Lost everything

Hello everyone,

Just using this as a place to write out my feelings. I’m feeling very overwhelmed at the moment. It’s a long story but it helps to write it out.

I’m 28 and I began investing in cryptocurrencies in Nov 2021. At the time, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never invested in anything before.

At the time, I had a new relationship with a girl. But between the relationship and my job it made me feel that becoming a musician was increasingly difficult.

So I was compelled to invest at the time. I wanted the financial freedom to pursue my passion for music without having to spend so much time at a 9-5.

However, I didn’t want my gf to see that we couldn’t continue the fun activities we normally did. We were in love and so I financed everything with credit and I began using all of my actual money for buying crypto.

Eventually I has about 9,000 in debt and I could have stopped right there. Just admit to her that I needed to pay my balances down, But I didn’t.

As you could imagine, I lost money during my initial phase of investing at the start of 2022. I then doubled down on my approach and began learning as much as I could about macro economics. It became an obsession, I was studying every CPI report, monitoring the DXY, anything I could to learn more.

At this point I had become disinterested in other things, even making music.

I was convinced inflation would fall, that tech, Bitcoin, alts would rebound. But this was April of 2022, and it would be many many more months before that happened.

Then in May of 2022, my girlfriend and I split. One of the reasons being that I had 16,000 in debt. But I never told her about it.

Once we went our separate ways, I kept dumping every check I could into crypto, even as the market continued to dump. By the end of the year, I had built out a considerable portfolio. I did tons of research on each project, I was diamond handing all of my positions, and keeping track of my entires.

By February of 2023 I had reached a portfolio ath of 24k. Enough to pay off the debt and start fresh with a small amount of cash. But I kept holding, thinking that alts would keep going much higher.

By April of this year, my portfolio dipped to 18k. I was beginning to feel that maybe I had picked the wrong alts. So I dug deep into crypto Twitter, and began changing my positions. Eventually I found myself going all in on one meme coin. I watched it go up and up, eventually having the opportunity to cash out for 35k.

But I kept holding. And it tanked to 10k. I got into a dark place, and made a series of horrible trades. I had abandoned whatever investment strategies I had learned. I wasn’t doing research, I wasn’t being patient, I didn’t have conviction, I wasn’t keeping track of entries and exits. I was gambling with what else I had left until I hit 0.

Yesterday, I told my parents everything. I cried my eyes out. I feel like a failure, a complete junkie. I had so many opportunities to relieve myself of debt and I squandered each one. My parents agreed to clear my 16k in debt, so I don’t have to pay interest, but I have to pay them back over the course of a year.

I feel so depressed, I think of self harm. I spent hours crying and whimpering in the bathroom today just repeating to myself I don’t know what I’m doing over and over. I don’t know how to get to where I want to be in life as an artist and I need help.