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Investor’s story from the field
My name is Jaden. Technologies have always inspired me. Actually, that’s why I became a Python developer. My crypto journey has been a long one. I heard about it in 2013, watched a couple of bloggers on YouTube, and by 2017 I decided it was the time. Being a stress-resistant and calculating person, I was sure that investing was my thing.
Tell us how did you screw up
Share your investment failure story in the comment section below. We are constantly looking for cool stories to share with our readers.
How I have started investing
During the so-called ICO fever, people began to massively invest in cryptocurrencies, which caused the price of Bitcoin to rise. I was no exception. I started with $1,000 and ended up investing almost $25,000. Back then, in my mid-twenties, it was a considerable sum of money.
Then Bitcoin price updated the ATHs. In August 2017 – $4,000, and in November – $10,000. Obviously, I was euphoric about the profit.
How I reinvested the income
Another way I made money was by investing in ICOs. I made up my own algorithm for analyzing companies. I read about developers, company activities, market size, and location. If I liked it, I invested up to $5,000.
After ICO, tokens increased in price by an average of 2-3 times. So I reinvested the money I earned in Bitcoin and Ethereum.
When everything went wrong
In winter 2018, I realized that I had been living without a vacation for two years, and it was time to reboot. In fall, my wife delivered our first child, so we were exhausted. We came to Cuba for two weeks. I left my laptop at home and didn’t check social media during my vacation.
Remember when I said that I’m stress-resistant? Well, you cannot test your resistance to stress until you get into a REAL stressful situation.
When I got back home, I found out that the Bitcoin rate fell by 2 times – from $16,000 to $9,000. Then I had about 2 BTС in my account, so I lost about $10,000.
I resigned myself to this loss and decided to give up investing for a moment. Even if the currency was kept in the wallet, the rate might grow over time.
Took an L
As the title suggests, this is not the end of the story. In 2019, a friend of mine offered me to invest in a project that was “guaranteed to make a profit” (you already guessed the end of the story? Huh!). I agreed and opened the wallet to transfer $1,000.
The application asked for an update. I agreed, and after installation, I saw my balance:
0 BTC
As it turned out later, the attackers introduced an update window. Then, they connected their servers to steal money from regular users’ wallets.
The funny thing is that since 2018, the media have already published that such cases often occur with desktop wallets. I was not interested in crypto security. I put the money in my wallet, didn’t share my private key, and that’s it.
What have I learned
According to the statistics, in 2019, the attackers stole about 2,000 BTC. Sometime later, I reinvested some money, which with the current exchange rate has grown to $10,000.
Here are some tips to jump through hoops:
- First, if you plan to HODL, choose hardware wallets.
- Follow the software update of your wallet on the official website and do not update the application at the first request.
- Read more news about the crypto world.
- Install apps with price change notifications on your smartphone.
- Simulate a situation in which you lose 100% of your investment. Breathe in, breathe out and accept it. It can happen to anyone.
My story will not stop hackers, make the crypto market less volatile, or increase the Bitcoin price. A crisis can happen at any moment. The main thing is to be mentally prepared for this (and store crypto in a safe place).
Share your story in the comment section below and it may appear in the following blog post.
My story may not be the most gripping or Hollywood-ready. There are no shadowy criminals trying to separate me from my Bitcoin. But if you follow best security practices, like having a Ledger, the real enemy is myself. There are many, many companies that enable people to trade their crypto-currencies. It is like having a Burger King, next to a McDonalds, next to a KFC in cyberspace. Why is this? Why is the market so crowded? How many people need to eat that many different types of junk in order to keep them all in business? The answer is: enough. There are enough people willing to trade cryptocurrencies to make this a crowded market. And whether you are good at trading or not, it doesn’t’ really matter, because they will take their fees from every trade. They are the winners in the trading game. It is similar to the Gold Rush. Nobody remembers Joey Bagadonuts, Prospector. But we know the organizations who enabled Joey to do his work: Levi Strauss the man who sold him pants, Wells Fargo may have lent him money, even the journalist who may have interviewed him – Mark Twain. I realize this may be the wrong forum for this opinion, but the truth is – the people who really make money in crypto are the ones who buy it and forget it – and have the good fortune to remember it at the right time. Don’t falls for the youtube hype. Put no head above your own. And HODL on my friends. I lost my crypto the old fashioned way, slowly through commissions and then quickly when I leveraged my positions to try and recoup my losses.
