People meet me and see a version. Mike — crypto entrepreneur, Las Vegas, 26, building products. Nice business, interesting story, move on.

But that's not who I am. That's just the latest render. Underneath it there are layers that no introduction will ever carry, and lately I've been asking myself: did I become someone new, or did I break an old identity to finally become who I always was?

The Kid from Biysk

There's a version of me called Misha. A kid from Biysk — a small city in Siberia that most Russians couldn't point to on a map, let alone anyone else. Biysk is the periphery of the periphery. People don't leave Biysk for a master's degree in America. They leave for Novosibirsk, if they're lucky.

Misha remembers school hallways. Football with friends. Parties in cramped apartments. The cinema on weekends. Playing video games for hours. Trying to fall in love with girls and having zero confidence about any of it. Arguing with his parents about nothing that mattered. And underneath all of that — a loneliness so deep he couldn't explain it to anyone.

That kid is still somewhere inside me. He never fully left.

The Entrepreneur in America

Then there's Mike. American-educated, Northeastern University graduate, living in Vegas, speaking business English, building products. This layer I built from nothing just a series of decisions that, on paper, shouldn't have worked.

These two versions of me don't always talk to each other. And there's a third one — the observer between them. The one who sees both systems from the outside and doesn't fully belong to either.

The Emptiness of the In-Between

Immigrant identity is its own category. I'm not an assimilated American — and I never will be completely. The accent stays. The way I think stays. The frame of reference stays. But I'm also not a "Russian abroad" living in a diaspora bubble, waiting to go back.

I'm something in between. Self-made in transit. My identity isn't tied to a place — it's tied to what I've built and what I'm building. The businesses aren't just businesses. They're proof that I exist in this system on my own terms.
But this position comes with a specific kind of loneliness. Russians back home don't understand my reality — to them, I left and that's the whole story, good for me. Americans don't understand where I came from or what it took to get here. Other immigrants are closer, but everyone's trajectory is different.

A real conversation about who I am — not what I do, but who I am — is rare. And I'm still figuring out who to have it with.

The Question That Stays

I'm building a public brand now, and it forces the question: which version of myself do I show? The crypto entrepreneur? The Russian immigrant? The self-taught builder? All of them at once?

And deeper than that — who am I building for? To prove to Russia that leaving was worth it? To prove something to myself? Or have I already moved past that stage and just haven't noticed yet?

I Never Dreamed of This

Here's the part that messes with people's narrative expectations: I never pictured this life. Not once. There was no vision board, no five-year plan, no moment where I closed my eyes in Biysk and saw myself running a crypto business in America.

I just focused on the next step. Get out of Biysk — that was the step. Get to Novosibirsk. Then: try Work & Travel, see America. Then: go back, figure out money, start a clothing store. Then: apply to a US university. Then: survive the degree. Then: don't get a job, try something on your own. Then: crypto. Then: build.

Every step only revealed the next one. I never saw the full staircase. I didn't even know there was a staircase — I just kept moving because standing still felt worse than any risk I could take. People hear the story now and assume there was a plan. There wasn't. There was just a kid who making one bet at a time and figuring out the rest on the way down.

The Math of an Unlikely Life

Which makes the math even stranger — because none of this was designed. I tried to calculate the probability of my exact path happening, as an exercise in understanding how many filters I passed through without ever meaning to.

Here's the chain:
  • Born in Biysk, not Moscow — limited starting position
  • Left for university in Novosibirsk: roughly 10–15% of graduates make that move
  • Did Work & Travel in the US: maybe 3–5% of students
  • Came back to Russia instead of overstaying illegally: about 70%
  • Started a business (clothing store) while still in school: 3–5%
  • Made it profitable: 20–30%
  • Didn't get comfortable — decided to leave again for a US master's: 2–3%
  • Got accepted to an American university from Novosibirsk: 5–10%
  • Got the visa: 50–70%
  • Finished the degree: about 50%
  • Chose entrepreneurship over a salary: roughly 5%
  • Chose crypto: another 5%
  • Built an actual operating business, not just trading: 10%
  • Made it profitable: 10–20%
  • Did all of this by 26: maybe 20%
Multiply it out:
≈ 0.000000000022%
One in 4.5 trillion.

Mathematically, I shouldn't exist. The real path is longer than any chain of probabilities can capture. Every zigzag — going back to Russia, starting a business, leaving again — added another point of failure that wasn't in the original plan.

So What?

I don't write this to say I'm special. I write it because I spent years not feeling like any of it was a big deal. Made it and made it, so what. That's what happens when you stop comparing yourself to where you came from and start comparing yourself to whoever's ahead of you.

But sometimes it's worth stopping the comparison and just looking at the actual path. Not to celebrate. Not to prove anything. Just to see it clearly for once — all the layers, all the versions, all the impossible turns that somehow turned into a life.

I'll keep growing — slowly, stubbornly, the same way I got here. One step at a time, the plan hasn't changed because there never was one. There's just the next bold decision, and the willingness to make it.