People painfully remember their biggest cryptocurrency errors

From fraud bearing the name Elon Musk to the collapse of Mt. Gox people share their horror stories about the loss of their Bitcoins and other cryptocurrencies. People have lost 2.5 million Bitcoins, which (since its inception in 2009) is worth $ 25 billion. What is missing in these figures is a true human story: mistakes, forgotten keys, wrong transactions, and unfortunate coincidences.

 

Today, all memories float to the surface and people share their stories. Anthony Sassano, Product Manager at Set Protocol, asked Twitter: “What was your biggest mistake in the crypto world?” And he received more than a few answers.

 

Mt. Gox and discarded mining opportunities

 

The main developer of Ethereum, known under the pseudonym Antiprosynthesis, recalled the most famous Bitcoin disaster: Mt. Gox. One of the most famous bitcoin exchanges, has been attacked by hackers for a long time, with a loss of $ 460 million. Antiprosynthesis says:

 

“ Moved my BTC to MtGox to sell for fiat because there was a price premium there… in early 2014. ”

 

Time is very important here: Mt. Gox was finally closed in February 2014. And those who hoped for a refund can wait indefinitely.

 

Moved my BTC to MtGox to sell for fiat because there was a price premium there… in early 2014. ?

— antiprosynthesis.eth (@antiprosynth) February 11, 2020

 

He wasn’t the only one blaming himself. Developer Eric Elliott mentioned Bitcoin mining in 2010. At a time when the BTC was somewhere between $ 0.008 and $ 0.08. At that time, it was easy to mine Bitcoin and you could extract it hundreds a day. But Eric Elliott gave up, thinking he would never make a profit.

 

Even if he only mined 1,000 BTC, these coins would be worth $ 10 million today.

 

“Dreading the regret I’ll feel when it hits $100k”

 

Mined Bitcoin in 2010. Stopped mining because I thought it wouldn't be profitable. Lost computer. Dreading the regret I'll feel when it hits $100k during the next 10x surge.

— Eric Elliott (@_ericelliott) February 11, 2020

 

From ICO to celebrity scams

 

In the answers we could find similar stories across the whole crypto world. We’ll show you some of which we can feel the running of frost on back.

 

ICO took the year 2017 by storm and literally caused a madness in funding. But even though some currencies fired, not everyone was on board. One of the crypto investors, known in the world of digital currencies under the pseudonym MF Grin, sold 3 million Trons just 3 weeks before its price grew 100 times from $ 0.00025 to $ 0.25. If he held his coins, their value would be about $ 750,000 at the top of the price. The joy to look back.

 

I was in tron ICO, sold 3m trx 3 weeks before it went 100x to 25+ cents. Luckily kept a small stash, but wasn’t 3m TRX. Dumped the rest over 20 cents and never looked back

— MF Grin ツ (@MF_Grin) February 11, 2020

 

Celebrity confirmation can be effective on the one hand – but it can also be a scam. One Twitter user revealed that he had sent some ETH to one ICO page because “Elon Musk invested in it.” He had never seen his ETH again.

 

But he should not feel too bad, even companies like SkyNews and TechCrunch have caught up with such scams, printed and considered them real.

 

sent some eth to an ico site because "elon musk had invested in them." they disappeared two days later.

— “scoopy trooples” (@scupytrooples) February 11, 2020

 

Business mistakes and thick fingers

 

Some people stumbled hard when they thought that crypto exchanges could be rational. The CEO of Truffle Suite, Tim Coulter, traded against Ethereum when it was worth just $ 3. He bet his price would go down. He thought the price would not go up until the large-scale technical work was done.

 

What he did not expect was the fact that the world plunged on BTC and other cryptocurrencies and by the end of 2017 will push the price of BTC up to $ 20,000. And the Etherea price was $ 1,500 at the beginning of 2018. He said he had no more plans to short coins.

 

Other mistakes are simpler. These include the classic “fat finger” where you accidentally sell currency for a smaller amount – typically by adding zero (some coins are worth 0.0001 and it can be hard to see the difference). In this case, the crypt enthusiast lost $ 4,000 on the EtherDelta decentralized crypto exchange. Ouch.

 

Fat finger on EtherDelta, like $4K in ETH ?

— smokatoke (@smokatokey) February 11, 2020

 

Let’s not forget The DAO. This was one of Ethereum’s greatest experiments that turned out badly. It was supposed to be an autonomous organization that would give out grants, but a code mistake led to a big $ 50 million robbery. Most coins were returned when the code of this ETH blockchain was rewritten. But some still have scars.

 

“Sent 100 ETH to the DAO”

 

– wrote a Bitcoin and Ethereum enthusiast on Twitter – without any explanation. The memory must still hurt.

 

Sent 100 eth to The Dao.

— SINE (@sinelael) February 11, 2020

 

Tight losses and happy endings

 

At least some stories end more positively. One of the Chainlink (LINK) fans sent 5,000 coins to the Kraken Exchange crypt at a time when it had not yet supported these coins. But in a year the stock exchange returned the coin. So everything’s fine here.

 

Sometimes mistakes are very close to losses. Cryptocurrency trader Aaron Kruker shared the experience of nearly sending $ 10,000 instead of $ 100 – another potential fat finger – but found himself just in time. “I always sweat when I think of it,” he wrote on Twitter. Indeed tight.

 

Summary

 

All these stories prove to us that the business world is not always favorable. Beware of fraud and possible attempts to rob. And this goes far beyond the cryptocurrency world, but to all areas of life.