A short story or maybe a factual account related to something that shattered my life.
Written by Mujibur Rahman
Chapter 1 – The Night My Body Gave Up
I had not been well for the past three days.
On paper these were supposed to be my “rest days” – the three nights off between my brutal runs of twelve-hour night shifts as a corporate security officer. In reality they felt like punishment.
Seven nights on, three nights off, seven nights on, four nights off. Repeat. That pattern had been my life for just over five years. More time in a glass and steel building than in my own home. More time watching other people’s money than looking after my own health or my family.
By the third day off, my body was no longer just tired – it was trembling.
I lay in bed in the half-dark, the bedroom curtains doing a hopeless job of blocking out the mid-morning light. My whole body was shivering. My heart felt like it was trying to sprint out of my chest. Each breath was shallow, scraping against my throat. Sweat clung to my skin even though the temperature outside was only thirteen or fourteen degrees.
Something was wrong. Very wrong.
It was Friday, 13 May 2022. I reached out with a weak, shaking arm and grabbed my phone from the bedside nightstand. My thumb found the crypto app almost on its own. It was muscle memory by now.
The screen lit up, and for a second everything in the room froze.
$0.35
For a moment I didn’t even understand what I was looking at. Then my brain caught up and tried to slam on the brakes.
That was the total value of my crypto assets.
I felt the blood drain from my face. The room tilted. Thoughts scattered in my head like frightened birds, none of them making any sense. A tight band wrapped itself around my chest. I knew that feeling. A panic attack was coming.
Somehow I managed to place the phone back on the nightstand. I pulled the duvet over my body like a shield and slid one arm under the pillow. I closed my eyes and tried to disappear.
I lay there for over two hours, caught between sleep and panic, my heart racing, my mind replaying that figure.
$0.35
My wife had already left for work. The house was quiet, but my head was anything but.
At some point I picked up the phone again and checked the time. My shift was looming. I had to get up, get dressed, and go into work, even though every cell in my body wanted to curl up and stay in bed. I knew that if I stayed home, if I was alone with these thoughts, the panic would swallow me whole.
I told myself the same lie I had been telling everyone else.
Act normal.
No one must know how you feel.
No one must know what you have done.
Chapter 2 – From Two Point Two Million To Thirty-Five Cents
On the way to the bathroom, the number came back to me again like graffiti sprayed across my mind.
$0.35
I unlocked the phone with shaky fingers and opened the app again, as if the numbers might have rearranged themselves into something less tragic.
They hadn’t.
My portfolio balance stared back at me, brutally indifferent.
I felt light-headed, like I was standing too close to the edge of a tall building. I realised what had happened, and the realisation was like a punch to the gut. I whispered a prayer. I begged for it to be a mistake, a glitch, a bad dream. But the evidence was there, line after line, chart after chart.
This nightmare had started three days earlier, on Tuesday, 10 May 2022.
That morning, I had opened the same app and seen something that had made my jaw drop:
$648,500
I thought it was a mistake then too. I checked the price of Luna on another crypto app. It was showing $25.94 per coin. I had 25,000 Luna in my portfolio.
The last time I had checked, on Tuesday, 5 April 2022, Luna was priced at $88.76. Back then my holdings were worth $2,219,000. Over 2.2 million dollars. For a security guard living in council accommodation, it felt like a portal had opened into another life.
From $2,219,000 down to $648,500. In my head I did the calculation again and again, as if the numbers might behave differently.
I had already lost $1,570,500.
I remember staring at that figure and feeling physically sick. Even then, I told myself it was just a correction, a dip, one of those violent swings crypto was known for. I convinced myself the price would bounce back and climb again. It had to.
The next day, Wednesday, 11 May, Luna dropped to $14.24. My holdings were now worth $356,000.
I had now lost $1,863,000 from that April high.
This was the kind of story I had read about online. People losing fortunes overnight. People talking about numbers that seemed unreal. I never truly believed I would become one of them.
On Thursday, 12 May, I watched the price slide further, down to $0.88.
My 25,000 coins were now worth $22,000.
