This article is part of Had I Known, Zikoko’s theme for September 2025, where we explore Nigerian stories of regret and the lessons learnt. Read more Had I Known stories here.
Harry* (25) isn’t who you’d call a crypto enthusiast. Before 2025, he’d only had one stint trading crypto. But after a friend claimed to have inside info on meme coins and encouraged him to invest his money, he went all in.
In this story, he talks about starting his trading journey with £1k, building his portfolio to $5k in three months, and then losing it all overnight.
As Told To Boluwatife
It started like a typical day. That morning in March 2025 when I realised I’d lost $5000 in one fell swoop.
Nothing pointed to that morning being any different from the usual. The day was bright; birds might have even been cheering in the background. I picked up my phone the moment I opened my eyes and launched Telegram.
I’d been in a few crypto group chats on Telegram since my friend, Don*, introduced me to meme coin trading in January, and every morning, I’d check the groups before I did anything else. It was my morning routine.
The groups were usually a flurry of activities, people sharing screenshots and chatting excitedly about how a coin they traded had done five or ten times the initial amount. However, the groups were awfully quiet that morning.
I went on Twitter and scrolled through the timeline. Trump had done one crazy shit again. I think he said something about electric vehicles. He was always in the news for some reason, and I didn’t really pay attention to whatever was happening.
After some minutes of lazy scrolling, I left the app to check my meme coin wallet. What I saw there made me doubt whether my eyes were working: WOLF token had tanked and lost over 80% of its value. My units worth $5000 had dropped to about $200 overnight. What was going on?
I texted Don, and he called me two minutes later.
Don: “Bro”
Me: “Bro!”
Don: “Brooooo”
Me: “Fuck!”
We didn’t need to say anything more. It was obvious: the money was gone.
The funny thing is, we might have had a chance to withdraw our money a few weeks before this event. A mutual friend had shared a YouTube video of a pastor prophesying about the crypto world taking a huge loss, but we didn’t give the video a second thought.
We’d been trading meme coins since January, and there was no indication of trouble. We just had to hold out until April, make big money and dump the project. No one expected things to play out the way they did.
Maybe it wouldn’t have been a great loss if we had started taking out our profit right from the start. I probably wouldn’t have even tried meme coin trading if Don hadn’t convinced me to.
Get More Zikoko Goodness in Your Mail
Subscribe to our newsletters and never miss any of the action
Back in December 2024, my aunt, who lives abroad, gifted me the equivalent of £1000 in USDT. I complained that she didn’t give me anything for Christmas, so she sent me the money. I didn’t expect that much, so I didn’t know what to do. I left the money in my wallet for a few weeks. Then, in January, I told Don about my windfall, and he introduced me to the meme coins.
I knew little about crypto, but I wasn’t a newbie. In 2023, I had a trading stint when my blockchain writer cousin introduced me to Harmony Coin, and I flipped $50 into $200. The coin later crashed, and many people lost their money.
I concluded that crypto was a zero-sum game. One person wins at the cost of another. When people take out all their money, the coin’s value is reduced, and others lose. You won’t always win, and that’s just how it works.
After that incident, I took my mind off crypto until Don brought up meme coins. Trump and Elon had their bromance going on, and it looked like crypto would be on an upward bullish run for a long time. Don was the crypto head, and he showed me how I could grow my money by trading instead of just leaving it in my wallet. He said he had insider info on meme coins that would scale.
So, I agreed.
We created two crypto wallets for the transactions — we didn’t want to put all our eggs in one basket. So, even if we incurred losses on one wallet, the other would be fine. Don mostly handled the trades, but I had access to both wallets and could see the transactions happening in real time.
We — mostly Don — also regularly tracked the coins on Twitter and Dex Screener. Viral trends drive meme coins, and you can follow the buzz online to predict if it’ll have traction. It’s almost like how people who follow the stock market can tell when a company is about to lose value because of how often they track the progress.
The first coin we tried was Trump’s coin ($TRUMP). I gave Don £200, and we made a £700 profit in two days.
