I will never be the one to tell you to stop betting. I will never tell you to stop forex trading either.

That decision is yours, and by the end of this article you will understand why I put it that way.

But I want to tell you what happened to me, because most young people are looking for quick money right now. We have seen somebody on social media promising a million shillings a day from forex, betting or a binary bot, and a lot of us are falling for it. I did too.

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How I found binary bots on TikTok

In 2022 I installed TikTok for the first time.

Slowly, the videos started showing me men talking about something called a binary bot. I had no idea what it was. But they made it sound like software that trades for you and makes money while you sleep, and I thought, I should try this.

So I found somebody online who sold them. He told me that for 12,000 shillings he would give me a bot. The one he sold me was called American Dream.

That 12,000 was money I had earned building a website for a client. I sent it. He gave me the bot and explained how to set it up.

I put money in and watched it run, and I was already telling a friend that from today, all our problems are over.

16,000 shillings gone in 2 days

The bot kept eating my money. In 2 days I had lost around 16,000 shillings.

I thought maybe I had bought the wrong bot. So who did I call? The same man.

I told him his bot was not working. Do you know what he did? He sold me another one. Add 8,000 shillings, he said, and I will send you a better bot.

I sent the 8,000. He sent the new bot. I put in the money I had left.

Within 2 hours it was gone too.

No rent, no food, 30,000 gone

At that time I was paying 6,000 shillings a month in rent. Now I had no rent. I could not pay for internet. I could not service my laptop. I did not have money for food.

I had lost more than 30,000 shillings in 3 days.

Chasing what? A quick way to make money.

And the man who sold me those bots stopped picking up my calls.

When I finally did my own research, I found that binary options are treated very differently in other places. Regulators in Europe banned selling them to ordinary investors years ago. I kept asking myself how this was being sold so openly to young people here.

So I started talking about it online. Stop buying binary bots. They do not work. And notice how the people selling them always show you a lifestyle, never a method.

Forex trading is not a scam, but

Let me be clear, because people love to misquote me.

I have never said forex trading is a scam. Forex is a real market. The problem is that most people come to it looking for a quick solution to their money problems, and it is not that.

It takes time. It takes a great deal of learning before you are any good.

How the lifestyle sells it to you

Somebody online says he is a forex trader making millions a day. He is standing next to a Mercedes or a Range Rover. You do not even know if that car is rented.

That is the easiest way to market to young people, because we buy lifestyles.

Most of these people are selling you hope that does not exist. Here are the 3 versions you will meet.

The mentor with signals. Send me 20,000 shillings and you can use my trading signals. They do not work.

The expensive training. You pay something like 50,000 shillings for a course, when you could start learning on free sites like BabyPips.

“Pay me and I will trade for you.” Give me 25,000 and I will trade your money. Today you get 5,000 back, tomorrow 3,000, the next day 7,000. Then one day you are told the trades did not go well, and your money is gone.

I train people too, so let me say what the difference is. I teach practical skills over 7, 10 or 20 days, skills people can use to earn. I do not sell anybody hope.

Should forex be banned?

No. There are brokers who are regulated, meaning the government knows about them and they answer to a regulator. There are also brokers who are not.

So if you want to trade, use a regulated broker, get educated properly, and accept that it takes a long time. If your only goal in Nairobi is quick forex money, you will cry.

My betting years

Now betting. I have said it before and I will say it again. I used to be addicted to betting.

I would design a poster for 150 shillings and take 100 of it straight to a betting company. I bet on live games, usually over 2.5 goals. I lost almost every time.

The most I ever won was about 3,000 shillings, after losing more than 27,000.

At one point I was earning a salary of 5,000 shillings a month. I took the whole 5,000 and bet it.

The day I almost bet my school fees

My parents sent me 12,000 shillings for school fees.

And I looked at it and thought, if I put this on over 2.5, I will have more than 20,000. I will pay the fees and keep the rest.

Something made me wait. I decided not to place it yet and to see how the game ended first.

The game ended, and my prediction was wrong. I would have lost every shilling of my school fees. How do you go home and tell your parents you bet the fees on a match in Saudi Arabia?

I did not think twice. I went straight to the bank and paid the fees.

“Bet responsibly.” Whose responsibility?

Should betting companies be shut down? No. But listen to what they tell you. Bet responsibly. The same way you are told to drink responsibly.

Notice whose responsibility that is. Not theirs. Yours.

You bet 1,000 and lost. You won 3,000 at 2 in the morning and put 2,000 straight back. The betting company keeps making money, and so does the government. Only one person in that arrangement is losing.

And ask yourself this. The owners of these companies are sitting on enormous deposits. Why are they not taking that money and betting it? Because they know exactly how it works. The house always wins.

The media does not help. The adverts tell you somebody won 5 million shillings. Of course they do. They have bills to pay, and betting money pays them.

Young men trapped in the cycle

Most young men I talk to are stuck in this. You think today’s loss will be won back tomorrow. How is that going to work?

I spoke to a young man who sold his mother’s belongings to keep betting.

And it is not only the young or the broke. People in very good jobs, on steady salaries, put their whole pay into “sure odds” that somebody sold them on TikTok. Salary arrives on the 26th, and by the 27th it is gone.

Then the same people say there is no money in this country.

If you cannot stop

I was addicted, so I will not pretend this is only about willpower.

If betting has a hold on you, do not try to fight it alone. Use the self exclusion setting in the betting app, delete the apps and block the sites. Tell somebody you trust what is going on and give them a reason to check on you. And if it is affecting your rent, your family or your work, speak to a counsellor. There is no shame in that. It is the same as getting help for anything else that has got beyond you.

Guaranteed profits and other schemes

It is the same story with everything that promises guaranteed profits.

The crypto platforms that paid well for a few months and then collapsed. The investment groups nobody could explain. Multi level marketing. There is no money to be made from any of them, except by the people at the top.

Money is in value

Here is how money is actually made.

You solve somebody’s problem. You provide a service or sell a good. They pay you.

I recorded the video for this article in about 11 minutes. Now it needs editing, captions and all the finishing touches. I am willing to pay somebody 4,000, 5,000, even 10,000 shillings to do that well, because it solves a problem for me and saves me time.

Look around you. The young men operating earth movers and cranes on construction sites. The MC. The architect. The carpenter. The plumber. The person selling furniture.

They work for their money. None of them are betting to make it.

So stop looking for quick ways. Become valuable, and the money follows.

Start your digital skills journey on Click2Skill

— Elvis W.