Sometime in 2011 or 2012 I was a walk to the postbox away from returning a form to my bank, to send £2k to MtGox to buy circa 200 BTC. I was saving for a house at the time and ultimately decided against doing so, which certainly hurt when I saw it run from $12 to $1200 over the next couple of years.

Eventually I invested at the lows in October 2015, at $250. I bought 500 ETH in 2016 at $10-12 but sold soon after as I was getting married in early 2017 and wanted some cash on hand. I was far from immersed in crypto, but did at least have an investment thesis for BTC. In Jan 2017 sold about 5 of the 25 BTC I held to cover some wedding costs.

I held the rest until the cycle top in 2017 largely through vibes and a trailing 5% stop I started to place each evening a few days before the cycle topped out. The acceleration and euphoria was abundantly obvious. I wasn’t looking at charts at all. I didn’t play much in that alt season as I was busy with life, wife, work, friends. I made low-mid 6 figs in aggregate. During this time I was primarily focussed on my job, but became more interested in trading in early 2018 (after all, it was no longer an investor’s market).

Stress and marital issues eventually led me to use trading as a means of escape and distraction. I remember the euphoria of winning a big trade in July 2018, shortly after I had single-handedly saved my company with a desperately needed raise - a hugely stressful period of my professional career, and in the midst of a bunch of marital difficulties. In fact, the round was closed on the day salaries had to be paid - which we wouldn’t have been able to do had the cash not hit the bank in time. I was now an addict. In fact, I had reactivated a latent addiction that had been dormant for a few years - during 2013-4, I had some trouble with sports betting. But I managed to curtail this - I found it easy to rationalise that there was no edge in what I was doing, that I would only continue to lose. Regardless, over the next few months I lost everything I’d made, and much more.

At the time I was CFO of a startup turning over about $10m, doubling revenues year over year. The company had taken some BTC as payment in 2014-5. As custodian of those assets, having lost everything, I “borrowed” them to trade with - a perfect storm of circumstances: gambling addict/addicted to trading crypto/having lost all his money/custodian of company’s crypto (11.27 BTC - I still remember the number) that no-one else ever looked at. I lost everything in the October 2018 nuke from $6k, even though I was short initially. I had to incur more debt to return what I’d taken. I did so, and started attending GA.

To a normal person, addiction seems incomprehensible—why would someone choose to destroy their health, career, relationships, and future for a fleeting high? Well, I can’t explain it either. Needless to say, I was compelled to gamble at all costs. I would gamble all the time - even, at one point, during a board meeting, sat across the table from my CEO and investors, with the company’s assets as collateral. My logic was distorted, my desperation irrational, and my self-destruction all but guaranteed. I was trapped in a cycle I couldn’t escape from. Any survival instincts I had were overridden by an all-consuming need, leaving my sanity and sense of self-preservation in ruins.

I sought help - I confided in my family, I had a consultation with the UK’s leading psychiatric expert on gambling addiction. But short of going into a residential rehab nothing was enough, and perhaps not even that would have been. I was attending therapy sessions and an outpatient programme but lying routinely to everyone, including my therapists. Despite my cries for help, no-one around me took it as seriously as I needed them to, not that I blame them - I take full responsibility for all my mistakes, people shouldn’t be expected to understand this nefarious sickness. I wanted to go into residential rehab but figured it would be difficult to given I had responsibilities at work - how could I justify taking 12 weeks off to my CEO? And honestly, I was probably allowing the addiction to convince me not to. So this cycle of addiction continued and worsened over the next 2 years, ultimately leading to me losing everything including my marriage, home, and career. I had to move in with my parents. I was almost certainly destined for jail but my family helped to return what I’d taken. I had to apply for bankruptcy and was given 6 years of restrictions, they threw the whole book at me.

At this time I was 37 years old. I finally went into a residential rehab after another string of insane and unmanageable behaviour. Even then, I continued to gamble - on my phone for an hour a week when I got hold of it. Nonetheless, upon leaving I was feeling optimistic and landed a bunch of interviews for CFO roles. But I decided honesty was the best policy, and unsurprisingly things didn’t work out. This just goes to show how fucking insane I still was at that time - answering “embezzlement” as my reason for leaving my last role. I suppose there’s a funny side to it. Soon after that my qualification was stripped after auditors came in to confirm that there were no other missing assets, and I realised there was no going back to anything resembling my old life.

So in mid 2021 with seemingly few options available to me, I decided to try trading again in “emotional sobriety”. I made some money in easy mode, including a 50X in Q4. I banked it and then farmed yield. I was focussing on emotional management during this time, and it was working. In 2022 I immersed myself in learning - as I knew my edge was thin at best. I mostly lost money over that year but it was nothing devastating, things were under control and I had surrendered to time. I was earning some money through sponsorship, emotionally I was doing better, keeping in good shape etc.

I met a girl I’ll perhaps always consider the love of my life at end of 2022, but I was far from back on my feet and couldn’t approach the relationship the way I wanted to and the way she deserved. She became another form of addiction that I relied upon as an emotional crutch. I traded well over the first part of 2023 but she could see that something was wrong, and after a rocky patch she ended the relationship in the Summer. Soon after that I blew everything up (70k or so) in under 24 hours, oversizing and cutting a good trade overnight, in a desperate attempt to make a bunch of money quickly to enable me to get on with my life. I nuked my Twitter account after this - which had significantly more long term value within it than I appreciated at the time - in a public meltdown. I was very close to suicide a few times; with easy access to pentobarbital I’m quite sure I wouldn’t be here today. At one point I even booked a flight to South America as I was desperate to procure some and take the easiest possible way out.

I came through that difficult time with the help of some meds - maybe they saved my life. In Q3 2023 I made around 50k from a scammy prop firm, swing shorting crude oil. To my surprise, they actually paid me (I’d been denied some payouts from other firms around this time). I funnelled this into crypto in Q4 and made good money - life changing for me, in fact. I fell seriously ill in Q1 2024 and missed some of the run but it didn’t really matter; I had already made a lot on a perfectly managed, leveraged PEPE long and beyond that nothing really mattered. At last I was at peace, and psychologically ‘back on my feet’. But soon after this, an audit by the bankruptcy receiver resulted in the government taking everything pretty much everything I’d made, to distribute my capital to my creditors (I obviously had no option but to cooperate).

Ever since then I’ve had very little to trade with and have found it very difficult to manage my emotions. I live in the middle of nowhere with my family and with lingering bankruptcy and nonexistent references getting a job - at least one that could become an acceptable career - is nigh on impossible - and no, I haven’t tried stacking supermarket shelves for minimum wage. I’ve applied for all sorts of things - but strangely enough no-one wants to hire a dude in his early 40s who was a CFO but now inexplicably wants to pivot into an entry level role (e.g. sales, marketing, hell - even fucking HR) doing something else with literally zero relevant experience.