Turning losses to wins: How a Ponzi victim became a crypto evangelist

cointelegraph.com:

Losing money to a Ponzi scam is not the ideal introduction to the crypto ecosystem. Thankfully, Mark Dave Manansala gave crypto and blockchain a second chance and discovered a new passion.

It all started when Manansala was invited by an acquaintance to join a very popular crypto project in 2017. The project’s team asked him to create a video of himself in exchange for free tokens. After this, he was advised to reinvest the gains. Baited by the high returns, Manansala ended up investing more money into the scheme only to discover that it was a scam.

When asked about how the experience changed his perspective of crypto, Manansala noted that he didn’t perceive crypto as a negative thing despite being "totally pissed off by that particular platform."

As life gave Manansala lemons, he made lemonades. “Because of the encounter, I became curious about crypto, Bitcoin and the tech behind it,” said Manansala. The Ponzi victim told Cointelegraph that he started educating himself, and after being confident about the life-changing opportunities within the industry, he wanted to share what he knew so that others would find crypto as well.

Back in 2017, Manansala started his crypto crusade with the person closest to him — his girlfriend. The crypto evangelist said that she was studying to be a pharmacist but ended up going all-in on the crypto industry.

“From there, we became like a tandem. We’ve had a common language which was crypto – our topic all the time. Then, together, we started the meetup in 2018 when we were confident with what we knew,” said Manansala.

After that, the Filipino Bitcoiner moved on to friends and family. Then, he opened up the meetup for anyone in his city who wanted to learn about crypto or blockchain. After a