How I fucked up and turned ~600 BTC into 200 BTC

[James Major]

Before I tell you how I fucked up, let me just say I am very aware of just how many newbie mistakes I made and how stupid I was. By all means, please feel free to laugh at my disgusting choices... the least my stupidity can do is serve as humor.

Back in May/June, I bought around 600 Bitcoin at around 2700 USD. I'll let you do the math on how much that cost me. But I believed in Bitcoin. The original plan was just to hold them forever. I was pretty convinced Bitcoin was going to go to $10K by 2018. Had I just left the Bitcoins in my wallet and done nothing, I would be pretty happy right now at $4000 per coin.

But no. I decided to try my hand at trading altcoins. I started off with Siacoin (this was back when there was hype around Siacoin).

Put in 10 bitcoins into Sia, at 450 satoshis... Next day, Siacoin went up to 600 satoshis. I was like "Cool, this is easy, I just made a couple thousand dollars in a day."

Next day I put in 20 Bitcoins into Antshares (now re-branded as NEO). Three days later, it went up as well. "Cool, I just made 10 grand in three days! All I have to do is buy altcoins low and sell high. So easy. As long as I HODL and don't sell in panic and just wait it out until it rises, everything should be fine."

You can guess where this story is heading... there's no happy endings here.

Basically, over the course of June, I invested pretty much ALL of my Bitcoins into alts, thinking they were going to keep going up and up. It was pure greed. Of course I should've just kept it in Bitcoin. Of course I should've done my research on some of these altcoins. Of course I should've not bought it at the very fucking peak before all the altcoins crashed.

Curious to see how badly I fucked up?

Here's a list = all the altcoins I bought, how much BTC I spent on them, and how much BTC they're worth now. Feel free to roast me, cause you could not get more stupid than this (especially putting that much money and faith into some of these altcoins).

Siacoin = 246.82 BTC → 72.94 (minus 70%)
CloakCoin = 139.27 BTC → 41.59 (minus 70%)
Factom = 120.72 BTC → 44.17 BTC (minus 63%)
Monero = 18.76 BTC → 12.96 BTC (minus 31%)
BitShares = 13.18 BTC → 4.54 BTC (minus 66%)
Crown = 10.26 → 4.05 BTC (minus 61%)
ZCash = 9.77 BTC → 4.13 BTC (minus 58%)
Golem = 9.13 BTC → 2.7 BTC (minus 70%)
GameCredits = 8.49 BTC → 3.1 BTC (minus 63%)
LBRY Credits = 5.71 BTC → 2.55 BTC (minus 55%)
BitcoinDark = 5.03 BTC → 1.96 BTC (minus 61%)
Ripple = 4.98 BTC → 2.03 BTC (minus 59%)
EmerCoin = 4.76 BTC → 2.02 BTC (minus 57%)
Digibyte = 4.38 BTC → 1.55 BTC (minus 65%)
Waves = 4.05 BTC → 2.76 BTC (minus 31%)
Ubiq = 3.89 BTC → 1.74 BTC (minus 55%)
Vertcoin = 3.35 BTC → 1.2 BTC (minus 64%)
Lumen = 3.06 BTC → 0.95 BTC (minus 69%)
Stratis = 2.96 BTC → 1.78 BTC (minus 40%)
SysCoin = 2.76 BTC → 0.98 BTC (minus 64%)
Ethereum = 2.53 BTC → 1.43 BTC (minus 43%)
MaidSafeCoin = 1.94 BTC → 0.96 BTC (minus 50%)
Komodo = 1.93 BTC → 0.94 BTC (minus 51%)
Voxels = 1.35 BTC → 0.67 BTC (minus 50%)
NEM (XEM) = 1 BTC → 0.88 BTC (minus 12%)
BitCrystals = 1 BTC → 0.41 BTC (minus 58%)
Ardor = 1 BTC → 0.34 BTC (minus 65%)
Wings DAO = 0.25 BTC → 0.15 BTC (minus 37%)
Expanse = 0.14 BTC → 0.05 BTC (minus 60%)
Why didn't I put in any stop losses? Cause I was stupid. Why did I keep holding onto these coins despite the massive fall in value? Cause I believed they would eventually turn around.

Trust me, I ask myself every day how I could've made THIS many bad decisions at the same time.

