Original author: hitesh.eth
Original translation: Luffy, Foresight News
I had been a startup guy before I got into crypto, and in 2016 I went all in on my third startup, Digital Gorkha. We built a simple visitor management and security app for physical venues, and raised some money, but from a bunch of bad investors who gave away too much equity.
Tweet: Digital Gorkha is one of my previous startups, an innovative yet straightforward technology product. Digital Gorkha (acquired in 2016) was a first attempt at developing a door access security app. The idea was then executed brilliantly by MyGate (valued at over $500M).
This misstep put us in a difficult position. Despite steady traction and revenue, raising a Series A was nearly impossible because the equity structure was so shambolic and the product we were building had no real technological moat.
As a founder, I watched my company fail and struggled to think of ways to change its fate. That’s when I started looking for a technology moat, something that would help us secure the funding rounds that were about to slip away.
At the same time, the pressure from my parents was overwhelming because my wedding was approaching and I hadnt received a salary for six months. I was staying with my college friends and they helped me with food and lodging.
I have nothing left to lose.
It was during a late night Google search that I stumbled upon blockchain.
Since I had a background in cybersecurity and some knowledge of cryptography, I quickly grasped the blockchain architecture. I read about different use cases and explored its future potential, and finally read a blog about a blockchain-based identity system, and it was a lightbulb moment.
The Digital Gorkha project has a verified database of visitor information for over 100 venues in over 20 cities, logging over 1,000 visitor records per day. If I could get these identities on-chain, I could create a truly defensible product.
GetXS was born, a blockchain-based identity authentication layer under Digital Gorkha.
The tweet reads: “Back in 2016, I was building GetXS — a decentralized distributed identity (DID) platform, and we were ranked among the top 10 Web3 startups in India. We published a whitepaper and planned an ICO, but for some reason it didn’t happen and the product never launched.
I started pitching this project to investors, but it was mid-2016 and venture capitalists in India were still apathetic about blockchain investments. I pitched to angel investors like Anupam Mittal, Kunal Shah, and even big funds like Accel and Sequoia, but none of them saw the potential.
Looking back now, it was an early version of Worldcoin, but at the time, I didn’t have a single rupee in funding.
We struggled for six months, but we were burning through our cash too quickly. The debt we had taken on to keep the company going was weighing us down every day.
My parents teased me every day because I had no money and was about to get married. Another person was about to come into my life and I had nothing.
I had no choice but to sell 30% of my shares for almost nothing, which forced me to leave the company I founded.
The real estate developers who had invested in Digital Gorkha didn’t like my exploration of blockchain and wanted to run the company their own way.
Mentally, I felt like I was fighting a losing battle and was overwhelmed by the financial pressures, so I gave up on starting my own business and started looking for a job in the blockchain space.
Falling down the cryptocurrency rabbit hole
I did three things:
I founded the Its Blockchain blog to record my learning experience in the blockchain field.
Relaunched GetXS as an independent startup with a new co-founder.
Working as a blockchain consultant for an IT company in Bangalore.
The money I earned was barely enough to make ends meet, and I couldn’t bring my wife over to live with me. That’s when I thought of Bitcoin, and in October 2016 I bought my first Bitcoin.
When I checked the price three months later, it had doubled. That’s when everything changed.
I started to dig deeper into the crypto space, looking for the next opportunity like Bitcoin. I discovered Ethereum and Ripple and made my first real investment, which resulted in a 10x increase in my portfolio within a month.
And just like that, I quit my job four months later.
I told my manager:
“What’s the point of coming to the office every day and doing nothing? I can make four times as much sitting at home doing something exciting.”
Since then, I have shifted the focus of Its Blockchain from blockchain to cryptocurrency, focusing on altcoins and initial coin offerings (ICOs).
One day I published an article: Top 10 Cryptocurrencies to Buy in August and the server crashed. Even after three upgrades, the site still had 150,000 page views that month.
I saw a need in the market, and we doubled down on listicles, and traffic soared to a million views at its peak.
The ICO boom was in full swing, and we were getting tons of traffic, so I started monetizing it 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, which has an annual recurring revenue (ARR) of over $500,000 and attracts 500,000 page views per month. I also have a paid consulting company with 500 members, making enough money to retire at the age of 25.
I started 2017 with a zero bank balance, and by the end of the year, I had earned over $1 million from Its Blockchain alone.
Life was good, but greed took over.
2018 Bear Market: Portfolio Drawdown
At the 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 more than 40 altcoins, intending to hold them forever.
This was the biggest mistake I ever made.
The market slowly began to collapse. At first, it looked like a normal correction, and I was somewhat comforted by the rebound.
I kept telling myself, “Everything is going to be alright.”
Because I was busy traveling, smoking weed, and spending like a crazy rich guy, I assumed the market would always reward me. I only read tweets that confirmed my biases.
And what is the biggest misleading thing?
Bitcoin has bounced off the $6,000 support level multiple times.
Everyone thought this support level was unbreakable. Everyone continued to hold. Everyone thought this was just a healthy correction.
Then reality hit hard.
Bitcoin fell below $6,000 and plummeted all the way to $3,200.
At around $4,000, I threw in the towel and sold everything I had.
In the end, I was left with less than 5% of my peak assets. I was once again penniless.
I was desperate to recover my losses. I started trading futures and by early 2019, when Bitcoin reached $13,500, I had recovered 30% of my losses.
But the sideways market made me miserable, technical analysis completely failed, and I began to fall into the predicament of continuous losses.
Tweet content: You can follow my Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions at this URL , my nickname is b3 y.
I got a job at Blockchain Whispers and earned Bitcoin by writing analysis articles.
I could have saved those bitcoins, but I didnt. I bet everything on futures.
Then, March 2020 came and Bitcoin flash crashed. I was forced to close my positions and lost everything.
Lessons from the cycle
That’s when I left crypto completely and went into filmmaking, which I did for a year.
Looking back, I learned three key lessons:
Greed is your biggest enemy. When you make enough money to change your life, know when to stop and dont just chase unlimited gains.
Your lifestyle can be a trap. I raised my standard of living too quickly, and when I lost it all, it felt like I was suffocating.
Emotional investing is a recipe for disaster. I only paid attention to information that confirmed my biases and ignored obvious red flags. But the market doesnt care what you think.
In 2020, I thought I was done with crypto forever.
But as we all know, no one can really leave the crypto space.
