selling a 100,000x for a 2x and fumbling a hundred million dollars
here we go again, new market highs, voices in his head
This is a short story of how I bought a coin for a thousand dollars and sold for two thousand dollars. The stake I sold would go on to become a million dollars 3 days later, ten million 3 weeks later, and a hundred million a year later.
I find most of the posts I make here on my site intolerable to read a day after posting. However, there are some exceptions and one of them is a post I wrote in early 2023 titled “The Art of Missing the Pump”. While it has barely any reads and I would rewrite the whole thing differently today, I quite liked the authenticity I felt it conveyed amid an array of mid posts that I was publishing during that time period.
The post covered the lessons I had learned from missing out on a 500x ROI in a month. While I had missed higher returns in a shorter timeframe before, that particular incident was easy to make an example out of to explain the “would’ve could’ve should’ve” thoughts as they pertain to crypto punts in general. This is an update to that post — a part two if you will — with slightly bigger numbers involved that I’ve been wanting to write about for over a year.
In April 2023, I was still active in various parts of Crypto Twitter and still punting in random projects I found interesting. So I made a tiny thousand dollar punt into a random meme coin called PEPE very early on (It had been created an hour earlier). For non-crypto readers, I could spend the rest of my life explaining why meme coins even exist and how they catapult to such outrageous valuations starting with Darwinian selection or Girard's mimetic desire but that's for another post.
Anyways, I owned one percent of the supply of coins at a $100k market cap and sold it for a quick double because, while scrolling through the buy/sell blockchain transaction data and noticed bots and what looked like insider selling. I found the whole thing fishy and it didn’t help that it was a $200k market cap coin. Usually 99.999% (not an exaggeration) of the time, the coin is a scam and goes to zero or at most barely increases and dies a boring death in the abyss of the chain. However, this was clearly not the case.
Anyways, after selling I went about my day but noticed that my Twitter timeline was picking up on this coin which wasn’t a good sign. In three days, my stake that I sold for two thousand dollars was worth a million dollars. cute. Three weeks later? 15 million. adorable. Then my “would’ve could’ve should’ve” stake died for a while before skyrocketing to 67 million in May 2024 and now 100 million in November 2024. PEPE is now in the top 20 largest cryptocurrencies and is the newest entrant in this league which is quite hilarious to say the least.
While I was initially quite disturbed by this, I’ve learned to ignore it over time. I had previously missed out on my fair share of opportunities for a 1000x returns during the previous bubble and was able to rationalise why I should not be that concerned as I followed the strict rules that I had set for myself with regards to crypto punts. I updated some of my rules based on this and was able to continue functioning without breaking down as much.
My previous adages — 'stop coping and think about whether it will continue increasing,' 'you would have sold anyway,' 'respect the pump,' 'mute/block everything related to the pump,' and finally, if all else fails, 'convince yourself it’s a scam'—worked decently. However, I still had to improvise and adapt to come up with new rules such as “there is no second best”. Usually when it comes to these random pumps, there are secondary coins that follow in its shadows. These are not worth punting into because the value accrues to the main market eventually no matter how small it is or “early” you can be.
Anyways, how did I cope? Part of it was just really convincing myself that I didn’t miss out on a hundred million dollars or even ten or if I really wanted to stretch it even a million dollars. I missed out on hundreds of thousands because that is realistically when I would've most likely sold unless I either immediately entered a coma after buying the coin or my house burnt down and I lost access to my MacBook and crypto wallet keys. Another part is just getting numb over time to seeing the numbers go higher and higher. While I avoid checking the numbers, it's inevitable considering how high up the leaderboard the coin is now.
I'm writing this post right now because crypto is making new highs based on its cyclical four year cycle as ordained by the gods and it helps that the Democrats, along with Operation Chokepoint 2.0, were booted out during the 2024 Elections for what currently appears to be a more crypto friendly second Trump Administration.
As with all new market highs, there are certain types of evergreen posts that go viral about how someone bought drugs on SilkRoad or sold Pizza or a Website for thousands of Bitcoin in 2012 that is now worth millions of dollars. It’s cringe, but I used to be mesmerised by those posts, wondering how that must feel like. Spoiler: I don’t really have to wonder too much anymore. Clearly, the gods decided I’d need a longer hero’s journey. something something mandate of heaven, delusions of grandeur. Thanks for reading!