RV How I Lost $250,000 In Crypto.........
[0:00:00] So, how to make a million dollars in cryto
currencies?
Well, take $5 million, invest it in crypto, and wait six months.
And, boom, just like that you’re down 80% on your investment.
All right.
So, all jokes aside, I did not invest a million dollars, but I did invest a sizeable amount
and I am down 80% on my investment.
And, in today’s video, gents, I’m going to be commiserating, I’m going to be sharing
with you guys my experience with crypto over the last couple of years.
Because come on, I wouldn’t be a proper YouTuber if I didn’t talk about something
that I have no expertise in.
[Music] So, for today’s video, gents, I’m going
to break it into three parts.
I’m going to share with you the story about how I got into crypto.
I think it’s pretty interesting.
And then, after that, I’m going to talk about all the mistakes, all the things I did
wrong, even knowing that I probably shouldn’t be doing this, but I did it anyway and what
it cost me.
And then, I’m going to talk about lessons learned.
Basically, where I’m at now and what I’m going to do to recover.
But, before we get started, gents, let’s talk a little bit about security, because
the number one growing crime in America, the one that is affecting millions of people,
every 14 seconds there’s a victim, we’re talking identity theft.
I mean, can you imagine somebody getting access to your email, then all of a sudden getting
access to all your cryto accounts and wiping you out and not being able to do anything
about it.
And that’s why, gents, I’m excited to have Aura as the sponsor of today’s video.
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So now, I’ve got seven alerts of my information being out there on the dark web, most recently
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video.
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Now, gents, I got to be honest to admit, I was nervous about making this video because
I’m supposed to be a relatively smart guy.
I own a numerous businesses, I’ve had some great successes in different platforms.
I’ve got a fancy MBA.
I actually read quite a few books on crypto, I’d like to think that I’ve watched a
few hundred videos and I’ve got some knowledge base.
And I know for a lot of people, crypto for the last six months has really sucked.
But, I have noticed now just to be straight up, I’ve invested in a lot of Altcoins and
eight out of ten of my Altcoins are down like 90 – over 95%.
Probably some of them like 99.9%.
They’re almost pretty much worthless.
I’m going to end up selling them and just taking the tax right off.
But, looking at this, I realized, you know what?
I’m not alone in this journey, so that’s why I thought sharing this information and
going back.
So, I made a video, I don’t know, a couple of years ago talking about should you invest
in a suit or invest in crypto.
If I had invested at Bitcoin at that point where we all just kind of making fun of it,
I would have – I would have done actually pretty well versus another suit, something
like 30 of them.
But, I still think the points in that video somewhat stand, but I did change my opinion
on Bitcoin and crypto because of a mastermind.
So, I’m in this mastermind, there’s a guy named John Sonmez that put it together
over at Bulldog Mindset.
There are some pretty smart dudes in this mastermind.
You had Richard Cooper over at Entrepreneurs in Cars, Noah Kagan, and there were a number
of other people.
And it was interesting, for the first few months of that mastermind, it’s like we
talked again and again about crypto and where people were putting their money, where they’re
investing.
Even though I thought we’re going to talk more just general business, it seemed to go
towards crypto and it got me, I’m like, you know, these dudes are relatively they’re
smart and I have a lot to learn from them.
And they are all talking about the wins that they’re having.
And this is, again, 2020, everything is going up, everyone is looking like a genius and
I go that whole, you know, the whole FOMO, fear of missing out.
And, I decided in the fall in that winter that, you know what?
I’m going to dive into this.
I’m going to start learning more.
[0:05:00] So, I picked up the book, The Bitcoin Standard.
Now, me being me, I got busy during the holidays, put off reading that book ‘til actually
January of 2021.
But, after getting through that audiobook, which is amazing by the way, I was sold on
the value of crypto currencies, in particular Bitcoin and Ethereum.
And I immediately went over and started my, you know, I bought my first bit of crypto
using an exchange and setting up my first hot wallet.
Now, of course, I’m not going to share with you which exchanges I am on.
I will say they are some of the most popular ones out there and I’m on a couple of exchanges.
Also, I’ve got various wallets out there and I’ve learned the difference between
hot wallets, cold wallets, all that stuff.
But, when I was first getting into it, I have to admit, I felt incredibly stupid.
