The Real Extent and Effect The Cryptopia Hack Is Having On Me.

I don’t think about the Cryptopia hack a lot. Partly because I try not to dwell on negative things too long. It took a couple days to realize exactly what could be lost. Although, in the back of my head I always knew this was a possibility. So in many ways, I was already prepared for this. As crypto traders, we know the risks and these are the games we play.

Considering the time I’ve been involved in trading, it was bound to happen sooner or later. I missed the Cryptsy debacle by about a week. I knew something was amiss and withdrew all my funds a little over a week before disaster struck. There were signs, and I acted accordingly.

With Cryptopia, there really weren’t any signs. Honestly, I was comfortable there. I never had a problem, and I really liked the UX of the exchange. Order history was always there, pages loaded fairly quickly. I was never crazy about the charts, but everything else was perfect. Frankly, it was one of my favorite exchanges.

Which leads me to my point. I’m not super concerned about the coins I had on the sight. It was a small percentage of my overall portfolio. What bothers me more, is the work I lost. In the greater scheme of things, I spent the better part of 6 months building positions, buying and selling, and preparing for the next bull run. All that work is gone now.

For the most part, I trade altcoin on three major exchanges. I haven’t really used Bittrex since they updated the site. I don’t like the UX, and I have to fumble around with my own software when I want to review order history. With that said, I just hadn’t been trading there. I even planned on leaving the exchange this year. Only a few days before the Cryptopia incident I planned on moving my coins from Bittrex over to Cryptopia and two other exchanges. Had I done that, I would have been completely REKT, with the exception of a few cold storage wallets, and my trading nut of BTC and USD.

I suppose it was a complete tragedy averted. Thinking back on that, things could have been much worse. I don’t know what will happen with Cryptopia. For the most part, they’ve always acted honorably in the past, so I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt now. I have to admit though, the lack of communication coming from the company is rather troubling. Currently, I’m expecting the worst and hoping for the best.

My understanding is that the hack was centered around Ethereum wallets and ETH related tokens. Fortunately, I didn’t trade ETH or own very many ERC20 tokens. Considering all the information I’ve received so far has been through a third party, I’m not going to comment further on what’s happening over there. Hopefully, a statement will be made, and the truth comes to light.

In the meantime, losing about a third of my work from the last 6 months is really starting to sink in. All those trades, all that position building, gone!

I practiced decent risk management splitting my position over multiple exchanges. Again, I’m not concerned about the money either. I’ll build the money back. Christ, I started in this game with pennies earned from Dogecoin and Bitcoin faucets.  Losing all that work is the real kick in the nuts!

With all that said, who knows what the future holds. For all I know, they may announce tomorrow that they’re open for withdrawals. I’m not holding my breath on that. I’ve already written it off as a loss. If for some reason I’m surprised, I’ll consider it a nice windfall.

So for now, a nice chunk of the last 6 months of my work is flushed down the crapper. I’ve already started rebuilding my positions. That’s all I can do. Move forward. Never look back, keep on learning, and try not to repeat the mistakes of the past. Another hard lesson learned!

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