I totally get you if you think I'm making up this story and how could anyone be stupid enough to spend 200 BTC on Siacoin. Pure greed. I thought Siacoin would keep going up, and I could make a quick profit.

The only mistake I haven't made is sold any of the coins at a loss. Even as I saw the altcoins go down, I convinced myself that all I needed to do was HODL.

I'm still holding. Still hoping that eventually some of these might go back up to the value they were before, and I can sell them off at break even.

Of course I'm tempted to sell them all. Take any BTC I can get for them. Maybe put it into NEO (that train already left though) or some other altcoin that I hope will blow up. But of course that too would be an impulsive mistake. I'm just scared shitless, so I hold. I've made every single mistake I could made, except selling at a loss.

"Just hold." everyone says. So I do. But the people who say "hold" usually didn't spend 600 BTC on altcoins and watched their portfolio go down to about 200 BTC.

By the way, I know that when you compare it to USD value, not all of these altcoins have dropped that much. But that's not what I look at. USD value is deceptive, cause BTC keeps going up.

What I care about is BTC value. I'd give anything to just have my 600 BTC back (which of course would now be worth way more than the $2700 per coin I spent on them).

I realize that the chances of these altcoins ever going back to the peak that we had in June / July are very slim... the more BTC keeps rising, the less satoshis each of these coins is worth. Trust me, I know how much I fucked up.

Anyway.... feel free to laugh at my stupidity.

I'm open to any suggestions as to what to do with my altcoins now, whether I should just sell them back and get ~200 BTC for them, or wait for some of these to turn around... I genuinely don't know how to make this any less of a fuck-up.

EDIT: To answer some questions that have popped up:

Some of you are having a hard time believing someone who has this type of money can lose it in such a stupid way. Earning money, keeping it, and growing it are different skills. I fucked up on the last two.

A few of you asked how I bought 600 Bitcoins all at once. I used an OTC called Genesis Trading. Minimum buy order is 25K. You negotiate a bid, then you wire them the money, and they send the BTC to your wallet.

I don't have any NEO. I sold it when it got to break even, and then it exploded to current levels. So not only did I fuck up by investing in alts that went down, the one single coin that went up, I sold before it exploded.

I will reply to comments. I'm just catching up and reading everything that everyone posted and taking it all in.

Thank you to everyone who replied.

[1714883877]

1714883877

[1714883877]

1714883877

[magiccarpett]

ok i saw this post earlier. a brand new guy copy paste a thread just to get faster rank up?

no man not with us.

[Andrey123]

Nonsenses some!
600 bitokonov - it's more than 1.5 million dollars!
If people have that kind of money, they are unlikely to be sitting on the forums.

The author has stolen someone else's text.
You can't do it this way!

[nickmax]

Before I tell you how I fucked up, let me just say I am very aware of just how many newbie mistakes I made and how stupid I was. By all means, please feel free to laugh at my disgusting choices... the least my stupidity can do is serve as humor.

Back in May/June, I bought around 600 Bitcoin at around 2700 USD. I'll let you do the math on how much that cost me. But I believed in Bitcoin. The original plan was just to hold them forever. I was pretty convinced Bitcoin was going to go to $10K by 2018. Had I just left the Bitcoins in my wallet and done nothing, I would be pretty happy right now at $4000 per coin.

But no. I decided to try my hand at trading altcoins. I started off with Siacoin (this was back when there was hype around Siacoin).

Put in 10 bitcoins into Sia, at 450 satoshis... Next day, Siacoin went up to 600 satoshis. I was like "Cool, this is easy, I just made a couple thousand dollars in a day."

Next day I put in 20 Bitcoins into Antshares (now re-branded as NEO). Three days later, it went up as well. "Cool, I just made 10 grand in three days! All I have to do is buy altcoins low and sell high. So easy. As long as I HODL and don't sell in panic and just wait it out until it rises, everything should be fine."

You can guess where this story is heading... there's no happy endings here.

Basically, over the course of June, I invested pretty much ALL of my Bitcoins into alts, thinking they were going to keep going up and up. It was pure greed. Of course I should've just kept it in Bitcoin. Of course I should've done my research on some of these altcoins. Of course I should've not bought it at the very fucking peak before all the altcoins crashed.

Curious to see how badly I fucked up?