Instead of taking out the profit, we put it all back in the market. That’s how we started. I kept giving Don more money, and he spread it across different meme coins. We diversified our portfolio like that to hedge against big losses. You never know when you could get rug-pulled, so it was safer not to bet on one coin.
Every day, Don watched out for meme coins generating buzz on Dex Screener, coins that could potentially get picked up by crypto whales, and we’d put money in them. We also had Telegram bots trading for us. It was a fun time.
By March, our portfolio had grown to $5000. Then we made our first mistake: we put all the funds in WOLF. To be fair, the coin looked good. It reached a market cap of $42m in two days. I thought, “Even if we make five times this amount, we’re good.” We could’ve made bank.
Instead, we woke up to $200. It was an obvious rug pull. We couldn’t even try to rebuild our portfolio because there was no guarantee that the coin would regain any value. So, we counted our losses and took out the $200.
Crypto giveth, crypto taketh.
For a few days, water stopped tasting like water to me. I lost my appetite and didn’t even want to look at my phone. But then, I figured there was no use crying over spilt milk. People face worse situations. The money wasn’t even in my account, so I guess it helped to make it not feel real.
Don took the loss much harder than I did. It took him months to get over it. We’d have shared the money, and his share was supposed to take him out of the trenches. The plan was that he wouldn’t have to work all year. My guy eventually had to find a 9-5 job.
He even offered to find money and pay me back at some point, but I told him to forget it. We went into it together.
If I could do it all over again, I’d have taken out my profits from the start — at least I’d have put my money in the real world.
However, I’m never doing that shit again. Crypto is not for me. You have to dedicate time and sleepless nights to battle bots run by supercomputers just to get crumbs while some people are raking in profit from these coins. The worst thing to do is to follow influencers in the cryptoverse. Some of them have insider information and are behind these rug pulls.
My advice to anyone reading this: Don’t do crypto, you’ll cry. The winners will always be fewer than the losers. It’s even worse when you can see those losses happen in a linear, real-time swoop. Just don’t do it.
Me, I know I’ll never do it again. I’ve counted my losses, and I’m moving on. Life continues.
*Names have been changed for the sake of anonymity.
Do you have a story of regret? Share it with us by filling this form.
[ad]
Meme coins are a class of crypto driven by wildly resonant memes, hype, narratives, and internet culture rather than actual use cases. Think of them as the crypto equivalent of a viral trend. They can blow up overnight, make some people rich, and then disappear just as fast.
Despite having no fundamental value, meme coins have made people overnight millionaires and bankrupted them just as quickly.
We spoke to four Nigerian meme coin traders who have experienced the madness firsthand. From wild profits to crushing losses, here’s what they said.
Wale, 25, Crypto Twitter Influencer: “I turned $400 to $22k with a meme coin.”
In September 2024, I bought 224,000 units of a meme coin called BabyBNB for $400. Five days later, I made $22,000. This is how it happened.
Some context: I stumbled on BabyBNB during a random Twitter scroll. The meme coin was a spin-off of BNB (Binance Coin), a cryptocurrency issued by Binance, the largest crypto exchange in the world.
While the original BNB has been used to facilitate payments and trades since 2017, this spinoff had no clear utility or purpose. But it didn’t matter.
Meme coins thrive on hype, and Binance was all the rage on Twitter because of a scandal: Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who founded the crypto exchange, had just been released from a four-month sentence. This shot BNB’s price through the moon, and meme coin traders quickly capitalised on the trend.
BabyBNB launched on September 27, the same day Binance founder Zhao was released. I started buying large units at fractions of cents: $50 here, $100 there, and slowly built my position. The prices took off on the first day, and I started taking profits immediately. In just a few hours, I sold the first 36,000 units for $3,600.
The price peaked at $0.143 per unit on the third day, and I offloaded almost everything. I knew it was time to sell because early buyers with significant holdings had started taking their profit and offloading the coin. I figured they knew something I didn’t, and that was my signal to sell.
Imagine stocking 224,000 litres of petrol at ₦180 per litre. Three days later, fuel scarcity hits, and the price jumps to ₦600 per litre. You sell everything at the peak and cash out big before things return to normal. That was exactly what this was. I withdrew all my money in five days and locked in $22k. I turned ₦600K to ₦33 million with one insane gamble.
