Lost everything in 2012, Lost everything in 2018, now building since 2020

[jack3rror]

I'm an old bitcoiner and thought my story could help others.

I've downloaded Bitcoin in March 2009, as my bank account was frozen for a debt of 200 euros, and when your account is frozen you don't have the ability to have another bank account in France.
I've tried to find an alternative way of storing digital value in a P2P manner and found out about Bitcoin to pay for my server.

I've mined with my CPU but I cannot found a single block (mining was built-in bitcoin core at this time) so I uninstalled it as the ecosystem was too tiny.

In 2011, I came back and saw that an exchange popped, mtgox, and GPU miners, bitcointalk.

I was working as a life assistant for an handicaped person and we decided to mine Bitcoin with her computer.
We mined 6 bitcoins in 4 months.

In 2012, It was worth a few dollars and didn't remember that I haven't saved my wallet, I formatted my computer. Bye bye the 6 bitcoins. I was working as a store merchant employee.

Disgusted in 2013 as I saw the price climbing. I bought some bitcoins onto localbitcoins and starts DCAing with my 450 euros monthly paycheck, 20 euros each month.

I dived into Ethereum in 2014 and put money at the ICO. In 2016, as the value soared, I've sold most of my 200 hard gained bitcoins and my 2000 ether but decided to work full time on bitcoin. I've bought a 4500 euro boat (450 ether at this time) to have a spot where I can live without paying a rent. And it cost me every single ether and bitcoin earned.

Bull market in 2017 was hard, as I spent more coins than I earned. So In 2018, I was back at 0 with a huge mental depression.

Since 2020, I work on mining pools as a Lead Engineer, working helped me a lot to focus and forgot depression.

And in 2022, I'm more bullish than ever but am still at 0.1 Bitcoins.

So I decided to make a solo mining pool with provably output jobs and started developing it in 2020 in Golang and from scratch.

Now all my bitcoin life is onto these two projects :

- [ANN] ⛏️ Soloblocks.io - 0.4% SOLO Mining Pool with Provable payouts.
- [ANN] Lottery mining blocks (BTC and lightning accepted)

If you have jobs where I can bring my passion and devotion, my pm are opened.
If you want to help and get a reward, you can try mining on my mining pool.
If you want to help and get a reward, you can try my lottery.

I'm selling the mining pool for 12 bitcoins if you want.

I think my level of understanding of bitcoin is atypical.

For my twitter handle: send a pm.

[1713246275]

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[1713246275]

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[Easteregg69]

12 BTC would take you a long way. Say everything is in the past.

How about I try again and get all 21 million?

I should go check my spenditure at mining rig rentals.

[Easteregg69]

I can relate to this story specifically on selling all Bitcoin and Ethereum holding just because of too much happiness of profit. I’ve done this before but not at your level since you are way earlier on Bitcoin investment than mine but I remember that I sold all my 5 Bitcoins when price break 1000$ because I thought that it will go down already until Bitcoin never stop growing until 20K during 2017 which gives me a depression at that time. I become inactive in crypto for so many years until pandemic hits and gave me opportunity to enter again in crypto with the better price.

I think you can bounce back too and recover part of your supposed to be gain from your previous holdings.

I crashed the shitcoin market with doge. It's the native that carves the value.

I just bought it and it went clueless. No lies. Don't buy my old seedbank twice.

[BitMaxz]

Why don't you try to recover your 6 bitcoin from your formatted computer if it was never been touched after formatted you can maybe still have a chance to recover the wallet.

Actually, I have the same experience that I never forget in the year 2018 I was almost depressed and forgot my holdings at that time because two important persons in my life die from illness and cancer. But I am still lucky that I sold them at a very cheap price. At that time I want to commit suicide but I'm thinking about the people I'll leave behind. 2018 is pretty bad luck to me.

Anyway, we have different paths after that I continue to stay here at the forum and trade, and lucky that I bought some miners after selling my coins year 2018 to have a new start.

[jack3rror]

Why don't you try to recover your 6 bitcoin from your formatted computer if it was never been touched after formatted you can maybe still have a chance to recover the wallet.

Actually, I have the same experience that I never forget in the year 2018 I was almost depressed and forgot my holdings at that time because two important persons in my life die from illness and cancer. But I am still lucky that I sold them at a very cheap price. At that time I want to commit suicide but I'm thinking about the people I'll leave behind. 2018 is pretty bad luck to me.

I've written the whole disk after formatting to play to eve online 
I have the disks but getting the data back from a reputable data restauration company costs thousands of dollars

Deeply sorry about your loss and your friends.

I think you can bounce back too and recover part of your supposed to be gain from your previous holdings.

Yes I will, since covid pandemic I hold and buy more than ever. The dump didn't affected me this time so I have balls to a next bull market

12 BTC would take you a long way. Say everything is in the past.

How about I try again and get all 21 million?

