Two years ago, I was deeply fascinated by cryptocurrency and its underlying technology, blockchain. The idea of a decentralized system for making transactions without the involvement of a third party piqued my interest, and I began to learn about cryptocurrencies and smart contracts.
During the 2020-2021 bull run, I invested in some of the most popular cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Cardano. However, my desire for more significant profits led me to explore the world of "Shitcoins". These are tokens with no real utility, but are popular in the market and offer the potential for exponential growth. Typically, these tokens are traded on BSC (Binance Smart Chain) due to its low transaction fees and the fact that most of these tokens were launched on this network. To buy and sell these tokens, the Pancakeswap platform is commonly used.
However, I soon realized that most of these tokens were fraudulent and not profitable to trade. Many of them were honeypots, meaning that their smart contract code prevented investors from selling the token after purchasing, with only the contract owner being able to sell. Of course, you could detect if a smart contract had malicious code by doing your own research and using some tools to scan the code. Other projects turned out to be rug pulls, where the developer sold all the liquidity pool tokens after investors put in their money, leaving them with nothing.
Furthermore, some of these tokens were targeted by bots and scripts that automatically purchase the token as soon as it launches and sell it once a certain level of profit is achieved. To ensure their transaction is prioritized and executed as soon as possible, these bots set a high transaction slippage, allowing them to buy the tokens at the lowest possible price. This caused the tokens' prices to skyrocket to their maximum value within seconds of launch and then collapse to zero in less than a minute. This process made the bot owners extremely wealthy, earning thousands of dollars in profits, while leaving the rest of us with nothing. It was virtually impossible for regular traders to compete with these bots.
While some of these tokens did have legitimate use cases and were supported by large communities and hype and managed to stay longer, they still tended to survive for only a week at most before crashing down to zero. You still could make some profits with these tokens if you could join the tokens’ presales, or you could just manage to buy the token as soon as it launches. Presales often allowed a limited number of investors to buy tokens at a cheaper price than the launch price.
Anyways, I continued to navigate through these projects, buying and selling tokens, experiencing some gains and losses along the way. Then, I stumbled upon a project called MOONPIRATE. There was something different about it. I joined their Telegram group a day before their launch, and I was able to join their group voice chat where the developers and investors were discussing the project.
The developers were extremely transparent and forthcoming with information about the project. It turned out that they had previously launched successful projects like AquaGoat and MoonRave, which had reached market caps of millions of dollars and garnered thousands of holders. In fact, AquaGoat had over a quarter million holders.
What set MOONPIRATE apart from other tokens was its unique use case involving physical items, rum bottles. Each bottle would have a QR code that links to an address on the blockchain, effectively connecting the physical product to the digital world. I found this to be an interesting and innovative concept. Also, it was planned for a fair launch. There was a buying limit, and the smart contract address was not disclosed until the second of the launch. The developers would then send the address of the smart contract to the Telegram chat, making sure that everyone had the same chance to buy in at the same time, same distribution. The developers also took other measures to ensure transparency and fairness, such as renouncing ownership so that they could not make changes to the smart contract code after launch and burning 100% of the LP (liquidity provider) tokens so there would be no chance for a rug pull. I was so hyped and so early in it, I was among the first 100 members in the group.
So, the time has come, everyone gets ready to buy as soon as the token launches. The token launched and I quickly obtained the smart contract address from the Telegram chat and proceeded with the buying transactions. Due to the buying limit, I had to make six separate transactions, starting with 0.005 BNB and then gradually increasing to 0.1, 0.2, and so on, as the number of holders increased. In total, I used 0.643 BNB for the purchases. At the time of the transaction, 1 BNB was valued at around $530, so the 0.643 BNB was worth approximately $340.
As I checked my wallet, I was surprised to see that I now had almost 78 trillion MOONPIRATE tokens. Excited by the prospect of this new investment, I continued to monitor the group chat and noticed that the community was rapidly expanding with more and more people buying in. However, some investors became wary when they noticed that the developer was selling some of his owned tokens. Concerns were raised in the group chat, including my own, but the developer reassured everyone that he was simply taking some profits for himself. Furthermore, his ownership percentage was not high enough to cause a significant rug pull even if he were to sell all of his tokens. Nevertheless, we remained cautious.
After an hour since the launch, I noticed that the value of my tokens had almost doubled, so I decided to sell all of them, which resulted in a return of 1.15 BNBs. See Transaction
However, I couldn't resist the temptation and kept trading, gradually increasing the number of my tokens with each buy and sell while the price continued to rise. Eventually, I ended up with a whopping 85 trillion tokens. Moreover, the developer's selling of his own tokens and the price starting to decline made me begin to feel nervous, so I decided to sell everything and exchange my 85 trillion tokens for 1.54 BNBs, which amounted to around $815. See Transaction
Not bad ha? roughly $500 in profits in just two hours. Well guess what, over the next four days, the price of the token skyrocketed, increasing almost 500 times its launching price. Here's how it played out:
My first buy transaction was on April 16, 2021, at 21:00, when the price was $4.35x10-12 per token. After 24 hours, the price had gone up to $3.26x10-11. If we do the calculations, then my tokens were worth 85x1012 x 3.26x10-11 = $2,771 at that time.
On April 18, 2021, at 21:00, the price was $1.58x10-10 per token, and my tokens were worth $13,430.
On April 19, 2021, at 21:00, the price was $3.05x10-10 per token, and my tokens were worth $25,925.
On April 20, 2021, at 17:00, the price was $1.71x10-9 per token, and my tokens were worth $145,350. This was the all-time high.
Unfortunately, one lucky investor sold trillions of tokens at that moment, causing the price to plummet and never again reaching those levels. As I watched the price continue to soar and reach all-time highs, I couldn't help but feel a sense of regret. If only I had held onto my tokens a bit longer, I could have turned that initial $340 investment into a life-changing amount of money. Getting into such projects this much early doesn’t happen every day. But it is alright, you don't always get what you want in life.
Despite this, I managed to make a considerable profit, turning my initial investment into over $800. Anyways, I quit trading cryptos now and am currently focusing on my studies. I’m a computer engineering student and a junior full stack web developer now. Who knows, maybe one day I'll launch my own blockchain project that will make me rich. Thank you for taking the time to read my story. And remember, sharing this could not be possible without the power of blockchain that allowed me to review all these statistics and transactions even after more than two years of making them. Cheers!