How I lost 4.1 BTC because the Bitfinex hack and what to do next
Today was the worst trading day of my life. I have been a serious trader for several years but I have never been ruined like this in a trade. After setting up a trade and hitting my first target with decent profit I let the second half of my trade ride like I always do. I always set stop losses when trading but for some reason my stop loss did not trigger this time during the crash. In addition, on the Kraken exchange, I have a limited amount of margin just in case price cascades through my stop loss. Unfortunately Kraken did not close my trades like they are supposed to when I reached my margin limit. As price cascaded Kraken allowed my account to fall -3.5 BTC under my margin requirement. Any other exchange would close my trades as soon as my margin limit was reached but not Kraken. Not only did my stop loss not trigger on the Kraken exchange, they also allowed my account to fall way below my margin requirement (-3.5 BTC) before closing my trades on the crash. This is extremely frustrating and daunting at the same time because I always protect my self with stop losses in case something like this happens.I have now lost faith in crypto and the Kraken exchange.
So what do I do next you ask? Well this is where you guys come in, any suggestions on how to cheer up and what to do after experiencing loss and how to regain faith in something that you strongly supported would be greatly appreciated. This loss is brutal to me and I am trying to find something positive to learn from this and how to avoid this in the future but I have no answers. I set stop losses, I had a limited amount of margin yet I still suffered a big loss on my account. Any useful and uplifting comments would at least cheer me up. Thanks fellow steemers.
I hoped you are already cheered up! But if not, I wrote yet another poem about Bitcoin that might be somewhat inspirational. https://steemit.com/bitcoin/@music8mycomputer/bitcoin-s-great-divide
That was a cool poem.
well having traded my way to 40 bitcoins by buying ether early days and then making a series of bad investments into digibyte, the DAO and a few other nightmares i ended up back with about 2. The price of btc soon doubled after i lost them also so it was defo hard for me to accept. Especially as being at work and trading never mixed. All i can say is like anything it takes time to put it behind you. Pick yourself up and start off small when your ready again with a clear head and accept that this is crypto and its so volatile its sometimes best to only risk small amounts. I recently got back into etc on day one and 2 and Im now grinning again. :D
Thanks for the kind words, this really cheered me up. I got screwed by the DAO and the ether crash that occurred because of the DAO hack.I agree, trading and work do not go together and thats why I trade off the 240 min and daily timeframes so I don't have to sit in front of my computer all day but this hack really got me. I know that stop losses aren't a guarantee but Kraken should have margin called me when I went under my margin requirement. Letting me go 3.5 BTC under is ridiculous. I bought some ETC too!!
I'm not sure this will cheer you up, but the Bitcoin difficulty went down today by over 5%. I hope Bitfinex can sort out and minimize the loss, and BTC price can recover. I hope you are on the receiving end of good trades in the near future.
Thanks for the comments everyone, they cheered me up and made me feel better. Steemit kicks ass!!
You should always host your own wallet not some centralized website unless they have insurance like coinbase.
Shut up karbonxx, you have no idea what you're talking about. How are you going to trade with your coins locked up in your own wallet.
Domavila, I feel your pain. If your stop loss failed to fire then I'm unsympathetic as you just need to "hodl" and wait it out. No biggy if your portfolio is diverse and you can turn your attention elsewhere. But... the margin requirement, now that stings.
All the best mate, hope you can pull through. You could go all in on ETC? :)
I do understand you can't trade all day from a self hosted wallet. My bad okay.
All good man, thanks for commenting. At least you tried to help!
Um, That's what the BitShares Decentralized Exchange is for...
No liquidity, redundant for fast trades at present moment in time
I was wondering about the liquidity too. If there is no liquidity it is very hard to trade unless you love slippage, which no trader does.
Yea, the margin call is what got me. Somehow Kraken allowed me to go -3.5 BTC under my margin requirement which really pisses me off. Thanks for the response though.
@karbonxx Kraken is supposedly insured and I can't trade with leverage if my coins are sitting in cold storage. With all these hacks I might only trade spot and keep my coins in cold storage. I am so sick of these hacks and shady exchanges costing me money. I only trade on Kraken and GDAX.
Yeah. GDAX is coinbase so should be insured. I heard bitfinex works with Bitgo which is insured but I'm sure Bitgo insurance doesn't cover bitfinex since they are 2 different companies.
I don't think bitfinex is covered for the same reasons as you. Plus they might have pulled an exit scam on this one or lost so much money that their insurance wouldn't cover it. The one thing I know is this all seems very shady.
Apart from ETC (that sucker needs to get to 0.0085 and I've had a win), Looks at the upcoming ICOs for:
akasha.world
gnosis.pm
Both ETH dapps that should (in theory) give a pocket full of cash back to those who get in there at the start line. I've been waiting for those two for loooooong time.
SingularityDTV also... If that has an ICO, I'll go deep as f*ck.
GDAX is the government and they added eth so
@imarealboy777 They need to add ETC.
Upvoted
Hi! This post has a Flesch-Kincaid grade level of 8.5 and reading ease of 71%. This puts the writing level on par with Leo Tolstoy and David Foster Wallace.