In his college-aged days, Chris Maurice, the CEO of African crypto alternate Yellow Card, mentioned he put his life financial savings into Bitcoin (BTC), discovering it stolen shortly after.
“Bitcoin was about $200 on the time, and I made a decision principally I used to be simply going to dump my whole financial savings account into into it,” Maurice advised Cointelegraph in an interview. Maurice mentioned he had roughly $5,000 in his financial savings again then, with which he purchased roughly 21 BTC.
“I used to be holding all of it on LocalBitcoins, as a result of that was the pockets that I used on the time and I did not actually know any higher,” Maurice mentioned, mentioning a preferred platform used for over-the-counter, or OTC, Bitcoin transactions. “You’ll suppose I’d have finished slightly bit extra analysis earlier than simply dumping my life financial savings into one thing,” he added jokingly.
Frequent trade apply warns customers in opposition to holding a lot of their crypto storage on custodial exchanges and on-line wallets, as these choices pose larger safety dangers whereas giving customers much less management over their property. Utilizing two-factor authentication, or 2FA, on a lot of these accounts is likewise seen as a should for private safety, although Maurice admitted he failed to do that as nicely.
“Anyone acquired in and took all of it, aside from 0.8 [BTC],” Maurice mentioned. “That 0.Eight Bitcoin I held on to till it began spiking after which offered it 16 days earlier than it spiked up from like $1,700 to love $6,000 or no matter,” he added, referencing Bitcoin’s historic yr when the asset in the end rose from lower than $1,000, all the best way as much as virtually $20,000. “So I kinda acquired screwed on each side of that,” he recalled with fun.
Along with his crypto storage mishap, the CEO additionally offered Bitcoin on eBay in 2015, and constructed a small enterprise promoting the asset at Taco Bell along with his pal Justin Poiroux.