Jack of all crypto, master of none

[Dragonfund]

Sequel to this thread Share your costly lesson about cryptocurrency..  I saw a post on the bitcoin subreddit with the title Good bye Bitcoin dream...life savings gone for good with over 2k comments, and the title piqued my interest, so I had no choice but to read the contents, and I couldn't agree more with COOLCRYPTOVATOR that we lose something to learn something, but there are some things that can never be fixed even after learning some lesson. When I was about to open this thread, the contents had already been deleted for reasons best known to the OP, but I was able to obtain some quotations from a blog that had published it before it was removed.
Bitcoin works as an investment vehicle in a variety of ways for different people; some like to hold, while others love to trade, and some gamblers choose futures since that is what works for them; but, if you choose to do it all, that may mark the journey of your portfolio collapse. You can't do all in cryptocurrency, this is why the majority of investors choose to hold. Except for theft and hacking of a wallet, which may be due to the holder's negligence, I have never seen or heard of anyone who has kept bitcoin for a long period of time with losses.


What exactly happens to this guy?  He and his wife worked tirelessly to get bitcoin, but his carelessness put an end to their dreams. He assumed he could be everything and outsmart the market but it doesn't work that way practically.
when it comes to Bitcoin or perhaps crypto in general, it's very broad and it fit in everyone who wishes to be revolutionised by decentralised finances but overdoing it wouldn't help you in the long run because jack of all trades is usually a dead end.

He has a pitiful story, and it goes like this:

During the last years, me and my wife have put in Bitcoins everything we had and slowly managed to reach 1.7 BTC, our entire life savings, 10 years of grinding and accepting odd jobs trying to save every dollar possible and buying every BTC amount we could,” the Redditor wrote.


When BTC began to rise from “$30k to $40k,” he started to watch YouTube videos to explain how to “earn more,” “trade futures,” and “leverage.”

“In [a] matter of hours my YouTube feed was completely flooded by videos of Michael Saylor, one of the world['s] top CEOs betting hard on BTC by doubling and tripling down his BTC holdings and claiming it would easily go to a million each BTC, I was HOOKED,”

Wanting to be a “hero” for his wife, he made the decision (despite not knowing what he was doing) to bet on future trades, which resulted in him managing to turn “1.7 BTCs into 2.1 BTCs.”

“I have put all ours 2.1 BTCs on a leveraged future for BTC going to $100k, and I was already envisioning the 21 BTCs (worth about $1m) in profit. I saw this as a gateway to exit our mediocre life,” the Redditor said.

But, it didn’t work in his favor.

“ BTC went from touching $50k down to $47k, and our whole life savings have been wiped out,” he wrote.

The Redditor also noted that he hasn’t mentioned the situation to his wife and is “simply devastated” as the money was supposed to help them in the future.

He concluded his post by offering advice to people on how not to fall into the “marketing traps.”

“Just HODL [hold on for dear life], BTC is the best thing ever happened to humanity, just HODL and don’t risk your beloved BTCs like I did.”

Source: Life saving

The final paragraph is crucial; bitcoin has been the best investment so far; it is great to have it and keep it secure, rather than allowing it to be consumed by greed of doubling the investment. Protect yourself from inflation, that amount would have been a stepping stone in their lives.

[hatshepsut93]

There's a lot of lessons you can learn from that post, like "don't trade with leverage and don't daytrade if you're a beginner". But another big one is the importance of not getting instantly hyped by social media. The OP describes how he got sucked into trading by watching youtube videos that got recommended to him and how Michael Saylor's 100k predictions got him hyped. This is dangerous because being emotional and over excited leads to breaking the main rule of investing - don't invest more than you can afford to lose.

[jackg]

Yeah, this is quite the lesson in starting to trade with tiny amounts of funds.

It's another lesson in beginners luck, it was a meme a while ago that a lot of traders have the intelligence-confidence cycle peak where the confidence peaks before intelligence does and this is quite a common occurance for the pattern with traders.