I’m having to learn the whole new terminology.
I am starting from scratch.
Yes, I’ve got a, you know, it wasn’t just about finance.
There was so much more to this.
Just simply learning how to mix things in and I found that there was – there really
weren’t a whole lot of gurus that I connected with.
That being said, I was able to find some I really enjoyed guy over at Coin Bureau, probably
being one of my favorites.
I love his dry sense of humor.
And he’s really put a lot of effort in his videos and it shows, I mean, the guy’s got
over two million subscribers, is getting hundreds and thousands of views per video.
His information is solid.
He’s really clear about, hey, he’s not telling you to do this, do that, he’s just
trying to give out information and his – he’s probably one of my favorite channels out there.
I also really like Cathryn over at Little Might.
And I like her channel because it’s smaller and she has courses.
And she’s really big in the DeFi and I found that that’s where I was gravitating towards.
I thought NFTs were interesting and crypto in general is interesting.
But, DeFi, you know, for me was really something I was drawn to.
Her courses are amazing as well.
There was also this guy, Sheldon Evans that I started following and watching his videos.
And I have to admit I did not understand what he was talking about with all these charts.
But, I did note that he had a paid Patreon group.
And I’m like, you know what?
I want to get an inside look, what is the information that he’s sharing and I think
going down this path is actually what got a little bit dangerous for me and I’ll talk
about it in a few minutes why.
But, I joined his paid Patreon group and I was in there and all of a sudden, I felt like
I was getting inside information with a lot of other enthusiasts.
There was a pretty cool community there.
And that’s what kind of led me into making some of the big mistakes that, yeah, I started
making in the summer and fall of 2021.
And I’ve nothing else that makes for a great video, right?
Again, if you’re into crypto, if you find this video at all interesting, do me a favor,
smash that like button.
Let me know down in the comments.
I’ve recently started a mastermind with a number of other business owners and it’s
really cool just to be able to talk to people, yes, you’re commiserating about the losses,
but you’re also talking about, you know, where do you see the future, where is going
to be a great place to invest.
I ended up buy – I bought five NFTs, none of them super expensive, but it was something
that, yeah, they’re really not worth much nowadays.
NFTs are harder for me to really take seriously as I think DeFi, but I don’t know.
You got an opinion on crypto?
Again, guys, let me know in the comments below.
So, the biggest mistake I made in crypto, one that cost me I think it put back probably
a year in terms of saving for my dream home is I took money for my dream home and, you
know, that was earmarked for that and I was putting it in crypto.
And that’s where you hear, again, don’t put money into a speculative investment that
you don’t – you can’t lose.
And, I have to say that I could lose this money, it was money I had been saving, putting
aside, but I found that initially the few thousand dollars I put into crypto to experiment,
all of a sudden turned into $10,000, turned into $20,000.
And once I hit that point, I’m like, you know, where can I pull some money from?
You know what?
This money sitting here for this house, I’m going to put it into cryto because, you know,
I thought it was, you know, stupidly that it wasn’t ever going to go down, you keep
seeing things go up and I’m like, well, I’m just losing money on inflation, which
actually wasn’t bad at the time.
But, you tell yourself and you rationalize what you’re doing and I started diverting
money from there, from that savings account that I had been working on for years into
crypto.
And that was probably the biggest mistake I made.
The next mistake was getting greedy and falling into these pump and dumps.
So, I talked about that Patreon group that I was a part of.
And I’m not blaming Sheldon, you know, anything on him.
The guy, you know, he’s been nothing but solid and many of his picks have turned not
to be great ones, but that, you know, he said which is pretty clear, hey, this is just his
investment or his thoughts.
But, in these groups, you would have people kind of going off on tangent sounding really
smart, smarter than I felt I was.
And so, I’m reading this and they’re talking about these interesting coins that no one’s
talking about that you should go, hey, you just grab a whole bunch of this.
And, me, you know starting to go in there and treat this like casino money because all
of a sudden you see, hey, I was smart, I bought Ethereum when it was, you know, just, you
know, well under a thousand bucks and now, it’s $2,000.
So, you’re taking your winnings and you’re putting them over into these Altcoins that
really nobody’s heard of.
I hadn’t done my research except that some guy in some forum that, oh, is paid is saying
that you should start putting some money here.
