What a rollercoaster ride its been, ive developed a whole new vocabulary, ive been undone by my own emotions, ive made some cracking trades but also a lot of shite ones aswell along the way. Ive been through tense periods of 'technical difficulties' and ive been scammed (along with thousands of other people).
But would i not of entered into the cryptocurrency space given the 20 /20 vision of hind sight, of coarse i would but i wish i could go back in time and have a word with myself about some of my decisions, but that would likely cause a temporal paradox. As it happens ive come through a lot wiser and more knowledgable .Big mistakes make for big lessons learnt
Ive known about bitcoin since about 2010 or 11, it was only about £3 a bitcoin , i watched it rise to nearly £500 quid but then Mt Gox happened and it put me off even though the price plunged to about £130, that and what felt like very techy stuff like wallets and keys. Cryptos were then put to the back of my mind even though i loved the idea of a decentralized platform to take power away from the banksters.
Early 2017 my interest was rekindled when i watched a youtube video by Cliff High who was talking about a meteoric rise in the price of bitcoin as people fled the banking system. Bitcoin was around £700 litecoin was £4 and ethereum was £35 ish. I started to study it and to be honest it still seemed too technical for me and too hard to buy and store. But i persevered, to understand it i had to use safety deposit box and key analogies for the digital wallet and private keys.
It got to about late may early june and i watched as the price of bit coin soared passed the cost of an ounce of gold, i was thinking thats crazy for a digital programme, its bound to come back down with a bump, i'll buy some then i thought, those thoughts were what i later got to know as FUD. Then i thought again that perhaps i should look into buying some before the price runs away from me, hello mr FOMO ,.I signed on with coinbase and awaited verification, meanwhile i watched and thought 4 bitcoins 10 ethereum and 50 ltc should do it for my measerly budget .My budget on coinbase was a paltry £300 a month. So i had to buy in small amounts 1.5ltc was my first purchase then an ETH followed by £28 worth of bitcoin i watched frustrated as hell as the amount i could buy with my £300 got less and less. There was a significant correction in june so i bought more ltc and more eth.
I watched amazed as my 6 ltc doubled in price to nearly £60 , had i been savvy enough i would of sold them at £60 and bought back in at £30, i would of nearly doubled my coins for no extra cash, hindsight is a wonderful thing. It did make me realise that i could play with the price and the ratios. I started to look around at trading exchanges and found etherdelta, i researched which coins to invest in. I plumped for OMG EOS PPT VERI and a few others, i jotted down how many i got and the eth value
I was cooking on gas i thought this trading is easy , then i traded some eth for 150 EOS put them in a wallet then for some reason i deleted the wallet, what a plonker ,it wasnt much at the time but looking back it would be worth about 2 ether now. I was careless and thought i wont do that again. Then etherdelta started getting bombarded with hacks and copy sites and so they took it on them,selves to change domains, i had trades pending and coins stored in my wallet on there, i lost access to them !!! i had committed the cardinal sin of not keeping a record of my wallet address and private key, i went into meltdown as i tried frantically to get my coins back, i reached out to my fellow steemians and a few did help me, thanks again lads. After 3 days i started licking my wounds and counting my losses. Then suddenly there was a PM on github with links to my addresses , WOOHOO im back, i recorded every address and every transaction , a bit OTT i know
Following this i signed up for exodus and got me a trezor hardware wallet , my confidence restored i started widening my portfolio, i let my guard down again!!! This time it was a site called bitpetite, it was being pumped by certain youtubers( who recieved refferral bonuses) it was guaranteeing 147% payout on investment, all yoy had to do was stake your coin and watch it multiply. I am now 10ltc 1eth and 0.1 btc down because the site, run by nigerians closed for maintenance and never reopened, it was a scam with manys a clone site still in operation, so beware.
So this brings me upto date , bitpetite swallowed up any gains id made as i had to rebuy my coins im probably at about break even point now with the recent rises, but i dont have any BTC.
But i must emphasise that none of the mistakes ive made are the fault of the cryptos or the technology , it was purely down to human emotion and error and ive no doubt that as more folkses pile into cryptos there will be thousands of similar stories. Ive reached a stage now where i keep emotion out of my investment decisions i dont listen to pumpers, i ratify my thoughts about coins with trusted youtubers thoughts, i always plan for long term investments but trade if the figures are right.
The cryptospace is very interesting and you feel engaged in it compared to the precious metals sphere, but PMs are my default position i will only sell/trade them when the manipulation stops. Think of Bitcoin when it was £3 , thats where the metals are now, they are a bargain and i think they will display the same % moves as btc when the manipulation ends
So good luck with whatever trading you do but please heed my mistakes they can be very costly