An ETH trader turns $87k into $40 million (a big investor) started selling some of their tokens on Sept. 16, but still has over $38 million worth of Ethereum in their wallet.
Sometimes, complicated trading can make people a lot of money, but this story shows that simply buying and holding on to coins for a long time can be just as rewarding.
Back in February 2016, Ethereum was worth about $5 per coin. An investor bought 16,636 Ethereum on a crypto exchange called ShapeShift, spending $87,006 in total. According to a Chinese crypto account named EmberCN, the coins were bought at $5.23 each.
After holding onto the coins for over eight years, the investor began to sell some of them. On Sept. 16, they sold 350 Ethereum at $2,340 per coin, earning $819,000—almost 10 times what they originally paid.
Even after selling some, the trader still has more than $38 million worth of Ethereum left.
High-Stakes Bet Costs Fickel $43M
Sometimes, a simple buy-and-hold strategy works well, but a more complex plan helped one trader buy a $1.5 million NFT for just $23,000.
In 2020, a trend called fractionalization became popular. This means splitting ownership of expensive digital items, like NFTs, into smaller pieces so many people can own a part of them. One of these NFTs was CryptoPunk #2386, a rare Ape-themed NFT with sunglasses and a headband.
The NFT was divided into 10,000 shares owned by 257 people on a platform called Niftex, which has since shut down. However, its smart contracts (automatic blockchain agreements) still work, allowing these features to stay active.
One feature is a “shotgun” bid, where a trader can make an offer to buy the whole NFT. If no one counters the offer within 14 days, the bidder gets the NFT.
On Aug. 28, a trader made a bid of 10 ETH (Ethereum) for the NFT. Some tried to stop the purchase, but in the end, the trader successfully bought the CryptoPunk.
While many people make money trading crypto, others can lose millions when things don’t go as planned. On Sept. 14, blockchain analytics platform Lookonchain reported that crypto millionaire James Fickel lost a massive $43 million, increasing his debt to $132 million.
Fickel, an early Ethereum investor and founder of the research firm Amaranth Foundation, expected Bitcoin’s price to rise faster than Ethereum’s. To profit from this, he placed a big bet on that prediction. However, things went the opposite way, with Bitcoin outperforming Ethereum, causing Fickel to lose the bet.
