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While some people get richer thanks to Bitcoin or cryptocurrency in general, there are many unfortunate cases. In it, a 20-year-old young man named Alex Kearns committed suicide because he thought he suffered heavy losses when trading on Robinhood.
Less than 24 hours after Alex checked his account at the Robinhood trading application, he found himself at a loss of $ 730,165. Robinhood is a popular cryptocurrency and stock trading application. From 2016 to the present, Robinhood has owned from 1 million users to 10 million users, with loyal followers on social media.

But, Alex seems to have misunderstood Robinhood’s financial statements. On the little yellow note that Alex left on his bedroom door was an ominous message, saying to turn on the computer. Then a four-letter letter appeared on the screen: “If you’re reading this, then I am dead.”

Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/azcoinnews/comments/hcebsa/a_20yearold_trader_who_lost_hundreds_of_thousands/

People should understand what they are doing with money. I dont think that there are any problems with site. Main problem here is this young trader

He's too young and very aggressive thats why he reacted that bad without clearing everything.

and He has huge capital to be 20 years old,losing 730 thousand dollars(as he assumed).
we have seen some like this when a young gambler from korea (if i am not mistaken) jump from his window after losing huge amount.

This is a tragic story. Of cause, $730k is a big sum, but in this case I may suppose the guy had a king of gambling addiction.

This is the result of a lot of money but inexperience. He was too young and too wild to use all his capital to trade margin. It is one of those types of transactions that makes many people insolvent without trading experience. So do not think you have a lot of money, it will easily make money in this trading margin.
Another great example is that we need to learn more to avoid this situation.

This could be the main reason for the suicide.


A lot of people might be investing with him.
He didn't want to take the blame and so he did the bad thing of killing himself instead of looking for another way out.
There is always a solution for everything even if how deep the problem is.
He did a wrong step and know nothing about what he brought himself into.
Condolences for his family. This should be a lesson for all of us here.

This is a really sad story and a tragic ending for this young man. The trader should expect loss before profit. He must also be interested in learning risk management before starting trading. I don’t know how this can be taught to young people, but there are a lot of important things that they should learn like not to start Using large capital at the beginning should be learned by a small amount. Also, the capital must be divided into two or three parts to avoid the big loss. Parents should also do their part to know what their children are doing and advise them.

Yes. People should know what they are doing with their money. The higher the promises of return, the higher is generally the risk.
And it's even frustrating to realize that people are putting killing themselves for something like money. If you have a life, you can pay off your debts someday and live an experienced and peaceful life in the long run.

I don't think that this is the only reason why he committed suicide. There must be a deeper reason why he'd done this.

For a 20 year old, that amount is really a huge one that I think he can't bear it and I think that there are some problems with him and that Robinhood is the catalyst to commit suicide. This is a terrible news for all of the traders here and even the investors who can't bear such huge losses. At his age, that amount is very huge already and having a loss of that amount is simply.... I don't know what to say about it if I'm on his situation at that time I saw it.

Anyway, this is another lesson for us.

Similar thread :  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256653.0  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256653.0)
We should be more responsible of posting not to duplicate the content.

Anyway, this young guy might be suffering from extreme depression. This is gonna be the result of so much greed, competing to be one of the youngest millionaire/billionaire. Tbh, this is just a very shallow reason to commit suicide. Money can't buy a life.

a similar thread has been posted about this story yesterday 20-Year-Old Robinhood Customer Dies By Suicide After Seeing A $730,000 Negative (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5256653.msg54646636#msg54646636). I suggest locking the thread. also if any of you interested in reading the article here's the link to Forbes where the article is originally posted https://www.forbes.com/sites/sergeiklebnikov/2020/06/17/20-year-old-robinhood-customer-dies-by-suicide-after-seeing-a-730000-negative-balance/#4be317761638

I really wish I didn't have to read stories like this, but I also hope this serves as a reminder to people that there are risks with trading that are very poorly understood by most people. Companies promise the world, and owners and developers insist it's a skill-based activity but really, it encourages risky behaviour and in most aspects because of the lack of education and awareness, is treated like gambling by most traders.

Nothing wrong with gambling, but you have to understand what you're getting into -- and most people don't.

