Welp, I just got out of the frying pan and into the fire so it’s time to grab my 12 gauge and head into the woods…
Started crypto on Robinhood (my first huge mistake) back in November (my second huge mistake) and finally got access to the Robinhood wallet last week. I’ve been using various defi protocols since my first two major mistakes and actually just yesterday I 2x my crypto portfolio. I’ve been having some pretty tough times financially (outside of current micro/macro economic conditions I’ve fallen on hard times) and my life savings (only about 5k) is split between various crypto investments as well as some ETFs. With the recent market volatility when I hit the 2x mark on my crypto investments I was feeling fairly confident in my learning progress and investing ability, well up until today…
When I got my Robinhood Wallet I immediately sent my ETH to my Metamask wallet (I set this wallet up back in November as well and have only used it recently for a few transactions outside of this one), where it’s sat for about a week (as I was waiting on gas fees to drop before moving it again). But when I logged on to check my balance today I just about passed out when I saw there is now only 0.005 ETH left in my account. I still can’t see the transaction on my Metamask wallet, but the ETH is gone, and the transaction is on Etherscan. I don’t know if I connected my wallet to an untrustworthy dapp months ago or if my account has been compromised somehow, but either way I want to blow my damn brains out.
I can see the hacker didn’t cover up the transactions at all and now has moved the stolen ETH to a new wallet, then through a curve pool, and then to a different wallet with about $240,000 of various tokens sitting in it, at least as of right now. The comments on the latter wallet is filled with nothing but people asking for their stolen tokens back and I can’t help but cry as I read all the post from people in my situation who experienced the same thing a couple weeks ago to over 9+ months ago.
I don’t know what to do now, I’ve been so interested in defi, I’m actually in the middle of writing my own white paper to try and help people like me better understand this space.
Now, I want nothing to do with any of it.
I know losing my investment is completely my fault. I know the hacker is just taking advantage of current opportunities. I know this is the risk involved with decentralized finance. I know I’m not alone in this. But I can’t help but think “What could I have done differently?” I still don’t know how the funds were drained nor do I know what to do now and I can’t help but feel the existential dread that must wash over everyone who has had their life’s work taken from them right before their eyes.
All I can think about is ending it.
I really don’t know how I’m going to recover from this. I mean, in every single prediction I have ever made for my portfolio I never even imagined complete disintegration of my shares as a possibility. Like I can’t even bring myself to look at my spreadsheet right now to see what this is going to do to my portfolio. I’ve planned for the worst and always knew that my wallet could be unsecure but also knew that either my whole computer would be compromised or I would need to give a hacker some sort of access to my funds to be able to execute anything, so being a tech savvy person I just knew not to expose my computer to anything that would allow malicious actors to access it. Because of this I never considered my investment going nuclear, and as I sit here thinking about this another thought comes to the top of my head and that is because my own dumb ass overconfidence I won’t be able to afford my rent for next month.
I don’t even want to try to imagine exactly how many years it’s going to take before I can make this money back through work as I live paycheck to paycheck, but to be honest I don’t think I’m going to need to worry about any of that anymore… If you think you might be able to help me at all I’m open to advice, but chances are I won’t be checking my computer anymore. I know hindsight is 20-20 so try not to put many people down for doing what I did, we are stupid, we all know. Hopefully this post can help deter anyone from making the same mistakes I did, the lord only knows I’ve made too many.
My thoughts the next day:
GOOOOOOD MORNING VIETNAM, HEY THIS IS NOT A TEST, THIS IS ROCK AND ROLL…
I’m pretty touched by the community responses, and while I can’t say I feel too much better this morning I do regret typing some of the things I did last night. I want to clarify a couple of things and also that YOU DO NOT NEED TO WORRY ABOUT MY PHYSICAL WELLBEING, as I know I will survive. My mental health is a different story but that aside I know this isn’t the end of times for me.
I don’t really want to back down from or try to justify my knee jerk reaction to this hack but I do want to say that I have never given away a seed phrase. Ever. I have actually gone way overboard on protecting them and keep them written on a piece of laminated graph paper, then stored in a little vault.
That being said, at some point I most definitely have overlooked some major security features when interacting with defi applications or with my computer malware protection. I’m still trying to figure out exactly where the point of failure was and (aside from my financial future) I think this is what has me the most upset now.
Also to clarify on what my portfolio contained, I did not put my entire savings account into Eth…
However, I did deploy all of my capital (my entire life savings) into various investments and with the volatile market my entire portfolio is down. My investments are split 50/50 between various crypto/defi protocols and ETFs. With Eth making up about a quarter of my entire portfolio I had roughly invested, and now that investment is worth roughly $17 meaning on this investment in ETH I’m looking at a 98.6% loss right now.
I mean in every var and cvar calculation I’ve run in the historical 99.9% worst case scenario it never had my ETH value dropping 99%. I mean it just astonishes me. You can sit here and try to analyze, study, and read about every thing in a defi market, and yet you can just lose your entire investment because you didn’t take security seriously enough. Lesson learned though…
Also the reason why this is going to affect me in the short term is because I was planning on liquidating some of my ETH positions next month to help cover expenses that I know are coming up as I will not be able to afford to pay out of pocket with the cash I make while living paycheck to paycheck (don’t you just love medical bills).
