Lost basically my entire investment last night doing something very stupid...

[moloman]

I also shared this on reddit earlier today: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7acprc/lost_basically_my_entire_investment_last_night/

Please try to learn from my story. I tried to make it a video, but I am not that great on camera, so I just made a short video here: https://youtu.be/6d6lJ_PxpW4

Right now I am sick to my stomach, I cannot sleep, and can barely function. After losing money left and right, I finally tipped last night and lost the last bit of a big chunk of my savings that I had ‘invested’ in Cryptos. This story is very hard for me to tell, because I am ashamed. Ashamed of how naive I have been, and how I made mistake, after mistake, after mistake.

A bit about me, just so you can see this could happen to anyone. My name is Ryan and I am from Canada, so don’t get too confused if I sometimes talk in CAD and sometimes in USD. I am typically a logical person, I have a degree in Computer Science, and I was always the guy saving his money. Not to the point of being cheap, but I wouldn’t spend money on myself, I would skip going out for lunch, or walk \ take the bus somewhere to save that extra cash. And in the past, I made incredibly risk averse investments, to the point of getting beat out by inflation most of the time.

Story starts about 2 months ago when I hear that Bitcoin was at around $4400, I had heard about it many times before, but as I said, I was never the one to risk investing. Finally I took the plunge, and invested my savings, many thousands into ETH and BTC. My plan was just to buy ‘safe’ coins, and invest long term. I didn’t expect to get rich anytime soon…

Soon after I did this, the crypto markets tanked. Im sure you all remember, everything fell to around the BTC $3000 and lower, I lost a ton. Not being used to this, I started scrambling to figure out how I could make it back, no idea if BTC would rise back up. I started ‘day trading’ cryptos, but I somehow made every mistake. At first I was buying based on if I thought the coin had actual merit, and a real use case (ripple, LTC, WTC, some ICOs etc.). But I just lost money, seemed I bought everything when it was up. My ICOs (like LAT) would end up being worth ½ of what I paid for them or less. Even my ETH, something I thought for sure would hold more value than BTC, was staying below my buy in point of around $340. When BTC started going back up, most of my portfolio was in other coins! I was too slow to react. Losing more money. So then I stepped back and thought, okay if this isn’t working how are other ppl making money? Sounds logical right?

After lurking on reddit, it seemed like rumours were really running most of the markets, they didn’t always pan out, but when they did it was big. This could have just been the small sample size I was looking at, but it felt real to me. So I started looking for rumours, and of course I lost more money. At this point I am starting to get desperate to make my funds back, I had tried scraping the markets volatility a bit before. Just place a sell order a bit above the market and then a buy order a bit below. But it only kinda worked, I would win some, but in general I didn’t have the time or the money to put into it. So I figured maybe there are bots that I can get to do this. Again I wasn’t thinking of getting rich overnight, just slowly making my money back. This is how I lost another big chunk. After googling for some bots I found a site called Carismo.biz that you would just invest your funds with them and they would use bots to make you money. Makes sense, but I was still skeptical of course. I tried with a smallish investment, and it actually started working. Not super fast, but fast enough that it had me hooked. I invested more. Till one day the site just stopped working...  It was gone, all gone.

After some searching I found a whole other market of what they call HYIPs, but that’s a very friendly name for them. As should have been obvious to me... they are pyramid or ponzi schemes. The site exists for just long enough to get noticed, paying ppl with funds that others invest, then it vanishes with everyone's money.

 

So now, I am just emotional, making choices with little or no consequence. Still following rumours cause I figure what the hell, it could work? Late last night I moved a bunch of money onto yobit.net because there was some coin that I was hearing rumours about, who even knows what coin it was now. I noticed they had a Dice Game, with no limit. Just press a button and you have a 48% chance to double your money... I didn’t lose it all at once, that would have been too easy. I knew the basic but seemly ‘foolproof’ Fibonacci or martingale strategy. Add the last 2 or more losses together, and keep betting higher and higher only when you lose sequentially. I would start at 0.0001BTC and that way my limit was high enough that I had to come out ahead… it worked for a few hours, I was up 0.2BTC or so or about $1200. Amazing! But this was no where near the amount I had lost over the last few days \ months, so I kept going. But eventually the streak hit, I bet more and more to recoup it, until I was at 0.64BTC for one roll, but enough lost bets before that to double it. I wasn’t even thinking about this being my last full BTC, and how much it was worth. I don’t know what came over me, I should have stopped long before that number, I should have never even started. It was just so easy to hit ‘Roll’. I was blind. I lost ~$8000 instantly. Might not seem like a lot of money to some of you, but I know to others it’s massive, and I am one of those.

