I embarked upon my Crypto-journey exactly one month ago, when I explained to my girlfriend that I was planning to give people I have no reason to trust, a reasonably large sum of cash with which to purchase "magical internet coins" that don't really exist, with the intention of doubling my money within a year.
Of course, Lil' Miss No Fun Allowed's first question was, "What if you lose it all?"
Oh, sweet summer child.
I flashed a wink, hit her with the double shooter fingers, and replied, "trust me! If I happen to strike it rich and 3x my money, I'll pull my initial investment out and play ‘on the house’!" Damn fine strategy, if you ask me. But the best laid plans of Mice and Men...
Fast forward 4 weeks later, and I'm @ 5x my initial investment, and I knew the conversation was coming sooner or later.
"So, you're at 5x, huh?" She asks. It came sooner, not later. "Does that mean you're pulling your money out?"
"Well...you see. I can't." My pullout game had never been strong.
"Why?"
"Everything I've invested in is SMOKING HOT right now! If I pull it out, we will miss out on the moon money!"
The moon money. I said it. I said that shit. Out loud. In words. To another real, live, human being.
Now, while this phrase may serve as the secret handshake amongst the meme lords of the online Crypto community, it makes you look like a total fucking maniac when you say it aloud to someone that exists as more than a collection of pixels and 1's & 0's on the internet.
Her reply was simply, "..." The dot, dot, dot. Classic.
Yep, one month of slurping the Crypto Kool-Aid Greed Juice had hulked my investment strategy from:
- "I'd like to 2x in a year" -> "5x IN A MONTH JUST. ISN'T. ENOUGH!"
- "I'll invest in some solid projects that are working to change the world" -> "FUUUUUUCK HOW DO I GET IN ON THIS XxXShitCoin69XxX ICO BEFORE IT 1000x's!!!"
- "I'll just invest in 3-5 coins and just not look at them until this time next year" -> "I CAN'T SWIPE DOWN ON THE DELTA APP FAST ENOUGH" *SWIPE* *SWIPE* *SWIPE*
The world of Crypto is absolute "Last Days of Caligula" lunacy, and once I caught the bug, all I did was eat, breathe, and live it for nearly a month, until I noticed the rapid Smeagol-esque decline of my mental and physical faculties, to include:
- Monitor tanning (from staring at Binance all day)
- The inability to communicate verbally unless speaking in Crypto terms or memes
- Red & Green Candlesticks flash burned into my retinas
- Extreme paranoia ("ARE MY COINS SAFE?" "WHY IS MY COMPUTER RUNNING SLOW, IS SOMEONE LOGGING MY KEYS?" "WHERE DID I STORE MY SEEDS?" "DID I SEND THESE FUNDS TO THE RIGHT ADDRESS?" "MERCATOX IS DOWN IS THIS AN EXIT SCAM?")
...and that's when I came to some hard realizations:
- I'd just almost made my entire annual salary in 4 weeks in Crypto, and I wasn't happy with the gains I'd made, but rather I was sorely disappointed at the opportunities I'd missed.
- I found myself sitting at my computer for hours a day watching little green and red candlesticks trying desperately to sell the peaks and buy the dips
- I could tell you the purpose of MOST of the coins in which I was invested, but I couldn't really explain what in the actual fuck a blockchain was, or why it was important
- All of this money could disappear tomorrow through market crashes, hacking, keylogging, or even a simple mis-click while transferring funds
And it was at this point, I realized I needed to take a healthier approach to my Crypto investing, so I established the following set of simple guidelines which has thus far kept me safe from the FOMOGorgon in the Upside Down:
- Be happy when I'm up, not disappointed because I'm not up more
- Reduce stress by adopting a sound trading strategy:
- Before making a trade, I ask myself, "Why am I'm executing the trade?" Is it based on data? A recommendation? FOMO? Gut feeling? Boredom? Have I done my research? Announcements?
- If I make a bad trade, I think through the reason I made the trade in the first place to avoid making the same mistakes, and/or to identify a pattern of behaviors that lead to bad trades
- Remember things are cyclical: they go up and down. If you’ve made investments into good coins, don’t freak out when they dip, it will probably recover, just hold...
- If I happen to wake up in the middle of the night, don't grab my phone and check Delta, it can wait until the morning...
- When I'm with friends and family, be present. Don't be tied to my phone or the markets.
Lastly, remember: many of us are investing into Crypto because we want Lambos to be part of the currency revolution, while also landing on the moon achieving a lifestyle where we can be free from slaving away at some pointless, dead end 9-5 job, where the fruits of our labor only serve to fill the coffers of greedy, oppressive corporations - so be the Breaker of Chains, and make sure you're not just enslaving yourself by being tethered to the markets all day. Stay in the loop. Take a mental health break. And remember there is life outside the Candlesticks. Live a little.