The year was 2010... i was in my final year of school at st johns university, living in a small dorm with 2 guys. i would say march or april if i had to guess the month, early 2010 for sure. I was excessively told about bitcoin by my 2 of my college roommates who spent too much time online and decided to do some of my own research, read the whitepaper made by satoshi n and was quite fascinated by the technology, i knew it was something new and ahead of the time, but also something that could terribly fail and be another fad. although, because of how much my 2 roomies talked about it i decided why not throw a bit of money into it, and was fine with losing it or not. so fast forward, i lived in new york and was able to find a local who actually sold bulks of bitcoin through my 2 friends who previously bought off them. i was a bored college student... didnt know what i was gonna end up doing with the coins. i wanted to buy $50 worth... ended up spending a bit more than that $60-$80 i believe to get exactly 10,000 bitcoins. it was given to me on a usb which was checked on his computer to verify the bitcoins were really there before i took off. everything was good and i transferred the file from the usb to my personal laptop. now, a single bitcoin was worth a fraction of a penny so i really did not have much focus on such a small thing (at the time). ever since i put it on my laptop i really just forgot about it and did not even think about any ways for me to spend it or use it etc. and just kept it stored on my laptop. i continued to forgot about it due to me graduating college being my primary focus and that's that. then after i graduated i looked to work and did work and never really even thought to care about some stupid bitcoin i bought off some guy for a bit of money. it was just another file on my computer i didnt bother to even look at for months on months.
now fast forward to early 2014 --- this is when i first heard about bitcoin again since i bought em, and no i did not continue to hear from them from my two roommates i was with while in college as 2010 is the year i graduated and after that we did not keep in touch. although i would assume they either lost the bitcoin they had online or are rich as fuck right now, wont find out as i have no way to contact them. anyways, so i was hanging out with a friend of mine who mentioned it to me and how the price went to $1000 and was down a bit and it would be a good time to buy some because he thought it was the future of money, it took me a few minutes to process, then it hit me and i literally almost fainted after coming to the realization i was pretty sure i had a shit ton of what he was talking about. i didnt even fully remember whether i had 1,000, 10,000, 100,000 immediately because of how much it was and how long ago i bought it but i knew it was one of those. i was so shocked and he was so confused then i just left the conversation as soon as he told me about the price to go online and check for myself if this is really the same shit i bought 4 years ago as a curious college student. it all hit me at once, i knew by the symbol and the chart which showed it going from where i bought it at less than a penny all the way to over $1000 that this was exactly what i bought and i remembered i bought 10,000 with the $60-$80 i spent and was in disbelief and euphoria over the fact that i had an absolute huge fortune waiting for me at home. this all felt unreal to me, i still remember the emotions i had going through me. now after realizing i had this fortune, i had to remember carefully where i stored these bitcoins, eventually i remembered i had it on my old personal laptop and at that moment i had a panic attack due to the fact that the laptop i had put the bitcoin on broke on me and was replaced although i figured i am not totally doomed because all i should need to get the file is the hard drive. so i look for the computer only to realize that because it was broken and old and damaged, my mom told me she had thrown it away a few years back after it broke down on me since she thought it was pretty much untouched junk and expected id never need it again. at that point i literally fainted, i was angry, confused, shocked, in denial, sad, raged and so many other emotions all at once that i literally just passed out. my mom woke me back up and i ran out of the house out of anger to go have a mental breakdown in my backyard. What was supposed to be the best day of my life become by far the worst. As u can imagine, the fact that i thought i had what was between 5-10 mil at the time and then right after had that taken away from me broke my heart. i never felt the amount of pain and severe depression i felt as i did on that day. the next few months of my life were spent very badly, every day i would be reminded of what happened and how my life could of been but wasnt because my mom threw out my fortune, i am not proud of it but i started to actually resent her and be disrespectful to her often. it was a bad bad time as i was working a shitty job with low pay and living in my parents house at 25 (shout out to my useless degree) so that bitcoin would have really changed my life completely. i started going through severe depression and suicidal thoughts constantly, i really did want to kill myself knowing what had happened to me. although i tried to get through it and didnt even tell any of my friends including the one who mentioned bitcoin to me to remind me of bitcoin what happened, though they felt i was acting different and not my usual self those following months. i barely went out, i lost my job due to my sudden lack of effort from what happened, i lost friends, i isolated myself from everyone and everything including my family. i gained a lot of weight and did a lot of dumb shit im not proud of. my life was pretty horrible for the year of 2014.
now fast forward to early 2015 i started to get back on my feet and try to get over the shitty year i just had. and the fact bitcoin dipped to $200ish helped with how i felt about the whole thing, though i never even considered putting another penny in it again and hoped it would just crash and die so i could keep this in the past, although as u all know this wasnt the case. now here we are in 2018, i am still broke, i still live with my parents, i am employed, but at a shitty job, and have friends, but we dont talk much, and life is just not the same as it used to be. the past 6 months were almost as hard as 2014 was. seeing bitcoin go up insane amounts all the way to nearly 20k and now around 10k really makes me sick to the stomach, to think that i bought 10,000 at less than a penny, WHAT THE FUCK... it still hurts. i really just want to feel like this is just some very long shitty ass nightmare and wake up to reality again but i know thats not the case. i could have had the most epic fucking life and most epic story to tell of how my riches came but it never happened. my life is on a downhill, i am severely depressed and have suicidal thoughts pretty much everyday. things are not the same as they once were and never will be the same because bitcoin has ruined my life. my hopes were all high and euphoric then right after low and dreadful within 24 hours, and it has impacted me til now and will continue to weigh me down for however much longer i live.
there is really no specific moral to this story, and i dont want sympathy from any of you, but i just wanted to vent this to someone or somewhere finally to get my story out. this is the first and last time i will speak out publicly to anyone about this, so there you guys go. that is the story of how i lost 10,000 bitcoin. that is all.
It is a lesson learned not just from you but for all of us. Nobody really knows that even a cheap commodity would become a fortune in the future. Be mindful on things even if how small it may be.
