Comment by btc_throughaway | Hacker News Reader

Comment by btc_throughaway | Hacker News Reader

btc_throughaway

I didn't miss the boat.

I bought the boat, was known as the shipmaster, and then set my boat on fire, along with myself.

Bought $10K+ of BTC in 2013 near the peak, traded it up to $60K even though BTC had crashed, talked to everyone and anyone about it and was known as the "Bitcoin guy". This was a lot of money for a high schooler / freshman.

By 2015 I had added another $10K of my own money. Much to the chagrin of my friends and family. Discouraged/depressed, and wanting to just lead a normal life where every waking moment wasn't spent thinking about BTC/alts, I took riskier and riskier positions until I blew up.

And I was relieved, for a while, until BTC started rising again. Now I can't get away from the discussion, and people are messaging me about it even if we hadn't spoken in years.

I would be okay with just losing $20K, but I'm honestly losing my sanity seeing and hearing about Bitcoin everywhere, even at work. The worst part is that no one knows I've lost anything. They all think I'm some genius.

I can definitely relate to this. I was an early Ethereum adopter and mentioned it to friends fairly often when it was around $2. I’m usually pretty dispassionate around others, so my friends took my zeal for Ethereum seriously and bought a bunch of it.

Once Ethereum hit $6, on a market cap basis it felt overvalued for what was essentially an early stage startup. I was afraid it would have scaling issues with smart contracts. I convinced myself it was overly hyped, even though I now realize that very few people outside of my bubble had heard of it. I sold the first time it dipped from $6 to $3.75.

As soon as I sold, it started heading higher. Every day I told myself it was overvalued, and yet it continued higher. New coins that contributed nothing of value were suddenly raising tens of millions of dollars, so I refused to believe that the bubble could continue much longer. This was early 2016.

I then repeated the cycle with Monero—bought early, told others, sold early, missed out on 2000% gains.

Most of my friends have enough money to retire at 25 and while I’m happy for them, it’s definitely negatively impacting my mental health. Crypto isn’t my first case of bad luck, but it’s the only one that I’ve had to relive nearly every day—it’s practically inescapable with the current hype.

Try not to let it impact how you view yourself, though. You seem like an intelligent person who made a couple of impulsive decisions that ended up being magnified by hindsight.

Thank you.

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