I just stared at the screen. The numbers blurred as tears gathered. I cried silently, hot tears rolling down my cheeks while my body sat frozen. My chest tightened. My hands went cold. I tried to think, to calculate, to plan. All I could feel was a wave of dread spreading through my body.
I did not sleep that night. I prayed. I bargained. I promised.
Just let it go back to a million, I thought. Just once more. If it goes above $1 million, I will cash out. I will walk away from crypto forever. I will take the lesson and run.
By Friday, 13 May, the game was over.
Luna was trading at $0.000014. My 25,000 coins were worth $0.35.
From $2,219,000 to $0.35.
My crypto dream wasn’t just damaged. It was obliterated.
Chapter 3 – The Silent Collapse
I went to work that night like a ghost wearing my body.
I passed my wife in the hallway earlier that day. She asked if I was ok. I said I was just tired. That was technically true. I had no words for what was really going on.
All my life savings had been wiped out. Years of effort, long nights, calculated risks, hours spent studying charts, re-reading articles, learning. Gone. And I was the only one who knew.
I walked through our front door, into the cool night air, and felt as if I was leaving a crime scene. I had destroyed something precious and was pretending nothing had happened.
How could I explain this to my family? How do you sit down at the dinner table and say, “By the way, I lost $2.2 million this week.”
How do you explain that you had that much in the first place, and never told them?
At work, I put on my uniform, my ID card hanging from my neck, my face set into that neutral expression corporate security officers wear. I greeted colleagues. I checked passes. I watched people in suits walk past me with expensive watches and easy smiles.
I stood there, knowing that the money I had once had could have bought us a home. It could have cleared my debts. It could have freed me from these endless twelve-hour nights.
Instead, I had nothing to show for it.
Nothing but a number on a screen that now read $0.35.
Later that night, I found myself standing by the huge glass windows of one of the largest financial institutions in the world. The city glittered outside. Billions of dollars were being traded daily from buildings just like this one. Each lit window was another office where money moved in and out of existence.
And I was standing there, a security guard with tears in his eyes, mourning $2.2 million that had vanished in seventy-two hours.
Was I really this stupid?
Was my dream of financial freedom over?
I wiped my face before anyone saw and turned back to my duties. There was no choice. The rent still needed to be paid. Food still needed to be put on the table. Security officers do not get sick leave for broken dreams.
All night my mind looped the same questions. How could this happen? Why didn’t I cash out at any of the break points? Why did I hold on?
There was no answer that brought the money back.
Chapter 4 – How I Built My Fortune
To understand why this loss cut so deep, you have to know what it took to get there.
This was not “easy come, easy go” money. It was the result of nearly five years of grinding – mentally, emotionally, financially.
Years earlier I had tried my hand at forex and stock trading. I had lost heavily. The red numbers on the screen had burned themselves into my mind. After that, I swore I would stay away from trading. I promised myself I would never gamble with money like that again.
In 2017, things started to shift.
I worked as a security officer in an investment bank. One of the traders there, a man named Ritoban Chakrabarti, used to stop and talk to me. Not in a condescending way. Proper conversations. We spoke about markets, about risk, about how the system really worked.
He told me to avoid day trading. He said the platforms available to the general public were like casino tables with extra zeros on the roulette wheel. It didn’t matter if you chose red or black. The house always had the edge.
The platforms used by the investment banks were different. He described them as a roulette table with the zero slots removed. Still risky, but fairer.
His words stuck in my mind.
Instead of chasing quick wins, he told me to buy good companies and hold. Be patient. Invest regularly. Let time and compounding do the heavy lifting.
In early 2018 I started. $300 a month into stocks. Quiet, boring, consistent. My portfolio slowly grew. By March 2020 it was worth just over $45,000. For someone on my salary, that was a big deal.
Then rumours of lockdown began. I watched the news. I watched the markets. Something in my gut told me to get out. I pulled all my money from the stock portfolio just before the pandemic crash.
That move, for once, had gone in my favour.
At the same time I was building a crypto portfolio. Back in the wild days of crypto mining programs, I had once accumulated over 100 Bitcoin through a multi-level mining scheme. Before it collapsed, I had managed to withdraw 8 Bitcoin to my own wallet. Eight coins that would later change my life – and then break my heart.