Although my experience with crypto is small, based upon most who dabbled in this old black magic, I can honestly say that I started with about $100, that turned into 10X in a matter of months. Was hoping for XRP to go hyperbolic earlier this year, but to legal issues, I guess I’ll HODL for now!
In trying to send ETH from a crypto lending platform to my wallet platform, I was not aware that some of these wallets had an address that regenerated periodically. Having copied the address from one moment, pasted it into the send form from the lending platform, doubled checked, and sent it, I then checked the platform again only to discover the address was different. I had assumed I had pasted the incorrect address, and that my $2,500 transaction was sent to an invalid address. While I was able to reach out to the lending platform and Prevent the transaction, I soon learned that no mistake was made, and that some wallets on that platform regenerate addresses without nullifying previous ones, thus preserving the integrity of the transaction.
Long before investments and value changes had crossed my mind, I had mined 5 bitcoins over the course of a couple months. (it was around 2011-ish I think, they weren’t worth very much yet) My mining software broke one day though, I tried everything to get that working again and I couldn’t. FOMO wasn’t as much of a thing back then I think, but I was feeling something like that. “This number will never grow if I don’t do something.”
So I found out about a crypto betting website… T_T It twists my stomach up thinking back to how foolish I acted, but I thought my coins were pointless if I wasn’t making more. I bet half of what I had on some this-or-that outcome bet and I won, earning 0.2 BTC or so back. Riding that high, I bet all of what I had on another this-or-that outcome bet, and I swear to you good reader, the real outcome of that bet did win in my favor, but somehow the deciders of the bet didn’t think so, and so I lost all 5.2BTC.
I’ve beaten myself up figuratively and literally a bit since then for squandering my single closest chance of paying off my friend’s student loan debt and buying excellent medical treatments, I could have had $300,000 if I’d just waited and sold it at the right time. -n-; I didn’t know though, and I used to have a real problem about convincing myself I had to make big decisions when there was nobody nearby to check with.
Now I live on $500 a month with no savings, but I’m into crypto again and I’m trying to invest wisely. ^^; Wish me luck, and good luck to all of you.
In 2016 my wife and I were introduced to Cryptocurrency, Etherium & Bitcoin to be exact. The company name was “**** *****”! It was an “Etherium mining” company! We were told that we could purchase these “mining computers” that were to mine “Etherium” Cryptocurrency. We had no idea what it looked like or how it functioned, except that in our 1st month were earned $5k USD worth of “Etherium”! We were so flabbergasted that we decided toput our life earnings into purchasing more “Etherium mining” computers about $300,000 USD! At the end of the 6th month we were making about $5k USD per week, it was absolutely berserk! But at the end of the 6th month my wife and I decided to hold the “Etherium” on the company’s back office website. The last week of the 6th month we went to log in and it wouldn’t allow us! Long story short, we were scammed out of our investments! A year later we found out that the owners were apprehended and were facing prison time! As you would imagine, we did not recover anything! We’ve learned the hard way! During this dilema, my wife was diagnosed with lung cancer and faught a good fight until her passing in April 2020! Her legacy lives on as we (I) use the cryptocurrency funds to support the homeless, needy, elderly & handicap! We (I)continued to learn how to trade Cryptocurrency, BTC at $3k, ETH at $400 & yes Doge at $0.00001 today we have over 50 Cryptocurrencies worth over $3 million USD. To all who decide to invest in Cryptocurrency, stay vigilant, trust in God and listen to those who know, not people who dint know! Minister Samuel, Blessings
I fell for a staking scam. The URL, at first glance, looked legit. The language on the site had no typographical errors. The logos didn’t look grainy like they had been copied and pasted. The site included the typical warnings about being scammed…and yet I fell for it all. I tried to stake my Lumens before the fake countdown ran out. I tried to connect my hardware wallet several times to no avail, and I grew more anxious with every failed attempt as I watched the fake countdown roll on. And then success, I connected my wallet to see the confirmation message on my wallet asking for permission to make the transaction. I paused for a moment and reread the site, “please be assured that no tokens will be moved from your address”. I confirmed the transaction and watched my balance go from nearly 20,000 to 1.54. I immediately felt the blood drain from my face as I realized the last 10 years of studying crypto, and the associated technology to secure it, had been overridden in my mind by a criminal’s well-designed false sense of urgency. I revisited the URL to find one additional letter that didn’t belong there. I was painfully cautious, and yet my own emotions failed me even when I knew better.
