Konduru pulled out and sold his miners since their value was tied to the price of Bitcoin. He withdrew most of his profits and kept his remaining ten thousand dollars invested. 

Later on when the price of Bitcoin increased, he decided to invest as much as possible and traded until he earned a $7,000 profit. 

Investing is a way for students to grow their money; Konduru includes  “…if you know what you’re doing. If you can analyze market trends, then it’s possible to make a bunch of money trading.”

Konduru still trades regularly, working toward buying the Lamborghini he has wanted since he was nine.