I was set for life.

How I was there from the start - and still lost everything

This isn't a "I almost made it" story. This is a story of someone who was there, made every wrong move anyway and ended up further behind than when he started. Maybe reading it saves you from repeating it.

• 2014

  I was doing sysadmin freelance work on Elance. Some clients wanted to pay me in Bitcoin. I said no. I was poor, struggling to pay rent - I needed real money for real bills. I took the fiat.

  Those satoshis would be worth life-changing money today. I know. I think about it constantly. At the time it felt like the only sensible choice. That's the cruel part.

• 2017

  The ICO craze brought me back. I took my entire life savings - under $10,000 - and threw it into a basket of weird altcoins. Some pumped. Some dumped. By December 2017 I was sitting on $90,000.

  I didn't take profits. The coins dumped. I rode it all the way back to zero. Every. Single. Dollar.

• 2018 – 2020

  Discovered ADA. Lost money. Bought more ADA. ADA dropped to $0.03. I bought 100,000 ADA at the bottom - one of the few genuinely good calls I ever made. Sold at $1.

  That felt like finally making it. I sold everything - ADA and all the other garbage - and bought 5 BTC.

  Then my girlfriend and I broke up. We split the stack.

• 2020 – 2023

  Life kept hitting. Every time I needed money, Bitcoin was down. I sold low, again and again, until I was down to 1.2 BTC.

  Then I made the worst decision of the whole story: instead of holding what was left, I tried to win it all back.

  Then I started to gamble it away like a twat hoping I will make it all again: bought some S9 miners to solo pool - failed, sold some to buy shitcoins - failed, bought some NFTs - failed, rented hashpower to solo pool - failed.

  FAILED. FAILED. FAILED.

• 2026

  Balance: $0 in crypto. $100,000 in debt (bank loan for an apartment). Every person I introduced to Bitcoin over the years is doing well. Some are genuinely wealthy.

  "I literally just had to do nothing and failed."

  The depression that comes from knowing you were set for life - multiple times - and dismantled it with your own hands is something I wouldn't wish on anyone.

What I learned - so you don't have to

I'm not telling you to buy Bitcoin or to avoid it. I'm telling you what destroyed my stack, because all of it was entirely avoidable.

• Desperation makes terrible decisions. Every time I sold low it was because I needed money and the market didn't care. Build an emergency fund in fiat before you stack crypto. Never put in money you might need.
• Trying to "win it back" is how you lose everything. The miners, the shitcoins, the NFTs, the rented hashpower - none of that was investing. It was gambling dressed up in technical vocabulary. The moment you're chasing losses, stop.
• Life events eat stacks. Breakups, emergencies, bad months - they all come for your coins eventually. Don't keep crypto you can't survive without touching.
• Doing nothing is a strategy. The people who got rich from Bitcoin mostly did one thing: bought it and forgot about it. I was more active than any of them and ended up with less than all of them.
• Your life is not on pause while you wait for the moon. I spent years watching charts instead of building skills, savings and relationships. The opportunity cost of obsession is invisible until it isn't.

If you are an OG who got into Bitcoin because someone like me pointed the way - this is your reminder to be grateful, stay humble and maybe take some profits.

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