82. Our Biggest Crypto Mistakes Including a $9M Lesson

Oh my God. The amount of ETH I put into these things, 99% of them went to zero.

You take that eth, that was perfectly fine as eth and barreled into these hyper speculative investments. You are that meme of that dog in the burning fire going, this is fine.

Went from 3 cents to the peak $28. It did a 5,966% increase after I sold it.

It's roughly a 900x. So for your 10 grand you would have got 9 million. How do you feel about that? Ben and I walked away with probably.

Eight and a half thousand minus fees. I could have walked away with $9 million, but I end up with a lazy T shirt. That's a nine million dollar T shirt. Welcome back to the bennebergs podcast. I am Ben, your favorite high school dropout and CEO of Collective Shift alongside Ms. Bergs, your favorite MBA and COO of Collective Shift, Australia's leading crypto portfolio insights company, providing professional analysis and portfolio strategies for crypto investors like you. We are a unique blend of the established and the self made and we're here to break down crypto business and personal growth. But we don't just talk shitburgs. We give you the insights you need to make better investments, build successful businesses and level up your life. And today, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking the hard, the hard truths. We're talking the biggest crypto mistakes we've made. And we've ran some numbers bergs and we both vomited before we did this episode. I can't believe.

Made it makes me so sick. So we've done this episode and look, we've made so many mistakes. So listen to this so you don't have to make the same ones. So much money's been left on the table. We've learned so much about ourselves, we're going to go into disgusting amounts of detail about what we've done. This is pretty much going to be therapy for Ben and I to talk through our sorted paths and mistakes we've made in crypto investing.

Crypto just brings out so much anxiety and stress. Like it is one of the very few markets that really can get yourself. And on a serious note, it can get you in a lot of trouble. Like if you're not careful. You really need to have your sort of wits about you because some of these mistakes can hurt. And I didn't realize this still hurts looking at these numbers five years on.

What is wrong with us? Not only is this difficult to understand, it's difficult to implement and it Moves so fast, you have to make kind of quick decisions. And then if you make one, anything can happen. In crypto, like, you've got one coming up that is just an unbelievable story. And now we've been in the game a bit longer. We understand it, we have a plan, we know what to do, We've seen quite a few scenarios that we're actually, you know, quite good at it. But, my God, the mistakes are made. Where do we want to start with this, Ben?

Where do you want to start?

I mean, let's start at the top. Let's start with a couple of my mistakes. Let's go there, right? Because yours are an absolute deuce. So mine. But.

All right, crypto mistakes. Let's go. This. This is the confessional. Oh, mate. So the biggest one for me was barreling into ICOs. I was a mad dog. 2017, couldn't do anything wrong. Any ICO, you do a little analysis, you go, all star team. Yeah, they've got this product, this is going to fit. You know, they've got this token launch. This is happening. We've got like a bloody. Was it pre whatever allocation discounts for.

The fucking buttings for a blockchain.

Oh, get me in like, oh, that's it, that's it. Free snags on the blockchain. And my God, the amount of ETH I put into these things, 99 of them went to zero. 8th was only a hundred bucks at the time. And when I go back and I do my tax and I look at my old accounts, I'm just like, oh, I'm gonna spew, gonna have a huge bomb. This is disgusting. So, but what I would do is I wouldn't actually spend my eighth. I would go and get fiat, put it into ETH, put into the ICO. But still, if I would have kept that eighth, at current day's prices, it's at least a 20x from where it was. All those ICOs went to zero. One or two returned quite a bit. Some of them I didn't. Here's Another thing with ICOs that went gangbusters, that were 20 or 30x didn't sell. I was like, yeah, this is great. This is running. And then I kind of lost a bit of interest and go, yeah, this is fine. And bang. Big Bear market falls off a cliff, drops 99%. And I'm just holding these bags of alts and I'm like, what am I going to do with this? A lot of them, the projects have gone to zero. I've written them off. I've carried forward those losses, that's fine. But then I'm still holding bags of other things and I'm like, look, I just have to make my life simpler. I've got to offload these bags in the future. But my God, looking, if I would have just kept eight, we're talking like.

Oh, top six figures, if not seven figures. I reckon a crazy amount of money.