Baby BNB is practically worthless today. If I had held onto my coins, they’d be worth $274. That’s the thing about meme coins; you either take your profits when you can or cry later.
Abdul*, 24, Community Moderator: “I turned $670 into $11K overnight with $TRUMP.”
January 17, 2025, was a regular Friday until it wasn’t. I returned from the gym, showered, and dozed off briefly. When I woke up at midnight, my night turned into absolute madness.
I sat down to my usual routine of filtering through meme coin updates, looking for my next potential stake. Around 4 a.m., a friend sent me an update on Telegram: Donald Trump had launched an official meme coin.
It was three days before his inauguration, and the announcement was right there on his Twitter account.
The idea of a U.S. president-elect launching a meme coin for quick returns was insane, and I was sceptical, fearing it was a scam. Reputable accounts get hacked on Twitter, and this meme coin was riding on a political trend.
I caved when I saw that the market value had exploded from zero to $4 billion a few hours after launch.
Something big was happening.
I threw in $670, and my money increased to $1,600 in the blink of an eye. I quickly took out $800, which was enough to cover my initial stake and secure some profit. Then I went to sleep.
I woke up a few hours later and was in utter disbelief when I checked my balance. My wallet had $11,000 in it. I withdrew everything instantly; I didn’t spend a second mulling over it.
I had learned not to be over-greedy. Even though I was technically greedy for leaving the remaining money overnight, it was something I could afford to lose.
On October 18th 2024, I went in with $2,000. But when the value started dropping significantly, I panicked and sold for a brutal $1,300 loss. As if my village people were personally mocking me, the damn coin took off.
I watched in horror as $Fartcoin’s value skyrocketed.
What followed was an emotional rollercoaster. On the first day, the market cap shot up to $4 million before it crashed to $2 million. I thought, “Yeah, I made the right call.”
A day later, the market cap exploded to $25 million. Five days later? It was back down to $6 million. That was a 70% drop. I thought I’d dodged a bullet, so I bailed and dumped everything.
But from that $6 million low, $Fartcoin blew past $100 million, to $500 million, to $1.3 billion, and then its peak of $2 billion. I would have turned my $2,000 into $600,000 if I had held my position. Instead, I walked away with a loss.
Meme coins brutally test your patience. No trader likes to lose because it seriously wrecks your confidence. It’s always better to walk away with something than to watch your money vanish into thin air. That’s why I made my decision.
I’ve learned my lesson, though. In meme coin trading, fear is your worst enemy. If you panic, you lose. If you get greedy, you definitely lose. And If you hesitate, you’ll miss out on money that could have changed your life. But the real test is knowing whether to hold or sell. I made the wrong call, and it cost me dearly.
Mark*, 31, Software Developer: “I’m a sore loser. I put $800 in meme coins and lost it all.”
I started trading meme coins in November 2024. Bitcoin had recently hit $100k, and the entire crypto market gained new momentum. Everyone was making money except me.
I had some agricultural investments, but I was looking for ways to diversify my portfolio and generate quick returns. That’s when I learned about meme coins.
At first, I played it safe. I’d take $10 out of my monthly income, convert it to crypto on an exchange platform like Bybit, and then trade it on pump-fun. Then I started buying different meme coins: $50 here, another $300 and $400 there. Before I knew it, I had put in $800, and everything crashed to zero in minutes.
I hoped I’d catch the next big meme coin and make a 10,000% profit. It’s simple: I’d buy large units early and wait for hype to increase demand. Before I knew it, the price would have multiplied.
But I’m a sore loser. I bought, held, and lost everything. I watched the coins pump, but I didn’t take profit; I was gunning for the highest.
Since November, I’ve traded at least 50 meme coins and lost every time. My wallet is still full of them, but they’re worthless.
I’ve lost everything, and I’ll probably lose again. But as long as there’s a shot at life-changing money, I will continue to trade meme coins.