I used some of the profits from the stock market to buy more Bitcoin and some Ethereum. I made good returns on Shiba Inu at one point. I picked up a handful of other coins. Some went up, some didn’t. That was the game.
By January 2022, I decided to simplify everything. I swapped all the smaller coins into just two: Bitcoin and Ethereum. When the dust settled, I held 15 Bitcoin and 131 Ethereum.
On paper, I was doing well. On the inside, I was desperately looking for a way out of my financial problems.
Chapter 5 – The Biggest Gamble Of My Life
On 22 February 2022, I took the biggest gamble of my life.
By then my 15 Bitcoin were worth around $575,355. My 131 Ethereum were worth $340,207. Between them, I had $915,562 worth of crypto. For someone working as a security officer and living in council housing, that number was surreal.
At the same time, there was this growing storm of hype and prediction around one coin in particular: Luna.
Everywhere I looked, analysts, YouTubers, influencers were talking about how high it could go. The charts. The models. The confident predictions. The “if you just hold for another year…” comments.
I let it get to me.
I told myself that if I went all in on Luna and it crossed a million, I could cash out, clear my debts, buy a home, and reduce my working hours. Maybe even quit the night shifts altogether.
I took all 15 Bitcoin. All 131 Ethereum. I converted everything into Luna.
I was looking to buy 25,000 Luna. The price I was paying was around $922,000. I added $6,438 to make up the difference.
Just like that, with a few taps on a screen, my entire financial life was balanced on one coin.
I knew it was risky. But I also knew how long I had been struggling. Bad business decisions in the past had left me with financial scars. I was tired. Tired of just surviving. Tired of counting pennies. Tired of working nights while my family slept.
So I gambled.
On 5 April 2022, the price of Luna hit $88.76. My 25,000 coins were now worth $2,219,000.
I remember that day vividly. Staring at the number. Refreshing the app. Checking it on different platforms like a man tapping a winning lottery ticket to see if the ink smudged.
2.2 million dollars. I had done it. At least on screen, I was a millionaire.
I should have cashed out. I know that now. There were so many break-off points I could have taken – when Bitcoin crossed $60,000, when my portfolio first hit seven figures, when my gut whispered, “This is enough.”
But I held on.
I told myself it would go higher. That I would take just a little more. That I had waited this long, what was a bit longer?
I had no idea that I was walking towards a cliff.
Chapter 6 – The Dream In The Velvet Cloth
After the crash, sleep became a stranger.
Every time I closed my eyes, charts flashed in the dark. Red candles dropping down the screen. Numbers peeling away like paint from a damp wall. My heart raced even when I lay still. My mind would not let go of the what-ifs.
On 15 May 2022, after another numb, mechanical night shift, I reached home just after 8 am. Usually, I would have breakfast before collapsing into bed. Not today. The exhaustion in my body was not from work. It was from grief.
I peeled off my uniform and lay down. I didn’t pray for money anymore. I just prayed for sleep. For a few hours where my brain would stop replaying the same horror film.
Normally it would take me over an hour to fall asleep during the day. Cars passing outside. Children shouting. Sunlight sneaking through the thin curtains. But this time, as soon as my head touched the pillow, everything went black.
I slept for around seven hours. When I woke up, I carried the dream with me as clearly as if it had actually happened.
In the dream, I was walking along a street when I realised my wallet was missing. Panic gripped me. My bank cards and money were inside it. I retraced my steps and saw it slip from my hand in slow motion, hit the floor, then sink down into it as if the concrete was water.
I dropped to my knees, scraping at the ground with my fingers. I knew it had vanished, but still I searched. Fear dug its claws into my chest. I needed that money to feed my family.
I looked up and saw younger versions of my children staring at me with wide, trusting eyes, waiting for me to fix it. The shame was unbearable.
As I searched, thoughts of hunger and poverty crowded in. That familiar knot of fear tightened in my stomach. Then I felt a gentle touch on my shoulder.
I turned and saw a figure in a white robe standing behind me. I couldn’t make out their face. The figure didn’t speak. Instead they pointed to something on the ground covered with a green velvet cloth.
I hesitated, then bent down and pulled the cloth away.