This means not only did I just lose a quarter of my portfolio to this hacker, but I’m now going to have to liquidate some of my other positions just so I can afford to keep a roof over my head and to get my teeth cleaned (I need a root canal so hopefully the S&P can keep in the green). I still haven’t checked to see what this means for the long term implications on my investments and my savings, but I think just about anyone can take a guess as to what it’s looking like.
I know the risks I took on when I decided to gamble with my life savings. I know I shouldn’t be too upset, and it does bring a smile to my face to know I’m not alone in this. Thank you all
On another note, I worked 14hrs yesterday, came home, saw a grand had been stolen from me, and then got on reddit to write about it at midnight. What I’m saying is my way of rationalizing my state of mind when writing this last post, but I know I said I wouldn’t do that so I’ll stop.
And lastly, for anyone wondering about tracking this to see how the hacker is transferring funds around: I was totally wrong about how they are moving their tokens around. When I logged in this morning I noticed they seem to be in the process of cleaning all their stolen coins so it’s been pretty interesting to watch. I will leave the public address of the wallet that I believe now has my eth below here so you can all see the transaction history with this wallet, and see when/how the hacker interacted with it. I will also leave the public address for the wallet that I traced some of my stolen token going to and is currently laundering hundreds of thousands in tokens.
Possible hacker wallet: 0x077D360f11D220E4d5D831430c81C26c9be7C4A4
Also please feel free to share any thoughts on how the tokens are being moved, as I’m kind of interested now.
Post the address of the hacker
Shit happens. You have to bounce back. You can do it I beleive in you. Expensive lesson unfortunately. 5k wasn’t going to make or break you. You can recover.
Get some CBD and feed your brain, avoid alcohol totally. Breath. Go stare at some nature. Spring has sprung. Your in shock get some back-up, church, friends, family, dog park. Breath. Crisis require help. Doctor visit ask about your options for stabilization. No alcohol. Hit the walking trail.
Hardware wallet and file with ic3.gov. Try to unmask the hacker by checking if the funds goes to exchanges. Involve law enforcement.
I have been where you’re at and know how you feel. It’s a dark and shame filled place with nothing but gray skies and spite. My heart aches for you, but know this:
Today I look back on moments in my life like the moment you’re experiencing now, moments where there seemed to be no future and all hope was lost, and I now see that those are the moments that I walked through to be the stronger, wiser, more empathetic person I am today. Let your head think its worst; let your guts tie themselves in knots; just make sure your feet keep taking you toward tomorrow and you will emerge from this with a resilience and strength worth far more than your losses today.
You’re not an idiot. You’re not hopeless. You’re not alone.
Do you use a trezor or ledger? Would that matter here?
Tbf you seem to earn some credit for caution from your post history. I’ve heard some people make a new wallet for exploring new dapps.
Chin up mate. It’ll get better. We are still early in crypto. There is a lot more to come.
This will just be a minor blip you barely recall in 5 years time.
It’s quite a shock, but this will show you in the future to be insanely paranoid (as you should be) in DeFi and crypto in general. It’s a horrible feeling but chin up. 5k$ in ETH is a lot of money but it’s not life-breaking money.
When you’re ready to get back into Crypto, you’ll use a hardware wallet for cold storage and regularly swap out hot wallets with Metamask.
You’ll be ok.
When transferring funds you can use the Dapp of Ebox for secured transactions they have safe sending reversible feature or you can use trezor as well depends on what you prefer.
Well, a hardware wallet is much safer.
I absolutely hate you got hacked and it’s not fair or right. With that being said, your life savings should never be in crypto. This is basically gambling. The best place for your emergency savings is in a popular bank’s savings account. I understand you won’t have growth. You aren’t suppose to have growth on emergency savings. With that being said please only invest what you can lose safely and without becoming depressed. This goes for all investments both in the stock market, gold, silver, crypto, bonds, or any other form of investing. Too many people have posts just like this. Do not invest what you can’t lose people!
Hacked, or gave your seed phrase away?
How is a hack like this even possible??
This among other reasons is why I use a ledger connected to metamask.
I was phished once about 10 years ago for half a BTC, all my crypto at the time. Sucks. That’s why I use a ledger.
It sound ridiculous but you are going to be fine. I know it’s hard and it will sound very cliche to say this but you will be back again in no time. Just stay strong, don’t give up.
Please be cautious and buy hardware wallets.
That was a heartbreaking experience. That’s why, to avoid situations like this, I prefer to use an escrow with a security tool like Ebox. They have safe-sending and reversible transaction features that can help you retract your transactions.
Hey man, I love defi as much as you do, however I also got hacked last month and lost all of my profits from playing Axie Infinity. I was extremely disappointed since I had had a good plan in mind for those funds at the time, but we must face the fact that the crypto space can be profitable if done correctly, but it can also be risky. What I did to recover from my loss was to use my knowledge in crypto, which I only began exploring last year, to look for a job that is related to crypto, and luckily, I was able to get a position that pays me in cryptocurrency(BUSD).
Get yourself a ledger nano x hardwallet.
Lost alot due to a hacking as well, keep your head up.
Not your fault. You’re obviously not alone in this. The biggest players in crypto are pumpers, criminals, or gamblers. All the others are just along for the ride or being taken advantage of. That’s the fault of the technology, not the people involved
I didnt read past the word “Metamask”. People never learn… How many of these posts do we need before people stay away from downloading fake Metamask?
What URL did you use to download? Crypto is a wild wild west
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