I think so many people can also relate to that in the NFT market. Like the last 12 to 24 months where you take that ETH, that was perfectly fine as ETH and barreled into these hyper speculative investments. Not. And by the way, this is me like, and not really thinking too much about portfolio allocation of like exposure to eth. And all of a sudden you've like reduced all your exposure to ETH to buy these super crazy hyper speculative things that most are gonna go to zero anyway and you're left with nothing again.

So didn't learn my lesson, barreled into NFTs. Not too many. Bought a few that I like. So you see the drop is up there. They're cheap as Here we go up there. I buy them because I look at them and I laugh. They're not for investment, they're just for fun. And I like the community because they're a bunch of bogans. They play poker. Bought a few other ones and just seeing them fall off a cliff and I'm like, did you not learn your lesson? The one time I did have a plan was with Moonbirds, where I structured it properly. I lent myself some money, list of money to my trust, did a loan agreement, had the money set up, had it all structured correctly, didn't get onto the white list. And that was the first time I would have sold. I would have bought for about 10 or 12,000, would have pulled the trigger at 150,000. Like that was my plan. That would have happened in about inside of a week and I would have made 140 grand profit. That is the first time I had a plan. And since then I've had a plan. And my God, it feels so good.

That's a great point. You add around like the mistakes that we're sharing today is the reason why we're now winning or can succeed in crypto. Because you learn so goddamn quick in this space what you need to do. It's like a failed relationship. You look back and go, fuck, I'm never out again.

And it's take. It takes a while to learn these lessons. Like it's taken me at least two market cycles and you don't want to be the person that has to take two market cycles. Another potentially eight years or if you're right here now, it'll be about five years, you'll get into two cycles. But you don't want to be that person to learn those lessons. You need to learn them today. And another one I did was you come into this space and you'll see all these traders, all these traders are making money. This looks amazing. I'm going to be a trader. So you start trading and I had one win, had another win, had a massive win. And I'm like, yeah, I can do this. All of a sudden I'm sitting in front of the computer for bloody like 10 hours a day while I'm supposed to be at my job working. I'm going through and I'm watching these charts and I'm like learning. I'm trying to see, pretend I can see stuff in the market and I've got this swing trade on and it's kind of going my way, kind of not. But then I have to go to Japan with my mates so my trades on and then I get over there, I've got a couple of bitcoin on the line and I'm like, oh shit. Like this trade's still going on. I should be enjoying my holiday. But the trades then that I can't log in with two factor authentication. All of a sudden I get an email going to get margin calls, I have to add more money. In the end I'm like, screw this, just call the trade. I'm like, I'm just going to enjoy my life. I am not a trader. And I put that to bed. And that was the most valuable lesson I have ever learned. Because a couple of wins happen. Like you get on, there's a flash crash I got with iota where it's 50 cents within a couple of minutes and went back up to five bucks, made a lot of money. You think you're a God or you barrel into ICOs where you're listening to influencers and you don't understand at that time that they're getting paid, they're getting a pre allocation to sell this to you. They're just marketing as sponsored content for you to get in. Then it goes up a little bit and it's a pump and dump. And when you start to learn this about markets because a lot of this kind of activity is illegal in traditional markets or you can't do it so you don't really see it all that often. And when you Start to learn these lessons, you start to understand what kind of investor you are. And for me, I've got all these deep rooted, weird things with finance. And one thing I am good at is having diamond hands, right? I can, I can hold onto stuff and not sell it for infinity, right? Don't understand why, don't really care why, but hey, that's an advantage. So for me it's dollar cost averaging. And then if I do want to get into spicier things, which I do, I, I only have a very small allocation, so maybe less than 5% of my crypto portfolio and I'm okay to go spicy there, but I don't want to allocate too much of my time to it, too much of my money to it. I want to sleep well at night, but I also want to be exposed to that potential upside.

Yeah, that's one of the positives that you, you have berks. You really know how you want to optimize your investing portfolio. Like you tell me you don't give a shit about alts because you just don't want to deal with it. You don't want to deal with about the stress. Like you're just optimizing for life happiness and just stress free. So if you know that you're not going to go into such fucking, doing day trading, you know, that's exactly it.