I stayed home from work today to write this, I knew there was no way I could face anything after these mistakes. Hopefully someone else can learn from this. I am sure this story or something similar has happened to others before. But you do not hear it enough. The shame stops you from telling it.

Today my portfolio is about 0.4 of a BTC, a little ETH and a handful of ico coins, who knows what will happen with them. I am not sure what to do. If anyone has any advice or help they could give me, I will listen. Should I exit everything? Or Just step back? Uninstall Blockfolio, and hold what little I have left? Some might even say I should buy back in, borrow against my credit cards and line of credit. I know there is a voice in the back of my head still telling me to do that. What else do I have to lose?

TLDR: Despite being a smart and logical person, I fell prey to the get rich quick hype and lost roughly $18,000CAD of my initial investment by every manner available: badly timed investments, icos, HYIPs, and finally the yobit Dice Game last night.

[Piston Honda]

yeah many of us have been there man, trust me.  your post sounds like me 1.5 yrs ago trying to recover from crazy alt times before then with crazy pnd coins, pnd groups around, and exchange hacks/shut downs and all that bullshit.  it's scary how this stuff can just encompass your life/brain the whole time you're awake, esp with a big loss.  just give it some time to get over and you'll be fine and move on.  remember what goes up must come down....BUT what comes down must go up

so get some small funds together, suck it up and stick to it man...for as bad as dumps as and stupid gambling losses get...the upside of making money (back) is STILL excellent.  it may take you 1.5 yrs as it did for me, but when u make it the feeling it great.  check the markets and see which charts that could rebound the best (non shitcoins that is lol). 

right now is the ideal time to buy alts cheap and HOLD for awhile....sell some after they all go x2 in a few weeks/months, then hold rest for the next time whales all decide "alt season is back" and they allll pump on trex.  Bam, you sell.  cycles of get rich quick still happen but you basically have to be on the inside for such gains....not sure if you can sit in front of pc 12hrs+ a day but i can't (if you're not in the groups that pump shit).    so i find the benefit of holding GOOD alts longer and waiting for market makers to drive them up one at a time big or all at once over 3 motnhs works out very well now.    hopefully you can benefit too.

be careful as usual as 95% of the market is bots/whale manipulation on EVERY coins except a few....so news doesn't always hype or pump a coin, sometimes they dump to shit cos the news is lame/bs or just fake.  you can see the dead chart long time then a pump, and dump again.  and stay away from gambling shit man, it's useless.  they are ALSO bot controlled...i was winning all the time with the 'free coins' i got , then as you play more and more, the game yuo could see you were losing more and more!  they tweak it so you lose man.

anyways check some good trex coins, buy and HOLD....have sells on the way up or just hold most and when alts finally pump again, sell most/all of them.

[Poink]

You need to step back and know if you are in it to invest or to gamble.

Seems like you are a gambler...you can lose your wealth that way whether in cash, crypto, gold, silver, real estate, etc.  Once you got this out your system, come back and invest.

Good luck!

[ikilledcobain]

Ouch, that sucks.

Really sorry to hear it, although I appreciate you sharing your story as a warning to others.

If it makes you feel any better, I got scammed out of 20 btc once. Granted, they were worth $4 a piece at the time but I still think about that at times.

Sounds like you got addicted to gambling. Earning money takes time and patience and hard work. I might invest in some alts like the previous poster mentioned and just not even check the markets for awhile. Best of luck.

