Hello World

(Goodbye NFT World)

First, I apologize for taking to so long to write again. You have all been so supportive and encouraging since I started this “newsletter.”

My motivation for this post is a result of a pretty major fuck-up I made yesterday. Fortunately, not enough of a fuck-up to do any lasting damage, but it was a wake-up call for me; a serious wake-up call.

Let me take you back for a minute, to 2018/2019. In those early years of NFTs, I got in over my head, spending about 90% of my money on CryptoKitties, at first, then all sorts of other NFTs, including Cryptopunks.

Just as the money was about to run out, I received a registered letter in the mail, saying I was going to be audited for 2016 and 2017. I had definitely paid my taxes for those years, but it looked like, according to my newly-hired accountant, that they were going to figure I owed twice as much as I had paid. I was therefore going to end up broke.

It was at that point that I realized I had a problem - a gambling problem. This wasn’t exactly an epiphany for me, as I had gotten in over my head with degenerate crypto and stock trading in the past, but this was the first time that I had come to the conclusion that I needed external help.

During the holiday season, I looked up the nearest Gamblers Anonymous (GA) group and made plans to attend. In early February of 2020, I finally mustered the courage to show up at a meeting. Well, I walked in sweating, and I left with a smile on my face. These were people who understood what I was going through. I ended up attending one more meeting before COVID hit.

Fast forward a few months, and as luck would have it, it turned out that my degenerate gambling paid off, and I hit the jackpot (mostly with cryptopunks). Thankfully, my now wife, who had ridden this roller coaster with me before, encouraged me to invest the winnings (I thought of the profits as “winnings,” like a lottery) in real estate and turn over the remainder of the money to a professional financial advisor. I did exactly that, and was able to weather the 2022 bear market without a problem. Lord knows I would’ve lost it all if I had tried to trade through a bear.

So, obviously, the GA meetings didn’t “take,” as in, I was still gambling. It’s not a problem if you’re winning, right? Cut to yesterday…

I had been on the sidelines over the last few weeks as ETH climbed from ~$1200 to nearly ~$1700, and it was KILLING me. I told myself I was done trading; done with riding the crypto rollercoaster. But then there was that pullback yesterday, and I thought, “this is my opportunity!”

Since I had no crypto, I had to put up some collateral to raise funds for trading. I headed over to x2y2.io (great site, by the way), and took 18 ETH in loans against my three remaining Doodles. At first I entered a 20x long, but then I proceeded to switch sides five or six times, getting it wrong every time, until I settled on a short and inevitably got liquidated. 18 ETH (nearly $30k USD)… poof.

Not only had I lost $30k, but my three Doodles, which were probably worth north of 30 ETH, were no longer mine, and I didn’t have the money to pay off the loans to get them back.

At that point, more specifically, when I got liquidated, I realized that I was still the same person I was in 2019, just that I had got extremely lucky in between then and now. That same person is more than capable of losing everything, given enough time.

I then decided that drastic action was necessary, to quit once and for all. I liquidated every NFT I had left that had a bid on it, and withdrew the funds. I paid off one of the Doodle loans, and actually had the funds to pay off the rest, but I decided I needed to make a sacrifice, if you will. I needed to do something that told the world, and myself, “this time, I’M ACTUALLY QUITTING.”

So, I left the last two loans open on x2y2, and I’m going to leave them until they default. I could literally borrow 12 ETH from someone, pay off those loans, and sell the Doodles for at least 20 ETH, but I’m not going to do it. One of them is actually the pfp that most people know me by (the sailor), but he had to be sacrificed. It had to happen that way. It’s symbolic. To whomever put up the offer for the loans, congrats!

I’ve also deleted my Twitter account, and my Reddit account, which goes back to 2011, when I first got into Bitcoin. I’m no longer on Discord, either. I’ve also closed my stock trading accounts with my bank. For the first time in 25 years, I will not be able to buy and sell equities.

This is it. I’m excited. The fact that I have the ability to once again sit down and write tells me I’ve made the right decision.

I wish all of you the best of luck in the coming years. There will be many opportunities. But be careful, because I know a lot of you are just like me.

Best Regards,

GoWestBTC

P.S. I won’t be able to promote this post on social media, for obvious reasons, so please do so on my behalf. If it helps even one person…