Here's a list = all the altcoins I bought, how much BTC I spent on them, and how much BTC they're worth now. Feel free to roast me, cause you could not get more stupid than this (especially putting that much money and faith into some of these altcoins).

Siacoin = 246.82 BTC → 72.94 (minus 70%)
CloakCoin = 139.27 BTC → 41.59 (minus 70%)
Factom = 120.72 BTC → 44.17 BTC (minus 63%)
Monero = 18.76 BTC → 12.96 BTC (minus 31%)
BitShares = 13.18 BTC → 4.54 BTC (minus 66%)
Crown = 10.26 → 4.05 BTC (minus 61%)
ZCash = 9.77 BTC → 4.13 BTC (minus 58%)
Golem = 9.13 BTC → 2.7 BTC (minus 70%)
GameCredits = 8.49 BTC → 3.1 BTC (minus 63%)
LBRY Credits = 5.71 BTC → 2.55 BTC (minus 55%)
BitcoinDark = 5.03 BTC → 1.96 BTC (minus 61%)
Ripple = 4.98 BTC → 2.03 BTC (minus 59%)
EmerCoin = 4.76 BTC → 2.02 BTC (minus 57%)
Digibyte = 4.38 BTC → 1.55 BTC (minus 65%)
Waves = 4.05 BTC → 2.76 BTC (minus 31%)
Ubiq = 3.89 BTC → 1.74 BTC (minus 55%)
Vertcoin = 3.35 BTC → 1.2 BTC (minus 64%)
Lumen = 3.06 BTC → 0.95 BTC (minus 69%)
Stratis = 2.96 BTC → 1.78 BTC (minus 40%)
SysCoin = 2.76 BTC → 0.98 BTC (minus 64%)
Ethereum = 2.53 BTC → 1.43 BTC (minus 43%)
MaidSafeCoin = 1.94 BTC → 0.96 BTC (minus 50%)
Komodo = 1.93 BTC → 0.94 BTC (minus 51%)
Voxels = 1.35 BTC → 0.67 BTC (minus 50%)
NEM (XEM) = 1 BTC → 0.88 BTC (minus 12%)
BitCrystals = 1 BTC → 0.41 BTC (minus 58%)
Ardor = 1 BTC → 0.34 BTC (minus 65%)
Wings DAO = 0.25 BTC → 0.15 BTC (minus 37%)
Expanse = 0.14 BTC → 0.05 BTC (minus 60%)
Why didn't I put in any stop losses? Cause I was stupid. Why did I keep holding onto these coins despite the massive fall in value? Cause I believed they would eventually turn around.

Trust me, I ask myself every day how I could've made THIS many bad decisions at the same time.

I totally get you if you think I'm making up this story and how could anyone be stupid enough to spend 200 BTC on Siacoin. Pure greed. I thought Siacoin would keep going up, and I could make a quick profit.

The only mistake I haven't made is sold any of the coins at a loss. Even as I saw the altcoins go down, I convinced myself that all I needed to do was HODL.

I'm still holding. Still hoping that eventually some of these might go back up to the value they were before, and I can sell them off at break even.

Of course I'm tempted to sell them all. Take any BTC I can get for them. Maybe put it into NEO (that train already left though) or some other altcoin that I hope will blow up. But of course that too would be an impulsive mistake. I'm just scared shitless, so I hold. I've made every single mistake I could made, except selling at a loss.

"Just hold." everyone says. So I do. But the people who say "hold" usually didn't spend 600 BTC on altcoins and watched their portfolio go down to about 200 BTC.

By the way, I know that when you compare it to USD value, not all of these altcoins have dropped that much. But that's not what I look at. USD value is deceptive, cause BTC keeps going up.

What I care about is BTC value. I'd give anything to just have my 600 BTC back (which of course would now be worth way more than the $2700 per coin I spent on them).

I realize that the chances of these altcoins ever going back to the peak that we had in June / July are very slim... the more BTC keeps rising, the less satoshis each of these coins is worth. Trust me, I know how much I fucked up.

Anyway.... feel free to laugh at my stupidity.

I'm open to any suggestions as to what to do with my altcoins now, whether I should just sell them back and get ~200 BTC for them, or wait for some of these to turn around... I genuinely don't know how to make this any less of a fuck-up.

