My story of massive losses today

I tried posting this with an alternative account as this is all quite personal, but that account is too new to post. So nevermind I'll just use my main account.

It looks like I've come to the end of my crypto story so I might as well tell it. God knows I'll never tell anyone in real life, certainly not my SO. I'm hoping sharing this will help me process what has happened. Re-reading it, I dislike that it sounds like a flex but I need to tell this to someone for some kind of peace of mind.

TLDR; took on massive amounts of debt, had an account over $1 million and ended up with an 80% loss of my original capital.

It started May 2021 when I decided to go full steam into ETH. At the height of the China FUD where we dropped to $1700, I started buying at $1900 and ended up with 100 ETH; $200k of savings were in. I have a well paid software engineering job so had decent savings. I could survive without this money, but damn, there were a lot of nice things I could have done with it.

Everything went well up to the first break over $4000 per ETH in early September. I had doubled my money. $200k profit. Didn't sell. Smart thing would have been to take out my capital, let the 50 ETH ride on house money.

We pulled back to sub $3000 during the El Salvador FUD and I started "dabbling" with margin (reader: "uh oh"). It seemed to me we'd push up past $4k again and beyond. I was tageting $6k and loading up on debt using AAVE. I was in serious pain holding onto a debt position of $3600 as ETH dropped to $2700 but I held through it somehow and even added debt on the way back up. Managed to pack in 188 ETH with a borrow of $307k. This made the margin position at $3500, liquidation at $1980 (AAVE liquidates 20% over your borrow amount).

Everything was going smoothly. We sailed away from the dip and broke $4500. I had initially intended to only hold the debt for a short boost in profits and then exit. But greed told me just keep holding the debt all the way to ETH @ $6k. Smart thing to do would have been to kill the debt at $4500 and bag an extra $88k profit. I initially just wanted to make a little more. Just a little more. Greed is real.

As we approached the ATH of $4800 in early November I discovered LRC (reader: "uh oh"). My AAVE account was a little under $900k. Minus the debt I had almost $600k i.e. $400k profit. Smart thing to do was, again, take out capital.

I started moving ETH from AAVE over to Binance to buy LRC. I sold some of the ETH to reduce the debt to $250k then moved out more ETH to buy LRC on Binance. I had 120 ETH left giving AAVE a liquidation of $2500. Then I picked up 80k LRC on Binance for my remaining ~50 ETH.

Smart thing to do was... oh forget it. Now I was staring at my 80k LRC in Binance and thinking "I want more". Why not leverage the LRC to buy more LRC in Binance? Addiction is real.

I bought another 100k LRC on margin.
In Binance: 180k LRC with a debt of $240k. Liquidation at $1.33.
In AAVE: 120 ETH with a debt of $250k. Liquidation at $2500.

The glorious day that was 25 Novemember 2021. This day. My god. LRC topped out at $3.77. ETH was around $4300-$4500 at that time. The screen shot rule is real. I have a screenshot of my Binance account on this day. I never take screenshots of my balance. It shows a 7 day profit of $210 472. It's beautiful. I had no idea at the time how much my entire holdings were but quick maths can tell all:
Total value: $1 190 000 (180k LRC x $3.7 + 120 ETH * $4400)
Debt: $490 000
Profit: $704 000

What a day.

I was so wrapped up in the glorious gains I had not even considered stop losses or any exit strategy. As far as I was concerned the market could only go up (and there was all the buzz about the "imminent" partnership, so why sell now?....). It amazes me how it did not occur to me AT ALL to sell, take profits or anything that made any sense at all. I was just so happy.

We all know what happened after that lovely peak on 25th November.

First we had the drop early December. LRC plummeted to $1.60 and I sold all of it to protect my capital. What a horrible moment. I didn't want to go to liquidation. I had to protect the capital. Probably the first smart thing I did. Unfortunately, it was the last.

After the dip, LRC started recovering. I had my capital in AAVE: 120 ETH and still $250k of debt leaving about $210k total value. ETH had been plummeting too and was sub $4000. I could have cleared debt and had 58 ETH to my name. How I wish I had done that. But I couldn't. I was so wrapped up in the potential of LRC and add to that I was bitter that I "only" had 58 ETH when I started with 100. I started to lose sense of what I had in dollar value.

LRC started to bounce. We moved up to $1.80. I started thinking about how high LRC could recover to vs ETH. If ETH recovered, I'd still just have 58 ETH. But if LRC recovered, maybe I could claw my way back to 100 ETH. So I swapped all my ETH for LRC. I got a hold of 110k LRC with no debt. I no longer gave a thought to protecting capital.

The smart thing to do would have been to leave my 110k LRC forever. Just leave it. Go out, have a walk. Live life. Enjoy life. Come back in 5 years and who knows.

I got back to margin. Idiot. Built up a position of 235k LRC all above $2 and a few ETH. A mountain of debt was back, totalling something like $190k. I had some on Binance with a liquidation of $1.20 and some on FTX with liquidation at $0.90. Looking back I do not know what the heck I was thinking. The most basic excuse I have is that I was basically so mad that we had bounced at $1.60 I was on a rampage. I'd sold to protect the capital, now I just didn't care. Surely this was it. Surely this was my way back to getting on top. Surely the dip was over. There was a point where I was back to $290k when LRC touched $3. I could've jumped ship there and then. Taken a break from this madness. Selling on the way back down to protect capital was out the window now. Last time I did that, we bounced, so as far as I was concerned I was riding this into the dirt.

And ride it into the dirt I did. A few days ago my Binance account liquidated. It liquidates 10% or so above holdings so that account left me with 10k LRC. And today the FTX account liquidated leaving me with 4 ETH.

So that's it. Story is over. I have 10k LRC and 4 ETH, totalling around $20k. I went from being $700k in profit to a $180k loss in under 2 months.

I'm not sure how I'm going to approach crypto in future. It's going to be difficult to put in more money. I'm an engineer and truly believe in it's potential. I don't even have hard feelings against LRC, I think it's a great project. Everything I did was on me. I should never have been so reckless with margin. I was given every oppurtunity to reduce my risk and count my blessings. But greed got me. It consumed me. And in the end it destroyed me.

I hope other folks out there who have suffered losses are keeping their heads up. This market is not for the faint of heart. If you are considering using margin, please take my story as a warning. At the very least, you might learn something from it.