Facebook Memories is the best feature.

It keeps me honest.

Like a good friend or mentor, it calls me on my bullshit and helps keep me from repeating mistakes.

One example - every spring for about a week, the leading photo in my memories is one of several where I'm half naked and flexing. From the strained-not-strained smile, I'm trying to look as if I'm just casually standing there.

"Yo, why you flexin’?"

"Not me, dog, I'm on chill right now. It's just a coincidence I had this camera set up like this!"

15 years later, this isn't exactly the image I'm looking to project to the world, and I've often thought about deleting those posts.

But, like I said, they keep me honest.

Yesterday, Memories reminded me of when I was fixing to be a freshly minted crypto-billionaire.

2018.

A year earlier, I'd brokered the lease of about 5,000 sq feet of warehouse space to a tenant mining Litecoin. I had no idea what that meant, but he needed a server room that one of my clients had sitting unused.

He installed hundreds of computers in rows of racks, each validating Litecoin transactions on the blockchain and with each validation earning him a tiny fraction - payable in Litecoin.

It sounded neat, but I was heads-down working on my main gig, a real estate brokerage, so I paid little mind.

Then, the price of Bitcoin skyrocketed and caught my attention.

I spent two or three weeks going superficially deep into crypto.

I ordered books (that I only skimmed).

I went to websites (that I glossed over).

I signed up for newsletters (that I didn't read).

I studied [read: guessed at] the different coins.

Then I went all in on XRP.

"I'm up 936% in only three days!" read the post in my memory feed yesterday.

I read through the comments.

"How'd you do it????"

"Yo, how do I set my wallet up?"

"I want to get in on this!"

I was the local crypto expert for a week or two, meaning only that I knew a fuzz more than the next guy.

Still, my money was doubling and then doubling again!

But in January of 2018, XRP crashed.

Big time.

From a high of $3.84 to less than $1.

I consider myself lucky.

While the co-founder of Ripple - creator of Litecoin - lost $44B in a single week, I got out with a slight profit.

Thank God for small miracles - a month earlier, I'd pondered liquidating my savings and retirement accounts (and even borrowing money) to go even more all-in on XRP.

I still have crypto today. Mainly Bitcoin, and I use it for its intended purpose: a store of wealth and a means of transaction, the same as any other currency.

I'm not trying to get rich quickly with it.

XRP is still around, too.

And, to this day, some people make gobs of money day trading cryptocurrencies, just as some folks make gobs of cash day trading traditional currencies.

But that's their main gig, and they know it well.

For me, XRP was a shiny object.

A get-rich-quick scheme.

A distraction.

And I'm glad I have Facebook to remind me every year.

Shiny objects and get-rich-quick schemes cannot further my mission; they can only distract me from it.