Some thoughts I've never shared: back in 2021, when I was first discovering crypto, my onchain journey started with a rug.
After that rug, I and other holders decided to launch a new coin together. I genuinely thought we were building something, with a vision around decentralization grading finance, whatever bullshit. Things got serious, we even shared our IDs to be sure nobody was gonna scam the other, yeah, I was naive. I was barely weeks into crypto.
One morning I woke up to a completely rugged chart, one pure red candle going straight to 0. Community holders were ready to come for my head, actively trying to find me IRL, while the "team members" who had my personal information were threatening me if I talked.
I remember my hands shaking just opening my phone, and crying in a voice calls with community holders asking to be repaid "at whatever cost". I didn't sleep for weeks. To this day, it remains the worst experience of my life. I went to the police station to file a complaint, which obviously led nowhere.
That experience made me hide my face and my voice in web3 for years, out of pure fear, costing me opportunities along the way. I swore to never be part of a token launch ever again. Tokenization has become more and more accepted since then with
@jessepollak famous "coin it", but I still carry that PTSD somewhere in me.
We don't realize enough how many lives and souls crypto can break, not just financially, but emotionally. For every amazing story of someone changing their life, there are far more stories of people being destroyed; scammed, drained, physically assaulted, liquidated on perps. We hear the wins, but we don't talk enough about the wreckage. I think we need, as an ecosystem, to be more humble about this and more supportive of one another.
To this day, I'm still afraid of everything around the concept of launching a coin. So while I obviously can't dismiss how much it means to earn some fees back, and there is a rush of adrenaline when people pump a coin affiliated with you, I do not take any of it lightly.