Underneath was my wallet. Next to it was a small wooden chest.
I picked up the wallet, relief flooding through me, then opened the chest.
Inside were gold bars and huge diamonds. Light bounced off them, sending out sharp, focused beams across the room. As I stared into those beams I saw images playing out inside them like little films.
Scenes of money I had lost over the years. Scams. Bad trades. Business failures. Moments when I had trusted the wrong people. Each memory was pulled into the chest, absorbed into the gold and diamonds.
I looked back at the figure in white. I wanted to ask who the treasure belonged to, but the question stayed stuck in my throat.
The figure placed a hand over his heart, then gestured towards the chest and pointed at me. I understood the answer without words.
The treasure was mine. A gift. A promise.
I woke up with that image still burning in my mind – the chest, the gold, the diamonds, the figure in white. It felt like a message, even if I couldn’t fully decode it.
I got ready for work. Something inside me felt different. Not healed, not happy, but strangely calm. I had lost $2.2 million in three days, yet there was a small pocket of peace sitting quietly somewhere deep inside.
Chapter 7 – Rajesh And The Rent
On the next shift, I was working with Rajesh.
We often spoke about stocks, crypto, NFTs. He was the only person at work I could have that kind of conversation with. Most colleagues were either not interested or thought it was all a scam. Rajesh, though, understood markets, risk, and the hunger to change your situation.
That night, the words finally broke out of me.
“I’ve lost all my life savings in the Luna crash,” I said, staring at the floor.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t say “What?” or “How much?”
Instead he gave a small, tired smile.
“I lose all my life savings every month when I pay my rent and bills,” he replied.
I laughed, a short, cracked sound that surprised me. His joke didn’t fix anything, but it pulled me out of my head for a moment.
He told me straight. I had taken a gamble. Now I had to deal with the consequences. I could spend the rest of my life replaying the loss, or I could accept what had happened and start building again.
“Man up,” he said, not unkindly. “Leave the past behind and mould the future.”
Rajesh had once managed thirty employees in his own company. Now he was working the same security shifts as me. Our stories overlapped in uncomfortable ways. Unfortunate incidents. Bad decisions. Businesses that had once seemed promising but ended in disappointment.
Somehow, hearing that from him made my pain feel less like a personal curse and more like one chapter in a bigger story that many people were silently living.
During those three days of the crash, I kept updating my blog as if everything was normal. I wrote about financial freedom and side hustles while my own financial freedom evaporated. My younger son was preparing for his final A-level exams. I refused to let this disaster infect his focus.
So I carried on, posting blog entries, answering messages, pretending to the world – and to my family – that everything was under control.
Inside, I was held together with tape.
Chapter 8 – Choosing To Fight Back
Despite everything, one stubborn belief refused to die inside me: the belief that I could still build financial freedom using the internet.
Just after midnight on another shift, I found myself once again staring out of the glass and steel front of the building, focusing on the skyscrapers around us. Billions moved in and out of those towers daily. Compared to that, my $2.2 million loss was a raindrop in the ocean.
A quote came into my mind from Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill. It was about Marshall Field, whose store burned down in the Great Fire of Chicago in 1871.
“Gentlemen, on that very spot I will build the world’s greatest store, no matter how many times it may burn down.”
If he could say that standing in the ashes of his life’s work, who was I to let this loss bury me?
I had two choices. Let this incident kill my dream of financial freedom, or use it as the fuel that powered me towards something even greater.
I thought about people like Andrew Tate, who dominated TikTok without even having his own account, relying on fans posting his content. I thought about Khaby Lame, who turned job loss during the pandemic into over $5 million by making simple, silent TikTok videos.
They had used the internet as a lever. Why couldn’t I?
I knew that with the right marketing, massive traffic could be driven to any website. Brands could be built in months instead of years.
I decided that my blog, mujiburrahman.com, would become the focal point of my new mission. I would use TikTok and other social media platforms to drive traffic to it. I would create passive income streams piece by piece – affiliate links, digital products, YouTube channels.
I still had no capital. But I had ideas. I had experience. And I had urgency like never before.
