Disillusionment

(story of mild inconvenience, not big at all, but frustrating nonetheless)

Three years ago I got into crypto because I was both fascinated with decentralized currencies and the technology behind them. I love the idea of anonymity, the security it provides, and the whole principle behind it.

Now, last year I tried to procure a number from Telegram that doesn't need a mobile one to work; anonymized sims that are put into auction in a marketplace. I made a terrible mistake of swapping TON (the token Telegram uses) on the ERC-20 network for ETH. Now the only way to swap it for usability (via bridges) is to pay a gas fee that's higher than what I have. I feel like I've been scammed. I cannot take out the funds from my Metamask, as I need MORE money to withdraw in the first place. I mean, if I knew crypto (TON, not the every coin there is) was going to be like this, I would have gone to the traditional methods instead.

tl;dr - made a token swap mistake, now it's stuck there in the ERC-20 network as a wrapped token for Satoshi knows how long.

edit: I needed TON. I had ETH. I swapped it for TON. Turns out it was a "wrapped" token on erc-20 network and before it can be accepted by telegram wallets, it has to be swapped again to their own network. Pretty counterintuitive.

edit 2: this is not supposed to be a crypto diss. at all. im just sharing :/