CHICAGO—Saying he had been absolutely blindsided by the sudden change in his fortunes, local 33-year-old Tyler Branton, a man who lost everything in cryptocurrencies, told reporters Thursday that he just wished several thousand more people had warned him. “If only a thousand—or even a few hundred—more friends had told me about the risks of putting my entire savings into Dickcoin, I might not be where I am today,” said Branton, decrying how no one had alerted him to the inherent instability of digital currencies except for dozens of coworkers, family members, podcast hosts, and respected economists. “Over the past few days, I’ve started to worry that all of this stuff—Web3, non-fungible tokens, even the blockchain—is just a Ponzi scheme to cheat people like me out of our money, and no one even thought to explain this to me outside of the hundreds of people I deliberately ignored. It’s really a shame that I learned all of this too late.” At press time, the relieved man had reportedly thanked social media users who spoke up to encourage him to shake off the bankruptcy and go into debt buying as many Golden Banana tokens as possible.