EDIT: To answer some questions that have popped up:

Some of you are having a hard time believing someone who has this type of money can lose it in such a stupid way. Earning money, keeping it, and growing it are different skills. I fucked up on the last two.

A few of you asked how I bought 600 Bitcoins all at once. I used an OTC called Genesis Trading. Minimum buy order is 25K. You negotiate a bid, then you wire them the money, and they send the BTC to your wallet.

I don't have any NEO. I sold it when it got to break even, and then it exploded to current levels. So not only did I fuck up by investing in alts that went down, the one single coin that went up, I sold before it exploded.

I will reply to comments. I'm just catching up and reading everything that everyone posted and taking it all in.

Thank you to everyone who replied.

Do not worry so much and panic. If you do not need money urgently, do not sell all your coins. Choose the 10 most promising of them and keep, the growth will be in the spring! You did not lose anything until you fixed a loss

[heritage35]

The write i think is not new and was written some couple if months ago. I feel you should try the originality of your own post. You do not require a long written text or technical writeup to rise on this forum. No matter how short it is, people like me will still appreciate it and comment over it.
Notwithstanding, if what you really mean is what you have in the thread created, i would advise that you should not be afraid to invest, but invest right and sell when you really need to sell.

[haroldtee]

I feel your pains bro and most people have been there. It is a whole lot of money to lose, but I am happy you realize your mistake and you are ready to make some adjustments.

First and foremost, take a deep breath, it has happened and trust me mate, there is nothing you can do about it, at least for now. The first mistake was going all in on those altcoins and not practicing risk management. You should not even be trading the whole 600btc, but just some few percentage of it (20% is good enough as far as I am concerned with the amount you have). Also, since you believe more in increasing your bitcoin, you should not even use more than 2% of your trading portfolio on a single alt.

Secondly, you already know by now that when you are trading without any strategy, then you are gambling which is what you absolutely did. The only good thing I could see here is that you chose some pretty good coins, but just unfortunate you picked them at the top. Here is all I just need you to know next time before telling you what to do with your present loss based on my opinion.

1. You will be better off with long positioning style of trading and 4hr or daily chart should be your best option. Also, always watch out for bitcoin's movement more as it kind of controls the market; if it is dumping, other alts are taking the hit and same happens during bull run on bitcoin. The only time when they rise hugely is when bitcoin is taking some rest if you know what I mean.

2. Learn how to trade by following trend for long position. The use of MAs will always help, and learning some other few indicators such as MACD, RSI will help as well. You can also learn how to trade with candles (make sure you are using at least 3 strategies to make your decisions).

3. As long as you know you want to trade, learn to leave your emotions aside, and remember that stop loss is always the best language of every trader, but a minimal one. (Usually, you cannot do all of these without knowledge).

4. Once on the daily chart of any coin of your choice, make sure you are picking them from the bottom, and they are either changing trend or they are totally oversold which the RSI can be of help with that. MA crossing shows that a trend is changing but that does not mean you should just relax and not monitor your folio.

5. All these should guide you on how to make some research on what to learn on google, and you will be so surprised how simple it would be for you. However, after learning, start with just very little to build your skills and have some confidence from the experience you end up getting.

Finally, you have so much altcoins to monitor at once, so try reducing their numbers next time and put a buy order only when you are sure without forgetting the stop loss. Also, based on what you are holding now, it is already unfortunate you are holding them, but you have just two options.
 
a. They are good coins, but most altcoins have their season, so if you can learn fast, you can watch out to see how they end up doing for a while, as they will definitely pick up, but do not expect big gains anytime soon, so try not to be greedy and watch for the best time to get out once you have finally made good profit from some of them.

b. Watch out for change in trend of bitcoin and trade against fiat, but you still cannot do this without knowledge but if you can learn how to trade a breakout from downtrend channels, that would help. Hopefully, you will be able to take advantage of the swings, and then increase your bitcoin. However, please do not do this without learning as you will get emotional and even lose more.

For everyone in the OP's shoes, don't ever trade without learning as there are so many resources on google you can make use of, and even if you learn, no matter how much you have, start with very little you can afford to lose, and see how better you get. Do not rush, because the same way you rush in, you will end up rushing out with huge loss. You should get a lot of resources to learn from with this website. https://tradingstrategyguides.com

I wish you the best of luck!

