Lost $200k in crypto. Now broke but mining 250 Raven a day.

I finally created a Reddit account to join this community in hopes of sharing my story and hear some encouraging words. It’s a story about hitting rock bottom and the hope of redemption. Anyways, here goes.

Last December, a long time friend had his software startup purchased and he was looking at having enough cash to retire at 35 years old. He put some of it in crypto and was telling me about the gains he was seeing. The allure of realizing my own early retirement was irresistible to me, and I promptly cashed out $200k (all) of my retirement savings, confident that by investing it all in crypto and making a few good trades, I could make this dream a reality.

Ten days later and I had the money sitting in an exchange and bought $175k of btc, with the intention of turning the remaining $25k into $250k. I had some incredible gains those first few weeks of January in some smaller coins and I figured I would have $2.5 million in a months time. Ha. And many traders did see such returns, thanks to (I learned later) people like me.

After those first gains, through about mid-March, I chased the markets trying to make up some small losses, then full-blown out of control, buying high and selling low, succumbing to many of the aspects of my personality that I now see had doomed this endeavor from the start.

By the end of April, I was hopping between discord channels trying to 100x what little I had left on the “next big thing,” and lost the last two thousand dollars I had gambling it away on that game on Pancakeswap where you guess if BNB is going to go up or down every 5 minutes.

I had to come clean to my wife and family. I couldn’t stop crying from the shame. I went into therapy.

That was about four months ago and it seems like a lifetime. I’ve been challenging myself to work on those things about me that make this type of behavior irresistible to me. I’ve uncovered so much and am so grateful it happened like this. It’s hard to believe that I wouldn’t change a thing of how it went down.

I guess I feel like I’m finally getting up off the ground and dusting myself off and finding my center. Hopefully, a bit wiser.

Slowly, I’m starting to deposit savings back Into the very retirement accounts I had liquidated. And I cobbled a good bit of hardware together, seeing wisdom in the slow act of accumulation over time, and began to mine Ravencoin, and am earning around 250 per day at the moment.

Even as I confront my self-doubt, I have some crazy notion, after lurking here and reading up on this project, that this is going places.

If there’s anyone out there that thinks that if I just leave these things running and don’t touch it, that there might be some financial salvation for me in the future, I would most appreciate hearing your perspective.

And likewise, if you think it’s “too little to late,” or some other point of view to share, I would be most grateful for those as well.

Thanks for your time.