Chapter 9 – Father And Son
On 17 May 2022, after a rare four hours of peaceful sleep, I woke up feeling different. Not happy. Not comfortable. But determined.
I went to my elder son’s room at around 2 pm.
“We need to talk,” I said.
We sat and spoke about our future. Our real future. Not the fantasy future that had relied on a coin staying high on a screen. I told him more about my plans for blogging, content creation, and building online income streams.
We were still living in council accommodation. I should have bought a home years ago. The regret stung, but I refused to let it dominate the conversation.
He told me about his YouTube channel. He had started it during Ramadan, back in April 2022. At first it had been more of an experiment. He was learning editing, thumbnails, titles. Now he was ready to take it seriously.
We made a pact.
He would focus on growing and monetizing his channel. I would do everything I could to support him behind the scenes – ideas, research, encouragement, maybe some promotion later. Once his channel was monetized, I would start my own channel and follow a similar path.
His target was to get monetized within twelve months. I said he could do it in six. I believed that with focused effort, it was possible.
He didn’t want any shortcuts. He wanted to build something he could call his own. I respected that. I promised to help, but not to take credit. His success would be his.
We decided he would officially relaunch the channel on 27 June 2022. After that date, I would place the link on my blog so whoever followed my story could follow his as well.
In that moment, sitting with my son, the loss hurt a little less. The dream shifted. It was no longer just about me escaping the rat race. It was about building something together as a family, brick by digital brick.
Chapter 10 – Lessons From A Two Point Two Million Dollar Loss
I still haven’t sat my family down and told them the full story. When they eventually read this, they will discover the truth in these lines.
They probably thought I had a couple of thousand dollars in crypto. A hobby amount. Not over $2.2 million. Not “life-changing” money.
But that money is gone now. It exists only as memory and regret.
I know most people will not believe my story. That’s fine. I will pass this off as fiction if I have to. Those who know me personally will recognise the clues in my behaviour during those weeks in May 2022.
I know I must forget the mistake and remember the lesson.
This has been an expensive lesson, but a valuable one.
I have learned how it feels to have it all on paper and lose it all in three days. It took nearly five years to build that $2.2 million. It took seventy-two hours to watch it vanish.
I have learned that no matter how big the number on the screen, it means nothing until it becomes real, until it’s in your bank or your hands, until it actually changes your life.
I have learned that secrecy can be a double-edged sword. I thought I was protecting my family by keeping my fortune hidden until I cashed out. In reality I cut myself off from the support I needed when everything fell apart.
I have learned that my greatest asset is not money. It is my ability to generate ideas, to learn, to adapt, and to keep moving even when everything inside me wants to stop.
The good news, if you can call it that, is that I do not owe $2.2 million to anyone. This was my own money that disappeared. I still need to clear a few thousand dollars of debt, but that is nothing compared to what I’ve already lost.
One day I will come back to this story and read it without feeling a knot in my chest. By then, my YouTube channel may be established. My blog might be drawing visitors from all over the world. My son’s channel might be thriving. We might be living in our own home at last.
For now, I keep my poker face on. I go to work. I swipe people through turnstiles. I stare out of glass walls at the city’s money machines. I act as if everything is normal.
Inside, I am rebuilding.
I am on a mission to turn nothing into something considerable. I do not have capital. I have a dream and a mind. If I can transform this loss into a story of victory, it will be one of the greatest achievements of my life.
Even when I had over $2.2 million in my crypto balance, I stayed quiet. I wanted to remain invisible until the money was safe in my account. That moment never came.
Now I understand that my story is not about a lucky bet or a perfect trade. It is about resilience.
I will need to take massive action. I will need to focus on creating real, sustainable income – passive streams built on skill, effort and creativity, not just on speculation.
I cannot give up on my dream. I refuse to let three terrible days in May define the rest of my life.
My crypto dream shattered.
But I am still here.
And I am not done yet.
Disclaimer
This story, published on mujiburrahman.com is a purely fictional work. All characters, places, communities, and events described are products of imagination or used in a fictional context. Any resemblance to actual individuals or real-world events is entirely coincidental. The purpose of this content is storytelling and entertainment only and should not be taken as factual or representative of any real person or community.