Having been here as a tourist since 2013/14 since I was a teenager obsessed with "making money online" and mining dogecoin on the day it launched. I sold that all for 2 BTC (something less than 4k) at the time which I cashed out and spent on CS:GO skins.

I completed an actual full cycle as an active participant from 2020 to now, and his post hit home HARD.

STORY TIME

I joined the space with no money, so I did what any self-respecting & normal person would do and got the largest amount in an unsecured loan any online bank would give me (which was £25k).

The monthly "Payback" would be covered by my job at the time (Government FED) if I did lose it all, so in a way, it was risk-free (or that was the logic in my mind at the time).

At the same time, I was around in some reselling circles to make extra money and from there is how I met the people who would ultimately become my co-founders.

Things started slow, I was using terms and analysis which I learnt in masters like cashflow models to get into DeFi coins like MKR, ROOK, ALPHA and even UNI, which would make this a basket approach and less "risky". We were naive back then and as you will now know, had I not pivoted or gotten out of that, I'd be down down.

I then found NFTs (AxieInfinity) and things just clicked in my brain that didn't need any analysis. I even bought a mystic Axie (which I still own to this day)

"This is what it feels to be early" I would tell everyone around me. "You don't see the vision" or even "This is life-changing, how are you not excited?" was a very common phrase. At this point, I made two stacks of my capital. 1 being for coins and the other for NFTs (50-50).

At the same time, every NFT mint I was doing with "TheOneDiscord" was ending up in a minimum 2x and some even went to 10x, I was getting 0 sleep and this infectious air was all around me. Everyone was in the trenches and we were making memories of the best kind, the ones where we make money.

I was also in a few other circles for coins but for NFTs, it was "The One". I started writing about all these niche topics with tervo and tolks through @PageOne at this time too. Though it was more of an afterthought rather than something which I was grinding out like I was NFTs and coins.

The cofounders I met and bonded with took notice of the idea around NFTs and we essentially built our first startup around this entire "niche" in crypto because of how early it was, and ultimately we ended up selling the whole thing for $13m to a CEX where we would work under their banner on the same product. As I wasn't allowed to maintain two jobs (I could've), I had to hang my hat on being a FED.

and so, outside of my "professional work", I hit my ATH net worth of just shy over 7figs (I want to say around $1.1m?) through this now insignificant beginning stack. Each of my "apes" would now be similar to that. This was done by being early in these new paradigms which were gotten by research. Think ILV, OHM, ALCX and so on and so forth. You know "big brain" coins

Work within the CEX was fucking fantastic too. I was the innovation person of this $ billion CEX and was leading a small team to basically "build what you want".

Hell, this was around the same time I started dating my (hot) ex too (Redhead, obviously). Life REALLY couldn't have gone any better at that point even if I imagined it.

I made some "monetary" purchases too. Bought a car, paid off the bulk of my family's debt, took my family on like 3-4 holidays abroad for weeks at time sparing no expense, stayed in really swanky hotels and to top it off I even paid off my initial loan. This meant I could do what I wanted without worrying about the bank bills.

I was the fucking king and Id achieved what 99% of people couldn't do in their first cycle.

During all this, I made a friend with this one guy who was around for the last cycle and made multiple 7 figs from essentially buying link for less than $1 and then selling at some 10-30x bigger number (i forget). However he won big and this was his second cycle and he'd talk to me about these really benign concepts like "maybe sell a % of your port", "You should keep some money in the bank" or even "Don't actually start to believe your own BS or what this space is throwing at you"

Everything I've done up until now was going my way and at that point, I was on my way of making more than he did in a faster way. Why would I listen to someone who couldn't or didn't do what I did? He fucked up and he's now telling me how to make money? Good fucking luck you boomer.

He even dared to tell me to sell my NFTs and go all in on Pudgy Penguins. Why the hell would I sell a CloneX or my other "bluechips" for a collection that no-one in web3 wanted? CT was old-school and lost relevancy. Keep up. Why would I spend 0.8ETH on a penguin when they're going to zero ?? I have the first Murakami designed NFT by a company which NIKE bought ffs. Keep the fuck up

Then you know, it happened. The first warning sign. One of my positions (OHM) which I had built to something like 500k, dropped by 20% in a day and then jumped back up to 15%. "Fuking jeets", I thought. "You need to 3,3 at all times for this to work".

Even if this went down in the worst case 75%, I would still have a decent portfolio. That was the rationale. Don't they know? This is going to be the reserve currency of fucking world without needing to be pegged by some government or useless company like circle or God forbid, Tether.

I was too caught up in my own "achievements" and had fully believed my own BS. Everyone is a genius in the bull and I would be the latest one.

