At the time of this crypto hype I didnt find it easy to buy and sell crypto and not only that but trusting any crypto exchange with more than a few thousand dollars of my money wasn't happening. Would be interesting to know what exchange he used and how much in taxes those crypto gains were. For anyone to actually believe that those gains were going to sustain themselves was foolish...out of thousands of cryptocurrencies less than 100 will be lucky to be around in the years to come. If the hype wasn't so great as it was the cryptocurrency fun could have lasted a long long time.
He bet his family’s entire life savings and mortgaged his home
- Thread starter johnarb
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You can take the after-tax gains, put into SPY and live a comfortable life off of the dividends. And if you're really smart, you'd take half over to my friend Asadullah in securities...
I bet he won’t do that.
“No one would shovel shit if they had a million dollars.”
Survivorship bias at its best. But then, maybe we are all survivors too? 
https://www.marketwatch.com/story/h...the-dream-2019-11-10?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo
He bet his family’s entire life savings and mortgaged his home for a shot at millions — now he’s living the dream
‘I’d seen a story at some point about someone who had spontaneous orgasms at random times throughout the day. That’s the best way I can describe the feeling. When I checked my phone, I’d be up another six figures since the last time I looked. I couldn’t resist stopping whatever I was doing to pump my fist and shout, “YEESSSS!”’
That’s Dan Conway, a former middle-management cog in a Silicon Valley firm’s wheel, describing in a piece for The Hustle how it felt to see his all-or-nothing $300,000 bet on Ethereum make him a very rich man.
It all started when Conway, who was making about $150,000 a year, asked his wife if he could invest the family’s $100,000 in savings, which was earmarked for their three children’s college education, in a risky crypto play.
“I hated the fake company culture, the bureaucracy, the endless chains of command,” he wrote. “Like so many others, I was looking for some kind of escape.”
His wife knew it could cost them everything but, amazingly, agreed to it anyway.
As a guy who had gotten into trouble before with his addictive personality, part of him recognized such a risk as self-destructive, but the more he read about cryptos, the more he began to believe in its future.
This was in 2015 and bitcoin BTCUSD, -1.80% had fallen out of favor, dropping from a previous high of $1,200 to $300.
“What if it goes up again? What if I put everything I had into this?” he wrote. “I could get rich and never work another day in Corporate America.” After eating up every bit of information he could, Conway turned his focus from bitcoin to Ethereum ETHUSD, -0.85% , which had just launched in July 2015.
“As a disenfranchised suit-and-tie, I was enraptured by the possibility of a decentralized future,” he wrote. “As a greedy speculative investor, it gave me a rush.” He became so smitten with the potential, that he embarked on a wild ride — he used that $100,000 to buy 6,933 ETH at an average price of $14.
Soon thereafter, he was served a heaping spoonful of crypto volatility and watched his initial investment drop below $40,000. “In the midst of a particularly volatile week, I found myself in the emergency room, struggling to breathe,” he explained. “The doctor diagnosed me with a panic event.”
Undeterred, Conway doubled down by tapping into his home equity line. He borrowed another $200,000 and ended up with a total of 26,750 ETH at an average cost of $11.21 each. This had all the makings of serious disaster, but, no, the investing gods had other plans.
“Something miraculous happened: It kept going up… and up… and up. Between February and March of 2017, ETH shot from $15 to $50 per coin. By April, it was at $70; by May, $230,” Conway wrote in The Huslte. “In a span of four months, my $300,000 investment ballooned to $6 million.”
It didn’t stop there. In January 2018, Ethereum topped $1,000, and the memes were flying across the internet:
“It was an unprecedented burst — so monumental in scope that it temporarily froze the exchanges,” said Conway, who wrote a book about his journey. “It was like a 9.0 earthquake with an infinite number of aftershocks.”
He got the urge to sell, and sell he did. It was a market timer’s dream, as he sold most of his Ethereum position for a cool $10 million. Soon after he cashed out with his fortune, digital currencies were absolutely clobbered and still haven’t recovered. Ethereum is currently trading at under $200.
Meanwhile, Conway paid off his mortgage, took a dream trip to Africa and bought a second home in Ireland. He still has seven-figures sitting in his bank.
His advice for would-be Ethereum traders?
“I still believe crypto will open up new possibilities for organizing the world in the decades ahead, and I’m confident it will pop again as a result,” Conway wrote. “But I don’t recommend that anyone try to replicate what I did. For every story like mine, there are hundreds of others about people who lost it all. I know that could’ve easily been me.”
Read: Alt-coin traders share their horror stories
Anyone can get lucky gambling which is what he did. Ask the gamblers in Las Vegas how many of them are now millionaires? Those huge, opulent Las Vegas casinos was built on gamblers losses. He also, violated the most important part of trading which is risk management. He had an all or nothing approach which will bite him if he is stupid enough to get back in!
Talking about casinos , 3 years old video, Dana White gets banned in Palms, for winning too much.
(ofcourse, that's one exception out of millions )
A short story with spin-up in the end :
We had this story in our country, where a guy, sold his & his moms apartments, when BTC was at 18k. Went all in. Busted.
(ofcourse, that's one exception out of millions )
A short story with spin-up in the end :
We had this story in our country, where a guy, sold his & his moms apartments, when BTC was at 18k. Went all in. Busted.
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For every positive story where someone made it you'll find 100 where they lost it all.
Bitcoin made a lot of people very very rich over a few years, ahhhh to have bought 100 in the early days for like $500, cashed out with 2Mil just before xmas
Ohhh wonder if there is a time machine on Amazon ? 
Bitcoin made a lot of people very very rich over a few years, ahhhh to have bought 100 in the early days for like $500, cashed out with 2Mil just before xmas
Ohhh wonder if there is a time machine on Amazon ? No point making it, if your not going to spend it, have fun, off yourself when it's job time, simples!!
Now to make this a positive investing story, people who averaged in monthly are up, even if they started at 18 or 20K, when BTC was at its highest. So advertising such approach would be more prudent, but we have to note we don't know how long these times will last.
And another run up from here to 50-100K is highly unlikely, but who knows, I have been wrong before.
And another run up from here to 50-100K is highly unlikely, but who knows, I have been wrong before.