Bottom line
Meme coin trading is like sports betting in a suit. You might get lucky, but most times, you won’t. If you can’t afford to lose the money, think twice before staking it. Most importantly, do your own research.
Every week, Zikoko seeks to understand how people move the Naira in and out of their lives. Some stories will be struggle-ish, others will be bougie. All the time, it’ll be revealing.
What was your first introduction to money?
Getting into university at 16 was my introduction to financial responsibility — or my lack of it. I started receiving a ₦15k monthly allowance and finishing it on food before the 19th of the month. Then I realised money wasn’t just there. I had to use it wisely if I didn’t want to go broke before I got my next allowance. Before that time, I never thought about money because my parents shielded me from it.
What do you mean by “shielded”?
I attended schools that were above my parents’ means. They’re civil servants, but my dad happily took loans to send me to expensive schools. Of course, I didn’t know this, so I had this illusion that we had all we needed.
It started to show we didn’t have much money when my dad would wait until the last minute to pay my tuition. One minute, he’s like I don’t know if I’ll be able to pay tuition. The next minute, he’d bring the money. It was obvious he had to take loans.
Interesting. When did you first make money for yourself?
My second year in uni. I helped a student faculty union political aspirant write campaign speeches for ₦2k. The thing is, there was no structure to the payment arrangement. He could just remember me randomly and send me ₦2k today and another ₦2k three weeks later. That lasted for only one semester. The guy lost the election; the last thing I wrote for him was an appreciation announcement.
But the experience taught me that I could get paid for writing. I’d been writing for fun since primary school, and I didn’t imagine I could get paid for it. So, I decided to pursue it further.
How did you get the next gig?
In 2019, a friend introduced me to some people who needed a writer to work on a white paper for a crypto token. I had no idea what a white paper was, and I went ahead to overpromise and undercharge. I charged them ₦50k and said it’d be ready in two days. Something that should’ve been around $500 – $1k.
I got it done though, but it has to be the worst piece of writing I’ve ever done. I downloaded several other white papers and just combined them. Thankfully, my employers didn’t know what a standard white paper looked like, and they thought it was acceptable. They put me on a retainer and paid me ₦30k – ₦40k/monthly to write promotional articles and employee agreement forms. The internet helped me a lot here. I just needed to search for templates and tweak for what I needed.
By the way, they gave me three million crypto tokens as a founding member— I still have them even though they’re practically worth $0 now. I stopped working with them after four months. The project wasn’t really taking off and there wasn’t much for me to do.
What did you do next?
I got a few opportunities to write for crypto companies. I also dabbled into trading crypto, and it was a lot of trial and error: I’d compete for airdrops and trade the token I got.
A few friends also introduced me to forex trading. The first day I tried it, I traded $10 on synthetic indices and turned it into $700. I guess it was beginner’s luck, but I was sold. I immediately called a friend and asked him to bring money so I could trade for him. He gave me $100, but I lost it. Thankfully I was able to pay back with the money I’d won.
That was a close one
Heh. It wasn’t the last time I lost someone’s money while trading. Towards the end of 2021, I lost $8k of my and other people’s money. I’d gained some trading experience and my portfolio was worth $5k, so I was comfortable trading with more money. I didn’t expect the loss.
How did it happen?
So, about $3k of that money was for me and a friend. We were collaboratively trading, so our money was together. The remaining $5k belonged to three lecturers and another friend.
How my lecturers got involved was so random. One day, I was on my phone in class, and the lecturer seized my phone. He saw I was on a trading platform and asked me about it when I went to pick up my phone. Apparently, he’d heard about the platform and wanted me to teach him. I convinced him to give me his money instead because my friend and I had a strategy to make about $100k from $8k. He brought in two more lecturer friends and they raised about $4k between themselves. The plan was to trade for three months and pay them back with 300% interest.
Why were you sure you’d make $100k?
My friend and I constantly explored ways to game the system and we came up with an arbitrage strategy for futures trading. It required us to trade simultaneously on two devices. We’d open a “buy position” on one device and a “sell position” on the other. If the market went up, we’d close the sell position and wait for it to balance out. It felt like a safe gamble since we were trying both ways.