I should go check my spenditure at mining rig rentals.

Yes, I'm in contact with a mining farm based in Africa, they have enough hashrate to mine solo on my pool and they will, I can get back 21 millions sats 

[moderator's note: consecutive posts merged]

[tabas]

You've got the boat and I think that's still something big to consider despite you've sold mostly at that time. Looking back at that date, you're an achiever and not everyone is able to do that. Although looking at those quantities right now despite we're in a correction, that's a lot and we  always get to compare past and present.
But that's really our lives, we get to have a day for selling and buying things that we want. I just wish you all the best and hopefully, you'll continue to be at best shape since you're already back on track.

[jack3rror]

You've got the boat and I think that's still something big to consider despite you've sold mostly at that time. Looking back at that date, you're an achiever and not everyone is able to do that. Although looking at those quantities right now despite we're in a correction, that's a lot and we  always get to compare past and present.
But that's really our lives, we get to have a day for selling and buying things that we want. I just wish you all the best and hopefully, you'll continue to be at best shape since you're already back on track.

Thanks for your kind words.

Oh you wanna know what's crazy ? I've sold the boat to a girl in 2018, she never paid me.

[m2017]

jack3rror, certainly your experience with bitcoin is very peculiar.

But I still didn’t understand from your story whether you are satisfied with your experience, with what you have earned thanks to bitcoin/eth (bought a boat, for example), or are you sad because of missed opportunities that could now bring you a huge profit.

I think everyone here has a similar story behind him about how he missed the moment when bitcoin was worth mere pennies. You should not grieve about this and remember the past with sadness, but rather focus on future opportunities.

Why don't you try to recover your 6 bitcoin from your formatted computer if it was never been touched after formatted you can maybe still have a chance to recover the wallet.

Actually, I have the same experience that I never forget in the year 2018 I was almost depressed and forgot my holdings at that time because two important persons in my life die from illness and cancer. But I am still lucky that I sold them at a very cheap price. At that time I want to commit suicide but I'm thinking about the people I'll leave behind. 2018 is pretty bad luck to me.

I've written the whole disk after formatting to play to eve online 
I have the disks but getting the data back from a reputable data restauration company costs thousands of dollars

Deeply sorry about your loss and your friends.

Why didn't you try to recover data from a disk on your own using programs available in the public domain? Suddenly, you could. Still have nothing to lose by trying.

You've got the boat and I think that's still something big to consider despite you've sold mostly at that time. Looking back at that date, you're an achiever and not everyone is able to do that. Although looking at those quantities right now despite we're in a correction, that's a lot and we  always get to compare past and present.
But that's really our lives, we get to have a day for selling and buying things that we want. I just wish you all the best and hopefully, you'll continue to be at best shape since you're already back on track.

Thanks for your kind words.

Oh you wanna know what's crazy ? I've sold the boat to a girl in 2018, she never paid me.

Your experience is invaluable. Based on the events of your life, can make a movie.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

I think most of us have similar stories, I meet Bitcoin in 2016 at an average price of $200, I couldn't buy because it was too expensive for me then, I had no tangible source of income, manage to buy about 50 Ethereum which I kept until 2020, in the year 2020, I got tired of waiting and decided to sell my about eth 50  at a private of about $200 each, for me then, it was quite a big amount, I was happy, but three months down the line, my happiness turned to great sadness and depression when I saw eth price begin to go up, I watched the price of eth cross $4000 and all I could do was calculate how much my investment would have worth if only I had waited.
I really learnt to be patient the hard way.

[BitMaxz]

I've written the whole disk after formatting to play to eve online  
I have the disks but getting the data back from a reputable data restauration company costs thousands of dollars

Why would you hire a restoration company if you can able recover them on your own free? And it's risky to hire someone since it's a big amount of BTC.
Even if you have overwritten the HDD why didn't you try it first with deep scanning maybe it can still be able to recover.

I have experience recovering a few altcoins before when I accidentally formatted it and even if the drive is overwritten I still manage to recover the wallet.dat file and recovery backup(nothing will be lost if you try).  And honestly, that amount that I sold at very cheap price I just recover them using Recuva and EaseUS and data recovery listed on Hiren's data recovery tools.

[Bitcoin_Arena]

Your story is more like a classic. Despite losing all that in 2012 and 2018, you have never given up and that could be what could make the difference in your life

I personally had some good amount of BTC and ETH in 2018 that could change my life so much today, but sold most of it off to get a house and get some things I had dreamed in life. When I look at my holdings back then compared to the recent bull run's prices. It would be an insane amount in USD by my standards  

But today, I still say I will never stop believing in Bitcoin.

[nullama]

~snip~
I've written the whole disk after formatting to play to eve online  
I have the disks but getting the data back from a reputable data restauration company costs thousands of dollars
~snip~

I think it's still worth the effort to try and recover the wallet file.

