There's a special kind of person who wakes up at 3 a.m. to watch a cartoon dog coin do a little dance on a candlestick chart.
And as of last Tuesday, Derek is also $40,000 poorer, which he'd love to tell you is the government's fault.
The coin in question was called DogeRocket69, or something equally dignified.
Derek found it on a Discord server where the profile pictures are all laser eyes and the grammar is a war crime.
He put in his entire savings because a guy named "CryptoKing_Mike" said it was "about to moon." Mike has since deleted his account.
Here's the thing nobody wants to hear: cryptocurrency trading is not investing.
Investing is buying a slice of a company that makes things people need.
Trading crypto is buying a lottery ticket that you can check every eleven seconds until you have an aneurysm.
The math, for those keeping score at home, is brutal.
Roughly 80% of day traders quit within two years, and most of the ones who stay lose money to the house.
Crypto adds a fun twist: the house is sometimes a 19-year-old in a hoodie who lives in his mom's basement and just rugged your entire community.
Derek's "community" was 4,000 strangers who now send him nothing but crying-laughing emojis.
Derek didn't say "I gambled and lost." He said the market was "manipulated." He said the SEC "hates innovation." He said he was "early." Buddy, you weren't early.
There's a word for the last person holding the bag at the party, and it's not "visionary." The influencers who sold him this dream?
They got in at the bottom, pumped it to their followers, and cashed out while Derek was busy drawing support lines on his phone at a red light.
They'll do it again next week with a coin named after a hamster.
The hamster will not be held accountable.
Now Derek wants to "average down." He's asking family for a loan.
He's watching YouTube videos titled "HOW I TURNED $500 INTO $2 MILLION" by guys who are clearly filming from a rental.
This is the part where I remind everyone that leveraging your rent money on an unregulated asset class is not a strategy.
So here's my closing thought, and I say this with love: if you cannot explain what a blockchain does without using the words "revolutionary" or "trust the process," you are not an investor.
Final Thoughts
And if you're reading this thinking "well, I'd be smarter," congratulations, you're exactly the kind of person DogeRocket70 was built for.