So here's my outlook. I invest in, I've got cash, bonds, stocks, crypto, real estate. Out of all those things, crypto is going to make the most money. Current interest rates are about, let's say 6%. I could put that money against my 6% and I'm making 6%. If I go to an investment, bitcoin, is it going to make more than 6%? Of course I think it will. So I put money in there and then all of a sudden, mate, you hear a story, you're like, oh, I've got this spicy alt. It's doing this, it's doing that. You're like, oh, you get the tingling. Yeah. And you think about all those times and you kind of get sucked into the narrative and you don't want to miss out and you start to get fomo. But I'm like, hang on, why am I actually here? I'm here because I want to make more than 6%. I don't need to go ultra spicy. And if I am, it's only going to be that 1 to 5% allocation of my crypto portfolio, not my overall investing portfolio across all of those different asset classes. And I've lost so much sleep and I have. I had quite a bit of regret. I put all that to bed now, but what am I optimizing for? I'm optimizing for greater than 6%. Sleeping well at night. That is what I want. And once you know that, it becomes so much easier to invest because a lot of options are just off the table. Speaking of options, I'm not trading options. I'm not trading. I'm not longing and shorting. I not getting into super spicy things. I'm not doing leveraging eth. I'm not staking. I have a very clear p plan of what I like to do. And it does take a while to come to. First of all, understand yourself and then talk to an expert to get to where you need to be.

That self awareness man. Like, if you didn't have self awareness, you wouldn't know any of that, you know, super important.

Exactly.

Super important to know exactly. Your wrestling style, your emotional ability. I'm the same, mate. I wouldn't, I wouldn't even, like, I wouldn't even put on a trade, you know, I just know it's not gonna. It's not gonna play out for me. Like, I'm not a trader One only in Betsy.

Oh, and mate, one final lesson from me before we get to yours because it's so spicy. So. Oh, just before the recent bull run, I think eth was. Oh, the 20, 21. 20, 20, 21 bull run, eth was about 700 bucks. And I was talking to. To one of our mates, Erickson. I'm like, oh, lad, I'm gonna go in. You know, this is the time. Had about 20 grand I wanted to put into eth. Just move it over and eat. Went from 700 bucks to 900 bucks within a day. And I was like, this noise, like it's gone up like 20%. I can't afford this. This is ridiculous. I'll wait for it to come down. Oh, this is just stupid. Day after that, 1100 bucks. Day after that, 1500. A week later, two grand. Two weeks later, four grand. And I'm just sitting on the sideline, horrible. Holding my 20 grand, doing nothing, losing money because it's just getting inflated away.

You are that meme, that dog in the burning fire going, this is fine.

Yeah, yeah.

And it's like I remember seeing one of my mates, a real estate agent, and he's got this picture of this skeleton sitting on a bench and he's like waiting for real estate prices to come down.

Waiting for these prices to go Back down.

Oh, exactly. And that lesson taught me so they taught me so much. And now if I had my time again and I had 20 grand and I felt that way, I would put in 20% when it went to 900 and if it goes up, just start averaging in until I felt the price was too high or I was due for a pullback. And I would use a little bit of technical analysis just to see where the market is at, if it's slightly overheated, if it's likely there's going to be a pullback just for an entry, not for trading. And that way at least I'm in the game, I'm averaging in. And now they've been upfront that further where I've got, I take a certain percentage of my income that I get every week and I dollar cost average that into Bitcoin and Ethereum. And I also have savings that I'll put lump sums into as well. So I want to automate as much as I can, remove as much emotion as I can, get off the tools as much as I can to savor for those really novel spicy things when I see something in the market.

Yeah, yeah, I like it, man. Great lessons. And you take those lessons into learnings. Right. That's now what we teach over collective shift. Like so many people go through similar stuff.

Exactly. And people think that you need to be really active. You don't. You need to understand yourself where you want to be and what your goals are. Yes. And then map to those goals and put a plan in place. The let the more hands off you are, the better it is because the more you're on the tools, the more you are going to stuff it up.

Right. And the less prepared you are in terms of wanting. Sorry, the less prepared you are of how it plays out and the less prepared you are of what you're going to do at certain points, the worst will be. So we see 90% of people just don't have a plan to have a strategy and they go and they don't make money because they don't know what they're doing. And in a crypto bull market, it is, it is hyper emotional, hyper euphoric, hyper fucking chaotic. And that's why most people end up just as. Just as where they were before the bull market or sometimes even worse.