You don't have to pay anything. You can try using one of the best open source recovery tools out there, PhotoRec. It's available here: https://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/PhotoRec

PhotoRec is file data recovery software designed to recover lost files including video, documents and archives from hard disks, CD-ROMs, and lost pictures (thus the Photo Recovery name) from digital camera memory. PhotoRec ignores the file system and goes after the underlying data, so it will still work even if your media's file system has been severely damaged or reformatted.

Take your time, read the documentation, and try to recover the wallet file, for free.

It should be able to recover Bitcoin wallet files, as discussed here https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1byfy0/photorec_able_to_find_lost_wallets/

[tabas]

You've got the boat and I think that's still something big to consider despite you've sold mostly at that time. Looking back at that date, you're an achiever and not everyone is able to do that. Although looking at those quantities right now despite we're in a correction, that's a lot and we  always get to compare past and present.
But that's really our lives, we get to have a day for selling and buying things that we want. I just wish you all the best and hopefully, you'll continue to be at best shape since you're already back on track.

Thanks for your kind words.

Oh you wanna know what's crazy ? I've sold the boat to a girl in 2018, she never paid me.

What a twist with that story about the boat. I now understand you more, the struggle and the story that you went and despite all of those challenges and problem you've got, you're still here. You really can be said one of the great enthusiasts in the community.
Just look at what you went through and I know that the greater fate will be you soon, we all together will be.

[P2PECS]

This is another example, like many, of how people lose money on something that has performed as well as BTC. We don't hold it in such high regard now, but if we think back to when it went to $69k, at that time everyone who had bitcoins was in profit. But there are many in the past who bought high and sold low, who lost keys, etc. Many of them are BTChaters today.

[dragonvslinux]

I've written the whole disk after formatting to play to eve online  
I have the disks but getting the data back from a reputable data restauration company costs thousands of dollars

As others pointed out, you should try a deep scan of the disk, as long as the data used up at present is less than what it was before when you had your wallet file on it. Otherwise, don't bother. Most don't realise that quick formatting of disks doesn't erase any data, only up to a few MB (KB even?) at partition/disk start depending on the format. It just restructures the way the disk reads the data (filesystem).

Last I remember when doing recoveries is that disks write chronologically (or at least the formats I was using), so if you previously had 100GB on it, and now only have 10GB on it, there would be 90GB to recover for example. The hope would be the wallet file is towards the end of the disk and therefore not yet overwritten. Just imagine if it was still there after all these years! It could be a filesystem restoration away...

Think it was PhotoRec I used before for restoring filesystem as nullama mentioned, but otherwise it was EaseUS for hard data recovery (and filename recovery) when recovering a partition failed. One of them I remember listed previous filesystems formats I could access (as some create their own backups), so it was like flicking a switch to restore data. No hard data recovery even required...

[CryptoHeadlineNews]

I dived into Ethereum in 2014 and put money at the ICO. In 2016, as the value soared, I've sold most of my 200 hard gained bitcoins and my 2000 ether

This is actually the highest number of Etherem I have heard someone actually owes (2000 Ether) which is approximately $2.2million today's current rate. This actually shows you happens to be among the lucky ones who venture into cryptocurrency in the early days, and am sure only if you had left this Etherem till date you most have been a crypto millionaires, but despite it all there is no right or wrong time to enter into crypto

[Lucius]

I will just say that you have very bad judgment in everything you do in life, and considering the development of the events you described, those bad judgments continue even today. If you think that anyone will pay you 12 BTC for a mining pool, then you are obviously living in a big delusion - and even if someone paid you, you would probably find a way to lose it all again.

Oh you wanna know what's crazy ? I've sold the boat to a girl in 2018, she never paid me.

You see, that's not a crazy move, but the move of a completely frivolous man who doesn't know how to make even the most basic sale - is it that hard to make sure you get paid before you transfer ownership to another person?

[Adbitco]

I've sold most of my 200 hard gained bitcoins and my 2000 ether but decided to work full time on bitcoin

Most at times Holding is always better, if that you were holding Bitcoin from then till 2021 December imagine what would have been the output till date. Will say its a very tough and sad story seeing you couldn't able to save your details, most at times learning from past experience is much better and will likely say as then you were novice maybe no much knowledge were gain then but i understand you seen your lapses.

[Husires]

If someone thinks that we are too late, I would highly recommend reading your story, as it is an indication for anyone who wants to pick up or thinks that the train is ahead.
It's good that you knew where to start so you didn't start from scratch but you will go faster than the rest, many quit and then blame their bad luck

[Osteoid]

Thank you for this story, hearing other bitcoiners’ life stories does inspire in some way. Well, congratulations for not giving up even after so many losses. This is why it is always told, consistency is the key to success. Good luck for your future!