So back in 2023, I kept pushing my GF to invest in crypto. BTC was at $20k, and ETH was $1-2k. I was constantly telling her to buy, even to the point of spamming her daily with messages to dollar cost average everything she has.
Looking back, I realise I pressured her a lot. I genuinely believed in BTC and because I thought DCA’ing into spot Bitcoin and Ethereum was a great strategy. If she had followed that advice, she would’ve been in huge profits by now—Bitcoin has 5x’ed, and Ethereum has gone up 2-3x.
The problem is, she misunderstood my advice. When she eventually started investing, she wasn’t using spot. She was doing futures trading with high leverage. I never recommended using leverage. I actually said for her to just send me her money and I'll buy it for her but she said no as she wanted to have ownership and control of it so i told her the app to download and buy it there.
However, I guess because she was new to crypto she didn't really know what she was doing so when she went on the app she was clicked on the Futures section rather than Spot and bought BTC and ETH using Futures/leverage. Over time, she ended up getting liquidated repeatedly, losing her salary month after month. Things spiraled, and she started dipping into her savings to "revenge trade," trying to recover her losses, only to lose even more.
Fast forward to now—she’s lost everything. Almost $300k of her life savings is gone. That money was the result of 15 years of hard work, coming from a low-income background and saving diligently since starting her career.
She blames me entirely for her situation. She says, “If it wasn’t for you, I would’ve never gotten into crypto and lost my money.” Every day, she brings it up, saying she can’t trust me and that I gave the worst advice.
I feel really guilty. While I never suggested she trade with leverage, I did pressure her into investing, and I failed to clearly explain the differences between spot and leveraged trading. I assumed she would know what I meant by “buy Bitcoin and Ethereum.” Even when she told me she was losing money, I assumed she was just temporarily down on spot investments, so I’d tell her to “trust me, just buy more” to DCA her position. I had no idea she was losing money due to liquidations from leverage trading.
She didn't really let me see her account or anything because she wanted to keep her finances separate and confidential so I didn't really see exactly what was going on until recently when it was too late.
Now, she’s severely depressed and struggling to cope with losing her entire savings of $300k and she broke up with me. I feel terrible knowing that my constant pushing played a part in this, even though she didn’t follow my advice exactly. I keep wondering if I could’ve done something differently—explained things better the difference between spot and leverage etc., or showed her how to use the app, or not pressured her at all.
What should I do now? And is there anything I can do to help her (if that’s even possible now that we’ve broken up.. I do want us to get back together but unsure how we can move past this)?
she's asked me to give her all my profits from my spot bitcoin to compensate for her losses, she's asked to move in with me and not pay rent so she doesn't have to rent a place and save her some money etc.. both of which i refused.. i don't see why i need to give her my profits for her losses, even though i did pressure her to buy crypto i really just meant spot. but i'm unsure who is in the right or wrong, i feel i'm in the wrong for pressuring her in the first place but if she genuinely just bought spot like i meant, she would be up hugely
This is entirely her fault for being an idiot and buying futures. I know literal children who have opened up exchange accounts and can figure out how to buy BTC/ETH without haphazardly buying leveraged futures contracts. There are a million and one videos on YouTube that walk you through the process so that even a boomer can do it. It's not rocket science and you're not at fault, she's just straight up stupid. Get a new GF because IQ is partially hereditary and no way you want an LTR with someone this incapable of following such simple instructions.
I do agree that it is easy to distinguish the two differences, although I'm unsure if that's because im a finance person so it might be easy for me, but for her who doesn't work in the industry I worry that I should have given her more details on the difference between spot and futures and maybe sat with her to give her a tutorial on how to do it, given she was my GF i feel i should have done that. Although as you said there are youtube videos out there etc.. I just can't help but feel responsible for this and now she's asking me to send her my profits to reimburse some of her loss and not sure whether it's really selfish of me not to send to her
If I could figure out how to buy Bitcoin as a drunk dumb highschool kid that was anything but financially literate a decade+ ago and this adult woman can't figure out how to buy one of the most mainstream, fast-growing retail & institutional assets being trumpeted across every publication known to man. She is the problem, not you. YouTube exists. There's a billion blogs and forums a short google away anyone can look up. Maybe excuse the first mistake and feel bad about that, but the most blatantly obvious clue that what she's buying isn't BTC/ETH would be watching it go to 0 and then looking at the price of BTC/ETH (again don't even need a special app, she can google it) and see it's clearly not 0. The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result. I'm sorry man, but she is just stupid. You can't be responsible for someone lacking the most basic common sense.
This relationship most likely isn't salvageable. She's not going to own her own dumb choices and conscious decision to not ask for clarity or help. She will blame you and it will hang over the relationship any other time you try to give her advice. Unlike her, you should know when to cut your losses.
Sounds like you really F’ed this one up. If she is a marriage prospect, let her move in for free.
she was a potential marriage prospect, we dated for many years although things are quite awkward now as whenever we speak, 100% of our conversations are now about her losing her money on crypto and blaming me for it and i feel she's never going to move past it and always hold this grudge over me.
I did feel like I owe it to her to let her stay with me and save her paying rent for a while but.. one of the reason's i said no to her moving in with me is because I already have a flatmate and having her share my room will just take up sooo much space and it's a small place so not much room for someone else to be living here, the place would feel really overcrowded with a third... hard to find decent sized places in the city
If she broke up with you, it's a clean break. Just drop it.
