Bitcoin Forum

How do you feel about those who bet their life savings on Bitcoin/crypto. Do you have sympathy for them, or more of a despise for being essentially degenerate gamblers?

Here's some example, meet Sean Russell, cryptocurrency investor:


https://money.cnn.com/2018/09/11/investing/bitcoin-crash-victim/index.html


Vote changing allowed, no time limit.

I’m indifferent. You always get those kind of guys, life is like that. Some people even took out a loan on their mortgage equity to invest in bitcoin/crypto in late 2017/early 2018. Some others bet all they have in the next fancy small cap company, or even get into debt, others bet too much in the casino because they think they have discovered a system to beat the casino...

No matter what we do, we always going to have people like that.

i will always feel a bit sorry for less smart people or older people that believed something there friend or children or grandchildren said and joined a shitcoin train without knowing anything but having good faith/believe in some people they know
i don't have sorry for them knowing what they where doing and getting greedy and shit or those that said BTC is to expensive and wanna get rich quick with buying shitcoins and.......

If we are talking about the rekt investors that have a similar situation to the man in the article you linked OP, I am somehow laughing my arse off from hearing that someone brave enough risked their whole life savings, gained a hefty sum of profit from bitcoin market movements, then at the end lost it by investing onto altcoins without the knowledge on investing into it but I don't feel sympathy for them, they reap what they sow. Although if we are talking about people who got their life greatly affected by the decision made by those gamblers, I feel a little sorry for them since suffering from with investors who got rekt is not their responsibility, they are not the one who made the decision after all.

Everybody has an option to choose and the big factor there is he owns the money he decides for it,  maybe at that moment he was confused or he was a little bit excited not knowing that a for of bitcoin has less value and not fluctuating of doubled price increase,  However,  i feel sorry for him, maybe the real reason is he was hoping that all things will be possible when somebody wants to be rich in crypto but sad,  that turns the table lad.

I'm a bit on two sides.

One side says it's your own fault and there are consequences attached to everything you do, especially if you invest in utter shitcoins.

The other side does feel sorry for people, especially with how most of them just try to improve their financial position in life.

People should never forget that there is only one single coin with fundamental value, and that's Bitcoin. As long as you money sits in Bitcoin, you'll eventually see your paper losses turn into paper profits. It only requires patience, and it's surely difficult for people to have patience during a longer term bear market, especially if they have invested money that's not meant for investment purposes, but you don't lose as long as you aren't selling.

Stop investing in shitcoins and stick to the Gold standard called Bitcoin. Stop supporting fraud and schemes.

That's another perspective to consider, we're quick to pass judgements forgetting we're not all intellectually equal. Some of us are simply more vulnerable, or just less capable of making cold, calculated decisions. But it's easier to believe in fairy-tale that all people are born equal and have the same abilities.


Yup, if he was up from $120k to $500k he could at least cash out his initial investment + lil bit extra (say $150k) just for a mental comfort, to know that whatever happens - he's still in green. Instead falling price prompted him to make panic moves and dig himself even deeper.

I'm totally indiferrent about those so called "investors".Every individual takes full responsibility about where he invests his own hard-earned money.If you bet all your savings on "one horse" and you lose,only your wife can gudge you. ;D
I can't say that I hate gamblers.Life is about taking risks at the right moment.Gambling is taking enourmous risk when you can't control the situation.

We can better call these guys as cryptocurrency losers rather than calling them investors. Similar to the Mt.gox downtrend losses where people lost thousands of bitcoins due to the hack, the end of 2017 and start of 2018 has seen abysmal investors who don't have any knowledge about crypto losing all their hard earned money  by investing in these. Most of the inexperienced newbies who invested in crypto for getting rich quick sold and ran away from the market to prevent further losses. They never think of these as a long term holdings or rather considering them as a form of digital payment. On the other hand, the guy you mentioned shifted his investments to other alts which was a blunder. Eth has tanked from $1500 to $170 which is roughly 9x from the peak.

Going by price history of btc, he has invested his life savings when btc price was around $5000 - $8500. Btc priced has never topped up higher than $8000 excluding the last 2 days of November. This clearly states that he is an idiot who is not even able to withstand for a year to retake his investments. If he had holded around a year he could have taken out all his investment without any losses. Let's assume this guy has invested when btc was $6000 if he had sold them this year when Btc was trading at $8000, he would have been in a profit of $40000.

