“I put my life savings in crypto’: how a generation of amateurs got hooked on high-risk trading
Noor is whispering so her boyfriend won’t hear her. The 30-something designer from London is down about £14,000 as a result of her decision to get into investing, in addition to another £8,000 profit she made on bitcoin last year, but then lost. Nobody knows the full extent of Noor’s losses – hence the whispering. “I feel so stupid,” she says. “I can’t talk about it to my friends, I can’t talk about it to my boyfriend.” Noor is not her real name.
It started in November 2020, around the time of the US presidential election. “People expected Trump to win again,” she says, “and it was a weird time, because it was mid-pandemic, and it just seemed like this financial moment might be happening.”
She started reading about cryptocurrencies online, and the more she read, the more ads for trading platforms she was served on her social media feeds. Because of Covid, Noor hadn’t spent much money over the year. So she bought £10,000 worth of the cryptocurrency bitcoin online, which turned into £18,700 within weeks. “I’d never invested before,” she tells me.
She’d sleep with her phone under her pillow and wake up during the night to check the performance of her bitcoin. (Unlike listed stocks, bitcoin can be traded 24 hours a day.) “It was cooking my brain,” she says. “I’d look at it constantly.” All she talked about to her boyfriend was how well her investment was doing. “I’d be telling him, ‘Look, I just made £400 in a day,’”she says. Noor started to fantasise about a future in which she’d never need a mortgage, where she’d invest her way to extreme wealth.“
“And so far, it’s going well. “I’m guaranteed to make about £1,500 a week indefinitely,” Blake says with confidence. “It’s just overwhelming, because I’ve never had that much money in my life.”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...h-risk-trading
Noor is whispering so her boyfriend won’t hear her. The 30-something designer from London is down about £14,000 as a result of her decision to get into investing, in addition to another £8,000 profit she made on bitcoin last year, but then lost. Nobody knows the full extent of Noor’s losses – hence the whispering. “I feel so stupid,” she says. “I can’t talk about it to my friends, I can’t talk about it to my boyfriend.” Noor is not her real name.
It started in November 2020, around the time of the US presidential election. “People expected Trump to win again,” she says, “and it was a weird time, because it was mid-pandemic, and it just seemed like this financial moment might be happening.”
She started reading about cryptocurrencies online, and the more she read, the more ads for trading platforms she was served on her social media feeds. Because of Covid, Noor hadn’t spent much money over the year. So she bought £10,000 worth of the cryptocurrency bitcoin online, which turned into £18,700 within weeks. “I’d never invested before,” she tells me.
She’d sleep with her phone under her pillow and wake up during the night to check the performance of her bitcoin. (Unlike listed stocks, bitcoin can be traded 24 hours a day.) “It was cooking my brain,” she says. “I’d look at it constantly.” All she talked about to her boyfriend was how well her investment was doing. “I’d be telling him, ‘Look, I just made £400 in a day,’”she says. Noor started to fantasise about a future in which she’d never need a mortgage, where she’d invest her way to extreme wealth.“
“And so far, it’s going well. “I’m guaranteed to make about £1,500 a week indefinitely,” Blake says with confidence. “It’s just overwhelming, because I’ve never had that much money in my life.”
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeands...h-risk-trading
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