"I want to travel the world, which isn’t the easiest thing to do with a Nigerian passport. I wanted a passport that’d give me access to pretty much everywhere. So, I learned about the golden visa, and the most affordable option I found was the Portugal Golden Visa. It cost €350k and involved buying property, which would give me a five-year residency. Last last, I could rent out the property and make money from it. I only needed to visit Portugal for one week every year for those five years, after which I’d get citizenship.

Plus, they don’t pay tax on crypto-based earnings in Portugal, they speak a lot of English, and there’s a relatively big Black community there. It was the perfect option, and I was going to get it. But then I lost all my savings — over $500k in total.

I’d invested about $80k in Terra in 2021. By April 2022, it had grown to $150k. Then the Luna/Terra coin crash happened, and took my money with it. Honestly, I should’ve known the returns were too good to be true, but sh!t happens. It was painful, but I still had about $400k in other savings and investments. So, it was like, “Damn, I lost money. Well, I still have money.”

The plan was to finalise my Golden Visa in November 2022. So, I liquidated the rest of my crypto and stocks in late October and put it all — about $380k — in a crypto exchange, FTX. I didn’t put the money in the bank because I didn’t want anyone asking too many questions or forcing me to fill out forms.

It was supposed to be there for a week. Unfortunately, FTX crashed on November 2. I didn’t even know until November 9 because I was busy with work and was ignoring my emails. By the time I found out, my money was gone. If I had heard the news earlier, I could’ve withdrawn some of it.

I was devastated. I couldn’t take a bath, eat or step outside for a whole week. My security guard even came into the house to make sure I wasn’t de@d."
https://www.facebook.com/100063543763373/posts/pfbid02EHF5MZwvYonoz2C1SwfTfJBUbdUvQdMh5MrzjNmvzaKWQgZwKXdwF4NpHSHLiN15l/


~ Zikoko