Dec 22nd 2017. The low point in my time as a crypto investor. It’s 5:30am and I’m rooting around in my desk drawers, reaching for my hardware wallet. This thing has given me many happy times, but this morning, I tear it from the box in a panic. Bitcoin is tanking. $15k. $14.5k. $14k. This is it. The bubble has burst. I’m out!

The only thing harder than watching your profits disintegrate is realising that your mental health is in a worse state than your Bitcoin-to-USD balance. This is my first day off work as the Christmas holidays arrive. I haven’t had time off for months, and yet the sleep I’ve been longing for has been broken by the bright light of my smart phone. I’ve been watching the price of Bitcoin all night, drifting in and out of dreams where I see numbers ticking up and down. And as my girlfriend wakes up to the sound of my Macbook starting, I know I’m in trouble.

“Pig, what are you doing?”, she calls out, in complete bemusement (that’s her pet name for me, by the way?—?neither of us know why). Just yesterday we had a long conversation about how crypto was taking over my life. Apparently, I haven’t been ‘present’ enough, and she’s tired of me staring at my phone constantly. Now I’m stood here in the early hours of the morning, wearing nothing but my boxer shorts, frantically punching in the pincode to my Ledger. “Nothing. I just need to send an e-mail to someone at work”, I reply, praying that she doesn’t come into the spare bedroom. A few minutes go past and there she is, standing in the doorway, staring at my Coinbase account. She shakes her head and walks off without saying anything.

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