This 22-year-old made a fortune with crypto then lost millions in the crash. Here's why he's still investing in bitcoin.

Kiarash Hossainpour, 22, made a fortune investing in crypto when he was 18.
He recently lost millions in the crypto crash, but he's continued to invest in bitcoin.
He told Insider why he still believed in the crypto market.

This is an edited, translated version of an article that originally appeared on June 23, 2022. Insider verified Kiarash Hossainpour's portfolio with documentation.

Kiarash Hossainpour is a 22-year old investor and one of Germany's best-known crypto YouTubers. He's also the founder of an investment fund that he runs with two friends.

He became a millionaire when he was 18 by investing in bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.

Hossainpour said that all his money was in crypto, so the recent crash meant his portfolio took a big hit — it dropped about 60% from its highest point, he said.

"Yes, that means I lost millions," Hossainpour told Insider.

But the young investor is still a millionaire, and he's still investing in bitcoin despite his huge losses.

When Hossainpour first spoke with Insider in December, he was also heavily invested in luna, the sister coin of terraUSD. Since then, luna has lost over 99% of its value.

"That did get to me," he said, adding that he still thought the idea behind luna was a good one.

He said, "I think the project only collapsed because of the team."

"But I have to be honest, I was wrong. You can't always be right, and unfortunately there are some things you can't predict," Hossainpour added.

"Losing such a large amount in the crash doesn't bother me," he continued.

Hossainpour said he viewed crypto as a long-term investment, adding that he had an investment horizon of at least 10 years for the money he's invested in it.

"I just have to ride out the current crisis," he said.

Hossainpour said the amount of experience that he's gained from investing in bitcoin has also helped him to remain calm in the face of the crash. He first became involved with bitcoin when he was about 14 years old. "I have to say that the reason I'm not worrying about it is simply because I've been around this for a long time," he said.

"To have that mental resilience, to theoretically lose millions and not worry about it, not everyone has that," he continued.

Hossainpour added that as long as he didn't plan to sell, he wasn't interested in bitcoin's price.

"And I don't plan to sell," Hossainpour said. "Even if the bitcoin price went up to 100,000 euros tomorrow, I wouldn't sell."

He said that he expected much higher prices in the future, and that's why he sees bitcoin's current price as an opportunity.

"I'm buying a lot of bitcoin and thinking long term," he said.

Hossainpour said that he never expected the price to fall so low, but that he still wasn't shocked by it: "I've seen coins fall from the very top to the very bottom and be worth nothing. That's how it is with crypto investments."

He added that the one thing that would "really shock" him would be bitcoin falling to about $3,000 to $6,000. But he said he didn't expect that to happen.

Hossainpour said his losses would have affected him a lot more but that fortunately he had other income to rely on, such as earnings from his YouTube account, where he has over 100,000 subscribers.

"The things I do in life — how I spend my money, what I buy, how I travel — I pay for with my regular income," he said. That's why he advises people against investing any money that you need to live.

Hossainpour also said that he has empathy for anyone who had big losses in the crash, but that it was a good thing that cryptocurrencies were returning to a "more normal scale."

In the past two years, he said, you could buy any token and expect it to go up — but that's no longer the case.

"Players that have an advantage will survive. That's where the wheat is separated from the chaff," he said. "The crypto world is complicated and not for everyone."

Hossainpour said he learned a lot from the crash. He said he became much more conscious of risk after luna's demise in particular. At the investment fund he runs with his friends, Hossainpour said, he's normally the person who has an appetite for risk.

"But fortunately, I have a colleague who analyzes risk as much as possible and tries to minimize it," he said. "That's what saved us from even bigger losses in the end."

Read the original article on Business Insider