1 Preamble
This is a brief personal summary of personal lessons learnt during the first Bitcoin Cash (BCC) attack on Bitcoin (BTC) held from Friday November 10th to Sunday November 12th 2017. Despite truly private and intimate nature of information published in this post and possible negative perception of myself in relation to it I decided to share it publicly with others anyway led by a sincere desire to help other people not repeat mistakes I did. I provide it for FREE although it cost me a fortune and will very likely continue to cause me more troubles and discomfort for some upcoming period of time.
2 How it started
Being a newbie in cryptocurrencies but very eager and passionate about it I decided at the end of October 2017 to use Bitcoin (BTC) as a tool for boostering my (but at the moment borrowed) money for some other investment opportunity planned for spring 2018. I deposited 40765.00 EUR to Bitstamp and changed them to BTC, the starting overall amount was 7.67815776 BTC, the exchange rate I exchanged for was approx. 5,296 EUR (approx. 6,244 USD).
3 Initial development
The plan went very well at the beginning. The value of deposited BTCs grew perfectly (around 7,500 USD per 1 BTC), Sun was shining, birds were singing by Friday Nov 10th 2017.
4 The War starts
That day the exchange rate BTC/USD was rather low, I first noticed that around 13:00 (CET) but didn't pay any bigger attention to it. Much more attention brought to my attention later development around 20:30 (CET). Since that time it was just a a free fall with parallel raise of Bitcoin Cash (BCC). I immediately started to look for some information, primarily visited my favorite sources Cointelegraph and Twitter. The feelings were mixed. The info from Cointelegraph indicated that maybe BCC is gonna dominate over Bitcoin and we are maybe witnessing it, the Twitter sources directly mentioned that this is an attack to BTC orchestrated by three suspects namely rogerkver, JihanWu and deadalnix.
This situation got me totally unprepared, not only mentally but also in terms of tools and methods how to face it and previous experience with crypto-exchanges. I was absolutely shocked that such attack could come within cryptocommunity. If it would be from the outside world I'd be calm as I believe that the cryptocurrency train is unstoppable for the old world with banks, institutions etc. but from cryptocommunity? Just this fact alone very intensified my fear and doubts what is going on out there.
4.1 The first exchange (good move)
At the moment the exchange ration BTC/USD drop roughly to 6,575 USD I moved my BTCs from Bitstamp to Binance (a cryptocurrency exchange) and waited. After a while decided to exchange it to BCC, gaining 31,563 BCC in approx value 7,65 BTC.
4.2 The second exchange (bad move)
I didn't stop to monitor both BCC and BTC exchange rates. An hour and half later after first move I spotted decrease in BCC exchange rate by approx 20 USD thought about reversing the trend and exchanged it back. I gained approx. 6,73 BTCs. The bad news for me showed later, BCC started to grow even more, the BTC started to lose even more. As I found the high price I pay for exchange and wrong guess about the tren I decided to wait until the last moment. I moved money from Binance to Bitstamp and prepared 2 strategies, namely: 1. Exit strategy: once reaching the exchange rate I changed for to escape into fiat money (EUR) or 2. try to again exchange for BCC and use the rise in order to recover from losses. I set up an alarm for an exchange rate reaching 6,200 USD per 1 BTC and let it be.
4.3 The third exchange (bad move – missed chance to escape)
The alarm woke me up on Sunday, November 12th around 04:30 (CET). The BCC/USD exchange rate was high around 1750 USD, the BCC low around 6,200 and I had to decide what to do next. The escape to fiat promised to me to have around 37,700 EUR. However I decided to not escape to fiat money, moved back to Binance and try to buy BCC, BTG, Ethereum Classic and BNB in order to mitigate a risk a bit. I did that, gained 22,84 BTG, 5,912 BCC and 335,87 ETC and 1520 BNB in overall value approx 6.69 BTC and 40,457 USD (34,347 EUR).
4.4 The other exchanges (all bad moves)
Since that move all crypto currencies I owned started to fall significantly. In order to tune portfolio I also did some moves resulting into even more recucing portoflio valuee.g. by fees. My portfolio ended up on Sunday November 12th 2017 at 18:47 (CET) in following: BNB 534, BTC 0.02404903, BCC 7.1, Ethereum Classic 313.83 and BTG 24,84 in overall value 27,817 USD (23,614 EUR).
5 How it ended
The aftermath of that fucking weekend showed in full detail on Monday, November 13th 2017. From an initial value of portfolio around 57,675 USD I ended up with portfolio in overall value 27,817 USD, locked up in altcoins not Bitcoin afraid of moving back. With ongoing constant fall of all these altcoins within Tue and rise of Bitcoin (BTC) now I have portfolio in overal value of 20 000 USD. **I lost 37,000 USD of !borrowed money! ** with further perspective of its complete melt-down.
6 Lessons learnt
Are you asking what I have gained for myself out of this, for the moment all below mentioned:
There is no nice cryptocommunity working for overall World's good in place. There are just good and bad people and non-commercial and commercial crypto subjects fighting with each other as people and subjects in the outer World. No mercy there. The winner takes it all. People having money in (customers) are irrelevant for all subject as in normal outer world. Will they lose? Who cares right?
The road was set – more attacks within cryptocommunity not only to Bitcoin will very likely to follow. Be prepared for everything.
If something goes wrong (misjudgement, bad luck, increase, decrease whatever) do not hesitate execute your exit strategy rigidly. Calm down. Take a pause.
Bitcoin is a KING despite many technical and other issues. A move from Bitcoin to Altcoin is not a solution in a time of crisis (due to fees, time, lock and dependability on BTC). The fiat is a solution, ultimate but bullet-proof existing out of the cryptomarket volatility.
Crypto is even more fun and adrenalin than I expected it would be.