Even in 2021 we had a meetup in Melbourne and I came down and the amount of people I talked to that are like, yeah, I had enough for a house, had a couple of meal on paper, had this, had that and it just all went to zero. It's incredible. Like, and this is the thing we all always think about. I'm investing because money's supposed to go up but when you're investing you need to have a plan. If it goes up or if it goes down, have a plan. Either way we're going to do an episode on that. That'll be a really good one.

Yeah, I agree. Great lessons Bergs. Unfortunate mistakes but great lessons. Right. I've got two, I've got two. One major fuck up, one pretty bad one.

Save the major one to the end. The first one is I got sucked into a narrative. This narrative was something that was hyper.

What was it? It was, it was very. There was, there was a lot of attention around it. This was sort of like 2018, 2019 era. There was a guy on YouTube putting out a lot of content. It was, it was called the Hyperwave theory. Do you remember this? The Hyperwave Theory?

Yeah.

I don't remember exactly the theory but it was this, this guy who was creating a lot of content around.

This idea of the hypothes from the US and Tyler Jenkins his name. And it was all about how bitcoin was going to return to $1,000 and all these. He produced so much content around this. He was founded this thing called Lucid Investments and he'd had 40 years of experience investing in capital markets. He'd been through several bear markets and there was this like, you know, phase one to seven of a hyperwave and were like on phases like you know, four or five and phase seven was when we, we basically reduced right down to like $1,000. And he was saying the probability of this is 100%. And it was at the time it was playing out and it got so much traction that it was nearly like it was like, oh my God, he's just right like look at this, it's going to go $1,000. I remember the time going, okay, I've watched this guy for a little while now. So many people listening to him. He seems like he knows what he's talking about. I need to sell my bitcoin. I'm just going to buy back into the bottom. Like it's just going to be easy. And I didn't sell all of it, thank goodness but I sold a decent chunk and was going to buy back in the market. And I remember selling and sort of sitting on the side of the market for like a couple of weeks. I remember thinking like what if I was, what if this guy's wrong? Like what if, like, what if he is wrong and like this market just rallies and now I'm just sitting like an absolute idiot in cash. Is that what I want to be? Well, how am I going to feel if this market rallies versus it goes down and I end up deciding like I'm going to feel worse if this market rallies and I listen to this guy on the Internet and, and not actually listen to myself with the conviction I have in the assets and I'm getting back in the market. Turns out it was completely wrong. And the biggest lesson I learned around listening to people online and not, not to say that everyone's wrong, but.

Understanding where you get your information from and who's saying it and what their incentives are and why they're creating what they're creating is the most important thing when consuming content. Crypto land. Because there's so many people out there that are doing it for the wrong reasons. Not to say this guy was doing it for the wrong reasons. I think he might have just been wrong. But like having conviction yourself and getting information from the right sources is one of the biggest factors of winning and losing. Because you can get sucked into narratives from listening to one person about this potential crazy theory. And if you believe that, you better hope that they're right versus getting your information from like a platform where you can get multiple opinions, you get multiple different analysis types. Because there's no blueprint to crypto. Right. There's different. You got to look at macro, you look at on chain, you look at fundamentals. There's a range of different things. One of the reasons why we create a collective shift to give you that sort of 360 degree view.

Yeah.

But you can get really sucked into these narratives. And like when you really start to believe someone online, like it can be pretty scary what, what they end up telling you to do. It's like nearly like a cult it is.

And people get amongst it and you see this with things like, like with Hex where people get into that is down bad, but they've got bags and they just keep saying like, you know, it's going to be a thing. That is what they are telling themselves. It's a story they're telling themselves and there's a quote where it's, you know, show me the incentives and I'll show you the result. So if you look at the incentives behind the people, you understand what drives them and what they're moving towards. And the reality is that in markets and even if we upframe this in life, no one knows what is going to happen. You look at your life, would you have predicted in the last five years all the wild things that happened to you as an individual, dear listener, would have actually happened? No. Like if you had an accident or you met your, your wife or your husband or you had another child or you got this job, or the serendipity, you would never predict any of that. Even in the Psychology of Money, where they say when Japan was getting bombed after the World War, it was just destitute right after World War II. And if someone came along and told you, oh, we're going to be world leaders, our money's going to be sad, we're going to have the best electronics, we're going to be thriving, we're going to have. People would think you were absolutely crazy. So no one knows what is going to happen in the market, but you can position yourself so that you can take advantage of when things are actually increasing in value or, or if they're decreasing. Like you need to have a plan and think long term. Like the secret to the majority of investing is long term is compounding. That's like 90% of it.

