Author: hitesh.eth

Translation: Luffy, Foresight News

Before entering the crypto world, I was an entrepreneur. In 2016, I fully committed to my third startup, Digital Gorkha. We developed a simple visitor management and security application for physical venues and raised some funds, but it was from a group of unsuitable investors, for which we gave away too much equity.

Tweet content: "Digital Gorkha" was my previous startup, an innovative yet straightforward tech product. Digital Gorkha (acquired in 2016) was the first attempt to develop a security application for access control. Later, MyGate (valued at over $500 million) executed this idea exceptionally well.

This mistake put us in a difficult position. Despite the project having stable appeal and revenue, completing a Series A funding round was nearly impossible due to a chaotic equity structure, and the product we developed did not have a real technological moat.

As the founder, I watched helplessly as the company I created declined, racking my brain for ways to change its fate. It was then that I began searching for a technological moat, something that could help us secure the funding round that was slipping away.

At the same time, immense pressure from my parents hit me like a tidal wave, as my wedding date was approaching, and I hadn't received a salary for six months. I was temporarily staying at a friend's house from university, relying on them for food and accommodation.

I had nothing left to lose.

One night, while using Google search, I stumbled upon blockchain.

With my background in cybersecurity and some understanding of cryptographic technology, I quickly grasped the blockchain architecture. I read materials on different application cases, explored its future potential, and finally read a blog about a blockchain-based identity verification system, which sparked an instant inspiration.

The Digital Gorkha project had a verified database covering visitor information from over 100 venues in more than 20 cities, recording over 1,000 visitor entries daily. If I could put this identity information on the blockchain, I could create a truly defensible product.

GetXS was born, a blockchain-based identity verification layer under Digital Gorkha.

Tweet content: "Back in 2016, I was building GetXS—a decentralized distributed identity verification (DID) platform, and we were ranked among the top ten Web3 startups in India. We released a white paper and planned to conduct an initial coin offering (ICO), but for various reasons, it never materialized, and the product never launched.

I started pitching this project to investors, but it was mid-2016, and Indian venture capitalists were indifferent to blockchain investments. I pitched to angel investors like Anupam Mittal and Kunal Shah, and even large funds like Accel and Sequoia, but none saw the potential.

Looking back now, it was an early version of Worldcoin, but at that time, I couldn't raise a single rupee.

We struggled for six months, but the rate of capital consumption was too fast. The debt we incurred to keep the company running was suffocating us daily.

My parents mocked me daily because I was broke and about to get married. Someone was about to enter my life, and I had nothing to offer.

I had no choice but to almost give away 30% of the equity, which forced me to leave the company I had founded.

The real estate developers who invested in Digital Gorkha did not like my exploration of blockchain; they wanted to run the company their way.

Mentally, I felt this battle was doomed, suffocated by financial pressure. So I gave up on entrepreneurship and started looking for a job in the blockchain field.

Falling into the "Rabbit Hole" of Cryptocurrency

I did three things:

• Launched the Its Blockchain blog to document my learning experiences in the blockchain field.
• Restarted GetXS as an independent startup with a new co-founder.
• Took a job as a blockchain consultant at an IT company in Bangalore.

The money I earned barely covered my living expenses, and I couldn't bring my wife over to live with me. It was then that I remembered Bitcoin, and in October 2016, I bought my first Bitcoin.

Three months later, when I checked the price, I found it had doubled. At that moment, everything changed.

I began to delve deeper into the crypto space, looking for the next opportunity like Bitcoin. I discovered Ethereum and Ripple and made my first real investment, resulting in a tenfold increase in my portfolio within a month.

Just like that, four months later, I quit my job.

I told my manager:

"What’s the point of coming to the office every day and doing nothing? I can sit at home and earn four times my salary by doing something exciting."

From then on, I shifted the focus of Its Blockchain from blockchain to cryptocurrency, concentrating on altcoins and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

One day, I published an article: "Top Ten Cryptocurrencies to Buy in August," and the server crashed. Even after three upgrades, the website's traffic reached 150,000 that month.

I seized the market demand. We doubled down on creating such list articles, and at the peak, traffic soared to 1 million views.

With the ICO boom in full swing, we had incredible traffic. So I began monetizing by offering advertising, paid articles, and consulting services to crypto investors.

Tweet content: 2017 was the peak of my career. I founded a crypto media publication, Its Blockchain, with an annual recurring revenue (ARR) exceeding $500,000 and attracting 500,000 page views monthly. I also had a paid consulting company with 500 members, earning enough for me to retire at 25.

At the beginning of 2017, my bank account balance was zero, but by the end of the year, my income from Its Blockchain alone exceeded $1 million.

Life was good, but greed took over.

2018 Bear Market: Significant Portfolio Drawdown

At that time, everyone was convinced that investing in altcoins was a faster way to make money than Bitcoin.

So in January 2018, when the altcoin market was booming, I exchanged 90% of my Bitcoin for over 40 different altcoins, planning to hold them forever.

This was my biggest mistake.

The market began to slowly collapse. At first, it seemed like a normal pullback, and the rebound gave me some comfort.

I kept telling myself, "Everything will be fine."

Because I was busy traveling and smoking weed, living like a crazy rich person, I thought the market would always reward me. I only paid attention to tweets that confirmed my biases.

And what was the biggest misguidance?

Bitcoin rebounded multiple times from the $6,000 support level.

Everyone thought this support level was unbreakable. Everyone continued to hold. Everyone thought this was just a healthy adjustment.

Then reality hit hard.

Bitcoin fell below $6,000, plummeting to $3,200.

Around $4,000, I gave up and sold all my assets.

In the end, I was left with less than 5% of my peak assets. I was once again left with nothing.

I desperately wanted to recover my losses. I started trading futures, and by early 2019, when Bitcoin rose to $13,500, I recovered 30% of my losses.

But the sideways market was torturous, and technical analysis completely failed; I began to fall into a continuous loss situation.

Tweet content: You can follow my Bitcoin and Ethereum trades at this URL; my nickname is b3y.

I found a job at Blockchain Whispers, earning Bitcoin by writing analysis articles.

I could have saved these Bitcoins, but I didn't. I bet everything on futures.

Then came March 2020, and Bitcoin crashed. I was forcibly liquidated and lost everything.

Lessons from the Cycle

At that time, I completely left the crypto industry and switched to filmmaking, doing that for a year.

Looking back, I learned three key lessons:

1. Greed is your biggest enemy. When you earn enough wealth to change your life, know when to take profits and not chase infinite returns.
2. Your lifestyle can become a trap. I raised my living standards too quickly, and when I lost everything, I felt suffocated.
3. Emotional investing can lead to your downfall. I only focused on information that confirmed my biases and ignored obvious danger signals. But the market doesn't care about your thoughts.

In 2020, I thought I had left the crypto industry for good.

But as we all know, no one can truly leave the crypto space.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。