Since last we spoke Pt.8 An intermission from the WSOP recaps to get closer to financial ruin
I briefly considered starting this entry off with a series of bullet-points demonstrating my history of being a come to life Mr. Magoo ( old man blindly ambles through life, narrowly escaping certain death at every turn ), but there's really not enough time. In my case I just do things backwards, make a mess of everything, but don't die. My friend Eric coined the term "On brand(on)" for when such instances take place. Instead I will try to give you a succinct history of how bad I am at crypto.
- Every poker player at the Rio around 2011 has a story about Bryan Micon telling them to buy BTC at $1 and I'm no exception. He also voluntarily deposited who knows how much BTC on his site SealsWithClubs for me that I never claimed. I believe my exact words to Bryan were "Thanks I'll check it out, but for now I'm gonna just rely on my poker "abilities.""
- I buy 10k worth of ETH on my own whim in 2014 for $10/ea, sit on it for a few years, and start selling it all off at $30 - $100 to various people. It turns out when a bunch of smart poker players all really want something from you, it's probably a good move to reconsider your intentions. I buy back in at God knows what price.
- Boom happens, and I pile my entire net worth in on crypto. Of course I used every fishy platform possible and paid infinite vig. Prior to 2017 WSOP I hear top n00b-bank Coinbase might not honor the Bitcoin fork to Bitcoin Cash. I thought this meant the value of my BTC was being split between two coins, so I would lose half of my coin's value. In reality it's just a free extra coin for each BTC a person has. I was too stressed preparing for WSOP, and offloaded it all to another smart poker player.
Sold it around $1,900 and bought back in a few months later for about 5k then progressively higher, until max exposed again.
- Went Alt crazy listening to the Bryan Micon of Binance, Matt Glantz, and also bought a bunch of that stupid Coinpoker startup. That is currently the only crypto anything I have, and it's purely because it's worthless as of a few months ago and a pain in the ass to get off of the site.
- Various fails trying to time trades, buying and selling. Way better off just leaving things alone. Habitually pulling everything out and buying in exponentially higher. My plan through idiot logic was to just cash out after Christmas 2017 (which would've worked out like a charm), and I was currently attempting to buy a home with those funds throughout that winter, but it was impossible for me to get approved for a home loan as a poker player.
- I've been fortunate enough to have made a few million through poker, but any good year I've had has seen me give 70% or so back to investors. Typically when I feel like I might not perform so well, I don't feel right selling action, and just eat the majority of losses myself. Man I'm a fucking fish. In any case, by the time Christmas of 2017 rolled around, realizing a million dollar mark in the bank of my very own seemed like an actuality, so fuck it, I'll hang onto my position just a little bit longer. Well, that day wouldn't come, and as many know, crypto took a massive dump starting Jan 2018
Since I'm in the process of recapping the last handful of years, I'll hold out on further spoilers, and stay the route of continuity. The strange thing about all of this is that my crypto downswings have been disproportionately larger than any poker swing I've ever had, but I always felt numb to any of it relative to a losing poker session, where I agonize and beat myself up over every recognized fuck up. So I kept a calm place in my head planning on being a good bag holder, and prayed to the poker gods for another solid even yeared WSOP to keep my ship afloat while my net worth plummeted into cyberspace nothingness.
<3 Brandon
