Losses up to a million dollars: an exclusive peek into crypto experts’ portfolios in 2022

2022 was very different for investors. Some lost everything, and some managed to make good money. We offer a peek into other people’s portfolios through these five stories.

Exclusively for buidlbee, those are who shared their 2022 investment results:

• John Carvalho, CEO at Synonym
• Alt Crypto Gems, Full-time Crypto Trader, Founder & CEO of AltCryptoTalk
• Nathan Leung, Cryptonauts Founder
• Anna Tutova, Co-founder of Coinstelegram and YouTube channel White Crypto, Partner at KYC-Pay
• Wolf, Twitter Blogger, and full-time trader
• + bonus Anonymous who lost $1m this year

John Carvalho, CEO at Synonym: Invested only in Bitcoin and only for the long term

“For the past five years, I have exclusively saved in Bitcoin, so the changes in market price have not affected me. I stack with every paycheck. My biggest mistake, by far, was not trusting Bitcoin enough during the first years I was aware of it. It took me years to learn that you do not need to ‘put your Bitcoin to work’ or trade; it is enough to just save for the long term.

What I realized during 2022 is that people are sheep, even many of the ones that think they aren’t. Most people are very bad at detecting the truth and being skeptical or analytical.

My strategy for 2023 will be the same as always. Save in BTC and earn as much income as possible from my career.”

Alt Crypto Gems, Full-time Crypto Trader, Founder & CEO of AltCryptoTalk: Lost $150K+ on LUNA

“Overall, in 2022, I went in the minus. Percentage-wise, I’d say I lost about 20% of my portfolio.

My biggest investment so far has still been $LUNA. I had a large chunk not specifically in $LUNA but in the dollar-pegged stablecoin $UST. Because $LUNA collapsed, I lost more than $150K on my $UST bag alone. On the other hand, the biggest multiple this year for me has been 27x on a small altcoin called ALCAZAR. Next to that, my biggest bag was $GMX which did over 2x as well this year.

The lesson I have learned this year is that even when it’s in stablecoins, it’s still crypto, and it can still go to 0. I’ve also learned that it’s important not to panic and to build during the market as it is.

In 2023, I’ll be continuing like I am doing now, investing and building. I believe that the ones that are surviving and investing in the bear market will be the ones that reap the rewards in the bull market. Also, I’m going to be more attentive to risk management.”

Nathan Leung, Cryptonauts Founder: Lost everything in the last crypto winter, knew exactly what to do this time

“In 2017–2018, I lost 99% of my portfolio, learned from my mistakes, and this cycle, my loss was 0%. My biggest mistake in investing was betting on random projects without a strong team — founders who partied too much or disappeared after fundraising.

Now I look at projects with a good team and strong community. The lesson learned is to trust myself. Buy the rumors, sell the news. Look at LUNA and FTX. Nothing is too big to fail. 

For 2023, I plan to slowly buy Bitcoin twice a month. My average is already pretty low, and I’m waiting to deploy capital around the 13k range.”

Anna Tutova, Co-founder of Coinstelegram and YouTube channel White Crypto, Partner at KYC-Pay: Earned on the Metaverse hype

“I’m mostly in minus for altcoins and mostly in plus from BTC and ETH investments: 1.5–2x on BTC, 2–3x on ETH, 4–5x on Polygon. I also invested in Sandbox in May 2021 before listing on Coinbase, and it grew the most in a few months — 25x on the hype around Metaverse. 

Fantom, on the other hand, did 10x, but now everything has gone down, and I didn’t fix my profits. That — not Fantom exclusively but not fixing profits in general — I consider my biggest mistake. Still, I managed to make 5–7x and fixed profits on Solana.

Another win for me was the Mina protocol: I managed to get an allocation on a CoinList sale just for 500$ and made 16x on it. The biggest failure was Luna. I bought it already at a high price, made 7–10x on it, never sold it, and it went to almost 0 during the crash.

During 2022, I’ve learned not to be over-excited about the bull market and to be a believer in good projects. Anyway, whether they are bad or good, everything will go down a lot during the bear market, so again, fix your profits. 

My strategy for 2023 is to buy a bit every week, or month, guided by the dollar-cost-average strategy. I also will look into early-stage projects and new low caps, which may give higher returns. Areas of projects I plan to invest in: ZK (Zero-Knowledge rollups), infrastructure, gaming.”

Read more: “Sell half of the tokens each time your investment doubles”: an interview with Anna Tutova about her rules of investment, based on her fiascos

Wolf, Twitter Blogger, and Full-time Trader: Had losses but knows how to deal with it

“This year, I lost about 60%. I didn’t sell BTC at 60K when I thought a bear market was possible. Instead, I only sold 5% and put 50% into 3TriCrypto to yield farm as a hedge against a bear market. The yield wasn’t enough to sustain the damage from alts and an over-extended bear market. Yields also dried up, which wasn’t something I predicted. I lost millions.

But I was in -$550,000 debt in 2019, and now I’m a millionaire, so I’m not too stressed about my losses this year. I will just harvest the losses for taxes next year.

Next bear market, I will just build a stablecoin farm to sustain it. And in 2023, I’m going to use the strategies I explained in this thread:

🧵A follower made a lot in crypto & lost it all, now he’s depressed. Very similar to what I experienced in 2019 & what I’m sure many of you are experiencing today.

He asked me for advice, so I gave him some

If you can relate, then please RT to help educate newcomers.#Bitcoin pic.twitter.com/Co1KtnatqU

— wolf (@ImNotTheWolf) July 27, 2022

Anonymous: Earned $200k and lost $1m

“I lost around $1m this year, which represented 90% of my total assets. My wallet was stolen because I put my memory phrases in a fake MetaMask, which caused $400k to be lost. I also didn’t withdraw in time from DeFi, mainly on OlympusDAO, and went through a 90+% minus around $300k.

But, there was some success since I invested in FLUX in early 2021 and gained 20x profits of around $200k in 2023.

This year’s lesson: it’s more important to believe in the economic cycle than technology.”