Industry Players Share Spooktacular Stories About Their Horrible Investments

As the gloomy spirit of Halloween has been lurking in the air giving you the perfect excuse to embrace your spooky side, so was BeInCrypto stretching its curious cyber tentacles to leading cryptocurrency investors and traders to trick them out of stories about their most horrific investments.  BeInCrypto had the opportunity to ask industry players what their most terrible investment was, as well as what their state of mind was when they went through it, and how they would prevent such mistakes from happening again.

“Inflation kills your cash savings”

For Andy Cheung, the founder and executive chairman at crypto exchange offering structured products ACDX and former COO at crypto exchange OKEx, his worst investment turned out to be fiat money. Cheung shared:

“Inflation kills your cash savings. The good thing about cryptocurrency is that it expands my boring investment portfolio. Now, I always keep a good percentage of my assets in cryptocurrency. It is also good for savings, because you can’t spend them easily, as right now, sadly, cryptocurrencies still aren’t widely accepted at stores. But of course, you can’t go blind and purchase whatever tokens in the market.”

He continued revealing that a few years ago, he lost 99% of an investment amount on a token because of the fear of missing out. Cheung went on saying: “Somehow a friend of mine convinced me to buy the token without doing any homework. But promised listings never happened. The roadmap never fulfilled. I am sure that I am not the only person having similar experience during the ICO boom. You can’t let the hype and excitement get you.” Fortunately, the amount Cheung invested in the token was not big and did not really cause him financial impact. “But it never feels good being deceived after putting in your trust,” he said and added:

“It taught me a valuable lesson though — you can’t treat trading cryptocurrency like a game. Somehow the great volatility confused us all. Back in the days, we had the feeling that even a mediocre project could give you a 10x and even more return. But I bet you won’t have the same investment mindset in the traditional markets. That’s why staying cool, calm, collected and doing your homework is extremely important. Don’t be the moonboy dreaming about lambos all day – greed makes man blind and foolish.”

No trades at night

Investor and fundamental analyst Vinicius Terranova linked his trade mistake with his physical condition, at that moment. He said:

“The worst investment is most associated with a trade mistake. What happened is that I was very sleepy, after spending a few sleepless nights or sleeping badly, while operating. I ended up missing a 0 when sending the order. I didn’t realize the mistake and went back to sleep.”

When he woke up, Terranova realized what had happened, since the operation had stopped. “A loss that would not have a big financial impact, ended up costing 80% of my capital. I only got up again because I knew that I would be able to recover the lost BTC, and from then on I went back to making my trades in a more concentrated and technical way,” Terranova told BeInCrypto, saying further:

“The main lesson I learned is that now I no longer open trades when I am sleepy or very tired. I avoid doing trades at night, and I only do it when I have insomnia.”

Fear of missing out

The worst investment of popular YouTuber and cryptocurrency analyst TheMoonCarl, often known as just “The Moon,” was buying many different types of altcoins at the top of the 2017/2018 bubble. He said he had “the same FOMO like everyone else” and bought probably 30 different random coins. “I had no clue what I was buying, I was just hoping these coins would pump. I was fortunate enough to cut my losses pretty early, in mid 2018, so at least I didn’t hold these coins through the bear market. Actually, some of my coins were in big profit when I sold them,” continued The Moon, adding:

“What I learned from this is that FOMO is even more dangerous than panic selling. Remember, the ‘F’ in FOMO stands for ‘fear,’ which is a very strong emotion. When I invest and trade from now on I always make sure not to make my decisions based on emotions. If you buy something out of fear, you’ll most likely lose your money. This is what I preach on my YouTube channel. Another lesson I learned is to just stick with Bitcoin. So I always tell my 130,000 subscribers, buy Bitcoin and HODL for 10 years. Thank me later.”

“All coins gone”

Crypto trader known as DonAlt bought some BQX during their ICO, with the aim of selling it once the token was listed on an exchange. Since he was about to get rid of a lot of coins, he sent them one by one, and when it was BQX’s turn, he entered an old address and sent all his coins to the wrong address.

“All coins gone. Immediately afterwards, the coin became x10 more expensive. An expensive mistake. Now, I always send a test transaction before sending the rest,” DonAlt shared.

Trader who goes by the pseudonym ExplorerDavid has a similar horror story to tell. He entitled it “Paranormal Crypto Activity?” “At the beginning of 2019, I came across the then lucrative Paragon (PRG) coin. The team behind PRG wanted to revolutionize the legal cannabis industry, with a sophisticated blockchain solution,” said ExplorerDavid and explained what happened further:

“So wallet loaded, PRG bought, and ‘bankrupted’ after a year-long paranormal downtrend (lack of SEC approval). And the investment’s gone completely. I call this experience the Paragon Effect! Invest not only because of fictitious, lucrative developments, but also because the compliance and security system of the project meets high standards! Then you will probably escape a crypto horror a la OneCoin, Paragon, or PlusToken.”

Overconfidence

Crypto trader and investor known as Crypto Rand revealed that their worst experience was with Pledgecamp (PLG), where they lost around 95% of the investment. “But well, they say you don’t have a loss until you sell… hahaha,” said Crypto Rand, further sharing that they felt “basically disappointment and anger, as the team changed the token management terms and structure multiple times. They fired the contact we had in the company, they ignored the project, etc. Complete nonsense.” Crypto Rand concluded:

“The investment was in the middle of the ICO boom, so the due diligence I did was pretty lax, everything was paying off. We saw Zuckerberg’s sister in the company with the Facebook Foundation, a very interesting proposal, several friendly funds that I respect also entered, we had direct contact with the team, etc. Clearly, I was overconfident and did not stop at many red flags that are now obvious to me.”

To borrow the words of English novelist Catherine Aird, “if you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.” Happy Halloween!