An old-timer in crypto said over lukewarm coffee, “Let me tell you a story about Cryptsy.” Wild days and crazier nights. If you don’t know the name, let’s just say it fits right in with those crypto stories you trade after midnight when everyone is “up only” on adrenaline. Browse here.

Put the calendar back to 2013. Digital currencies were on the edge of geek circles. Platforms promised a golden ticket to trade rare coins. That’s where Cryptsy came in. You could swap coins you had never heard of with well-known ones like Bitcoin and Litecoin. Choice was the most important thing back then. The site was open to everyone, from dreamers to hustlers to a group of people who thought mining Dogecoin was a way to get ahead in life.

It was a mess with a little bit of excitement from the start. Withdrawing slowly? Of course. Problems with the trading interface? At least once a week. But people ignored it and said, “That’s crypto.” Honestly, some people thought it was exciting. It was like white-water rafting in a boat they made themselves.

Safety? In hindsight, it was tight as a sieve. The password resets stopped working. Coins would sometimes land in your wallet and sometimes not. And what about that help desk? Those tickets were useless; you might as well have sent queries to the moon.

Then there were the whispers. “Money is missing.” “Withdrawals are frozen.” It was like every scary story set in a haunted house, but instead of ghosts, there were disappearing wallet balances. People got together online and held up digital torches and pitchforks.

Things got out of hand quickly. The platform slid off its post. Litigations came up faster than dominoes. It was a warning: work on trust, and it will disappear in a flash. The lesson hit home: don’t leave money on exchanges unless you’re okay with losing it to fate or a security hole that wants deposits.

People still talk about those days, generally with a sad laugh or a nostalgic sigh. People who love thrills become smarter. They traded in physical wallets and bad jokes about digital pirates for dramatic danger.

If someone ever says that trading is completely safe right now, merely raise an eyebrow and say, “You ever lived through that old exchange collapse?” People tell each other stories about Cryptsy like they do about bootleg mixtapes. There is always a fresh person who is wide-eyed and ready to learn from mistakes they never made.

Over time, memories of trade mayhem and lost cash hurt a little less. But the punchline is usually the same: it’s easy to talk about trust, but it’s much tougher to preserve it on the blockchain.