KOL self-reportedly: At its peak, I earned $1 million annually, but how did I return to zero later?

Author: hitesh.eth

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

I was starting a business before entering the crypto world. In 2016, I devoted myself to my third startup, Digital Gorkha. We developed a simple visitor management and security app for physical venues and raised some funds, but obtained from a group of inappropriate investors, and sold too much equity for this.

 Tweet content: \"Digital Gorkha\" is my previous entrepreneurial project. It is a very innovative but simple and direct technology product. Digital Gorkha (acquired in 2016) is the first attempt to develop access security applications. Later, MyGate (valued at over $500 million) executed this idea very well.

This mistake put us in trouble. Despite the stable attractiveness and revenue of the project, it is almost impossible to complete a Series A financing because the equity structure is chaotic and the products we develop do not have a real technical moat.

As the founder, I watched the company I founded decline and racked my brains to find ways to change its destiny. That's when I began looking for a technology moat, something that could help us get the financing round that was about to slip away.

At the same time, the huge pressure from my parents also came like a rush, because my wedding date is approaching and I haven't received a salary for six months. I temporarily live at my college friend's house and rely on them to help me solve my food and accommodation problems.

I have nothing to lose.

Just one late night search, I stumbled upon blockchain.

Since I have a background in network security and have some understanding of encryption technology, I quickly mastered the blockchain architecture. I read about different application cases, explored its future potential, and finally read a blog about blockchain-based identity recognition systems, and inspiration suddenly emerged.

The Digital Gorkha project has a proven database covering visitor information at more than 100 locations in more than 20 cities, recording more than 1,000 visitor records per day. If I could put these identity information on the link, I could create a truly defensive product.

GetXS came into being, it is a blockchain-based identity authentication layer under Digital Gorkha.

 Tweet: \"Back in 2016, I was building GetXS, a decentralized distributed identity recognition (DID) platform, when we were ranked among the top ten Web3 startups in India. We released a white paper and planned an initial coin offering (ICO), but for some reasons, the product never went live.

I started selling this project to investors, but it was mid-2016 and venture capitalists in India were still indifferent to blockchain investment. I pitched to angel investors like Anupam Mittal, Kunal Shah, and even big funds like Accel and Red Sequoia, but none of them saw the potential.

Looking back now, it was an early version of Worldcoin, but at the time, I didn't even have a rupees to raise.

We tried hard for six months, but the funds were consumed too quickly. The debts we bear to keep our company running are so much more than we can breathe every day.

My parents sneer at me every day because I am penniless and I am about to get married. Another person is about to enter my life, but I have nothing.

I had no choice but to sell 30% of my equity almost for nothing, which forced me to leave the company I founded.

The real estate developers who invested in Digital Gorkha don’t like my exploration of blockchain, they want to run their own way.

Spiritually, I already feel that this battle will definitely be defeated and I am overwhelmed by economic pressure. So I gave up starting a business and started looking for a job in the blockchain field.

Falling into the "rabbit hole" of cryptocurrency

I did three things:

• Founded the Its Blockchain blog to record my learning experience in the blockchain field.
• Together with a new co-founder, getXS reboot as a standalone startup project.
• Worked as a blockchain consultant at an IT company in Bangalore.

The money I earned was only enough to make ends meet, and I couldn't take my wife over and live with me. Just then, I remembered Bitcoin, and in October 2016 I bought the first Bitcoin.

Three months later when I checked the price, I found it had doubled. At that moment, everything changed.

I began to dig deeper into the crypto field, looking for the next opportunity like Bitcoin. I discovered Ethereum and Ripple and made my first real investment and in one month my portfolio increased by 10 times.

That's it, I quit my job four months later.

I told my manager:

"What's the point of coming to the office every day and doing nothing? I can earn four times my salary by doing something exciting when I sit at home."

Since then, I have shifted its focus from blockchain to cryptocurrencies, focusing on altcoins and initial coin offerings (ICOs).

One day, I published an article: "The Top 10 Cryptocurrencies Worth Buying in August", but the server crashed. Even after three upgrades, the website's views reached 150,000 that month.

I seized the market demand. We doubled down on the creation of this list-based article, and the traffic soared to 1 million views at its peak.

The initial token issuance (ICO) boom is in full swing and we have amazing traffic. So I started to cash in, providing advertising, paid articles and consulting services to crypto investors.

 Tweet content: 2017 was the peak of my career. I started Its Blockchain, a crypto media publication, with annual recurring revenue (ARR) of over $500,000 and attracting 500,000 page views per month. I also own a paid consulting firm with 500 members and earn enough money to retire at the age of 25.

My bank account balance was zero at the beginning of 2017, and by the end of the year, my income from Its Blockchain alone exceeded $1 million.

Life is beautiful, but greed prevails.

2018 Bear Market: Investment Portfolio Retraces

At the time, everyone firmly believed that investing in altcoins was a faster way to make money than Bitcoin.

So in January 2018, when the altcoin market was booming, I exchanged 90% of my Bitcoin for more than 40 altcoins and planned to hold them forever.

This is the biggest mistake I have made.

The market began to collapse slowly. At first, it seemed like a normal callback, and the rebound market gave me a little comfort.

I kept telling myself, “Everything will be fine.”

Because I was busy traveling around, smoking marijuana, and squandering like a crazy rich man, I thought the market would always pay me back. I only read the tweets that confirm my bias.

And what is the biggest misleading?

Bitcoin has rebounded from the support level of $6,000 many times.

Everyone thinks this support level is unbreakable. Everyone continues to hold it. Everyone thinks it's just a healthy adjustment.

Then reality gave a heavy blow.

Bitcoin fell below $6,000 and plummeted to $3,200.

At around $4,000, I gave in and sold all my assets.

In the end, my assets were less than 5% of my peak. I have nothing again.

I desperately want to recover the losses. I started trading futures and by the beginning of 2019, when Bitcoin rose to $13,500, I recovered 30% of my losses.

But the sideways market made me miserable, and the technical analysis was completely ineffective, and I began to fall into the dilemma of continuous losses.

 Tweet content: You can follow my Bitcoin and Ethereum transactions on this website, my nickname is b3y.

I found a job at Blockchain Whispers and earned Bitcoin by writing analytics articles.

I could have saved these bitcoins, but I didn't. I bet everything on futures.

Then, March 2020 came and Bitcoin crashed. I was forced to close my position and lost everything.

Lessons in the cycle

At that time, I completely left the crypto industry and switched to filming movies. I worked like this for a year.

Looking back on the past, I learned three key lessons:

1. Greed is your biggest enemy. When you make enough wealth to change your life, you must know how to stop when you see it, and don’t just pursue unlimited gains.
2. Your lifestyle can become a trap. I raised my standard of living too quickly and felt like I was about to suffocate when I lost everything.
3. Emotional investment will make you lose all the money. I only focus on information that can confirm my bias and turn a blind eye to obvious red flags. But the market won't care about your thoughts.

In 2020, I thought I had left the crypto industry forever.

But as we all know, no one can really leave the crypto space.