[0:10:10] And that’s exactly what I did and it’s
probably the biggest mistake because like I said, eight out of ten of those now are
complete losers.
I don’t expect to recover.
They are, yeah, they’re just bombs.
And that takes me to my next mistake is not even understanding the fundamentals.
I didn’t even go in and read the white papers.
I mean, most of these companies you can invest in, they make a white paper available, so
that you can actually read who they are and what they’re about, versus getting caught
into the hype, the whole fear of missing out.
You’re seeing something shoot up and you want to be a part of that.
Greed, you know, greed grabbed me.
All of a sudden, I’m putting a few thousand dollars into something that all of a sudden,
hey, I may double, triple my money.
And instead of pulling out and celebrating that win, no, you know, hey, I’m going to
leave it in there for awhile.
And I took my hands off the wheel, I said, you know what?
I’m going to worry about some other things.
I got busy with business and, yeah, I go back and I look at it the end of last year, all
of a sudden everything is down.
And, you know, I’m kind of that mindset of, you know, I am going to hold on for dear
life.
And that’s kind of where I’m at right now with my investments.
So, at the height, I had almost $300,000 in crypto, at least on paper.
I’d invested, you know, well under $100,000, approximately $75,000 in crypto.
And I thought it was pretty smart.
I had made four times on my money.
I remember even kind of, you know, dropping that I had done this with a few of my friends
and thinking, oh, yeah, you know, I know what I’m doing.
Of course, everyone’s a genius in a bull market.
Now, as we see with the cryto, winter having hit, I mean, lucky for me, I didn’t have
anything in Terra, I didn’t have anything in Luna, I’m not part of the Celsius Network.
But, even though I’ve got majority of my holdings in Ether, in Bitcoin, it’s been
a, yeah, it’s been quite the roller coaster.
It’s – all of those are down substantially.
And so, the ride the last six months has been humbling.
It’s something that I’ve realized, you know what?
You are not as smart as you thought you were and you probably need to get back in and study
those fundamentals.
Understand where you’re putting your money and just slow down a bit.
Now, the good news is I’m not wiped out because I learned a long time ago to protect
myself from myself.
So, I set up automatic investments, which I’ve talked about before.
I’ve got multiple savings accounts, but I also have I’m paying myself first and
putting into conservative investments that I’ve actually been with the same investor
since college.
We went to school together.
I trust the guy to an extent because I also have other places I’m investing, again,
to protect me in case that doesn’t go right.
I also keep my expenses relatively low.
I have some real estate that I’ve invested in, although I do want to expand my real estate
holdings especially in land.
And like a good Texan, I’ve got plenty of guns, ammunition, food, all the stuff that,
yeah, you need just, yeah, everything goes to heck.
And just to be clear, I still believe in crypto.
I think that what we’re going through is definitely a down patch, but I believe in
the future of Bitcoin.
I believe it will be a store value just the same as gold is except digital.
I do believe that Ethereum is what the Web 3.0 is going to be built on.
That or one, you know, its competitors out there.
I do believe in the power of decentralized finance.
When I go through and I look at, yes, I said eight out of my ten Altcoins I believe aren’t
going anywhere or failures, but two out of ten, I’m actually think – I actually hit
something here.
I’ve actually spoken with one of the – the CFO of one of those companies and they’ve
got I think a legitimate project.
Yes, they are down like 98% on their all time high.
That being said, I’ve read their white paper, I think they actually have something.
It has to do with property rights and being able to change how the laws are going to change
and they’re going to be in a position to be able to provide the technology.
And I think these guys do have the chance to be a value, you know, values at billions
of dollars as a company.
And the fact that, wow, I’ve been able to pick up a lot of these tokens for pennies
on the dollar where they once were and I bought them when they were dollars.
So, you know, you’re making – it’s a bit of a speculative bet, but it is something
that I’m fortunate I’m in a position where I have very low expenses and I’ve been continuing
to, yeah, I think invest in the future.
All right, guys.
So, what video to watch next?
How about that time somebody stole my identity?
Yes, it has happened to me and I cover it in this video.
There was a fake Antonio Centeno out there that was contacting companies and stealing
merchandise from them using my name.
Find out, very interesting story.
Yeah, find out what happened here in this video, guys, right here.
Click it, it’s a good one.
[0:14:38] End of audio