Crypto taught me a hard lesson of sorting myself out financially

So, I am a 26 year old guy coming from a modest family background and is earning a decent income for the last four years. In the first year I was employed, I spent all of my salaries on buying things which I had thought of buying ever since I was young (there were many, since my family background was modest and I had to sacrifice quite a bit along the way to reach where I am). I do not regret any of those. But around year 2 or something, I began spending things just out of mere whim, things which really were not needed and even didn't matter - super expensive furniture, latest electronic gadgets, expensive clothing. I was sinking deeper and deeper into the capitalistic trap and essentially I was saving close to nothing annually. And whatever I saved, were in my savings account. All of this continued for 2 years.

One day, a college friend of mine and I were having a conversation and he incidentally told me he has invested in crypto and had more than doubled his amount in less than 3 months. I was intrigued. To be candid, I had heard about bitcoin but was never interested in knowing more about it. And the thing of earning 2.5x multiple on your initial investment swayed me to jump onto doing something I was remotely aware of. (And to give you a bit more background, I never ever invested in anything, no stocks, real estate, nothing. I was financially illiterate to even do that.) I took all of my savings and invested in crypto. This was the time around May.

Within a couple of days, as I was casually checking my portfolio, things started to take a downturn. I watched my entire savings plummet to -40% and then bounce back to -25%. I thought it's a common thing and didn't cash out and then it went deeper and deeper into the sinkhole to a point when cashing out meant stupidity.

Unfortunately, one day, there was a family emergency and my parents reached out to me for financial assistance. I had to cash out some of my savings while freezing the losses to help them out. I was strained financially and was suffering mentally. I had no money left just in case any such emergency came again and due to covid, there was an ongoing threat of layoffs looming.

This instance opened my eyes. I knew I had made the worst financial blunder possible. Everything seemed uncertain.

(Damn it's already so long to read)

I picked myself up and started reading on books to plan and maintain personal financial health. From the basics as having an emergency fund, 50-30-20 rule of saving, different assets for investing, creating a diversified portfolio and managing risk. Around this time, I spend a lot of time reading about the crypto I had invested in and came to realise how exciting this space really is and how interesting and cools many of the projects are.

I started from scratch. Curated a portfolio as per my risk appetite and began DCA-ing into few of the crypto projects I thought were promising. Since I was investing small amounts weekly, losing it on paper doesnt seemed like a nightmare. And eventually everything came together about last week. I had more than tripled my investment amount on the new crypto portfolio and nearly 1.5-x'ed holistically (stocks included). I even checked my past portfolio (atleast part of what was left) and it was not bad as well.

All of this led me to thinking if this had not happened to me, I would have never sorting myself out. I think financial literacy is something fundamental to every individual and even though I had a well educated background, I was still an illiterate financially. Even though it was a rough ride, I believe in the larger picture of things, it was worth it! I hope someone somewhere learns from my experience and doesn't have to experience it himself/herself! :D