Sometimes I laugh about it. Sometimes I cringe. But either way, I learned a lot from that $50 I’ll never see again.
It was 2022. I had just discovered Telegram groups about crypto. Everyone seemed to be making money from low market cap gems, and I wanted in. I joined a group shilling a new token — the name sounded incredible, the logo was cute, and they promised to “revolutionize GameFi.”
I didn’t know how to read a smart contract. I didn’t check if the team was doxxed. I didn’t even realize the token had only 5 holders, and one wallet controlled 96% of the supply. 🥲
But I was new. And I was greedy. I bought in. And the next day… the devs vanished. The Telegram group was deleted. The token was gone from the DEX. I’d fallen for my first rug pull.
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🚩 What I Missed Back Then
✅ No team, no audit, no website beyond a Wix page
✅ “Only going up” language everywhere
✅ No real use case, just hype
✅ Telegram admins blocking anyone asking real questions
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🤕 It Hurt, But I Needed It
That $50 lesson did more for me than any YouTube video.
Now I check the contract. I watch wallets. I avoid hype. I don’t ape into anything unless I can explain what the project does in one sentence—without using the words “next Solana.”
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🌱 If You’re New: Don’t Learn This the Hard Way
Never buy on emotion.
DYOR isn’t a meme — it’s a shield.
If it sounds too good to be true, it is.
Losing money in crypto isn’t the worst thing. Not learning from it is.
— Lena