How I almost lost over 4 Bitcoin because of stupidity
This is a real life story of what NOT to do with your bitcoin and other crypto.
How it started
BitBet.us
A couple of years ago, I ran across a website called BitBet.us. It's a website that allows users to bet on various real world issues. All bets and payments are in bitcoin. The following categories are available for betting:- Bitcoin
- Politics
- Sports
- Entertainment
- Finance
- Miscellaneous
I was skeptical when I first discovered BitBet and started off with small bets. Eventually I got up to over a bitcoin on some bets. I have now been using it for maybe 2 years. It has been very profitable. I feel like I'm double dipping by winning a bet and capturing bitcoin's value increase. It has allowed me to make money and keep my pack of bitcoin happy by letting them do hoodrat stuff.
I have made several bets that bitcoin would rise above certain price milestones. For example, bitcoin would top $2k USD by January 2018. I bet in early May when bitcoin was already above $1500. The profit if I won the bet was about 50% in terms of bitcoin. The profit in terms of USD was 100%!
- A bet of 1 BTC paid out 1.5 BTC
- 1 BTC at the time of bet was about $1,500
- Payout of 1.5 BTC would equal $3k at least (2k x 1.5)
- That means if I win, I get $3k. If I lose the bet, I lose $1500.
- That's 2 to 1 odds that bitcoin would go up 33% in the next 7 months. The volatility of bitcoin was very high, so it was worth it to me. I thought bitcoin would go above $2k or crash down below $800...betting allowed me to capture a better upside.
My most recent win was betting on bitcoin hitting $3k by end of 2017. I won the bet, but it was painful to watch. Bitcoin came within a few dollars of hitting $3k on June 12th and then crashed down to $1800. In between June 12th and August 5th (when it finally crossed $3k), bitbet.us was sold to another party.
I'm an idiot
Number one rule in crypto is to never trust a 3rd party website with your money. This is why people hate exchanges and want to hang on to their funds in a place where only they have the private key. I had gotten used to betting on BitBet and I like winning! The more I won, the more money I would leave in active bets. When the site went down, I had a little over 4 bitcoin tied up in bets. I didn't have all my crypto in bets...but when bitcoin is worth over $3k, losing a few bitcoin hurts!
I got lucky
Bitcoin did clear $3k and the site came back up. No payouts though. The admins were posting every now and then on reddit trying to tell people everything was ok. They started posting on the actual page of the bet asking people how they wanted to handle the Bitcoin cash payout. https://bitbet.us/bet/1345/bitcoin-to-top-3000-usd-before-january-2018/...still no payouts on August 10th even though bitcoin cleared $3k 5 days earlier. Bets usually resolve in 24 hours. I started composing this post on the 10th and was going to title it...
How I almost lost over 4 bitcoin because of stupidity
This may be the craziest bet ever, because it's tied up for so long!
Lessons Learned
I'm not putting anymore money into bets on bitbet. Even if I think they have an honest track record since 2013, the fact that they can just sell their site to someone else is mind boggling. And nothing stops them from just taking everyone's bitcoin and walking away.I have told my bitcoin pack to calm down for now. I still need to find another place to bet....I was hoping one of these ICOs would come out with a decentralized place to place wagers. Until that happens, my pack of bitcoin will be waiting...
Likewise mate,happy brother for you that you only 'almost' lost :). I actually lost, along with maybe over 10,000 investors (idiot). Wonder you've heard of Betrobot. Those scammers would be rich af by now. Seems like they knew way before that the bull ride was on it way!
sorry to hear that! No, I haven't heard of that.
-"What are you"
-"An idiot sandwich"
hahahahahahahah 😂
Haha @financialcritic your bets have been going well however does it worth the stress? betting can lead to addiction. Hold tight on your bitcoin
I guess you can call it betting...but I think of it more like investing. I don't make blind bets....I only like to make bets where I think the risk is smaller than the reward.
I find it stress reducing...actually it's stressful to not participate for me. But I understand what you mean...my wife finds it stressful and wonders how I can spend so much time building spreadsheets for random things. Before crypto came along, I was investing in the stock market or whatever else I could wager on.
Great, I wish you success. Lets hope that our bet on steem will yield fruit by end of next year
Hopefully! Although I don't wait around that long on failed bets. Love the platform, but if bots aren't controlled and price doesn't recover, I'll cut my losses and move it to another investment....and keep blogging with low Steem power.
Hahaha dont cut and run bud...we are in in the long run!!!!!!! together we will power up this baby to the stars.
Is there another steemit like competitor? guess none can clone steemit
I'm not going to leave Steemit....but there is no benefit to having $20-30k worth of Steem power unless I were to create a bot to sell those votes.
The benefit lies in the Future value (FV) of steem
Exactly what I'm thinking....so I should treat it like any other crypto investment. Investing in Steem vs Bitcoin vs NEO vs Ether vs whatever. It's best to do it outside of Steem Power, so I can trade as needed and not have it be stuck for 13 weeks.
Lost 0.7 BTC investing in some shit, learnt the hard way. I'm still ahead from investing, but that was a real wakeupcall.
There are only a handfull of companies I trust in BTC world.
Yeah...the list of companies worth trusting are getting smaller and smaller
Cool story bro. Are you looking into Peerplays?
I hadn't heard of it before you mentioned it, but I'll check it out. Thanks!
I lost 6 BTC in January with a wrong paper wallet address. Ouch.
Yikes! Sorry to hear that...
Sounds like a Ponzi scheme to keep you doubling down each new bet. Did the government shut it down or was it just a big scheme? Will that be the way of Steemit?
Wasn't a ponzi....I was betting against other users. Every win I had meant someone else was losing. Every loss meant someone else was winning.
Some people made money with Bernie Sanders But in the end most investors lost everything . So at the end of this one how many people lost money?
Bernie Sanders? Not following you....Also, it's not an investment scheme. It is a site where you can bet against other users....so half the people lose, half the people win.
buen post, ya te sigo, sigueme espero tus aportes en mis post, saludos...
No hablo espanol.
wohhh that's a nightmare for sure
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