Then the next thing wasn't a warning, it was akin to cannon misfiring. I got laid off from the CEX within 11 months to avoid the 25% cliff unlock from my acquisition. That $13m would be worth $0 to me and the team. I found out about this after my same trench friends were tagging me in Discord after they read the news on Twitter. I was flying out to a holiday in 2 days when i got the news.

"No Biggie, I still have investments made in sound protocols and coins"

All those giga-brain coins finally caught up to me too. Some were time-locked with no "rage quit" mechanic, some were laden with delays & the promise of coming back stronger, some were hacked and some were just straight-up nuked by the dev team. Most coins went down 90% and then a further 90% from there.

That cool and swanky 7-fig net worth I had achieved in record time? I only managed to keep around 10% or so. I experienced a 90% loss in record time too.

6 figs to start the bear? Thats alright. I can buy these coins at record cheap prices and ride into the sunset when things pick up. I'm still a king.

I was not.

Then the "unexpected or emergency bills" came up, health scare within the family, the cheap coins which were on sale got even cheaper and most of my friends at this point had already left or were very inactive. That's still ok, I can get an awesome job, right? The record sale and title would pull my weight.

No, because the whole CEX stint was less than 1 year and the tech market leaders like FAANG were having record layoffs too. I wasn't competing with "normal" people for the jobs now, I was competing with people who've had more than 6-10 years of exp. I had less than 3 and that's when I learned that years in job is the king, not how much you did as fast.

"I'll just start a new company, fuck finding a job".

6 months later building a project with a couple of other IRL peeps, we failed to secure any funding because we did the cardinal sin of not finding actual PMF. We built "what we think was needed most expansively", aka, we were doing a bazillion things in one and not just one. We got rugged by our advisors too, but whatever.

At the lowest point, I think I had just over 10k to my name. I thanked my idiotic self for paying for everything in cash in the bull and more importantly paying the loan off. This can still get worse and there is no end in sight, yet having gone through all of that, why would I quit now when I could've quit months ago? What was the fucking point?

The same "boomer" friend and I never stopped talking. Most of his words turned out to be prophetic. He didn't gloat nor did he make me feel bad. To this day, he remains kind and is one of the closest (if not the closest friend I have in this space). He simply said, "This space is a trail by fire and that's what you're going through right now". He did go massively into Pudgy Penguins and has close to 20. That was partial of his stack and he is still 7 figs or so liquid.

I hit a couple of decent wins, got rugged in most and slowly started to increase my "capital". PageOne throughout the bear became an avenue of getting all these "Rambles" out and people seemed to like them. It became my refuge (which both tervoo and tolks won't admit but having seen everything I went through, I know they felt this and just supported me in encouraging ways and a healthy amount of shitposts)

While there will always be a very small subset that plays their first cycle perfectly, most won't. Even less will lose over 90% and continue to stay here.

Whatever people are going to peddle you about this "new" tech actually changing things and we're going to have a 100x more after seeing a 50x from its low in the bear, you need to try very very hard to actually take profits.

This experience and feeling like everything and everyone around me I was letting down was debilitating at times. Had I not met and talked to the select few people (and had they not quit as well), I would've left. I can't thank the powers above enough that my now brothers didn't quit.

The lore of this period was fun and I hope to remember the struggle period in a fun light in a few years. The bear was exciting at times but it was also depressing and debilitating.

It's what allowed me to break out of "web3" twitter and sort of become a member of CT who doesn't deny why they're here and have pretty much been through this experience sometime before. It's why I'm a lot more critical of new "marketable" terms like web3 was at its peak.

Most NFT/Web3 Twitter doesn't like me yet CT does. CT is a lot more fun (That's what I would classify miladies in too). It's not engineered, it just is being unashamedly yourself.

Going into this new cycle, if you've been following me since the start of the last cycle to now (which is very few of you), you will have seen me going from trying to be a "voice in the space" to now essentially being a silly billy with my other mentally ill and unhinged friends who didn't leave.

Ironically enough, I now have a bigger "voice" now as a silly and publically horny cartoon anon than when I was trying to be one. Like I said, Silly Billy maxxing.

I hope to make enough this cycle to buy a house and have some money left in the bank by the end. This cycle is for me, the next one will be for the bloodline.

I'd like to retire my parents and as such, then not worry about "playing the game" the way it's meant to and just play it on my own terms.

While I'm not saying it will be easy (it really won't), you need to block out the noise and not be peak euphoria Boffin. This ride is not what most can stomach, so don't let yourself get there in the first place.

ALWAYS TAKE PROFITS. It will make this journey 100% easier and don't quit halfway.