By the end of this lesson you’ll be able to name the five ways people lose money in crypto, with a real example of each, and you’ll know the one rule about how much to put in.
Prices fall
Four of bitcoin’s falls of more than half
Keys get lost
A man in Wales says 8,000 bitcoin sit in a landfill
Scams
$11.366 billion reported to the FBI in 2025
An exchange fails
FTX, 11 November 2022
Rules change
Unauthorized stablecoins removed from EU exchanges in 2025
The five ways this lesson covers, with a real example of each.
How far bitcoin has fallen, with dates
Everyone who buys crypto has heard that it goes up. Here is what bitcoin has done on the way, in daily closing prices on Coinbase as recorded by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
Four of bitcoin’s falls of more than half. Each bar shows how much of its price was lost, against a full bar of 100 percent.
$19,650 on 16 December 2017 to $3,183 on 15 December 2018: 84 percent in a year.
$10,380 on 14 February 2020 to $4,980 on 12 March 2020: 52 percent in four weeks.
$67,510 on 8 November 2021 to $15,756 on 21 November 2022: 77 percent in a year.
$124,720 on 5 October 2025 to $58,586 on 30 June 2026: 53 percent in nine months.
On 31 October 2026 bitcoin closed at $77,404. Smaller coins fall further, and many never recover.
So whatever you put in, you may watch most of it disappear for a year or more. You need to be able to live with that without being forced to sell, and without going short of something you need.