I lost $75,000 — all my savings for an apartment 🏠💸

I want to tell my story — not to justify myself, but to listen to myself and maybe help someone save money and nerves. 😔

I started trading crypto in early spring 2024. I don't remember the exact date, but I remember how it all began: I had a small deposit — one hundred dollars. 💵 In February, the market seemed favorable: prices were rising, I was making my first leveraged trades and everything was going up. 📈 This gave me confidence. I thought, 'I understand how this works.' It seemed that if you acted carefully, you could make a profit.

Then euphoria came. 🎢 I saw the charts going up, read praises in the channels, and began to increase my bets. First, I topped up my account with 500 dollars, then another 500 — it amounted to about 1,000. 💰 It seemed that now I could scale the position. The trades became larger — and along with them, the risk grew. The exchange always offers high leverage: 20×, 50×, even 500× — and I let myself press those buttons. 🔥 It seemed to me that I was trading safely, that "this is Bitcoin, it only goes up," that I calculated everything.

The mistakes began out of euphoria. 😵 One of the key ones — I didn't close trades on time. If I had to close at a loss, I tried to "make it back," pouring in new funds. I took hedges, opened opposite trades, hoping that if one position went into the red, the other would close in the green and compensate for everything. But the hedge didn’t work as I envisioned: the hedge closed at a loss, while the main position remained vulnerable. 📉

I lacked discipline. 😣 I followed advice from Telegram channels and "expert" videos, placed limit orders hoping to catch a breakout — and almost always found myself either at the top or at the bottom. The order triggered right at the most unfortunate place. I thought the market was "against me" — like paranoia: as soon as I opened a short, the market turned up; as soon as I placed a long hoping for a pullback — it fell. It tormented me: sleepless nights, 🌙 constant balance checks, notifications from the exchange "top up your account, otherwise liquidation." 🚨

From March to July 2024, it was just hell. 😭 I tried to maintain the balance, but the losses grew like an avalanche. Sometimes I closed individual trades in profit, but the overall budget remained in the red — because there were more bad trades. I remember specific drops: one coin fell by 30% in a day and took a significant part of my deposit; on one trade, I lost six thousand — and that was just one blow. I had huge hopes for Ethereum — "soon an ETF, Ethereum will soar," — but attempts to catch the rise turned into losses. 💔

The worst thing is that I started spending the savings I had accumulated for years for an apartment. 🏠 This wasn't spare money — it was the foundation, my plan for the future. But I kept pouring more and more into it, hoping that the market would turn around and give everything back. I invested a total of about 75,000 dollars — I am not a wealthy person; these were my savings, which I never allowed myself to live luxuriously on. I stopped going out, saved money, and then just started pouring this money into the exchange. 💸

Psychologically, I was destroyed. Insomnia, thoughts I had never experienced before, the fear of admitting to my loved ones. I didn't want to bother anyone because it was shameful to admit that I essentially lost their money. I was afraid that my loved ones would find out, and I didn’t know how they would react. I often woke up at night, checked my balance, lived in constant anxiety: "Am I going to be liquidated now?" It felt like the market existed just to wipe me out. 😥

At one point, a message came: "Liquidation." I woke up to find that I had actually been liquidated. There was a little less than 4,000 dollars left. I tried to freak out and open a couple more trades, but I understood: this is the end. I was faced with the reality — I lost what I planned to spend on an apartment, and I don’t know how to recover. 💀

It’s hard for me to admit this: I feel like an idiot. I realize that much of it was a mistake: lack of risk management rules, trading with leverage without discipline, emotional entries, belief in damn "experts." But the most bitter thing is not the money, but the realization that I let down those who counted on me: my girlfriend, my mother, who depend on me at this moment. 😢

Now I've written this text — not for views, not for likes. I needed to express myself to at least someone because I can't talk about it face-to-face. 😔 I don't know what will happen next. Scenarios constantly spin in my head: how to pay for my mother's dental treatment, how to support my girlfriend who is currently looking for a job, how to move forward. It all seems overwhelming. 😣

If I could go back, I would do it differently: I would never touch money for vital goals, I would never trade with such leverage without a clear plan and stop-losses, I would never set a goal to "make it back." 💸 I would rather have lost a thousand at the beginning and walked away than lose everything. 💔

I am not saying this for you to feel sorry for me. I want people to hear: trading with leverage is not a game. 🎲 It’s a risky strategy, and if you lack discipline, it resembles a casino. 🎰 Never risk what secures your life. 🚫

I don’t know how my story will end. Perhaps it will be a lesson for life. 📚 Maybe one day I will recover. 🌱 But right now, I just want someone among you to read this and think: do not repeat my mistakes. 🙏