When we were successful, we could make $10 every five minutes. So we thought — rather foolishly — that if we did that 100 times, we could make $10k daily. It didn’t happen like that; we made $300 on the first day.
Then a few days later, I left my room to watch a football game and dropped my tablet with my friend so he could trade with two devices as usual. When the match was over, I saw that my friend had called me several times. I called back and he said he’d lost the money. His phone had gone off before he could close a position and the only thing left of the $8k was $500.
Ah
I didn’t understand it. But I was very audacious and arrogant about my skills. I believed I’d trade the remaining $500 and make the money we lost back. I don’t need to tell you I failed miserably.
I had two months to pay back $5k and I couldn’t tell the people involved what had happened to their money. When the time elapsed, I called one of the lecturers and asked for three more weeks because the money was locked up in a trade. He called me a scammer and said I had used their money to buy clothes. The lecturer I discussed the opportunity with initially was more cool-headed.
But then the three weeks came, and still no money. I had to come clean. The cool-headed lecturer — who was a senior lecturer — told me I wouldn’t graduate if I didn’t pay him his money.
Damn
It was a chaotic situation. They were all on my neck and it seemed like the two other lecturers were willing to harm me physically. Thankfully, ASUU went on strike in February 2022, which gave me some breathing space. I stopped taking most of their calls so I could think about how to make money. I didn’t know how long the strike would last, and I needed to make the most of it.
I decided to go back to the basics: writing. I got ₦6k from my dad and paid for a “How to use Upwork” course. I was added to a group with the other course participants.
Within a week, someone in the group got a gig. I’m very competitive, and suddenly I didn’t just want any gig, I wanted to catch up with that person. So, I started studying like my life depended on it.
I believe that helped
It did. But I had to send proposals every day for a month before I landed a video transcription gig that paid me $15. I got another writing gig that was supposed to pay $1k, but after they made the first milestone payment of $10, they never got back to me again. After that, I regularly got random $20 gigs here and there.
I got my big break a few weeks after. I landed a $25 gig to write an edition of a daily crypto newsletter. They liked my work and paid me $125 weekly to write the newsletter daily. I did that for three weeks before they offered to take the gigs off Upwork so I’d join the team full-time.
On the same pay?
Somewhat. They offered $500/month. I took the meeting in my dad’s room, and after the call, I told him I’d turn down the offer. He thought I was mad, but I felt I could get more. I was basically keeping the newsletter running.
So, I made a list of the things I’d do on the job, requested another meeting with my employer, and successfully negotiated an increase to $750. My dad was shocked. Honestly, I wasn’t completely sure it’d work, but I had to try. This was in July 2022.
In September, I got another Upwork gig to create a tutorial for an edtech company. I had to walk a friend through the process over the phone so he’d do it for me on his laptop — I didn’t have one, and it was necessary for the tutorial. The employer liked the work and I became a regular tutorial content creator for them. The hourly pay usually came to $1,500/month.
By the time ASUU called off the strike in October, I had enough to pay everyone with interest as agreed. I even had to beg one of the lecturers with extra $200 because he was really pissed and insisted I wouldn’t graduate. I paid back $8,100 in total.
Phew
I kept working like crazy after school resumed. My boss at the edtech company was pleased and gave me $1k for a new laptop after I complained about the one I was managing. The money was enough to get me a laptop, a headset, keyboard, and a mouse.
Two months later, I got laid off from the newsletter job because of funding issues. I had the edtech job, so I wasn’t bothered. I’d also somehow transitioned into their marketing guy, so I was doing more strategy than creating.
My salary increased to $2500 in 2023. On average, I was spending ₦200k/month. I wanted something stable to put my money in, so I started thinking of starting a business.
What kind of business were you considering?
A lot. At first, I thought about building a restaurant. Later, I considered a gym. But in 2023, I finally settled on a co-working space after my friends and I visited one during a trip. I had $4k — about ₦2m — in savings which was nowhere near the ₦8 million I projected I’d need to start. I got two more friends who also earned quite well on board and we got started.
