What I’ve learned from losing money in Crypto and NFT’s

The high return’s promised in crypto, NFT’s(and heading into web3) are far from true and I learned it the hard way.

Question: Do you consider yourself an investor OR a gambler?

Your pride and ego, most likely like mine would instantly say that that your an investor. I have learned throughout the time that rationality was thrown out the window, didn’t asses risk and rewards(especially in Nft space) in my actions and paid a dire price.
I started to act more on my emotional response rather then logical and mostly that’s how I see todays society(sadly). It’s basally the reason why I hate technology even as a developer myself.

Greed and status

The amount of sheer greed in the space is humongous, plus it prompts scammers, other flimsy exchange programs(hello Celsius 👋) or the new kid in block web3 to capitalize on our cognitive biases.
Now it doesn’t mean that all of them are here to scam you, but most are there just for the money, fame, fortune of just selling you something that exists. There is a high tendency of reinventing the wheel in the sector.
The way it works is:

1. Create something that already exists(crypto, nft, web3, exchange program)
2. Market the sh*t out of it push it to all the platforms and shill it like your life depends on it.
3. Ones you gained peoples trust and $ just close up, rug pull people or just ghost them and walk away.

I am privileged to be able to attend a web3 event and multiple other tech related meetups and the amount of people “making a decentralized exchange program” or anything else related made me sick to the stomach.
No one cares to make you wealthy it’s just to sell you something while you are compulsive and full of emotions. Status on other hand is a huge selling point especially for Nft’s as in Discord chats and Twitter everybody is praying that my Nft will be the next BAYC.

Noise and Investing

There is too much noise in the crypto space the best decision if investing in my opinion in crypto is just to keep BTC, ETH and that’s it. Lock it and forget about everything else and invest in yourself. About Nft’s is even a bigger risk, here is my OpenSea account I got sentimental about selling and thus kept holding the bag.
Investing all in all is not bad the question remains are you in control of your decisions, if you don’t falter in cognitive bias and have the following traits:
Sceptic(but not a cynic)
Question everything
Use reliable sources and facts
Have emotions/impulses under control

Concluding

Raising this subject was unpleasing but necessary, as the reality is most do loose money rather then earn. Our desperation for a fast, easy cash is the quickest way we loose everything and making the wrong decision.

Adjustments I am making

Minimize tech usage:

I grew stronger despising tech as mentioned before as it does more damage then good with impulse based decisions and short attention span. Thus outdoor activities, reading and aspiring for minimalistic life brings high fruition and logical thinking.

Understanding and learning the market:

I have blockchain books in my cart and learning Solidity, web3 gradually. We have a tendency to watch 1 YouTube video about blockchain etc and suddenly announce that we know everything about that subject due to ego being so bloated with arrogance. There is no investment greater then investing in yourself.