Yeah.

And then if you really want to get those, you know, huge gains, it can be through concentration in riskier assets.

Yep.

And mate, speaking of risky assets, speaking of. To tell your story.

So 2018, Bergs, I'm, I'm in Sydney. I met a con, the Ethereum conference in Sydney. Ethereum, at this point in time, man, it was sub $100. Like I remember being at the conference, there was all people there, mate, it was like bear market, 2018.

Bitcoin. It was like late 2018. So Bitcoin, sorry, Ethereum was like, yeah, like $80 maybe somewhere there. I think it was like late, late 2018. She might even be 2019, early 20. Anyway, no, it was like $80 because I remember the questions were coming up like when, when do we think Ethereum was going to hit.

$100 again? And we're in this conference room and Vitalik's up the front with some of the, some of the Ether devs and you know, just getting, getting grilled, wanting to know when the price go up. And then we went into the main hall and this guy came out.

Warwick, Kane. Warwick. And.

Actually so I don't know if it's Kane or his brother, one of the Warwick brothers. Anyway, founder of Synthetics at the time was called Haven. And I was like, you know, sitting, listening to this thing and like a lot of it was over my head, but I was like this Thing sounds super fascinating. Like what, like what, what on earth is this thing? Like the vision sounded really interesting. It was, it was basically like you know this like protocol where you could like do these crazy like synthetic, Synthetic asset like on chain, you know, trading on these like different assets. And I was just like right, this thing sounds kind of crazy but like if he pulls this off it's kind of like going to be massive. And I was like you know what? I listen to this guy, he seems genuine, like he's got a good background. I like the idea like let's just, let's just have a tickle. So back in 2018 it was Haven. It was. I can't remember exactly the price.

Hold on, hold on. Before we continue dear listeners, if you are eating at this point in time just, just, maybe just pause this or just stop it for a while. And if you're driving your car just prepare yourself because it's coming, it's coming. Ben. So what, what price was it at the time, mate?

I think approximately I was somewhere so, so it was, it was called Haven at the time and it migrated to synthetics. Synthetic started when synthetic started at 3 cents. So haven would have been somewhere between 1 and 3 cents. Oh God. And I probably put in somewhere like ten grand I reckon. Ten grand. Like let's even, let's just say it's three cents. My hands are sticking up on my arm. I get really like sweaty palms just even thinking about this. So put in like let's say ten grand at three cents. I was like okay this is, this is a good investment. Let's just hold on this, let's have a tickle, see where this goes. Doesn't do anything berg for like six months. Right? And I remember, you know, if you remember back in the day everyone had the old coin peaks. I didn't have a heap amount of cash in my name sitting on this Haven thing. I was doing fuck all. I was like this thing, I'm wrong, wrong, got it wrong. This thing's doing nothing. Sold everything. Sold it all six months this thing gonna go somewhere else. Rotate it into some other like ADA or some. Anyway, terrible, terrible decision within two months Bergs. This is like oh it's probably, yeah, probably two months because this is now early 2019 synthetics launch. It's rebranded to Synthetics. Right, okay, amazing. Kind of forgot about this point. Like this it's doing nothing. It didn't do anything for another year or so. Right, right well it didn't do anything. It went from like $0.03 to like.

A dollar in a year, which is nothing in crypto. Lazy 30x.

Lazy 30x. Right, whatever. And then the bull market comes and it's. And this thing.

Went from $0.03 to the peak $28.00. It did a 5,966 increase after I sold.

Went to 28.

Oh my God. And that's, that's after you sold it. So before you sold it it's roughly a 900x. So for your 10 grand.

You would have got 9 million.

How do you feel about that? Ben?

And I walked away with probably eight and a half thousand minus fees.

Oh my God.