That is a really sad story, this should be a lesson for every trader out there, you should know the risk when you do trading, you should also accept the fact that you may lose your money when you do it so you won't end up like the man in the story. I think there are also other reasons why he did the suicide, losing a big money is not enough to kill your self, there are so many ways for you to earn again that kind of money, your life is much important than your money. Trading is somehow related to gambling which may cause you so bad, there are so many lives that get broken because of gambling as well as the trading.
Being a beginner in trading is really hard, you will face so many struggles and you may also lose your money, if you know that you are losing much of your money then you should think that its time to stop.

Every inexperienced trader should know that if you don't have enough experience about the market, you can't swim in the wavy sea

I feel embarrassed and disappointed during the time I lose in trading but it never brings me into a point thinking about suicide. I don't how this young boy thinks about it. And I don't want to read any news similar to this scenario.

That is how important that every time we make a deal for a certain thing we should have to know what it is and what should we get later. The risk that it involves in trading ain't that something enough to think about negative and committing suicide for our life isn't worthy of that. We valued our life more than anything, more than about losing, and more than about money. I believe we all gone sooner but not in that way.  

I'm actually confused about this statement written on the article. I read the whole content and I can't the reason why he misunderstood the financial statement of Robin Hood? There is no statement there that he didn't loss the money so he really did loss it all. Enlighten me if I'm missing something.

The guy is leveraging too much and didn't do a proper risk management. Considering the funds he hold. That 730k will not burn if he set stop loss to minimize the risk. IMHO, x5 is the maximum leverage for a safe trading more than that is a pure gambling. Anyway condolence to his family.

That's terrible,

He's too young and what disappointed me as he took his own life so easily just because he had big losses in trading. He should have think deeply about how his family and friends would think about what he did, in this kind of situation, he should have realized that taking his own life will not bring his losses back. He just wasted his life.

It's very sad that this person died... Of course, losing a lot of money must be tough, but from any situation there's a way out, and it's important not to think that money is everything. He was very young and, I guess, impulsive. Maybe young people should not have such huge amounts of money at their disposal... I'm older than him, and not only I've never had anything remotely close to this amount of money, I don't even know anyone who does! Then again, after reading the article it seems that the story is not that simple, and he somehow lost way more money than he owned, I think. I've never used Robinhood, so I don't understand how this works... Something's not right about this story or the way it's told.
Edit: acroman08 shared a link to Forbes, and the explanation there is quite good. Now I understand at least some things. One of them is that such dangerous form of trading should either be completely illegal or have huge warnings everywhere so that only people who know the risks join.

I think trading is not for everyone, you need to have knowledge and experience about the market. I have seen many new trader loosing their money. Good lesson for new trader.

This is very terrible and sad at same time. For him to have this kind of amount at his age he must be very lucky. His cousin or whoever it is that posted the article sure must have told him the risks about this space. Alex shouldn't have been so quick to act on committing suicide. It's now two loses, his investment and his life.

First of all, I want to say that "suicide is not a solution". if you lose once just try again, hope you will gain. we all know that all businesses have risk, nothing can be done without taking risk or challenge. If you lose and get frustrated, then business/crypto trading is not for you. because as a trader I know that there will be many remarkable ups and downs while trading, and I adjust my mental state based on that.  As there are good times in people's lives, there will be bad times too. we have to be tough and deal with bad times. we have to work hard to bring back the good days.

This is a sad story of a young trader. He might not understand completely the risk of what he do and never been prepared for the worse outcome thats why this happened. Its a huge money as well and for such young age he is not an average guy who is struggling to have a money like that. Well its a lesson learned to those traders who want to try trading, its risky and somehow similar to gambling so make sure that you're aware of the consequences.

I think young people's emotions work a little more This is why they do not hesitate to commit heinous acts like suicide out of frustration There is nothing to be frustrated about doing business. Success is possible only by reducing the amount of damage and trying to recover from it No one can ever learn anything in one day It is very easy to make a profit as there are risks in the trade So you have to try to learn by analyzing different places.

Why risk if you arent' ready for consequences

P.S by the way where did he take those money from?

That is what happen if the trader is not sleeping and just keeping His eyes in Monitor lol.

Trading must not be our life instead we have to make some things outside of this for not to become like this story.

I think it was from a miscalculated leverage Robinhood displayed. Not that he owed that amount.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/06/19/business/robinhood-suicide-alex-kearns/index.html

It is sad and it doesn't have to go up to that point.

