Preface:

There are always pitfalls in web3, and everyone who helps others to avoid pitfalls deserves respect

With the double gold gains of SHIPB and UNI, plus the early purchases of BTC and ETH, I had about 1.6 million yuan in funds at the time. Since the wealth came so suddenly and unexpectedly, I was simply unable to manage it as I was only three months away from turning 19.

At the beginning, I wanted to use the web3 funds to find a dex or cex to earn interest, and then use a small portion of the funds to participate in some early projects.

At that time, the current financial management of OKX and Binance were about 2%-3%. The returns of some on-chain dex were much greater than those of cex. There were also some first-mining coins that could be participated in, but high returns were accompanied by high risks. For some mining coins, I used a small part of the funds to rush to the first mine, and basically they would collapse in 1-3 days and plummet. You are greedy for its high APY, and it eats up your principal.

When I first started to get involved in the airdrop circle, this web3 netizen I knew would always send us some good projects to get platform coins, or the first mines and early ecological interactions were all very good. Later he also started his own community. Now he has retired for more than two years. At that time, he was considered a high-quality airdrop hunter.

I clearly remember that it was a Saturday afternoon. He sent a message in the group that the new exchange had launched a 30-40% current APY benefit for USDT, and that early participants would receive an airdrop, which was the exchange's platform currency, when they registered.

Platform coins are the forms of OKB and BNB that everyone knows. After the exchange develops, there will definitely be a minimum return of 10 times.

At that time, I was thinking, the money is just sitting there anyway, and now there is a USDT no-liability current account ANY, so why not take advantage of it? I can withdraw the money at any time without having to worry about the money running away.

After registering the exchange, I completed the KYC and immediately received 500,000 platform tokens.

At the beginning, the platform coin had not been opened and had no price. I thought that I could earn interest anyway, and it would be nice to have some money when it opened in the future.

At the beginning, I didn’t have much courage, so I put some money in to try to deposit some and see if I could withdraw the money normally. I found that I could deposit and withdraw money normally without any restrictions. Then I got bolder and directly deposited half of my assets into it to earn the interest. I could earn about 1400-1600u in interest a month.

Afterwards, the exchange started a series of platform coin ID activities. I thought the subscription prices were attractive, so I participated in two rounds with a try-it attitude. The two rounds were 0.00001u per coin and 0.00005 per coin respectively. A total of 20 billion coins were issued in the two rounds.

Each subscription is limited to 200USDT, so there are not many winners, and I am no exception and did not win the lottery. . .

It is August 8, 2022, what an auspicious day🤡

The platform coin is opening, and my heart is excited and my hands are trembling!

Can you believe it? The highest opening price is 0.002

What a concept, it means that if those who bought in the first round of idols at 200u, they can now get a profit of 4wu, and a profit of 8000u in the second round!

The users who received the 500,000 coins airdropped were also able to sell the order number for a profit of 1,000u, which was the highest profit on the first day of trading!

I was obsessed with this exchange at the time. Those who participated in the ido lottery in the early stage shared their joy in the DC group, but they didn’t know that all this might just be an internal decision and early distribution of chips by the dog dealer!

In the following period, it stayed sideways at 0.001 for a long time. After three months, it began to climb slowly from 0.001 back to 0.002. In November, it rose to 0.003. Everyone began to shout the banner of 0.01, spending money on advertising and promoting it everywhere in Hong Kong and the Asia-Pacific region. The endorsements of movie stars and Taiwanese artists later stirred up emotions to a climax!

With the support of some web3 kols who were active in the cryptocurrency circle in Hong Kong in the early days and the platform that can be regarded as the Wang Sicong of Hong Kong, the foundation has been laid for reaching 0.04 and the subsequent harvest!

As the calls grow louder, KOLs in Hong Kong have begun to conduct OTC business offline, organize exclusive activities for exchanges, and sell you platform coins to get a higher exchange rate when you go to their money changers to make purchases or deposits.

When the average price was around 0.015, I transferred almost 80% of my web3 assets to the platform for holding, preparing to take a gamble and make a 10-fold profit to quickly reach my life goal of 1kw. When it rose to 0.03 for the first time, I was ready to sell my principal for conservative operations. Who knew that at this critical juncture, the platform launched another game coin based on the metaverse game, which also adopted the same idol model as the previous platform coin.

If you were in this exchange, and you made so much profit in the early stage and could withdraw it normally, you would also think about arbitrage and eat the next IDO to quickly increase your assets by 10 times.

The game currency idol is different from the previous model. It is no longer a lottery to get the currency, but a first-come, first-served one! At that time, I was already so excited that I lost any ability to identify a scam! In fact, first-come, first-served has already sounded the alarm bell for harvesting in a sense.

This time, the game currency is open to subscription of BTC, ETH, platform currency and USDT. The upper limit of subscription for each pool is 20WU.

With the mentality of getting the same returns as platform coins, I dispersed all the coins I had previously hoarded into 4 pools, which also put 80% of my web3 assets into them.

Only 20% is left to continue financial management to maintain life. This subscription is different from the previous one. It will take until April 2024 to open the market to exchange for income. That is to say, your money will be locked in the platform during this period. Unfortunately, I am still fantasizing that I can achieve the goal of 1kw in a year.

In September, a statement from the Hong Kong SFC completely shattered the exchange, and my dream was shattered too. . .

At that time, I was still imagining that many exchanges did not have licenses, so it would be better to leave Hong Kong. Unfortunately, this exchange is completely dependent on users in Hong Kong to maintain its operation. If Hong Kong is liquidated, that is, all the money is returned to the users, naturally the money cannot be repaid, and user funds must have been misappropriated during the period, so it is time to close the net!

The booths at the web3 conferences held overseas were deserted, and the buildings set up in Taiwan were completely deserted, with even the rent not paid. It was as if everything had returned to the time in 2016 when I was scammed out of 5,000 yuan to buy BTC.

I was devastated at that time. I couldn't sleep all night and didn't dare to tell my family. It was like a dream, and I just woke up!

It takes a lot of energy to write about this experience, I need to take a break and bring you the sequel.