Twelve Years in Crypto: The Night I Pulled $1.9 Million Back from the Abyss

Two nights ago, I was sitting in my dimly lit home office in Lagos, the blue glow from three monitors lighting up my face like some mad scientist from a bad sci-fi flick.

Charts everywhere—Bitcoin hovering around its latest ATH, Ethereum quietly grinding higher on Layer 2 buzz, DeFi protocols flashing yield numbers that still make my stomach flip even after 12+ years in this game.

My MetaMask wallet was open, notifications pinging from a Web3 community I’m in. Life felt… normal. Predictable, even.

Then my phone buzzed. Not a trade alert. A DM from an old mentee, Tunde, someone I onboarded back in 2018 when he was still calling blockchain technology that internet money thing.

Oga, emergency. Can you jump on a quick call? It’s about my NFT project. I think I’m about to lose everything.

I sighed, rubbed my temples—I’d heard that line too many times. But Tunde wasn’t dramatic. If he was panicking, something real was cooking. I hit the video call button.

His face filled the screen, eyes bloodshot, background a messy room with empty energy drink cans and a glowing rig humming in the corner.

Boss, he started, voice cracking, I minted a collection last month—utility NFTs tied to real estate deeds in Lekki. Tokenized properties, fractional ownership, the whole RWA dream everyone’s hyping for 2026. Sold out in 48 hours. Raised 320 ETH. Life-changing.

I nodded slowly.

Sounds solid. What’s the fire?

He swallowed.

The smart contracts… I hired this dev on Upwork. Cheap. Said he audited everything. But today, a whale tried to claim their fractional share via the DeFi dashboard I built on top. Transaction failed.

Gas ate four hundred dollars, reverted. Then another. Then the whole pool froze. Someone drained the liquidity—two point one million gone in under ten minutes. Rug pull. But… it looks like I did it. The multisig only I control.

My heart dropped. I’d seen this movie before—back in 2021, a close friend lost his shirt on a similar exploit. Human nuance hits different when it’s someone you taught how to set up their first crypto wallet.

Show me the tx hash, I said.

He pasted it. I opened Etherscan, heart pounding like my first Bitcoin trade in 2013 when I FOMO’d in at two hundred and fifty dollars, thinking I’d missed the boat forever.

The trail was clean at first glance—then I spotted it. A sneaky delegate call buried in what looked like a routine upgrade. Classic backdoor. The dev had left a kill switch.

Tunde, breathe, I told him. This isn’t over. You’ve got the private keys?

He nodded furiously.

Good. We’re not calling the police yet. We’re calling in favors.

I pulled up my old group chat—guys from the early Ethereum days, white-hat hackers, blockchain devs who now consult for institutions bridging TradFi and DeFi. I typed fast:

Emergency audit needed. Possible exploit. Need eyes yesterday.

Within twenty minutes, we had a war room on Discord. Screens shared, coffee brewing, everyone in pajamas but laser-focused. One guy, Segun, a legend who once patched a zero-day in a major DEX, spotted the vulnerability almost immediately.

It’s not a full rug, he said, voice calm. The funds went to a mixer, but the mixer is one I know—a privacy protocol that’s traceable if you know the coordinator. We can front-run the next hop.

I leaned in.

You mean… we steal it back?

Segun laughed dryly.

I mean we rescue it. White-hat style. But we move fast before they tumble it further.

Tunde looked like he might faint.

Boss… if this works, I’ll give thirty percent to charity. Swear.

We worked through the night. I coordinated, drawing on every mistake I’d made—times I over-leveraged on margin in 2017, lost sleep over altcoin pumps that dumped, trusted shady projects because the community seemed legit. I told Tunde straight:

This hurts, but it’s the best teacher. Never outsource your smart contracts without multiple eyes. Never skip the full audit because gas fees are high. And never think Web3 makes you invincible.

By 5:47 AM, we executed. A flash loan from Aave, a precisely timed transaction sandwich, and the funds bounced back to the original multisig. Not clean—some slippage, some gas war—but one point nine million recovered. The thief kept a tip, probably laughing somewhere, but most holders were made whole.

Tunde stared at the screen, tears streaming.

I… I don’t even know what to say.

I smiled tiredly, the Lagos sunrise painting orange stripes across my wall.

Say you’ll pay it forward. Teach the next guy. And maybe name one of the properties after Oga Grok or something silly.

He laughed through sobs.

Deal.

As the call ended, I leaned back, exhausted but oddly alive. Twelve years in cryptocurrency and blockchain—I’ve seen moonshots, rug pulls, bear winters that broke people, bull runs that made millionaires overnight.

But nights like this? When you pull someone back from the edge, when the tech actually saves instead of destroys? That’s the real alpha.

I closed my laptop, whispered to the empty room,

Still worth it.

Then I went to bed smiling—because in this wild world of Bitcoin, Ethereum, NFTs, DeFi, and Web3, sometimes the plot twist isn’t losing everything.

It’s realizing you can still save the day.