I’ll go first…after 10 years of speculating in the market (read: gambling in high risk assets) I realized I shouldn’t ever touch a brokerage account in my lifetime. A monkey would have made better choices than I did. Greed has altered the course of life many times over. I am at an age where I may recover from my actions over the decades, but it has taken its toll. I am frugal and have a good head on me, but having such impulsivity in financial instruments was not how I envisioned my adulthood. Its a bitter pill to swallow, since money is livelihood of my family, but I need to “invest” all I have into relationships, meaningful moments, and fulfilling hobbies.
I continually fight this myself. I made a fair amount of profit in crypto, but I 100 percent realize that it’s just blind luck. I like the idea of it and I love the news about it, so it’s very difficult for me to not to go 100 percent in every time I see a trend!
So far, I’ve resisted the urge to go to crazy with it, but ugh, it’s tough . And I lie to my gf and tell her that I just follow, but don’t invest. So I’m pretty much the kind of asshole that I grew up despising. lol
I’ve never invested more than I can afford to lose, and cash out the minute I make a little profit. But I can see how addicting it is and how easily some people could fall off the cliff.
A lot of crypto isn’t blind luck any more than the stock market is. I’ve made smart, strategic, well researched crypto investments over 13 years and it’s been quite successful. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, Sui…
If you keep up with the engineering and filter all the noise, it’s historically been really smart investment / store of value.
That said if you’re just following influencers and aren’t an engineer or have a keen eye for finding truly knowledgable people - yeah it’s risky af!!