Inexperienced newbie investors feel like they have lost the btc run and invest in a shitcoin assuming that they may rise like btc and they would become a millionaire easily within days/months. There was a similar situation in 2013 when btc rose from $150 to $1000 and then came back to $500. People who bought btc during 2013 peak would have got 6x if they are holding them till now. This is not a get rich quick ponzi scheme which might make you a millionaire the next month.

Regarding that person Russell and his investment in BTC I just say that he is not some kid and he should known what he was doing at that point. But in one moment he have 500k$ and he decided to wait for what, maybe 1 million $? Even after BTC is start to losing value he have enough time to sell and make big profit since price in November 2017 is from 6400-10000$, and price is hold above 10k$ all through January and even reach 11500$ in March 2018.

So why is he wait to price drop to 6000$, maybe he did not know that there is "Sell Button"? This is happening to people who have no idea what they are doing. Two big mistakes, investing life savings and invest in something he did not know how it works - is he learned a lesson from this?

Every people takes full responsibility about their actions, and where they invest their earned money is their freedom of choice. But this scenario looks like gamble and like many people who has problems with gamble, he just dont know then to quit.

Good part is the results have no despise him voted. People do not despise the people who got rekt which is a good start, we are showing hope for humanity, I am not sure if it is 100% honest but considering its anon to vote it must be honest thought. I thought people would be glad that others lost money as well if they lost money and only be alright with people who made less money than they made if they gain profits, apparently it is not like that and I stand corrected.

I feel pity towards US because I am one of those people who got rekt during nano drop in price deals, I think we should have been smarter before investing and be careful and get in and out correctly.

I'm not going to give CNN any clicks, so I'm just going by what was quoted here.

I'm indifferent.  He looks young, and it also sounds like he has a job that will allow him to make a financial comeback, so it isn't the end of the world for him.  Plus it's his own fault for buying something like bitcoin back in 11/2017 when it was rising so fast.  He just wanted a piece of the action, which is understandable, but he got in at the wrong time AND put too much money into it.  Then he compounded his mistake by buying BCH.  That's on him, and hopefully he learns from this.

I sometimes feel bad for them, as i have lost in this bear market as well, so i am sympathetic. But i am not sorry for the people who invested more than they could lose. Reckless investing with money you dont have is something i dont support

I usually have more to do with my own time and feelings than feel pity or despise for someone who decided to get greedy enough to gamble the market without any investment knowledge. Even without investment knowledge, he should have been smart enough not to make such move, but indeed there are so many others like him.
Well, all hope is not lost aa long as he can find how he has gone wrong, learn as much as possible to be able to make better investment decisions in the future when another opportunity comes, because it will definitely come as long as the market keeps evolving .

i'm not gonna lie. i feel a tiny bit of schadenfreude when i see stuff like this. it just makes me chuckle because i've been there as a noob trader/investor. as traders, we call it "paying tuition." most everybody gets rekt early on, blows up their account. one of my first experiences with crypto was chasing litecoin in april 2013 (because bitcoin was "too expensive" hahaha). it turned out i was buying into the first post-crash bull trap. i got massacred so much worse because i was in LTC rather than BTC.

these are lessons new investors and traders need to learn. it looks easy. you think, "i'll just buy low and sell high!!" right, haha. then you get greedy on the way up, refusing to sell. then you let your losses run on the way down. and you buy altcoins with no regard for the altcoin market cycle.

noobs get rekt---it's a fact of life. most traders lose money, then they give up and quit. and unfortunately, some are dumb enough to invest their life savings. :-\

i try to impart whatever knowledge i can to help noobs avoid the pitfalls of new traders, but like i said, most of these people are gonna get rekt. they're greedy (that's why they came) and they don't know what they're doing. then they're gonna sell the bottom. at some point all you can do is shrug. this is how markets work.

no i never feel anything for "idiots" who don't listen to anyone. and you can not call them "investors" either. what you are describing with that quote is the classic example of an idiot who was blinded by greed and was deaf to all the warnings. and we have had a lot of them, specially in the altcoin market as they were being promised constantly that they will be rich if they buy such and such shitcoin!

however, losing money while investing in a natural thing. there is nothing wrong with it and the real "investors" aren't sad for losing money so there is no reason for us to feel empathy for them. a real investors knows where to put his money and when to pull it out and unlike altcoins investing in bitcoin has never been a bad thing even if price went a little lower than what you bought it at.

I think this is the mesaage that needs to be transmitted to all these unfortunate Bitcoin owners. Hard not to say it without sounding like a deluded cultist but the rationale os deeper than mere history... Even economists know there is something deeply flawed with the current money system, something that is bound to give.

