I’m an idiot. I’m a fool. I’m a jackass. I’m a human- What I wish I understood about investing in Bitcoin before getting wrecked
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Regretfully, I sold my entire stack of Bitcoin (3.5 BTC) last March when it was trading for $5,600. After wallowing in remorse and eating a lot of chili dogs, I have been re-building my Bitcoin stack (slowly) with a three-pronged approach that I‘ll share in a follow-up article. Perhaps you got shaken out in the most recent drop in the crypto markets and are wondering if it’s time to get in again. Or maybe you are panicking because you are staring at paper losses that you didn’t expect when you bought Bitcoin a few months ago.
I’m an idiot. I’m a fool. I’m a jackass. I’m a human.
Making mistakes sucks. Making massive financial mistakes can be gut-wrenching. I sold 3.5 BTC last March for $5,600. I bought in for an average of $8,000 per Bitcoin. Worse yet, I sold over 100 ETH for around $128. I bought them for an average of $215 each. At today’s market value of over $355,000, I sold my Bitcoin and ETH for $32,400. Ouch. It makes me want to cry writing these words. Luckily, my wife doesn’t read my writing or I’d be hearing about this for the rest of my life. She has noticed that I am significantly grayer over the past year, but luckily so has everyone.
How I got wrecked
I had a strategy after the last bull market cycle to re-enter the crypto market before the 2020 halving. I made a bold bet and bought my BTC and ETH in large swaths and planned on riding it up for the next bull run. Then the pandemic hit. I suffered from flashbacks of the last financial crisis. I remembered how I lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in real estate and stock wealth in a matter of months. In hindsight, here are why I think I got shaken out.
Mistake #1- Selling everything due to a black swan event
Being in sales at the time (lost my job since then), I watched my income drop considerably. I was working from home and because no one was buying what I was selling, I became obsessed with the financial markets. I was heavily invested in stocks and crypto. I couldn’t stomach the losses. Being the sole income provider for my household, I sold everything. In hindsight, I shouldn’t have been so heavily concentrated in…