[aalborg]

I've read the whole story and it is really worth reading, unique experience. By the way, guys, I am sure that isn't a story of this guy, just copy+ paste. Could anyone send me a link for original story? I just wanted to read some comments and other answers of author

[cryptodevs]

You really did fucked up hard, and i know you have learned your lessons,you just need to get some time to review each coins you wanted to invest in because most of your coins are shitcoins,im pretty sure you didnt do some research firsdt,the first thing you need to know is Bitcoin's price would dictate all the altcoin's faith that is why we need to stick with bitcoin if you want to be safe with the high volatility,70% of my portfolio is in bitcoin 30% is in the altcoins,if you really are a good trader you can make atleast 10-15% daily average gains from the altcoins.

200 btc is still huge amount i am sure you will still recover from your losses,always do a lot of research so you wont be fucked up with these shitcoins.

[IlfarIldarovich]

Why chew one and the same the text on 100 times . We've all seen this text . Well, I think millions of examples , but learn from the mistakes . Many unfortunately on their

[tiggytomb]

Whoever did write this in the first place it is still pretty sad, many of those coins will probably remain static but there are a few that might come back to life, it's hard to tell somebody else what to do with their btc, it's a hard lesson but a lesson nether the less so I hope that the author takes it on board and learns from this mistake.

[SalmanMJ9]

I believe I've seen this story before, and it seems you just copy paste that "not sure where's the joy in doing that  "

However, the main story is quite sad and obviously such a market teaches you loads of lessons "the hard way", and the main we learn along the way

[kryptqnick]

You spent over a million dollars on bitcoin. I guess it means that you have quite some money. Yes, you made a lot of mistakes, because you invested too much in altcoins and most of those you listed aren't really anything special.
You say that you look at the btc price and that's what you care about - well, it's a fair choice, but, as if you once sell everything, you'd probably use usd to buy stuff, I guess you should analyze losses and possible ways of recovering in fiat. Hold monero, eth, ripples and waves. Sell shitty coins for btc and hold it for a couple of years. Even though you made mistakes, I am sure it can turn out successful eventually.

[visiblehand]

Holding isn't necessarily the right move.

Whatever money you've already lost is a sunk cost - it's irrelevant to what you should do going forward.

Whatever the value of your current holdings is, imagine that you had that much money in fiat currency right now.  What would be the smartest thing(s) to invest it in?  If it's not what you're current holding, then sell your holdings and buy whatever you think will do better!

[DdmrDdmr]

This same story can be seen on reddit, having posted it there 6 months ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6tfxq4/how_i_fucked_up_and_turned_600_btc_into_200_btc/

https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/6tg3kd/how_i_fucked_up_and_turned_600_btc_into_200_btc/

It's a plain copy-paste, with no data updates.

Not feasible coming from a Newbie account. That's not the way to start earning merit.

[flashmark]

I invested 3k USD on crypto. During last December I had 4k USD as profit. Some of the coins I bought up 100x. But at that time I though the prices will go up more and more. So I was waiting to reach the profit 10k USD. But what happen after that? Market was starting to crash last December. At that time I thought it recover soon. But it is not. Now I'm in loss. Now my portfolio value is 2k USD.
Now I have learn a lesson. Don't be emotional investing in crypto. Convert your coins to USD when the market is starting down and buy in the dip.

[Frank76]

This story seems a very lamentable.I experienced the author's feelings while reading the article  
 
 

[xiaohang07]

Holding altcoins in the long term is not a pleasant experience. I fucked up and turned 10 BTC to 0.5 BTC in 2017. At the end of the day, you still have 200 BTC which is a lot of money to start with.

[BitcoinGuruOne]

so you invested more than 1,5m$ and fucked up with noob mistakes. sounds really unrealistic. and as other noted - this is copy&paste

[cryptocue]

You should be doing a lot of research before investing with these altcoins because most of the coins you had are shitcoins,doesnt have good team and products that is why these coins have failed your expectation,only invest with coins which has good working product and development team,so that the roadmap will be followed accordingly.

[jpoker272727]

IF this is a real copy paste, well good luck man,
If this is real and you did that way, you will never loose much as long as you hold that token and wait for the pump!
every lost is a sell on low, but if you will stay on your holdings then you just need to wait for the right time so no worries.