So but Bergs, I have something to show for it. I have a Haven T shirt. They gave me a Haven T shirt as a supporter because I went to one of their events, man. I went to one of their early investor events and got a Haven T shirt.

I could have walked away with $9 million. But I end up with a lazy T shirt.

You still wear that T shirt. Is that just to remind yourself? Just to punish yourself, man. Every day. Nine million bucks, mate.

That's a nine million dollar T shirt, mate.

I'd be keeping that T shirt as well. That's like moonbirds with the socks. All I got was Z socks.

I use it as a T shirt at nighttime. I cry into the T shirt of a nighttime.

Nine million bucks, mate. That is incredible.

So.

There'S a few lessons here. The biggest ones I've taken away is like when you have conviction, have conviction, hold on for long periods of time. Double down on the investments that you like. Don't get bored. Startups take a long time to start up. We know it, we're building one, you know, don't get bored and sell too early. And if you have conviction, back yourself.

Do I regret.

Take action, take action.

Do I regret selling? Well, you know, you know, of course, at some extent, yes. But where it's where it's ended. Like if I made 9 million bucks, would I have started collective shift? YB would have been here. Probably not. So you know, you got to take a bit of grain, grain of salt. Like it would have changed the direction of my life completely and I'm freaking happy with where I'm at. So like I think something's happened for a reason. $9 million would have been nice. I'm not saying it wouldn't be but you know, one of those.

That's interesting because you would have $9 million but would you have gone through all the things you've gone through in the last couple of years building a business all the personal growth and be the human you are today. It's these weird little things where you're at a crossroads and like one path just goes. You don't really think about it.

Yeah.

But it completely changes the trajectory of your life.

One hundred and and let's, let's, let's be honest listeners. Like I not gonna not sell anything and sell at the, at the pick to top and like just, just get in and out right at the bottom. Right at the top. It doesn't work. It doesn't happen that way. So like you know you wouldn't make $9 million anyway. But it was a shitload of money. And the biggest thing I think now is is, is having a sales strategy because I, you know even if I held onto it I wouldn't have been able to sell at the top. I probably would have sold it way beforehand. Right. So we're gonna do an episode on how to create a sales strategy. Cause I think that's the difference between winning and losing in crypto. Like we spoke about Bergs with a lot of lessons there. But yeah that's huge. That's some sickening lessons.

And also having an accountability partner. So Ben and I actually keep each other accountable. We've been talking recently. Yeah. And I think during the bull market we'll definitely have to keep each other accountable. And we lean on the team as well to run our ideas past them. And it's a real challenge. When you have a strategy. Let's say you've got one and then it comes time to execute. That's another challenge.

You've got to go. You got to go.

Yeah. Do you actually execute or be. Oh just wait a little bit longer. You know squeeze another 10 or 20% and then you need people to keep you accountable saying no, you're doing it for this reason. This is why go and do the thing you said you were going to do because you caught up in emotion and that guides your decision making.

Yeah. Yep. Spot on man. Totally agree. Totally great. Had that accountability partner. So we're going to talk about that on another episode but we might wrap it up there. Thank you everyone for sitting in therapy with us. That was nice to get that off our chest.

I do feel a lot better and I feel better because 9 million bucks off.

But mine was only probably a million so.9 million mate. There's always someone that's got more money or less money or lost more or whatever than you. Yeah but mate. Oh. Both life changing amounts of money. Lessons learned and I'm sure not going to make those mistakes again.

Exactly. I'm sure know that. Yeah. Everyone listening to this podcast also won't make those same mistakes.

So I'm going to keep you accountable. And if you don't action, I'm literally flying to Tassie or Melbourne and going to make you action.

Thank you everyone for listening. If you've got a friend, family member, crypto buddy that you think would would find this episode interesting or, or valuable, we'd love for you to send it to them. Hit that little share button, WhatsApp it to them, messenger, tweet at them. That's how we grow the podcast. We're grinding day after day. We're a year in fam. Thank you so much for listening. We're nearly up to ten thousand downloads on the pod. We're up to a hundred thousand views on YouTube. So thank you everyone that follows us across. As always, you can watch these podcasts if you want to see our ugly faces on YouTube. And as always, we'll keep delivering you quality crypto insights on a weekly basis. Thank you everyone for listening and we'll see you next episode.

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