Editor's Note: This article is the author's review of his own cryptocurrency investment experience, sharing the three key lessons he learned from the traps of greed, emotional investing, and lifestyle. In the 2018 bear market, he suffered heavy losses due to blindly chasing investments, and later lost everything through futures trading. In March 2020, the Bitcoin flash crash led him to completely withdraw from the crypto space and switch to film production. Ultimately, he realized that greed, emotional investing, and overly rapid lifestyle upgrades were the root causes of his failure.
Original Content (edited for readability):
My First Bull and Bear Market Cycle Reflection: Lessons Learned - Before entering the cryptocurrency space, I was always starting up companies. Digital Gorkha was my third startup project, which I began working on in 2016. We developed a simple visitor management and security app for physical locations, and also raised some funding - but from the wrong investors, giving away more equity than we should have.
This mistake put us in a bind. Although we had decent user growth and revenue, raising Series A funding became almost impossible - the shareholder structure was a mess, and the technology we built didn't form a real moat.
As a founder, I watched my company heading towards failure every day, thinking of ways to change its fate. It was then that I started searching for a technological moat - a way to help us complete that round of funding that was slipping away.
Meanwhile, the immense pressure from my parents was constantly increasing, as my wedding was approaching and I hadn't drawn a salary for six months. I was staying at a university friend's place - they were covering my food and accommodation expenses.
I had nothing left to lose, and it was then, in a late-night Google search, that I stumbled upon blockchain.
I had a background in cybersecurity and was already familiar with cryptography, so I quickly grasped the blockchain architecture. I read about different use cases, explored its future potential, and eventually came across a blog on blockchain identity systems. This instantly sparked an idea.
At Digital Gorkha, we had a verified visitor database covering over 100 locations in more than 20 cities, recording over 1,000 data points daily. If I could put these identities on the blockchain, I could create something with a real moat.
And so, GetXS was born - a blockchain-based identity layer under Digital Gorkha.
I started pitching it to investors, but it was mid-2016 and Indian VCs weren't interested in blockchain investments yet. I pitched to angel investors like Anupam Mittal, Kunal Shah, and even giants like Accel and Sequoia, but they didn't see the potential. Looking back, this was an early version of , but I couldn't raise a single penny at the time.
We persisted for six months, but the burn rate was too high, and the debts I had taken to survive were haunting me daily. My parents mocked me every day for being penniless and about to get married. With no choice left, I had to sell off 30% equity for almost nothing, forcing me to leave the company I had created.
The real estate developers who had invested in Digital Gorkha didn't like my blockchain exploration - they wanted to run the company their way. Crushed by the financial pressure, I had already given up in my heart. So I abandoned entrepreneurship and started looking for jobs in the blockchain space.
Falling Down the Crypto Rabbit Hole
I did three things: started @ItsBlockchain, a blog documenting my blockchain learning. Spun off GetXS as an independent startup, running it with a new co-founder. Worked as a blockchain consultant at an IT firm in Bangalore. The money I earned was just enough to sustain myself, but not enough to bring my wife over. It was then that I remembered Bitcoin - I bought 1 Bitcoin in October 2016. Three months later, I checked the price and found it had doubled.
That moment changed everything, and I dove deep into cryptocurrencies, searching for the next Bitcoin. I discovered ETH and XRP, and made my first real investment - less than a month later, my portfolio had 10x'd. That's how I quit my job four months later.
I told my manager, "What's the point of coming to the office every day to do meaningless things? I'll stay at home, do interesting things, and earn four times my salary." From then on, I pivoted @ItsBlockchain from blockchain to cryptocurrencies, focusing on and ICOs.
One day, I published an article: "Top 10 Coins to Buy in August". The server crashed. Even after three upgrades, the site's traffic that month reached 150K. I had found the demand breakthrough. We increased our investment in list articles, and traffic peaked at 1 million views. ICOs were booming, and we had a massive email list and incredible traffic. So I started monetizing through ads, paid articles, and providing consulting services for crypto investors.
I went from a zero bank balance at the start of 2017 to over $1 million in revenue through ItsBlockchain by the end of the year. Life was good, but greed consumed me.
The 2018 Bear Market: My portfolio flipped - at the time, everyone thought investing in was a way to increase their Bitcoin.
So in January 2018, when exploded, I converted 90% of my Bitcoin into over 40 different - planning to hold them for life.
This was my biggest mistake, as the market started to slowly decline. Initially, it looked like a normal correction, and I found comfort in the rebounds. I kept telling myself, "Everything will be fine." Because I was busy traveling, smoking weed, and spending money like a crazy rich person, I thought the market would always reward me.
The biggest deception? rebounded 6-7 times at the $6K support level. Everyone thought it was unbreakable. Everyone kept HODLING. Everyone thought it was just a healthy correction. Then reality hit me.
broke below $6K and crashed to $3.2K. I gave up around $4K and sold all my coins. In the end, my portfolio was left with less than 5%. I lost everything again.
I was desperate to recover. I started futures trading, and by early 2019, when reached $13.5K, I had regained 30% of my portfolio. But the sideways chop killed me - technical analysis no longer worked, and I fell into a losing streak.
I found a job at , writing analysis articles and getting paid in . I could have held those . But I didn't, I gambled all my funds on futures, and then, March 2020 happened.
flash crashed, and I was liquidated, losing everything. In that moment, I learned the lessons from this cycle and decided to exit cryptocurrencies, instead pursuing a year of filmmaking.
Looking back, I learned three key lessons:
Greed is your greatest enemy, when you earn the money to change your life, take it, do not pursue unlimited returns. Your lifestyle may become a trap, I have raised my standard of living too quickly. When I lost everything, I felt suffocated.
Emotional investing will make you go down in flames, I only seek to confirm biases and ignore obvious warning signs. The market doesn't care about your beliefs. I completely left the Altcoin in 2020, but as we know... no one can really leave the Altcoin.
To be continued...
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