Sadly, a lot of these sites won't care about the losses a user makes either and will just want to take more money from them as it's their entire business model (and yes I do think the onus should be put on exchanges to tell new traders to futures that they're essentially gambling until they know what they're doing).

[mk4]

There's a lot of lessons you can learn from that post, like "don't trade with leverage and don't daytrade if you're a beginner".

This. And more importantly, stop taking unnecessarily dumb bets in the first place while risking your life savings. It's crazy how things like this have to be said and isn't common sense. And equally as worse, some people think taking these huge dumb risky bets is their only way out of a shitty life. Desperation surely can make people do dumb things.

[Darker45]

Oh, so this heart-wrenching story has now reached this forum. I think every newbie should read this. Lessons learned as hard as this shouldn't go to waste.

Anyway, I'd say the man risked too much. While trading is not for everyone really, he could have tread lightly on it. By it I mean he should have avoided margin trading. If I remember it correctly, he didn't mention how much leverage he used but I reckon it's high enough that a movement from $50,000 to $47,000 was enough for all his and his wife's 2.1BTC to get wiped out.

I also think his overconfidence of Bitcoin killed him. Whatever happened to stop loss? $3,000 is already 6% of $50,000. Stop loss should have already taken effect the moment the price shed 2%.

[Oshosondy]

“ BTC went from touching $50k down to $47k, and our whole life savings have been wiped out,” he wrote.

The risk is too much.

Assuming he leverage the 2.1 btc at $50000 and go 2x, he will be able to use 4.2 btc to trade, but instead of the btc to liquidate when btc become zero price, it will liquidate when btc price is $25000.

If he went 4x, the liquidation price will be $37500.

If he trade on 8x leverage, the liquidation price will be $43700 and so on.

The higher the leverage the riskier the trade. Even normal spot trading is risky but margin trading is the riskiest. Some traders will go for 100x leverage, knowing nothing much about trading, this can result to millions of dollars to be lost in just a single hour if the market is volatile and against the trader trading direction.

The best is to hold, if the price fall, the btc will not be liquidated and the price will rise again even more than before, this will result to profit.

[cryptoaddictchie]

Thats a very sad story. Lesson learned I guess, is to avoid future tradings if doesnt have such experience or basic knowledge on crypto trading. Leverage trading is so dangerous and even on a split second you could loss a lot of money since you are trading a higher rate than a normal trading.

The loss btc could have been gained slowly by staking on some sites such as Binance instead using it for leverage. I dont know but I feel sorry for OP. Hope you could reciver those losses.

[nakamura12]

Trading your lifesavings without experience in doing it is a huge risk and I think it is the reason why they both lose profit. If he is not desperate in doubling/tripling the btc he and his wife got it wouldn't have happened but he did so it's his fault for doing it and lose their lifesavings. It is a sad story and the lose they experience will be a lesson for them even if it's the worst thing they experienced.

[DdmrDdmr]

You can read the full original Reddit story here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210827210618/https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/pbxvpf/good_bye_bitcoin_dreamlife_savings_gone_for_good/

The story was there yesterday, but has since then been deleted. I haven’t seen any hint as to why it was deleted. Perhaps it’s something someone spills to the world in the spur of the moment, and later regrets having done so (especially if anyone in his environment knows his identity on Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/Prudent_Plum_7644). He could also have got pissed-off by those calling him a liar. Who knows.

The story does have a feasibility ring to it, more tied to a gambler than a solid thinker. Real or not, the possibility of it happening is the story people should take away from it …

[aoluain]

The thing about crypto as we know, it's decentralised and unregulated so anyone can
become a "trader" and believe they will make profit....easily because Bitcoin
"always" goes up.

That is kind of true but with lots of down turns and corrections. It indeed
takes experience and knowledge to trade.

This is a good share by the OP, hopefully others will learn from it.