Sadly man there's no coming back from this. It'll always hang over your relationship unless you give her the full $300k right now, in which case then the resentment will shift over to your side of the table
It's why over the years my advice to others on investing has become more and more generic, and ALWAYS caveated. I just explain and never recommend, and always mention 1) indexes are likely the best path for most folks in equity markets and 2) timing is always uncertain so typically better to just dollar cost avg over time (and also that I have no idea what direction the mkt may move if they put in money today, might go down 30% before it goes up so. these are risks they have to keep in mind)
It's never worth it, if someone pushes on my personal investments I just say I can't talk about it legally. Don't go down this rabbit hole
The entire time you never looked at an account balance or trade summary together? She just accrued losses over many paychecks over many months?
What are you leaving out?
Yeah when she said she lost $10K, $30K, $70K, $100K, $150K, $200K etc ... didn't you think something was wrong? Or one day she just said she lost $300K? Seems crazy.
The whole thing is fiction
play stupid games win stupid prizes - maybe don't give unsolicited advice to people in the future
she lost $300k and broke up with you, sounds like it's all over. I would apologize and wish her well, I don't see any restitution going well at all. you're both in the wrong, just take this as an opportunity to learn
Do yourself a favor and just move on
There is no way this is real lol
I once lost 550k plying high stakes poker one year, and it was all I had outside of my retirement accounts. I was around 26 at the time.
The mental toil and anguish was tremendous. Suicide floated through my mind several times. Lots of self hate and disgust. I can’t imagine the hatred I would feel if someone else had been the reason I gambled. I only could blame myself, but your gf is right in the sense that you helped cause this.
Of course she is dumb for investing in something she didn’t understand. And not letting you help her and hiding the account. But why would you suggest crypto to a total newbie? Why not suggest something easy like index investing to start? I don’t understand why you didn’t teach her exactly what to do lol instead of spamming texts.
I’m also confused at your other actions. You love her and want her back but won’t let her live rent free with you? I mean if you love here and see a future wife, why can’t she live with you lol?
I understand not wanting to give her your profits, but living rent free doesn’t seem that huge an imposition.
Agree with a lot of this… also have some trouble with the OP’s decisions and other threads — it seems like your life doesn’t make sense at all, to be blunt.
One post states that you made a million in net worth (it is asking a question whether to disclose such number to one’s family — perhaps it’s hypothetical, fine, grain of salt), another one discusses transition from an American boutique (leaving the name out for obv reasons) to a tech boutique and then whether to open up a business for your GF (I guess this one?) in your own name despite some obvious red flags and potential breaches of your own employment contract. Another highlight is the small side hustle which takes ~15 hours a month (on top of your assoc role at a tech boutique) and brings 800 bucks (which ironically may be already a breach of the contract) — honestly, this all doesn’t really make sense to me. Tried to figure out whether this post is fake but I think it is real, sadly.
I find some answers in the thread fairly cruel, “just walk away, her problem.” Truth is in the middle, she obviously fkd up (if it was like this) and should accept her mistake, but if your net worth figures are indeed 7#, or you are on the way there, then you could easily throw her a rope to survive this… the thing with the rent is one sacrifice, slippery slope to give money thus a lawyer should review in case you consider helping.
If I had pushed my partner into such a situation, I would feel the obligation to throw a rope into the pit and help her out… it’s not like she went ahead and bought some random Blockbuster futures and fkd this up all on her own…
Ofc many of the replies are cruel. You have to remember that many of the users are between the ages of 16 and 26. They don’t have much life experience or understand the nuances of life.
It’s like that great quote from Robin Williams in good will hunting, where he tells Will that if he asked him about love, Will could quote Shakespeare but he doesn’t actually have experience with it.
It’s easy to type that the girl is a moron and she deserves to live in the streets when you’re likely a virgin with no actual relationship experience.
Did you make sure to say, “this is not financial advice?”
I really hope this is fake but in the event that it isn't, idk why everyone is blaming you in the replies. No offense, seriously, but is your gf fucking stupid? Has she ever invested before in equities? Why would she see words like "futures" and "leverage" and not even think to ask you what it means? Literal children figure out how to buy crypto, I've never heard of anyone ever making this type of mistake. It is fully her fault, especially since you tried to look at her stuff but she didn't let you.
Seems fake they don’t even let you buy derivatives much less crypto derivatives without signing some form.
This is a great lesson — never make investment recommendations, especially to friends and family. It went up, but could’ve easily gone down. You asked her to speculate with her money and she did it. Spot BTC did go up, but she didn’t even understand what she was investing in and bought futures instead..
I think you’re both at fault. She was an idiot for not doing her research and you should not have recommended a speculative investment to someone who does not know anything about investing. And you should’ve exercised some oversight after she did. IMO, unless you become a multi and share your wealth with her, this relationship is permanently fucked.
Honestly, putting the whole situation aside, the lack of accountability for her own actions is striking. She didn't do any form of research, didn't ask you (or anyone) for specific advice into what you were buying or how much to invest with and wanted to "take on ownership" over something she fundamentally didn't understand. I don't "take on ownership' when I feel like crap, I got a doctor, or "take on ownership" when my car breaks down, I got a mechanic because they know what they're doing.
And then, after taking zero steps to understand anything of how to invest, the difference between crpyto and futures, not reading the legal documents you have to sign for derivatives and leveraged investments, when it began to turn to sh*t, she hid it until it was literally too late and then turns around and says it was all your fault. And to top it all off, she kept it private - she didn't share what she was buying nor how much she was actually losing which is just a fantastic show of faith and trust in the relationship.
I really hope this is fake, but on the off-chance it's not, it reveals how she would handle herself in a time of crisis by not confiding in you (or anyone else given she went from -10k USD to -300k USD with no change in strategy). She likely won't listen to you, so I would suggest you pay for a financial consultation/advisor (some private wealth guy or something) to review your and her portfolio and he will say "how the fk did you mess this up so bad" on your behalf.
He can also make future investments on her behalf since she doesn't trust you or herself at this point.
A bit of a heated rant, but my point remains - tl;dr - not marraige material, no accountability from the GF.
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