Hopefully, Bitcoin owners will be encouraged to at least try using their coins and seeimg for themselves that it works better than fiat, while waiting for the inevitable recovery.

P.S. I can empathise, we all know their situations and are probably in this because we sought similar freedoms. I can sympathise as well, that their timing wasn't good. But big picture, while mass adoption has yet to happen, timing is a fleeting concern.

I am seeing the exact same trend with most people that I know locally.

They either,

Bought BTC way too late at $20K and sold it at $6K and started gambling with trading alts to "break-even" which lead to even further losses

OR

Bought BTC way too late at $20K and sold at like $6K back in April and shorted at $6K instead and lost even more money and then when they assumed that $10K would break, they bought at $9500 and sold at $6K again and went short and the process repeated until they ran out of BTC.

not at all. for example take a look at this one: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5027920.0 (it will probably be deleted soon though). it is an obvious newbie who thinks he can become super rich by just buying cryptocurrencies. he is literary telling others that they can "earn $1000+ per day" just by entering. there are a lot of newbies who think this way or fall for these lies and lose their money and get rekt!

This is a very dangerous article and it seems to me that it is even created to scare people. if someone reads the whole article then it can conclude that the article object is destroy the bitcoin image.

In November of last year the price of bitcoin had the minimum of $6500 and the maximum of $10,000. he bought between $6500 to $10,000. So he does not have many losses. Why the hell was he talking about it in the press? why he does not show when he sold and bought altcoins? show us proof that he's telling the truth.

we can't do anything about investors who buy at peak prices and sell at panic prices we should be consistent in life and control emotions whenever we are entering any financial markets

Yes, we have all made some mistakes one way or the other ourselves which means no one is above it. The only difference is just the level of mistake we ended up making, which in his case, it is one horrendous mistake to make. Nevertheless, no hope is lost, as there would still always be seasons to the market and at some point later on, if he is patient enough, he should still be able to get back on his feet. He is not someone I know, so feeling sorry for him should not even be a thing and no one is above mistake, so feeling despair for him does not sound cool as well. So, I am totally indifferent.

Sean Russell has decided to lay his own bed the way it deemed please, even though he ended up laying his bed wrongly, but what he should be doing now is to learn from his past mistakes, take a chill pill and then see how he would be able to make good decisions in the long run. We all make mistakes, it is how we pick up from the mistake that counts, but feel sorry for him or feel despair for him is none of my biz.

Well there are different kinds of investors around us, some of them are too smart to even know the term loss in their life. Some are totally dump who just throw their money in some unknown shit coins.
On the other hand gamblers who don't only suffer by themselves but their whole circle of friends and family suffer with them. I feel sorry for their families which depends on them.

You might be onto something here. 96% is very unlikely. Maybe if he measures his losses from portfolio ATH, not initial investment. Otherwise he'd have to panic-sell/FOMO back in at least once or twice.

Considering that CNN are not famous for high standards and ethics lately, it's very much possible that they paid that poor chump few hundred quids to tell his sob story.

Or lets take a look on this part:

How many guys do you know/heard of, so fascinated with Bitcoin that would spent years studying and tracking (?) it without owning any, just to buy in during obvious pump?

But investing in such an amount that you can not afford and have to borrow, then invest all of this.. it is simply gambling, and nothing more.

^^ life of new traders right here. they're completely ruled by emotion and yet foolishly think they can beat the market. this is what it means to "pay tuition." ;)

you have to just let these people get rekt. it's just part of the market---in fact, successful traders are profiting from their follies. many of these noobs will just leave the space entirely, writing off crypto as a scam. a small minority of them will bounce back and actually study markets and trading strategies and will learn to beat the market.

on some level, i've got sympathy, but i also understand this is a crucial aspect of markets. this is fear and greed and playing out. their fear and greed is the reason my orders get filled. :P

I won't rule out the conspiracy theory angle, but most newbies buy the top and sell the bottom a few times before calling it quits. It sounds like he probably did just that with his foray into altcoins. I did it myself as a newcomer: sold the bottom on BTC, then started chasing the losses by gambling with alts. I got dumped on several more times before learning my lesson.

If he sold into altcoins near $6,000 and then panic traded through the recent altcoin apocalypse, 96% paper losses doesn't sound impossible to me.

All true, but that undermines CNN's narrative. Losing in trading, by trying to time the market is completely different type of animal than investment losses (it's even treated differently for tax purpose in the UK, where he's from). If panic trading indeed played a big role in his losses, then not mentioning it by CNN is dishonest, at very least.