Am I the only one from 2017/2018 that isn’t rich now? A 1 million dollar mistake

I was soo certain that I was going to be a millionaire at the very least. I never had soo much money in my portfolio. I knew I would eventually write a post on reddit about my crypto journey into early retirement. But it seems as I am cursed. . .

It all started in late 2017 for me. About November 2017 my friends were talking about Bitcoin and Ethereum. As anyone would be, I became curious. I recalled hearing about Bitcoin in 2011, I remember disregarding it, I was in my very early 20's at that time. Thought there was no need for that because I had a visa card, and I had no idea about investing or anything. I felt regret and fomo, and went all in with whatever I had left. In December that year I multiplied my money, as you can see on that charts everything went parabolic. I wasn't emotionally attached to anything, so selling for a quick 5x was easy. But as you can also see (you might want to write this down) when Bitcoin began entering the bear market in 2018 it took a long time for Bitcoin to find it's bottom (about a year). Everyone on social media and youtube was saying "buy the dip!" technically speaking that is true, I just had to wait 4 years. So I bought the dip of every dip, and 6 to 8 months out I felt foolish for not DCA a little more lightly, and being patient. See, patience plays both ways, to buy and hold, but also to hold USD and to wait for a good entry point.

Three years have passed, I was investing a large sum of my paycheck into crypto. Living very frugal to invest probably about 80% of my paycheck on average into crypto. I was fairly diversified. Btc, Eth, even XRP and other various alts on beyond page 2 on CMC (I ended up selling these too early). Made many mistakes along the way. You hear the stories about how people got hacked, how they sent crypto to the wrong address, how they didn't sell and held all the way down etc. I heard it all, and I slowly throughout the years crossed each one off those of the list of mistakes I made. Been hacked, scammed, phished you name it. Earlier this year I made the biggest mistake I have ever made thus far, and it costed me 1 million dollars in gains.

"Bigger bags don't always mean the highest returns."

My portfolio finally breached the 6 figure range, and quickly was in the multiples reaching more than halfway to a million. It got to my head. XRP wasn't really moving due to the SEC lawsuit. So I thought I should sell it and try to trade it into something else. By the end of that day, I lost a third of that position in USD value. I laughed it off because I had soo much more to spare. I said "I'm going to make this all back on one trade, watch." This went on a few times until I lost 2/3rds of my entire portfolio. I wasn't laughing anymore, and I realized I had become a gambler and not an investor. There was a series of moments where I would buy into something like Binance and XRP but I couldn't hold on for long, I couldn't stomached the stress, I couldn't sleep. So I couldn't hold on long. I realized my psychology changed. I lost the feeling of being safe. When you buy in soo low and hold you can hold through just about anything when you are up X amount. I lost that security when I sold and let the numbers get to my head.

I took a step back, tried to find a real entry point to get back in at, but I had cold feet. This was around April, I felt like at any time the market could crash. I was still up in profits, so I decided to just wait everything out. 3 years of preparing for this run up and I ruined that opportunity of a lifetime. Will there ever be another opportunity like this again? I guess we will see in 3 years or so.

I'm not the best writer, and I am skipping through some details but I don't want this post to be too long than it already is. This is one of the biggest and stupidest mistakes I have made in my entire life, but at least I am running away in the green, i guess. I hope some of you that are new here can learn from my mistakes. Just remember, don't let the numbers get to your head when you approach 1 million. Don't get over confident. I heard similar stories just like this where people trade their portfolios away. I remember hearing about it in early 2018. I got over confident, and disregarded the warning signs and stories I have read, people warning me what not to do.

One last thing before I go back to work. "Bigger bags don't always mean the highest returns." The biggest lesson that learned here. Living soo frugal to pack the heaviest bags does not always mean you will come out on top. So live life and enjoy it. Be with your family.

Sorry for the long read *put on McDonalds cap*

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EDIT: Forgot an important detail. I would of exceeded 1 million in profits had I not screwed around with my portfolio.