After losses in 2016 that exceeded our life savings of $500k to Five Winds and Mining Max we learned to “trade Cryptocurrency” and recovered by 2018. We also learned what companies were “trustworthy” and did all of our business with those companies! Companies that helped us get back our losses included “Changelly” & “Coinbase” just to name a few! God get all the honor then these companies for treating customers with respect and loyalty! You want to invest? Don’t listen to folks who know nothing & listen to folks who do know something like Changelly blog and CoinMarketCap news! Then proceed with Gods help and caution! Best wishes to all who lost and those who are recovering! Blessings to all, and yes, to Changelly!
This, ladies and gentlemen is an unfortunate tale of thinking one knows everything about crypto…
Quick disclaimer: ‘NO ONE’ ever knows everything about Crypto!!
I was introduced to trading bots one fine day while researching cryptocurrencies as one does on the most prestigious of applications. Now you may be familiar with said application as it is by far where all the greatest minds in the world of Crypto come to exchange, debate, teach and even scam one another. Yes! You’ve guessed it, the one and only… ‘TIK TOK’.
After watching the most riveting video regarding trading bots, I brought it upon myself to do a little research and to make a long story short, decided to test my hand in hopes to make a little extra cash. So, I allotted a few grand, created my bots to the gentleman’s specifications and just like that I was up and running. Now at first everything was sunshine and rainbows until one terrible day, the Dogefather himself (Elon), the Chinese government, Chinese and American whales as well as institutions decided to crash the market.
BOOM!
60% of the cash that had been allotted to the bots was gone… POOF! Just like that.
After crying myself to sleep and eating a few gallons of ice cream to sooth my broken heart I decided to try to figure out where I went wrong as the gentleman on most prestigious of apps promised me that this could never happen…
Well ladies and gentleman come to find out you need at least 30k to cover 30-40 bots and make sure to turn your stop loss OFF!! That was it, if I hadn’t had that option on I would have been able to wait it out and recover my losses. Whelp! I hope this helps someone deciding to go down the bot road and be careful.
Moral of the story… YOU NEVER KNOW EVERYTHING ABOUT CRYPTO!!
After reading about the risks associated with online wallets I bought a Trezor One in 2019. I carefully read all the instructions,found it easy to setup, and began depositing coins that I wanted to store. All was well until October 2020 when I wanted to deposit additional coins. I connected my Trezor to my laptop and brought up the Trezor home website. As I was proceeding a message popped up on my computer – a very official looking screen that claimed to be from Trezor. It advised me that something had gone wrong and told me I would have to enter my recovery seed.
That was a crucial point in my life. I did not recognize this as a phishing attempt. I had forgotten all the protection steps I had read a year earlier. Most of all, I did not become suspicious when the message told me not to close my browser. I did enter my recovery seed and lost 1BTC and 8 ETH, everything I had in the wallet. Not only did I lose it all, I got to watch it go. The attackers transferred everything out to their own wallet. I watched the consensus progress until my balance was 0 in about 10 minutes. Meanwhile I was on the phone with Satoshi Labs to try to stop it. There was nothing they could do. They reminded me to never give my recovery seed to anyone. Furthermore unless the loss was $1,000,000. or more no law enforcement would do anything, even though I had a record of the wallet receiving my stolen coins. An expensive lesson.
My investment failure story is buying high and selling low.
The worst thing you can do in investing is panic buying and panic selling, I have lost money many times using this method.
When the market is pumping and you FOMO buy without doing any research why it is going up and buy in is a great way to lose money because it could be a flash pump followed by the flash dump.
