'I've Lost Nearly $3m on Dogecoin'

In February 2021, I put $188,000—my life savings—into Dogecoin. At that time it was worth around 5 cents per coin. In April, my investment had risen to over $1 million. In the following weeks, it went to $2 million, then close to $3 million.

Since then I have kept every single coin. I didn't sell any. Now, my investment is worth around $230,000.

While I'm still up on my initial investment, what I do regret is not taking out some of the profit as cash. If I could go back in time, I probably would have taken out $1 million or $500,000.

I also calculated what I would have done in the stock market if I had just kept all my money in Tesla. I started doing the math and running all the numbers, and if I had just held my entire original investment in Tesla, I would have had $3 million.

But the big thing was being a part of the Dogecoin community. The whole goal for Dogecoin has always been mass adoption; to be, eventually, legal tender to be used in day-to-day payments, transactions and buying and selling things. For us to get there, we have to all believe in the same thing. So I still feel like I was doing the right thing by holding.

Also, I had gone out and preached about those coins being the future. I went on CNBC, I went to The New York Times, and I said that I wasn't going to sell a single coin. I had this mindset, I had this conviction, which I still do, about those coins. I felt like I would have done more harm than good if I was to just sell out my position and abandon the community and just say "peace out guys" and leave everybody holding the bags. So, I followed my heart. The difference now is that I feel like it's going to take a lot longer than I had initially expected for these coins to be widely adopted.

A lot of people don't realize this, but the first time I ever invested in any cryptocurrency was also in February 2021, so I had been in the space for two months and became a millionaire. I had a lot of learning to catch up on; the theory, the utility, understanding what blockchain technology is all about.

If I made $3 million on Tesla, nobody would care, but they do care about the dude who turned $188,000 into $3 million with a cryptocurrency featuring a dog meme. I was hoping that people would back me up, be supportive, and show me love. And a lot of people did, especially for the first six to eight months.

That changed somewhat when I decided to start doing collaborations, sponsorships, ads and promos for other cryptocurrencies and other projects. Then I started getting a lot of hate. But I'm still trying to make money, I still need to make a living. My options were to sell out of my Dogecoin at $3 million and go on to live a happy life or, I had be out there hustling. But I still get a lot of hate from people.

No matter who you are, if you bought cryptocurrency in 2021, the chances are you're down right now. So there's a lot of frustration, there's a lot of negativity, there's a lot of people wanting to find a scapegoat or wanting to find a target to spread this hate to.

At the same time, with my most recent YouTube videos, I've been getting a lot of support. The biggest blessing from all this is the online community I've built. I feel like honesty is the best policy, and I show my portfolio at the end of every single one of my videos, so people know exactly where I'm at. Once I put it all out there, I even had people messaging me apologizing for saying mean things to me before. Other people are telling me to stay strong, others sharing their stories. It's like Jay-Z said: "First they love me, then they hate me, then they love me again."

As to why Dogecoin and cryptocurrency is in its current state? I feel like the war in Ukraine is a big reason. The housing market is likely another; I feel like we're in a bubble with that. We're also seeing murmurs of a recession coming up soon. Everything is just bad right now. Obviously that's going to affect cryptocurrency.

I'm still optimistic though. The younger generation is now becoming a lot more aware. I feel like when the next cryptocurrency bull run happens, everyone will have a cryptocurrency wallet ready. People are just on the side lines asking: "When do we jump in?"

I personally believe that next time we have an incredible market high, Bitcoin is going to hit $100,000 and Dogecoin will hit a dollar. For now, it would be really convenient for me to completely cash out. I'd be sitting at a profit, and I would be able to just see where the market goes before investing again. But I feel like that would probably be the most cowardly move that I could ever make. I can't sit here saying "I'm gonna hold forever" and then bail as soon as it gets a little tight.

I've already decided that whatever happens, happens. I'm here for the long run, and if the ship goes down, I'm going down with the ship.

Glauber Contessoto, 34, lives in Las Vegas, Nevada. He became a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency community in 2021 after he became a millionaire by investing his life savings in Dogecoin. He is known on YouTube as The Dogecoin Millionaire and he is known on Instagram as @ProTheDoge.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

As told to Ed Browne.