How I missed a 122,252% gain being “much stupid”

Imagine turning $1,713 into $2.08 million.

Imagine how that feels.

Imagine being that close to perhaps the single-greatest trade ever, certainly the greatest trade you’ll likely ever make.

Imagine it being so close you can (painfully) smell it.

And then imagine… losing it all.

Or, I suppose, technically imagine never really having it at all but knowing that you could have had it.

Let me explain in a little more detail how I almost turned $1,713 into $2.08 million.

Much wow!

In early 2021, the crypto market was going a little bonkers.

A year earlier, in the depths of the first wave of the Covid pandemic, all the markets were crushed.

The entire world was getting locked down by its authoritarian governments, and the crypto market was not spared the bloodbath. At the lowest point of the crash, in March 2020, bitcoin traded below $5,000.

One year later, it was over $58,000.

This market exuberance carried over from bitcoin into the thousands of “altcoins” in the market.

Around this time, one in particular coin – known as Dogecoin – was really on the rise.

The “Doge” meme is well known online as a Shiba Inu dog that comes with many meme phrases such as, “much wow,” “such wow,” “much vroom” and lots more strange terminology.

I don’t really get it, but it’s kind of funny. And the Dogecoin crypto is based on that Doge meme originating all the way back to 2013 and the first big crypto altcoin bull market.

However, this time around, as Dogecoin was pumping and Tesla’s CEO Elon Musk was even getting on the Dogecoin bandwagon, I started to think to myself, “This market is a little crazy.”

I thought that if Dogecoin (originally just a meme joke) was going bonkers, then other related parts of the “dog-coin” market might just go a little silly, too.

So I had a look around the back alleys of the crypto market and discovered a very little known “dog coin” called Shiba Inu that was getting virtually no attention.

As far as I could see, aside from Dogecoin (based on the Shiba Inu meme), nothing else existed that was Shiba Inu-related except for Shiba Inu (SHIB) crypto.

I thought to myself, “You know what, a lot of the crypto market is ridiculous, so have a punt on the most ridiculous idea you’ve ever had, Sam, and throw something at SHIB.”

It was, and may always be, the most ridiculous rationale for putting money into a cryptocurrency ever. But it was a Shiba Inu that I thought was worthless, and that would probably end up getting “rekt”. I also figured the market was so stupid, SHIB might just pump to silly levels.

I made a deal with myself that I’d chuck some punt money at it and, importantly, just leave it alone for exactly one year and see what happened.

That was the plan.

That’s not how it worked out.

Learn, learn and learn

In early-to-mid March 2021, I swapped about $1,700 worth of Ethereum (ETH) for around 24 billion SHIB tokens.

That’s right, twenty-four billion SHIB tokens.

By the end of the month the price had almost halved. That $1,700 was less than $1,000 at this point. Meanwhile, a whole raft of other great crypto projects I’d been researching looked like far better prospects.

They had legitimate timelines, they were working in exciting areas of the market, and, fundamentally, they had a lot going for them.

And then there was SHIB, just some random meme coin, literally there on the basis of “number goes up” and nothing more.

The SHIB price jumped around for a little while, and, eventually, within the next month or so, I’d had enough of the wild volatility swings, the absence of anything substantial, and decided to ditch my original plan and just get out for a small profit (about $2,500) and move into something more exciting.

That was my first mistake.

I ditched my original plan.

I had thrown punt money at SHIB. I didn’t desperately need the funds. Had this been the case, I’d never have never thrown $1,700 at it.

But I had also paid too much attention to it. I had watched the volatility swings up, down, up, down. None of this was the plan I’d made for this; I was breaking my own rules.

Eventually, because I paid too much attention to it, it got the better of me. The original plan went out the window and in flew a new one for something else.

Had I stuck to my original plan, exactly one year later, those 24 billion SHIB tokens would have had a value of around $550,000.

However, Shiba Inu hit an all-time high in October 2021 which would have made my 24 billion SHIB tokens worth about $2.08 million. That would have been a 122,252% return.

Now, honestly, if I’d held on longer, to have timed the top of the market perfectly would have been unlikely. Would I have been shaken out of the position even getting close to that?

Well, yeah, probably. After all, I never even made it that far to start with.

Does it hurt to know that  I was this close to turning $1,700 into over $2 million?

Well, no, not really.

Partly because I see what’s coming next. The biggest change not just to crypto but to everything you do in this world is due… imminently. This the most significant prediction I’ve ever made. I believe what we are about to witness is set to alter everything.

It’s so big, so important, that I’ve teed up a massive interview with one of the biggest names in the UK to discuss exactly what it means, what’s coming and what you need to do to prepare for it.

I’ve been in this market for over a decade. This isn’t the first altcoin boom cycle I’ve seen. It won’t be the last.

Every cycle I’m still always learning. And so should you.

While the SHIB story here is a little wild, it’s a good reminder that sticking to your plans in this market is really the best thing you can do.

Learn about the market, the way the market moves, how investors think, how these cycles come and go and what it’s all building to.

Understand how to move in the market, trade, transact, interact with the crypto world. Learn, learn and learn. If you make mistakes, as I’ve made plenty over the years, learn some more.

Do this, and I believe you’ll become one of the most clued-up investors on the planet. And that puts you at the pointy end of the biggest, most exciting market opportunity in history.

Until next time…

Sam Volkering
Editor, Exponential Investor