Same thing when the market is going down, when you see price action is falling rapidly and you start to panic sell is worst thing you can do, of course anyone is going to panic if they see their investments down. But it is not the right time to sell, at least wait for the retest to de-risk your self or sell completely.
If you have investments in good coins with good fundamentals it’s not going to $0 in one day, the price action might be very volatile that’s why you need to have a cold head.
I was having Decent portfolio of my crypto holdings holding XRP,BAT,USDT,XLM,Tron of almost 2000 USD on a new crypto exchange in the country during the market crash i was expecting double of my initial investments i left my cryptos on the exchange itself and when i tried to access the account after 2-3 days as the market was again in the bull run and bears were tired , I tried to access my account in first attempt it was showing that my password was showing to be incorrect , I tried 3-4 times after that also was getting the same message that “Incorrect Password”, I reset my password and went into the account and was expecting to have some profits as the market was rising but this was not the case there were no funds which i left it was showing everything zero. I was thinking how it is possible when i went to notification settings i found that every notification was disabled for the email and all the funds were transferred to another addresses and all the funds were wiped up. When i contacted the support they too were helpless as their T&C were clearly mentioning that if a withdrawal of funds is done it can’t be reversed and at the time of opening the account i have to accept them all. I was helpless no one could help me in that situation being a student i saved my money from compromising all my needs and controlling the expenses. When I started investigating myself i found that my password was same on all other platforms too and i got the email stating that someone from Russia has accessed my account and after a data breach check I found my email and password and from there i lost all my savings it would be better if i would have all different passwords for all other platforms and should vary with the platform or if i could have a cold storage to store the funds in as it hurts a lot when you loose your sacrificed money. I should have kept money offline or should have different passwords. In this case no one can help me out as because of my stupidity i lost my hard saved savings.
My story goes back to early crypto days where $120 could buy 50 BTC. Well I knew nothing of BTC then but instead I was trying to use Virwox to purchase SLL using PayPal. But instead I received 50BTC (which I was supposed to then use the BTC to buy SLL) knowing nothing though I thought I was ripped off and just logged out and never went back. That is until 2020 when I remembered about that purchase. So I went to the website to my hope crushed heart they closed earlier that Year. And my desktop from years back, yea the one that would have the private keys to the wallet on it’s hard drive. Sold to some random person. So at today’s current price 50Btc valued at $1.55Million USD lost forever from what would of been only a $120 investment. Now in my early BTC ignorance if I had the Ledger Nano S to store that BTC on. I would be a millionaire today. So I hope I win this contest so that next time I am thanking Ledger Nano S for saving me millions of dollars.
Pro Tip: Don’t think you can succesfully do a crypto swap at 2AM after 2 bottles of red.
Not much lost (only a few hundred $), much experience gained…
How to be an idiot an expose:
So i took out a cash advance and bought a full coin in 2016 with a wallet. It was my 2nd wallet ever so I was pretty new, but I had confidence with what would happen with bitcoin. Everything was gravy I was up 10k in 2019 until that fateful night. My boss at the bar I worked at got annihilated drunk and needed a ride home, I, being 2 years sober, was volunteered to drive her home. now I dont know why volcom makes such shallow pockets in their shorts but getting into her car my phone fell out of my pocket and I ran it over. 2 hours later I realized I dont have my phone and just figure i left it at work and I can get it the next day.
I pull up to my work and see in the parking lot my phone…that wasn’t backed up anywhere…with my wallet seed saved in it because i was too lazy to write it down, no seed, no private key, usb debugging disabled and a screen so cracked there were rocks embedded in it. I still have the phone, i completely gutted it hoping to extract the hard drive (which isn’t a thing), I look at the wallet every now and again on the block chain and see the money just sitting there with absolutely nothing I can do about it….writing this story breaks my heart. chers guys.
My 1.3563 btc @3500 on p.o.s. phone. The phone lived on my dresser with a wonky screen for a couple years. My child was all about the environment and took my btc phone to be recycled.
Bought into BTC many years ago. Soon after I couldn’t access it. Noob crypto knowledge, poor record keeping meant that I was locked out for many years. I have now regained access. My next plan to spend some of my BTC on a Ledger