Rising asset prices paper over problems and can make fools and fraudsters look savvy for a while. But they never were investors, just gamblers banking on blind luck to continue. Classic money behaviors are timeless and repeatedly end the same way. See After the boom: hard lessons for cryptocurrency investors:
Pete Roberts of Nottingham, England, was one of the many risk-takers who threw their savings into cryptocurrencies when prices were going through the roof last winter.
Now, eight months later, the $23,000 he invested in several digital tokens is worth about $4,000, and he is clearheaded about what happened.
“I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck,” he said this week. “The losses have pretty much left me financially ruined.”