Yesterday I was looking around Reddit and I found a post in the r/Cryptomoonshots group. I normally don't go in here, because groups seem to be making new tokens all the time and it is hard to trust. The post introduced a new token called daddyBUSD. The premise was simple, you buy the token, and you are rewarded when people buy or sell their daddyBUSD tokens. The reward is 9% of the daddyBUSD tokens someone buys are pulled out and converted to BUSD and collected. Every hour the holder's accounts get a percent of this BUSD based upon their stake. It sounded interesting and I had a few BNB tokens lying around, so I thought, "Why not?"

I like to test the token before I put in the amount I want to invest. I thought they were a tried and true tests. First I spend a small amount of BNB (0.01 BNB) to buy the daddyBUSD. Second I swap the daddyBUSD back for BNB. If those two tests work, that tells me the contract isn't an issue. I have received airdrops in the past where I try to swap the airdropped token for something else and it gives me an error, telling me the token is a scam. The scammers want you to take the airdrop, then invest more into the token, and when you sell and get the error that is when you know you will never get your money back. The third test (which I try to do first, a week before I invest, but in this case, I didn't) is to go into the group's discord or telegram and watch the people communicate. The Telegram had some really excited people in it, with one guy, in particular, saying he put a lot in and posting a screenshot of his wallet with 200+ earned BUSD. The final test for this coin was seeing if the reflections really did put BUSD in my wallet. After about 10 minutes of buying the tokens a small amount of BUSD was transferred to my wallet. 

With all tests passing and my excitement building, I put down the rest of my 3 BNB. The initial investment of 3 BNB was valued at $1,300 USD. I received 8 million daddyBUSD which was around 0.86% of the total tokens. I was a whale and I just got in. Within one hour the value of my daddyBUSD went from $1,300 to $1,700. I thought about selling but when I looked at my BUSD rewards. 24 BUSD tokens. Holy crap, this was the real deal. Two hours later the value went back down to $1,300 and I looked at the poocoin charts to see there were people selling. I went on Telegram and the masses were yelling how the paper hands were missing out. I thought about selling but I didn't want to panic sell. Instead, I went to sleep even though right before bed I told myself that I should sell in order to protect what I had invested, as so far I have earned a total of 52 BUSD.

I had a great sleep. Nice dreams. I woke up early because another group I follow was having an AMA at 6:00 AM in the morning and the first thing I did was check the price. Overnight the value went from $1,300 to $52 US in BNB (Plus 56 BUSD). I went to the Telegram. No messages after 11:00 PM that night and the chat was muted. I went to Twitter where they had an account. The account was deactivated. While I slept they shut down the operation and sold all their holdings, leaving me with a useless token. I felt horrible. How could I have been so naive? Why didn't I sell the first time I thought about it? Why did I stay in?

For a lot of people, there is a term for why I didn't sell, FOMO, or fear of missing out. I didn't want to sell the token if it tripled in value. I didn't want to miss the BUSD rewards. They had me, hook, line, and sinker. The entire thing was devised in order to take money from investors who were greedy and wanted a quick reward. I was one of those investors, and they succeeded in taking my money. I hate that they did it to all the investors but I really hated they did it to me. I thought I had a proven system to determine a scam token, but all I have proven is I am still very young in the cryptoverse and I still have a lot to learn. 

I decided I wasn't going to dwell in it. $1,300 is a lot of money to me, but anything I have invested I can live without, and since I am not going to get it back, there is no point in crying over spilled milk. I am taking this as a life lesson. My third test was not a success as my FOMO'd self thought. It was a failure. If I would have sat there not investing like I normally do for a week, I would have seen the scam for what it was and I wouldn't have lost anything. Sure, I would be late to the party, but are you ever really late to a good party? My buying and selling tests passed, though that just means the contract was not devious, at least I don't think it was. I program in multiple programming languages, but I don't know the solidity language used to program the smart contract.

What can I do to be better informed?

• Don't feel FOMO'd about anything crypto related
• Learn the smart contract languages in order to research the token prior to joining
• Make it a set rule not to invest in a token until I have spent one week in the social areas (Telegram or Discord)
• Listen when my internal self tells my external self something

I hope you read this and gain some extra knowledge from what I experienced. It is not fun, but any experience you can learn from is value experience.