Before I tell you how I fucked up, let me just say I am very aware of just how many newbie mistakes I made and how stupid I was. By all means, please feel free to laugh at my disgusting choices... the least my stupidity can do is serve as humor.
Back in May/June, I bought around 600 Bitcoin at around 2700 USD. I'll let you do the math on how much that cost me. But I believed in Bitcoin. The original plan was just to hold them forever. I was pretty convinced Bitcoin was going to go to $10K by 2018. Had I just left the Bitcoins in my wallet and done nothing, I would be pretty happy right now at $4000 per coin.
But no. I decided to try my hand at trading altcoins. I started off with Siacoin (this was back when there was hype around Siacoin).
Put in 10 bitcoins into Sia, at 450 satoshis... Next day, Siacoin went up to 600 satoshis. I was like "Cool, this is easy, I just made a couple thousand dollars in a day."
Next day I put in 20 Bitcoins into Antshares (now re-branded as NEO). Three days later, it went up as well. "Cool, I just made 10 grand in three days! All I have to do is buy altcoins low and sell high. So easy. As long as I HODL and don't sell in panic and just wait it out until it rises, everything should be fine."
You can guess where this story is heading... there's no happy endings here.
Basically, over the course of June, I invested pretty much ALL of my Bitcoins into alts, thinking they were going to keep going up and up. It was pure greed. Of course I should've just kept it in Bitcoin. Of course I should've done my research on some of these altcoins. Of course I should've not bought it at the very fucking peak before all the altcoins crashed.
Curious to see how badly I fucked up?
Here's a list = all the altcoins I bought, how much BTC I spent on them, and how much BTC they're worth now. Feel free to roast me, cause you could not get more stupid than this (especially putting that much money and faith into some of these altcoins).
Siacoin = 246.82 BTC → 72.94 (minus 70%)
CloakCoin = 139.27 BTC → 41.59 (minus 70%)
Factom = 120.72 BTC → 44.17 BTC (minus 63%)
Monero = 18.76 BTC → 12.96 BTC (minus 31%)
BitShares = 13.18 BTC → 4.54 BTC (minus 66%)
Crown = 10.26 → 4.05 BTC (minus 61%)
ZCash = 9.77 BTC → 4.13 BTC (minus 58%)
Golem = 9.13 BTC → 2.7 BTC (minus 70%)
GameCredits = 8.49 BTC → 3.1 BTC (minus 63%)
LBRY Credits = 5.71 BTC → 2.55 BTC (minus 55%)
BitcoinDark = 5.03 BTC → 1.96 BTC (minus 61%)
Ripple = 4.98 BTC → 2.03 BTC (minus 59%)
EmerCoin = 4.76 BTC → 2.02 BTC (minus 57%)
Digibyte = 4.38 BTC → 1.55 BTC (minus 65%)
Waves = 4.05 BTC → 2.76 BTC (minus 31%)
Ubiq = 3.89 BTC → 1.74 BTC (minus 55%)
Vertcoin = 3.35 BTC → 1.2 BTC (minus 64%)
Lumen = 3.06 BTC → 0.95 BTC (minus 69%)
Stratis = 2.96 BTC → 1.78 BTC (minus 40%)
SysCoin = 2.76 BTC → 0.98 BTC (minus 64%)
Ethereum = 2.53 BTC → 1.43 BTC (minus 43%)
MaidSafeCoin = 1.94 BTC → 0.96 BTC (minus 50%)
Komodo = 1.93 BTC → 0.94 BTC (minus 51%)
Voxels = 1.35 BTC → 0.67 BTC (minus 50%)
NEM (XEM) = 1 BTC → 0.88 BTC (minus 12%)
BitCrystals = 1 BTC → 0.41 BTC (minus 58%)
Ardor = 1 BTC → 0.34 BTC (minus 65%)
Wings DAO = 0.25 BTC → 0.15 BTC (minus 37%)
Expanse = 0.14 BTC → 0.05 BTC (minus 60%)
Why didn't I put in any stop losses? Cause I was stupid. Why did I keep holding onto these coins despite the massive fall in value? Cause I believed they would eventually turn around.
Trust me, I ask myself every day how I could've made THIS many bad decisions at the same time.
I totally get you if you think I'm making up this story and how could anyone be stupid enough to spend 200 BTC on Siacoin. Pure greed. I thought Siacoin would keep going up, and I could make a quick profit.
The only mistake I haven't made is sold any of the coins at a loss. Even as I saw the altcoins go down, I convinced myself that all I needed to do was HODL.
I'm still holding. Still hoping that eventually some of these might go back up to the value they were before, and I can sell them off at break even.
Of course I'm tempted to sell them all. Take any BTC I can get for them. Maybe put it into NEO (that train already left though) or some other altcoin that I hope will blow up. But of course that too would be an impulsive mistake. I'm just scared shitless, so I hold. I've made every single mistake I could made, except selling at a loss.
"Just hold." everyone says. So I do. But the people who say "hold" usually didn't spend 600 BTC on altcoins and watched their portfolio go down to about 200 BTC.
By the way, I know that when you compare it to USD value, not all of these altcoins have dropped that much. But that's not what I look at. USD value is deceptive, cause BTC keeps going up.
What I care about is BTC value. I'd give anything to just have my 600 BTC back (which of course would now be worth way more than the $2700 per coin I spent on them).
I realize that the chances of these altcoins ever going back to the peak that we had in June July are very slim... the more BTC keeps rising, the less satoshis each of these coins is worth. Trust me, I know how much I fucked up.
Anyway.... feel free to laugh at my stupidity.
I'm open to any suggestions as to what to do with my altcoins now, whether I should just sell them back and get ~200 BTC for them, or wait for some of these to turn around... I genuinely don't know how to make this any less of a fuck-up.
EDIT: To answer some questions that have popped up:
Some of you are having a hard time believing someone who has this type of money can lose it in such a stupid way. Earning money, keeping it, and growing it are different skills. I fucked up on the last two.
A few of you asked how I bought 600 Bitcoins all at once. I used an OTC called Genesis Trading. Minimum buy order is 25K. You negotiate a bid, then you wire them the money, and they send the BTC to your wallet.
I don't have any NEO. I sold it when it got to break even, and then it exploded to current levels. So not only did I fuck up by investing in alts that went down, the one single coin that went up, I sold before it exploded.
I will reply to comments. I'm just catching up and reading everything that everyone posted and taking it all in.
Thank you to everyone who replied.
Wow! That is a whole lot to take in at once! You really fucked up just like you have said, but nothing is gone yet. Like someone has rightly said, it is either you wait if you do not have anything to do with the cash for now, and then monitor them to see how they turn out as they will still recover even though it ends up taking some time. I have been there once, and I did not regret waiting as they even ended up surpassing my imagination when they got pumped.
