It was the height of the last cryptocurrency bull market in late of 2017 and coins were rocketing up faster than people could even comprehend. I had gotten into a coin, then called Raiblocks (now called Nano), several months before when it was trading for pennies.

At the time, there weren't many exchanges that allowed you to trade Raiblocks. The exchange with the most volume (and best prices) was called Bitgrail, based in Italy. I'll never forget the day it happened, I was in the back of a taxi cab in New York City when my phone started going completely haywire with notifications. Raiblocks had breached the $15 per coin mark!
I immediately rushed back to my Airbnb in Brooklyn, opened my laptop, and started selling. I continued doing this for several days. Raiblocks just kept growing in price, reaching a peak of around $28. Bitgrail was known for being a little "glitchy", but many of the exchanges were back then, this was way before most people even had heard about Bitcoin.

Bitgrail limited the amount of Bitcoin that you could transfer out of your exchange wallet to three in a twenty-four hour period. I had applied for the next level of verification so I could transfer more at a time but the exchange had been stuck in their review process for weeks. So, like clockwork, I took my proceeds from the Raiblocks sales and was transferring the maximum amount of Bitcoin I could every day.

About a week-and-a-half into this process of feverishly selling I had amassed a backlog of 73 Bitcoin in the Bitgrail wallet that I couldn't transfer off of the exchange due to their daily transfer limits. A few days later they locked all of their wallets permanently and announced the exchange was hacked and the thieves had stolen more than $175 million worth of Raiblocks. I had instantly lost the equivalent of almost a million dollars.

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“When you win, you don't examine it very much, except to congratulate yourself. You easily, and wrongly, assume it has something to do with your rare qualities as a person. But winning only measures how hard you've worked and how physically talented you are; it doesn't particularly define you beyond those characteristics.

Losing on the other hand, really does say something about who you are. Among other things it measures are: do you blame others, or do you own the loss? Do you analyze your failure, or just complain about bad luck?

If you're willing to examine failure, and to look not just at your outward physical performance, but your internal workings, too, losing can be valuable. How you behave in those moments can perhaps be more self-defining than winning could ever be. Sometimes losing shows you for who you really are.” ― Lance Armstrong, Every Second Counts

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At the time my corporate salary was in the low-$40k range and my book sales were meager at best. I had instantly lost more money than I thought I would ever make in my life, I was devastated.

I'm part of a class-action lawsuit with thousands of other claimants who lost money on Bitgrail. It's been dragging on for several years now. The Italian courts in Florence keep changing the rules for the claimants and pushing back hearing dates. With each month that passes I lose a little more hope that I'll see a refund of any significance. The emotions associated with this are a weird cocktail of anger, embarrassment, garnished with million "what ifs." I sometimes think about how different my life would be now if that wallet wasn't locked.

People in the crypto sphere always say....never leave coins on an exchange, if you don't own the keys, you don't own the coins...and I get it. But there are instances like this where it's not as black and white as that. That kind of wealth, made so quickly, is dizzying and disorienting. Especially back then, investors didn't have many choices for exchanges. If you wanted the reward you sometimes had to take the risk. I gambled and lost big.

Losing that kind of wealth will, very quickly, make you realize the stuff you're made of. The experience was character-building. I, like so many others, had to keep getting up day after day and make the most of what I had left.

There are only two choices: 1) Give up; or 2) rebuild.

Even still, all things considered, I'm thankful for cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and the wonderful communities of individuals behind it. Every sector has its bad apples. Despite the predators, the exit scams, and the hacks, I’ll be the first to tell you there are many more good people than bad in this space. These good people are changing the world, for the better, a little more each day. Exposure to and connection with these people in crypto-community have brought many more blessings than curses into my life. You simply can't put a price on that. I can't imagine going back to my pre-blockchain life.

These past few years have been like a master class in life itself. What I’ve learned is dreams don't always turn out exactly like we think they will. A sizable portion of what happens to us is beyond our control. How we react to the things that are beyond our control are as important as the goals we set. I’ve come to realize that relationships are far more important than any coin or dollars ever could be. This is why I still get up in the morning, most days, with hope and a smile. This is why I continue to create, learn, why I keep sharing my stories and ideas.

This is precisely why I'm here.

With Gratitude,
~Eric Vance Walton~

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*I am an American novelist, poet, traveler, and crypto-enthusiast. If you’ve enjoyed my work please sign up for my author newsletter at my website. Newsletter subscribers will receive exclusive updates and special offers and your information will never be sold or shared.

Alarm Clock Dawn, one of the first full length novels published on the blockchain, and the book that started it all for me can be found HERE. Or Click Here to read it for free on the Steemit blockchain

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