[zypa]

Moloman,

Writing such post shows great courage, first in admitting your mistake, second by warning other people and giving a life lesson; these life lessons are not easy to have and usually not free.
I was also in your position, well, still am because I have never recovered my loss, but the important thing in the long run is not to affect your "life changing funds". That means, never risk the amount required to buy a house or safe deposit in case of emergencies. Lose as much as you can afford. 

Now if you are young, like me, with no kids or wife, you are in the right moment to risk more. When we shall be older, with responsibilities, then we can act with more precaution. If we do not risk now, then when? If we do not make things that makes us scared now, then when?  How can we learn, if not by our own mistakes or by learning from the others, if possible.

Head's up, forget what you could have done with that money and try a more long term, low involvement plan. Like buying small amounts of different coins. Who knows who is the next bitcoin? More eggs, in more baskets, maybe we can hit the golden egg.

Best regards

[mpgalloo]

I lost 0.9 btc in September, I was only 0.1, they were all my 10 year savings though.
Never give up on altcoin, I see it as learning, before investing I analyze everything from the currency, in the trade I see the total of coins for sale and purchases besides graphs and projections, and I learned to use stop limet.

[suncokreten]

Although we all know how volatile crypto is and the risks of it, I am really sorry to hear this.

You seem like a reasonable guy, I believe you will get your money back.

Btw. check your PM, I might have some advices.

[chocopapaya]

Wow, 18k, that's a terrible loss no matter how you look at it.  That would totally cripple my finances too because I don't make a lot of money in my normal job.

My best advice might sound corny but it is strong and true:

Believe in Satoshi Nakamoto

Move whatever you have left into BTC.  The price should crash in about a month or so so wait until then.

After you move what's left into BTC, just leave it and go on with life.

Resist the urge to check coinmarketcap, bitcointalk, all of it.

Come back in 6 months see the small, positive gains and see how you feel.

As others have said, it seems like you have developed huge gambling tendencies (as many others have) and you need to cold turkey it.

After this "rehab" if you still want to do crypto take everything you learned and become better, more patient, and more smart.

Good luck with everything and much Aloha to you!

[moloman]

Thanks for all the advice everyone. I have to head out now, but I will be back later tonight.

[Aureliusy]

Thank you for telling your story. It reminds me a bit of playing online poker while being drunk. You feel invincible. When you wake op next moring your bankroll is decimated. 

[Pab]

You have got life lesson now maybe you know more about yourself,do not gamble on casinos,maybe good idea to sell btc to eth and keep eth untill feb,march,look your ico whan thay will have ready product,sell two days before release,your logic is not so strong you are driven by emotion.Never follow social media advices,it is all hype/fud

[MissionPhailed]

Damn, that's rough! Being new on the cryptomarket while heading in with a large amount of money is a dangerous combination. I'd step back from the market for a while and sort of 'digest' the things that happened. Meanwhile, consolidate those 0,4BTC and ETH by putting 'em in a cold wallet; its certainly a possibility that amount of crypto could compensate your lost 18.000 CAD in a few years time.

[blur_revision]

Man, every one of those things sounds like what I've gone through in my few months investing in crypto, albeit on a scale of about 1/3 of yours. Lost a bunch trying to day trade and chase coins that were pumping, usually at a loss, sold to USDTether overnight during volatile times thinking the price was gonna drop only to wake up to a huge jump and buying back in at a loss, lost about .2 btc to a HYIP, dove headfirst into margin trading without really understanding how it worked and lost bad, and after all of that, took 75% of what I had left over and invested in Authorship Token (ATS) at around $0.04 when they first got listed on HitBTC. Figured it would easily pump since the ICO price was 5 cents and the dev team "recommended the price to be 15 cents".. as of today they're trading at $0.005 and I'm still holding almost 50,000 of them... After spending months completely immersed in charts and stressing about pumps and dips, knowing that if I had just bought and held BTC and didn't do anything else, I'd have 10x what I have right now makes me sick to think about, especially when it seems like so many people in crypto have gotten wildly rich in the same timeframe. it's really just an expensive lesson in patience, impulse control and strategy. the crypto game is still young, and we're still pretty far from mass adoption. Best to learn these painful mistakes now because crypto isn't going anywhere anytime soon. now that you have so little invested, think of it as a new start. work with what you have slowly and don't put any more than you can stomach losing into it. Fuckin sucks, but I think the slow and calculating route is the way to go, unfortunately you and me both have learned the hard way.