[Lucius]

A story like this (if true) can fit into just two words: ignorance&greed. I don’t know how else to describe someone who gambles their entire savings, and here I don’t see any difference at all between trading and having him go to a casino and put the entire amount in red or black. It seems to me that such people have serious mental problems, because a normal person will never do such nonsense.

During the last years, me and my wife have put in Bitcoins everything we had and slowly managed to reach 1.7 BTC, our entire life savings, 10 years of grinding and accepting odd jobs trying to save every dollar possible and buying every BTC amount we could,” the Redditor wrote.

I don't know how to interpret the term "during the last years", but I find it strange that in 10 years of saving they failed to save more money - because less than 1 year ago the price of Bitcoin was below $5000, and somehow it seems to me that they could accumulate much more than they claim.

[hatshepsut93]

There's a lot of lessons you can learn from that post, like "don't trade with leverage and don't daytrade if you're a beginner".

This. And more importantly, stop taking unnecessarily dumb bets in the first place while risking your life savings. It's crazy how things like this have to be said and isn't common sense. And equally as worse, some people think taking these huge dumb risky bets is their only way out of a shitty life. Desperation surely can make people do dumb things.

It seems to be very common for newbies who invest in a bull market to think that their quick (and often unrealized) profits are sign that they are very talented traders, so they start getting more and more reckless and eventually lose most or all of their gains and then some.

[mk4]

It seems to be very common for newbies who invest in a bull market to think that their quick (and often unrealized) profits are sign that they are very talented traders, so they start getting more and more reckless and eventually lose most or all of their gains and then some.

That's a bad move as well; and it sure is dumb, but moves like that is mostly caused by beginner ignorance. You know, those people who have a set amount of money allocated for crypto trading and who's just experiencing their first bull run. On the other hand, betting your entire life savings and with leverage? Now that's next level.

[Rrita]

First of all, I want to say, ''Only invest what you can afford to lose''
I don't know, Why did this man deposit all of his Bitcoin for trade futures, and leverage trade. It was the worst decision at all. He was a noob at trade, and He tried to do leverage trade with all of the capital!! It was a biggest mistake. This man cants able control emotion by watching Hype over youtube/social media. The result is, He got REKT.

It is a good lesson for the newbie trader, or for those who want to do cryptocurrency trade.

[dbc23]

The topic just got me laughing you have a big point here dude wow I learnt a whole lot from this thread. The crypto market is too broad with different coin/token been released on daily basis. It's really hard keeping up to all and this will make an investor seem confused on what project to invest in. Get few coins that has nice projects and monitor their growth before deciding on which to invest in trying to follow all the available projects will lead to excessive loss stick to the few you can monitor and ensure you always take some profit for yourself

[Mpamaegbu]

so I had no choice but to read the contents, and I couldn't agree more with COOLCRYPTOVATOR that we lose something to learn something

That's for me is what I call "learning from experience". We either learn from "knowledge" or from "experience". Learning from knowledge doesn't cost us anything except our time to leaf through books by reading what others have passed through while learning from "experience" is our bitter experience of what happens to us. So, it's pay attention or learn from lack of it. I think learning from experience is an indelible way of learning as one never forgets in a hurry the lessons therein. Again, despite how I like trading I don't go close to Futures or Leverage trading. At least, not yet. It's scary a thing to do if one doesn't have a grasp of it.

[GeorgeJohn]

Bitcoin can be use in different form in order to make a physical or digital cash,see different people have  different motive to invest in cryptocurrency more especially bitcoin we all know, provided that bitcoin is concern you can use it for something you feel like in order to make profit, you can as well trade with bitcoin and also store or hold bitcoin for long term investment, it's obvious that the more you go deep into cryptocurrency, the more you understand different method that will make you to exploit in cryptocurrency sphere, nothing like jack of all crypto, Master of none, the more you feel reluctant in cryptocurrency the more you lose, that is basic analysis of cryptocurrency, op that your definition is absolutely wrong for my comprehension.