A man got fired from his job, was unemployed for 10 months, watched his savings crash 75%, and somehow built one of crypto's biggest exchanges.
> In July 2017, Siemens laid off Hayden Adams, a 24-year-old mechanical engineer.
> He had no software engineering career to fall back on.
> His friend Karl Floersch told him Ethereum was the future and convinced him to learn smart contract development.
> Hayden spent two months learning to code.
> Then Karl showed him an idea from Vitalik Buterin about how people could trade tokens without a traditional exchange matching buyers and sellers.
> Hayden started building a prototype. Called it Uniswap.
> By April 2018, he'd been unemployed for 10 months and the crypto he was living on had lost over 75% of its value.
> Most people would've started looking for another job.
> Hayden booked a flight to South Korea to attend a crypto conference.
> He didn't even have a ticket to the event and was turned away at the entrance.
> Then he ran into Karl, who introduced him to Vitalik Buterin.
> Vitalik pulled out his phone and read Hayden's smart contract right there.
> He adviced him to apply for an Ethereum Foundation grant.
> Hayden applied and got the grant which was valued at around $100,000 on paper.
> After
$ETH's price dropped, its actual value was closer to $55,000–$60,000.
> He kept building.
> On November 2, 2018, Uniswap launched on Ethereum.
> Today, it's one of the most important decentralized exchanges in crypto, allowing people to trade tokens without relying on a traditional centralized exchange.
A man lost his job, watched his savings collapse, and built one of crypto's biggest financial platforms.
Imagine if he'd just updated his CV and moved on.