[polylogic]

"Finally I took the plunge, and invested my savings, many thousands into ETH and BTC. My plan was just to buy ‘safe’ coins, and invest long term. I didn’t expect to get rich anytime soon"

now everything i read after that was the complete opposite.
you paniked, Things got emotional. you lost more by trying to get back into your original Investment, $8k dice roll? sorry but you didnt think.

now. cut your losses.
never invest more than you are able to loose.
do not invest blindly because somebody said something positive about that coin.
the market is like the wind. it changes direction very quickly.

invest small, $10, $20
if you dont want to get rich quick you can make alot from small Investments.
buy low and sell high.

you will loose and you will win, but please dont gamble, this is all loss

[illiki23]

I also shared this on reddit earlier today: https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7acprc/lost_basically_my_entire_investment_last_night/

Please try to learn from my story. I tried to make it a video, but I am not that great on camera, so I just made a short video here: https://youtu.be/6d6lJ_PxpW4

Right now I am sick to my stomach, I cannot sleep, and can barely function. After losing money left and right, I finally tipped last night and lost the last bit of a big chunk of my savings that I had ‘invested’ in Cryptos. This story is very hard for me to tell, because I am ashamed. Ashamed of how naive I have been, and how I made mistake, after mistake, after mistake.

A bit about me, just so you can see this could happen to anyone. My name is Ryan and I am from Canada, so don’t get too confused if I sometimes talk in CAD and sometimes in USD. I am typically a logical person, I have a degree in Computer Science, and I was always the guy saving his money. Not to the point of being cheap, but I wouldn’t spend money on myself, I would skip going out for lunch, or walk \ take the bus somewhere to save that extra cash. And in the past, I made incredibly risk averse investments, to the point of getting beat out by inflation most of the time.

Story starts about 2 months ago when I hear that Bitcoin was at around $4400, I had heard about it many times before, but as I said, I was never the one to risk investing. Finally I took the plunge, and invested my savings, many thousands into ETH and BTC. My plan was just to buy ‘safe’ coins, and invest long term. I didn’t expect to get rich anytime soon…

Soon after I did this, the crypto markets tanked. Im sure you all remember, everything fell to around the BTC $3000 and lower, I lost a ton. Not being used to this, I started scrambling to figure out how I could make it back, no idea if BTC would rise back up. I started ‘day trading’ cryptos, but I somehow made every mistake. At first I was buying based on if I thought the coin had actual merit, and a real use case (ripple, LTC, WTC, some ICOs etc.). But I just lost money, seemed I bought everything when it was up. My ICOs (like LAT) would end up being worth ½ of what I paid for them or less. Even my ETH, something I thought for sure would hold more value than BTC, was staying below my buy in point of around $340. When BTC started going back up, most of my portfolio was in other coins! I was too slow to react. Losing more money. So then I stepped back and thought, okay if this isn’t working how are other ppl making money? Sounds logical right?

After lurking on reddit, it seemed like rumours were really running most of the markets, they didn’t always pan out, but when they did it was big. This could have just been the small sample size I was looking at, but it felt real to me. So I started looking for rumours, and of course I lost more money. At this point I am starting to get desperate to make my funds back, I had tried scraping the markets volatility a bit before. Just place a sell order a bit above the market and then a buy order a bit below. But it only kinda worked, I would win some, but in general I didn’t have the time or the money to put into it. So I figured maybe there are bots that I can get to do this. Again I wasn’t thinking of getting rich overnight, just slowly making my money back. This is how I lost another big chunk. After googling for some bots I found a site called Carismo.biz that you would just invest your funds with them and they would use bots to make you money. Makes sense, but I was still skeptical of course. I tried with a smallish investment, and it actually started working. Not super fast, but fast enough that it had me hooked. I invested more. Till one day the site just stopped working...  It was gone, all gone.

