Trading crypto is a whole new ball game compared to the stock market. Most notably, it doesn’t end! Crypto exchanges run 24/7 and trading occurs all throughout the night. However, it can be hard to sleep when holding onto FIAT money in an exchange. Maybe fear of missing out from “buying the dip” keeps you from falling asleep easily. Maybe you check your phone multiple times during the night just to make sure you’re not missing out on a deal. I did for a while, and it wore me down. This is how I overcame that and was able to sleep at night without worrying about that dip in the middle of the night.
Let’s say you have traditional FIAT money sitting in an exchange. We’ll use $1000 to invest since it makes for nice round example numbers. Obviously, change the numbers to what suites you, but this will help with understanding. The price of ETH/USD is about 1 ETH / $300 USD at the time of this writing, so let’s use these numbers in the example.
Using your favorite exchange, you’ll be setting a few limit orders. All of them have this functionality, with the only difference I’ve found so far being the fees. Hopefully if you’ve gone this far down the crypto trading rabbit-hole, you’ve heard of and have figured out how to use them already.
Set limits to buy…
- .5 ETH @ $275 (Cost: $137.50, Remaining: $862.50)
- .75 ETH @ $250 (Cost: $187.50, Remaining: $675)
- 1 ETH @ $225 (Cost: $225, Remaining: $450)
- 1.25 ETH @ $200 (Cost: 250, Remaining: $250)
At this point, either use the remaining money to buy more at whichever “tier” you think is most realistic, or…
1000 ETH @ $0.25 (Cost: $250, Remaining: $0)
You never know, it may happen again…
Now let’s analyze what we set up here. We’re going to use our FIAT money to work for us in order to pick up a discount while we sleep. If the price drops, we buy based on the tiers, but still get to keep the money on any unfulfilled orders.
If nothing was sold or maybe you just bought at the first tier, great! Cancel the remaining limits (there shouldn’t be a charge for setting and canceling a limit order) and you see your available FIAT money show up again. You can set limits again for the next night and rest easy.
If the price of ETH went up, even better! Think about it this way: your current holdings have increased in value and you lost nothing. The price will likely come down a bit again later, so update your limits. If you’re still trying to turn a lot of FIAT money into ETH, this may be disappointing, but remember, if you’re in this for the long haul, it’ll work out.
Best case scenario for the FOMO sleeper? The price of ETH tanked and you got a steal! This is the scenario that keeps me up at night. I don’t want to miss out on a great deal, of course. Crypto currencies, and Ethereum especially, aren’t going anywhere. Trying to get the best deal now while we’re still early in the game, at least for me, is currently the most exciting part.