This means that due to Robinhood's inaccuracy, led to this?   :-\

The first step is to gain a lot of knowledge in order to invest your money in a gambling site. You can't always make a profit, you have to keep in mind the direction of the loss all the time. So I shouldn't gamble with money that would get me lost. I think it's a good lesson. The crypto market will teach us to invest very thoughtfully. And those of us who are involved in crypto currencies have to accept losses as well as gains. After all, the value of life is much greater than money.

He is so young,i feel sorry for His family and hope they will find peace from this.

Maybe this serves us a lesson to not just jump into conclusion always,instead make sure every thing before deciding.

As a general rule, invest only what you can afford to lose also. Win or lose, you learn from your experience and basically try to recoup your losses by risking again, and hopefully, you've learned enough to win more when you invest again in the future.

Take note, we're talking about risks when investing your money, in order to earn more. And we're not talking about risking your life away by doing suicide instead (it's not the intention nor the end goal when investing your money).

Indeed. Even if he didn't commit suicide, that figure alone is enough to traumatize him for the rest of his life.

Come to think of it, even our retirement money might not save us.

really terrible. personally, you need to have a strong and tough mind when it comes to this industry. my heart goes out to the family.

the only thing that matters to me(in respect to the dead boy) is how did he managed to have that Huge leverage thinking that He is just a student and has no work at all?

im sure there is something behind this thats why he needs to cut off His life in this one.

I will never Let my children invest here what they cannot afford to lose since all their allowances is coming from us until now that they are in college like the Victim.

We've heard many stories about traders committing suicides in the past for losing his clients money. Its a tremendous pressure from clients when they ask about thier money and so they hang. But for a 20 year old, he should just be partying and enjoy youth. 

As for OP, did you try to lure us to join your reddit sub for this boy's death?

But this is a different case. The trader doesn't have any fault but it's the platform's fault why he had done such a thing.  :(

This was an extremely sad story. Investors really should need to display a certain level of understanding before being granted the ability to use leverage. Financial literacy is not as widespread as many seem to think. I’m constantly amazed at the lack of financial intelligence I see even here on these forums from self-proclaimed experts that couldn’t get an entry level finance job giving others advice.

I think it was how Robinhood portrayed the figures which were "underlying" or behind the scenes. Since I'm on mobile, I can't quote from the article I posted before, but from what I read, they were meant to be negative until the trades on the other end were processed.

So he had high leverage with his 5-figure balance and naturally that gave him some huge purchasing power. For instance, a 100:1 leverage means he gets to control $100,000 worth of stocks with only $1,000.

As I have traded before, brokers usually allow users to set the leverage up to 1000. But by default, we only see the basic readings such as tradeable margin, free margin and balance.

About investing, its not wrong to expose them so they could judge by themselves because its a very good experience (minus the losing). Like how I was curious about trading almost a decade ago and eventually treated it as some part-time activity.

We can't have a perfect life, there will be up and downs for sure so all we need to do is accept what life gives to us and tart living a better life with it.

Young trader might used his parents money that is why he don't know how to earn them back which is the mistake of their parent for giving huge responsibility without having any experience.

Anyway thats so messed up

Perhaps you're right and Robinhood couldn't do anything about his death anyway.
But I hope they could clear their messages or whatever, because as we've witnessed - the consequences of misunderstanding could be lethal

No mate, the problem is the exchange. Read the reply of UserU.


They can't do anything but with those quotes, it seems to be that it's their fault which led to this miserable loss.

Such a sad story. I hope other people will learn from this.

Don't gamble or invest into high risk assets with money you still need. There are so many recommendations on this forum how to deal with losses. If you find yourself too emotionally attached to your trades, you need to take a step back and evaluate your positions again. Getting into a depression because of bad luck with your investments is fairly common.

There is no shame in asking for help and everything can be fixed in the long run.

Golden rule of trading: calculate your risk and only trade what you're allowed to lose

actually post above you  mate explains it all,this same question i put on top but i am wrong i guess,

And that is the reason why he has that Huge leverage.

That's Heart broken.
He did wrong cause suicide is not a solution to solve any problem. As a twenty year old boy, he had a lots of money.so It was really painful for him, losing such amount of money but he should understand that, money is not valueable more than life

Yeah, he doesn't have to do that but he's in the state of mind that doesn't know what to do and just to end his life.

But if you'll get back to read the whole story, it was said that it's the exchange's fault.