When ppl claim this I always wonder how they think it happens, or have unrealistic expectations on how much $1bn actually is.
I joined crypto with $200. If I held my initial bitcoin since then and never traded, I would have ~$300k.
If, instead, from that moment I sold the top and bought the bottom of every crypto cycle on Bitcoin, and never paid any taxes, I would have ~$6m USD.
If I put my entire net worth into the Ethereum ICO and never touched it, today I would have ~$150m pre-tax.
While it was definitely possible to have made >$1bn with the opportunities in the market, these versions of reality would also require me to make no mistakes, and have no need to spend $ in real life, or take excessive risk via leverage.
In reality, I grew up in a working class family. I didn’t have a trust fund and I had to pay off my student loan myself. I had a job at Tescos while at high school. After university, I needed to pay rent and fund cost of living and eventually buy a place to live.
I worked at startups for relatively little $ salary, and while a couple have done okay, they still are illiquid and worth nothing until some exit.
Perhaps if I erase a couple of dumb mistakes and drawdowns, or if I had a lil more grind, then my answer would be different today. But it is easy to say this with perfect hindsight vision. It’s easy to see where you could have optimised better, and decisions you made look dumb when the past makes things so obvious.
The truth is I have always optimised for enjoying my life and not going to 0. I never felt like I had a safety net, so it was never possible for me to do anything in any other way. I would probably have less money if I had tried to add more risk or chased $ harder, because being all-in with your entire livelihood is a mental battle and I feel I only win that battle when the stakes are lower.
In writing this, maybe I do understand why CT folks believe this, because modern CT sees crypto as a late-stage lottery ticket farm, where the optimal strategy is to 5x leverage up your portfolio in a hope of catching a good 20% move and then leaving. Or, literally going all-in on the next coin they heard Ansem is buying. So perhaps to them, looking back at the charts, of course that’s what successful folks did.
In reality, I use leverage close to never (and typically to reduce risk rather than add risk — have used it to add risk maybe 3 times in the last 5 years, and maybe 15 times ever). I never go all-in on anything, have only ever done that on BTC and ETH before in the last decade. When I buy other things, I limit risk to tiny amounts, because I treat it as a 0 until proven otherwise (so, always <1% liquid portfolio). Liquid portfolio is also a smaller % of overall portfolio to future-proof against my own fuckups.
Obviously I made a lot of money, I have been here 12 years! CT doesn’t want to hear about “getting rich in a decade” though. I am happy with where I am and have never really cared or optimised for maximising $ earnings, but instead having a nice life that lets me enjoy the game we play together.
This is not to take credit away from the hard working teams out there in crypto that have already created a great product and are in it for the right reasons.
Many amazing teams in the space just want to make that clear.
The difference between altcoins and stocks is simple.
99% of people create altcoins to make money selling their altcoin which is immediately public, many times, before they even have a real product/service.
99% of people create a company in hopes that it becomes valuable and provides a good service and then eventually goes public after they have a proven working product/service.
And you wonder why your altcoins don't hold value long term.
BlackRock CEO Larry Fink just said he estimates more than $4.5 TRILLION of value is currently held accross the crypto ecosystem and that will expand rapidly
This sucks. I feel awful for everyone who got wiped out.
But let’s be real about what happened.
“Retail” didn’t get flushed. New retail is buying spot on centralized exchanges or large caps through ETFs - they’ll barely notice this move. Prices just rolled back two weeks.
The people who got liquidated weren’t retail investors. They were crypto natives and traders using leverage on decentralized exchanges. As always.
This was painful, but it wasn’t a retail flush. It was a leverage washout of our most ardent believers.
In these hard times, I don't care if you were bullish, bearish or kangarooish, my DM's are opened if you need someone to talked to.
I've been in your shoes some years ago and lost big when trading & is a nasty feeling but is ONLY money.
Please take care of yourselves 🙏!
It is pretty crazy to see how quickly Coinbase passed $1 billion of on-chain loan originations.
Seems like a no brainer finance is moving onto these new rails.
Companies like $COIN continue to be well positioned to benefit from this trend.
Big reason why we invested years ago.
Hi Internet! I'm Drew and THIS IS MY FACE.
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For those that don’t me I just lost a million dollars on a dream I wanted
I missed all the red flags
Sad but true
Bad partners and all that
But I still missed it
I wanted it to work
Even a 40 year vet gets it wrong