How I missed out on millions - a dogecoin story

I bought my first million Dogecoin in 2014 from a website called "WeSellDoges.com" via PayPal. At that time, I knew very little about cryptocurrency in general, but I was an avid Redditor and stumbled across the Dogecoin subreddit early on. Right away, I was overwhelmed by a feeling of community, friendship, and positive energy.

I participated in fun events like raising money for the Jamaican Bobsled Team, the 98 Dogecar, raising money for clean water, and tipping each other on all sorts of social media platforms. I even remember using a functional Dogetipbot on Facebook.

People were making products and taking Dogecoin as payment. I remember buying stickers, T-shirts, physical coins, and even hot sauce. We had community members like "Dogeball," who made Doge comics, and "GoodShibe," who did a "daily Dogecoin" post every day. There were even apps like "Dogerain," where you could tip Dogecoin to people all around the world with a swipe of the app.

But one of my favorite communities and the reason I stayed around for so long was "Pokershibes." It was a poker website that used Dogecoin as currency, with 50k Dogecoin freerolls every hour, million Dogecoin Sunday tournaments, and an amazing community.

In hindsight, I can't believe the amount of money we were playing with. At the time, it was dollars and cents, but we did not play for the money; it was for the passion of poker.

During this time, a lot of things shook the Dogecoin community up, such as the "Moolah Scam," where a trusted member of the community ended up scamming millions of dollars. "Dogewallet," an online Dogecoin wallet that was supposed to be secure, mining scams like "cloud-based mining," and worst of all for me, "Pokershibes" shutting down the website and taking everyone's Dogecoin with it.

I did not have my whole bankroll on the site, like a lot of my good friends did. The person running the site, known only as "admin," had been a long-time, trusted member of the community and a friend.

These situations fractured the community and caused a lot of distrust between members. Some of the best community members left the project, and the price of Dogecoin fell to 0.0035.

My millions of Dogecoin that I accumulated playing poker were worth around $300, and the poker site that I loved was gone. The Reddit community was a ghost town, my friends and family were sick and tired of hearing me talk about Dogecoin, so I swapped to Litecoin and used "QuadrigaCX" (funnily enough) to cash out my coins to my Canadian bank account after months of waiting.

Fast forward to December 2020, Elon Musk starts his Dogecoin tweets, and every tweet pumps the price more and more. The price of Dogecoin soars to an all-time high of $0.73 USD per coin.

All of a sudden, friends, family, and even exes start messaging me asking about my Dogecoin. My friend, who I sent 100 Dogecoin to play with on Pokershibes, is messaging me about how to get it out.

I tell them I don't have it anymore, and their response is a typical "oohh well, you should have held, you would be rich," etc., etc.

The following year was depressing for me. I was no longer involved in crypto in any way, and whenever someone mentioned it, I would get angry and say I didn't want to talk about it. Crypto seemed to be booming, and I even had a coworker who wouldn't shut up about "Bitconnect."

These days, I believe everything happens for a reason, and I'm not so bitter. I no longer hold Dogecoin, and I share the same thoughts as one of its creators, Jackson Palmer, who believes that it has lost the true meaning of what it was meant to be - "a fun, light-hearted project that is friendly and inclusive" - and has become "commercialized and professionalized," and is rife with fraudsters, scammers, and people getting into the community for the wrong reasons.

I still hold some Bitcoin and Ethereum, as well as my physical Dogecoin. My passion for crypto has not died completely, but I look back with nostalgia and miss the simple times.

Proof