We leased land somewhere and worked on the building project for six months. All our savings and salaries went into it, and we eventually spent about ₦50m on that project. We’ve been in business for about three months and have made about ₦8m in revenue. Most of the money still goes back into the business because our dream now is to build co-working spaces in multiple locations.
That’s audacious
It is, but we have a roadmap for how we hope to achieve that. It’s transformed from just a means for me to invest and make passive income. It’s now the crux of my life’s work.
I should add that I also formed a digital services agency with two other friends in 2023. They’re badass designers and software developers. We pitched handling marketing and product development to a startup, and they accepted.
So, we gave ourselves a name, pitched more people and kept a portfolio of clients. We’re now a 10-person team and currently have one retainer that pays us ₦900k/month. We also get other bigger clients from time to time. I get about 40% – 50% of whatever we make monthly because I fund the upfront costs of running the projects. However, profit sharing is dependent on the project and terms. The highest payout I’ve gotten is ₦5m. There’s no standard amount, but it’s naira income and I like that it helps me save my dollar earnings.
What’s your monthly income like right now?
My 9-5 pays me around $3,500 these days. It slightly differs sometimes based on the number of hours I work. I make an additional average of $600 – $1200 from the agency. I earned more here in 2023, but I’ve not been as active this year because of school work.
Wait. Are you still in school?
I wrote my final exams a few weeks ago, so I like to say I’m done with school. But there’s still clearance and a few more steps before I’m officially done.
How would you describe your relationship with money?
I’m not shy about spending money. I don’t necessarily live above my means— my quality of life is pretty modest — but I spend aggressively on things that can improve the quality of my life, like my businesses.
Right now, I’m super confident that I have what it takes to make money at any time. So, I’m willing to take more risks and put my money into possible income opportunities because I know I can get it back.
Let’s break down your typical monthly expenses
Black tax is mostly self-imposed. I just send money to my parents and siblings because I want to. I live in a two-bedroom apartment that I share with a flatmate, and that sets me back about ₦300k in rent yearly.
What are your savings like right now?
Absolutely non-existent. I mentioned my partners and I are pursuing the expansion of our co-working facility, and most of my money goes into that. I recently made an additional ₦750k investment a few weeks ago.
What might the next few years look like?
I think I want a PhD, which is ironic because I didn’t take my undergraduate years seriously. However, working on my final year project resurrected an interest in school. But I’ll focus on my 9-5 and business for the next two to three years because I need to leave Nigeria before 2027.
Why 2027?
I feel like our president will contest for a second term, and it’s my personal responsibility to be out of here before he wins.
Haha. What would that mean for your businesses, though?
I’ll spend the next few years building them to become self-sufficient. The goal is to build systems and structures that move them from mere businesses to proper organisations.
What’s a recent unplanned expense you made?
I bought two phones in the last three months for frivolous reasons. I replaced my iPhone 13 with the same model in January because it had a scratch. That cost ₦800k. In March, I decided I needed a new phone for another sim and spontaneously bought a ₦500k Google Pixel. I only needed the phone to make calls. Thinking about it now, those weren’t smart decisions.
How would you rate your financial happiness on a scale of 1 – 10?
6.5. I’m earning reasonably well, but I think I’m still leaving money on the table. I’m not earning as much as I should because being in school hasn’t helped me explore all the opportunities available to me. Now that I’m nearing graduation, I intend to fix that.
What’s an ideal amount you think you should be earning?
At least $10k/month. It’s audacious, but I have a mental picture of how to get there. I’ll definitely need to pursue entrepreneurship on a larger scale. I have ideas for businesses I can start, as well as how I can increase cash flow to my digital services agency. I’ll also need to find a way to reduce time spent at my 9-5 to give more time to these ideas.
I’m curious. Have you ever thought about when you’d like to retire?
I think about that every day. I want at least a million dollars in liquidity so I can retire at 30 — even if it’s pseudo-retirement. I may not stop working totally, but it should be reduced to the barest minimum so I can pursue fun projects. I’ll be 22 in a few weeks, so I have eight years to achieve that goal.
If you’re interested in talking about your Naira Life story, this is a good place to start.