After some searching I found a whole other market of what they call HYIPs, but that’s a very friendly name for them. As should have been obvious to me... they are pyramid or ponzi schemes. The site exists for just long enough to get noticed, paying ppl with funds that others invest, then it vanishes with everyone's money.

 

So now, I am just emotional, making choices with little or no consequence. Still following rumours cause I figure what the hell, it could work? Late last night I moved a bunch of money onto yobit.net because there was some coin that I was hearing rumours about, who even knows what coin it was now. I noticed they had a Dice Game, with no limit. Just press a button and you have a 48% chance to double your money... I didn’t lose it all at once, that would have been too easy. I knew the basic but seemly ‘foolproof’ Fibonacci or martingale strategy. Add the last 2 or more losses together, and keep betting higher and higher only when you lose sequentially. I would start at 0.0001BTC and that way my limit was high enough that I had to come out ahead… it worked for a few hours, I was up 0.2BTC or so or about $1200. Amazing! But this was no where near the amount I had lost over the last few days \ months, so I kept going. But eventually the streak hit, I bet more and more to recoup it, until I was at 0.64BTC for one roll, but enough lost bets before that to double it. I wasn’t even thinking about this being my last full BTC, and how much it was worth. I don’t know what came over me, I should have stopped long before that number, I should have never even started. It was just so easy to hit ‘Roll’. I was blind. I lost ~$8000 instantly. Might not seem like a lot of money to some of you, but I know to others it’s massive, and I am one of those.

I stayed home from work today to write this, I knew there was no way I could face anything after these mistakes. Hopefully someone else can learn from this. I am sure this story or something similar has happened to others before. But you do not hear it enough. The shame stops you from telling it.

Today my portfolio is about 0.4 of a BTC, a little ETH and a handful of ico coins, who knows what will happen with them. I am not sure what to do. If anyone has any advice or help they could give me, I will listen. Should I exit everything? Or Just step back? Uninstall Blockfolio, and hold what little I have left? Some might even say I should buy back in, borrow against my credit cards and line of credit. I know there is a voice in the back of my head still telling me to do that. What else do I have to lose?

TLDR: Despite being a smart and logical person, I fell prey to the get rich quick hype and lost roughly $18,000CAD of my initial investment by every manner available: badly timed investments, icos, HYIPs, and finally the yobit Dice Game last night.

You are going to have to first practice radical acceptance.  You are still alive and there is still so much out there.  So you lost 18 grand - that is just drops in bucket in the overall scheme of things.

Then find meaning in the pain - you learned a very hard but very valuable lesson.  You now know about HYIP ponzi schemes and crypto volatility.  You also learned you don't have what it takes to day trade and you new know altcoins are like penny stocks.

Go back to work.  Make money.  Put only what you can afford to lose into major coins like bitcoin as it is gambling at this point given its unknown future.    Find worth in your relationships and family, find healthy hobbies, read some books.  Now there goes some safe investment.

And know that the pain will fade with time.  It is impermanent.

[Soutogu]

I'm sorry for your loss dude. Hopefully you can learn from this experience and make better decisions (more rational and less emotional) in the future. Get the "get rich quick" mentality out of your life and try to see crypto for what it is in a technological side of things. I wish you good luck going forward

[Johnnywelsh]

Sad story to hear, recommend stepping back from it for few months and return when you feel your ready. Start small and see it as a hobby rather than a way of life. Maybe set a limit of say $20 a week or month and slowly start to build up your portfolio. Try rewarding yourself with fund topups maybe by cutting back on things in real life like smoking, if you give up use what you'd pay for a pack to top up your fund. Same with drinking etc you get the idea.

[konigilya]

if you held it 2 more months after posting and sold at the top... I am sure could have been very profitable

[flowdon]

so much is resulting for a bad and losing something in your goods. but, i think this not the end you, and we have time for another opportunity always, just never stop believing for a second chance, you can rise up again mate. Cheers!