Bitcoin has surged above $10,000 making early investors rich or even millionaires and billionnaires like those twins. At the same time the astonishing trajectory of bitcoin price can make some people feel depressed for “missing out”; not buying in time to get rich too. And sometimes, tragedies emerge like this story of a man who commited suicide after loosing thousands of BTC too early.
According to a post in Reddit r/bitcoin forum by user “barking_bonerz” his brother has killed himself “because of BTC”. The redditor acknowledges that there could be other factors that led his brother to commit suicide, but he stresses that “he had been beating himself up over Bitcoin for the past several years to the point where he seemed constantly depressed over it and gradually became a shadow of his former happy self.”
The reddit user goes on to describe how his brother once claimed to have owned 15,000 BTC although he points out that it “may have been an exaggeration”. Nevertheless, the tragic man was “so enthusiastic about Bitcoin and how cryptocurrencies would revolutionize the financial world” that made him annoying even to his relatives:
“He was annoying the fuck out of our relatives about how it would make them millionaires,” his brother says.
According to the user who penned the story, he had seen himself his brother wallets once containing at least 6,000 BTC in late 2012. But at some point in 2013 something happened to all this -by today’s standards- fortune. His brother “claimed to have lost most of them in a hack” and he “sold the remainder too early”.
If Bitcoin price had crashed after 2013, the story would end here and you wouldn’t read this article at all. We wouldn’ t talk about bitcoin, there would be no high traffic exchanges and thousands of people rushing to buy cryptocurrencies, speculate and get rich. But, as we all know, Bitcoin gradually took off after 2013. That made the man feel sorry about loosing his BTC: “He was distraught over it and became increasingly withdrawn from family and friends.”
Things got out of hand this year and especially in the last couple of months as Bitcoin surpassed $10,000. The tragic man was probably thinking that if he had saved his 15,000 BTC, it would worth more than $150 million dollars. He would be super-rich before turning 30 years old. But he had lost his opportunity and that depressed him to the point of no return:
“It became even more difficult to make contact with him, he just wouldn't reply to me or my parents calls and texts. A couple weeks ago my parents flew out to see my brother and found him dead by suicide with no note. He was 29 with 50 years of life ahead of him.”
How would you feel about this? What would you do if you had missed out $50 million or $150 million? Can one mistake define your future?