“Dogecoin Drops to New Low on Blockchain Reveal.”
The above sentence shouldn’t cause me to bend over and let out a guttural sound of pain.
I should consider that bizarre string of words for what it is – gibberish, nonsense, the transcript of an idiot’s gibberish, rather than a truly terrifying headline that has a huge impact on my finances. And yet here we are.
Dogecoin is a cryptocurrency named after a Japanese dog meme that was popular 10 years ago. The new low referenced in that headline is Dogecoin’s current market price of £0.056, its lowest valuation in years.
And the last bit of the sentence, the blockchain disclosure… well unfortunately I can’t tell you what that means.
I don’t know if it really needs to be said, but I didn’t do a whole lot of research before depositing much of my savings into Dogecoin or Bitcoin, or any of the other little made-up tokens I emptied my Help To Buy ISA For .
Perhaps I should have known that the wave had already crashed, the crypto race winners had already crossed the finish line by the time I invested and it was doomed to fail.
But me and many of my friends have all put our savings into this currency. And now, because a blockchain doesn’t do what a blockchain should do, we’re all in a little bit of trouble.
I must say that the money I put into crypto was not a huge amount, for which I am grateful, and I have only invested in cryptocurrencies rather than NFTs, for which I am very grateful.
A friend of mine invested quite a bit of money in a cartoon of a sick looking man, an NFT known as a ‘Dead Fella’.
As the value of the NFT soared, every week we excitedly asked our friend through our group chat ‘how are you dude? What is he worth now?’ he excitedly told us every week how the value had increased by thousands, how he had no intention of selling, how he was going to drive this thing to the top!…
Until the crash came inevitable.
Our friend got sheepish, even coy, when asked about his dude. When someone recently asked how his dude was doing, our friend simply replied “dead.”
And this friend is not an idiot – he actually works in finance. It may look crazy now, throwing huge amounts of money at cartoons and currency named after memes, but thousands of my generation sincerely believed it was our golden ticket.
It sounds crazy, but then the alternative is even crazier. How else are we supposed to achieve a level of financial comfort?
You could throw everything into a Help To Buy ISA, save diligently, create spreadsheets to help with budgeting, and even then you can afford a small transshipment in Zone 9, and the money you save by not paying rent, only ends up being spent trying to heat the container (one of the drawbacks of living in a container, I guess, is that the metal exterior is a conductor rather than an insulator of heat).
The bottom rung has been cut off from the housing market, wages are not rising, food is expensive because a bus convinced us to leave the European Union and petrol is now more expensive than champagne.
No other generation had to constantly try to get their hands on the road to financial security like ours does. Our parents could just do their job, get pretty good at it, and get paid enough to live a life they were happy with.
We are permanently looking for a way to find extra income, trade our way up, and not live a luxurious life per se, but just to have the things previous generations took for granted: a home of our own, the opportunity vacation, enough savings to start a family with peace of mind.
It’s not just cryptos and NFTs. Watch a group of guys at your local pub the next time it’s football and try to count how many are betting. It’s constant. Young men glued to their phones, permanently gambling on sports. I go to the Emirates to watch Arsenal when I can, and that is not a cheap ticket.
I’m always amazed at how many people around me are glued to their phones and betting on OTHER FOOTBALL GAMES. NOT EVEN THE FOOTBALL GAME THEY PAID A HUNDRED POUNDS TO ATTEND. THIS IS THE SCOPE OF OUR GAMBLING PROBLEM.
Outside of sports, social media shows a similar desperation to try to shorten your path to financial freedom. Instagram is awash with ‘Forex Traders’, young men who have learned the ropes of the Forex currency markets, eager to show off their cars and vacations, and for a small fee they can help you dive into the market and buy a fake. make a small life of your own.
As the cost of living crisis continues, house prices soar, inflation hits new highs and a recession looms, there’s no reason to stop it all.
We’re laughing about the Dogecoins and the Dead Fellas right now, but in a few weeks we’ll have found a new lottery to join, and we can only hope that this time it’s a little less embarrassing than losing all your savings to a coin that named after a meme dog.
Do you have a story you want to share? Contact us by email [email protected]†
Share your thoughts in the comments below.
LAKE : Why is cryptocurrency crashing?
LAKE : Cryptocurrency Crash: What to Do When You Have a Bitcoin Investment?
LAKE : Crypto giant Coinbase to cut 1,100 jobs citing ‘crypto winter’