Today exactly a year ago I bought my first BTC and entered the vast Crypto verse...
So after a year I consider myself a pro..... nah I did not learn a thing.... well maybe just a little let me share for all those crypto babies that are stepping into this metaverse right now.
The whole making money in crypto so far came down to two things.
1. DYOR
2. Be Patient, don´t be greedy.
DYOR
The biggest losses I made were caused by not doing my research... well that and buying into coins at the top of the bull run.
SO that second part is easy:
Thy should not spend all thy profits on buying into coins during a bull run...because in life there are 3 things imminent : Taxes, Death and that what goes up will go down...there is always another dip.
So what did I do wrong, I started spot trading in December.... simply buy low sell a little higher philosophy and that did very well for me....by early March I made my 250 dollars into 800 dollars.
And then the bull run started, I bought and sold with 10-15% profit at the minimum. But reinvested what I made from those sales as soon as a coin would drop 5-10% by scooping it up and planning to flip it in a day or 2.
Which worked perfectly I reached $2000 in no time...until the dip of dips arrived.
All the coins I was holding dipped as BTC dropped 58K to 34K. A 40% drop during those 2 weeks in May, and the ALTs I was trading dipped even harder. One gigantic bloodbath and the great thing was as I bought that initial 10% dip.
Hence I had nothing left to buy the 40...or later that 50% drop with. Well nothing, I was of course holding bags of highly overbought coins now And landed around a portfolio value of 600 dollars at the bottom of this dip.... but the sunny side still in profit.
Lesson 1
Ensure to build up a buy the dip fund to buy the real dips <25% and do not use all of it when you dip 25% because there is always an after dip. So as an example after the Oct/Nov run I had a buy the dip fund of $3000. Now we dipped to 45K and I have about 800 dollars left in case we hit 44K and 42K, Also don´t buy everything the first day of the dip, as sometimes ALTs need 24/48 hrs to fully digest the impact.
Now I have not proven that this works better, but simple math says it´s better to buy low and sell high than to have bought high and having to wait till you can sell higher. I hope to prove this thesis next run-up.
Lesson 2
So the other thing that made me lose money was not researching a project.
Trust me DYOR for spot trading does not mean you have to know all the ins and outs. But I lost a lot of money buying into projects I had never heard about just because the chart looked good.
For example: they just had a 50% dip over the last 24 hrs. while all other coins went up a little. Often that huge dip is caused by a dump after a short-term pump or bad news and my experience is they normally do not recover.
Also, don't FOMO as everybody and his granny are talking about a project...you are probably too late to make a profit...
Examples enough I would say, DOGE, SHIB, SAFEMOON. But what´s even worse if a project goes crazy overnight.... there is probably something fishy going on or should I say Squidy (SQUID Token scam).
**A good project does not do a 100X overnight...at least not often so that´s a signal right there. **
Another one where I did not correctly dyor was Metamask, once when using the Polygon to BSC trying to save myself some gass fees.... and once trying to cancel a failed transaction on Metamask.
I tried to figure this stuff out without reading the detailed instruction manual. I did so the Guy way, just clicking some buttons.
Or at best reading the manual but not getting the exact same picture, but going "well that´s close enough, so it´s probably okay." This very male behavior ended up costing me $350 in unnecessary transaction fees as nothing got transacted.
So now I have a Mega Meta trauma.....and I hope to not have to use Metamask bridges ever again as I still did not do all the required research.
But again my mistake for not doing the proper research and testing.
Being greedy vs being patient
Timing is everything and nobody can time the top exactly...so how do you time correctly without having your greed or fear getting in the way?
Well my experience is that in general, it´s better to peak too early than to peak too late. Because when peaking early you at least peak into profit....
And trust me not peaking at all is the worst, and it happened to me with EGLD. Not peaking made me miss out on a $300 profit...because this greedy baby thought that it would go up even further.
Strategy is everything and personal
So, of course it all depends on your strategy and that can be different for everyone. But I will explain mine.
High level I am trading, and if I make enough profit trading I buy BTC during a dip and send that to my Hot Wallet (thinking about getting a cold wallet but as it has been only a year I did not do so yet.)
So basically that wallet is my hodl wallet and I am not even looking at it...well okay maybe once a month. But to accumulate BTC in that wallet I do spot trading. And I did not do so bad, on the exchange I never did anything but that I turned 250 dollars into 2800 dollars (0.008BTC into 0.055 BTC). And my approach has not changed.
Buy low, sell high, be patient, do not get greedy, sell on the way up, buy on the way down.
So in essence I try to find good projects, hold 30% in blue chip coins, 30% in Low Cap (possible) Gems and 30% in my buy the dip Stable coins fund.
Then it´s all about when to take profit:
That depends a bit on how the market is behaving but I am often already satisfied if I can make 10-20% on a trade. Due to tax rules being different this might not work for everyone, but it does for me as I only pay tax at the point in time I convert my crypto into fiat as long as it remains under a certain amount.
That 10-20% is of course depending on what type of market we are in. Although I used to not even care about that too much, I now incorporate that in my strategy. So it changed from taking profit and buying the next new low, into selling on the way up and buying when there is blood in the streets, the more the merrier.
So I buy on the real dip, and then split my buy into 3-5 batches:
Batch 1 sell order at 10-15% profit.
Batch 2 sell order at 20-25% profit
Batch 3 sell order at 35-50% profit
Batch 4 sell order at 75%-125% profit
Of course these are just guidelines and it depends a lot on the volatility of the coin e.g. low caps do a 50% a lot easier than BTC
The Real Dip
That real dip as mentioned is not your dip down a couple of %, that still is a good time to buy back what you sold but at the same time I keep saving up for that >25% dip and the >35% after dip....because that is where you make the real profit. But even when I buy these dips, I do not wait on a 10X I use the previously mentioned selling orders and wash, rinse repeat.
Don´t look back in Anger
And one final thought, nobody ever went broke taking profit. If you sell, don´t look back on what could have been....
No Hindsight. Look forward to the next investment, the next dip.
Dont buy the Bull Poo
Don´t buy into fomo, don´t buy because you read one bullish article or saw one MyTube Cryptofluencer talking rainbows and unicorns. Follow the right people, the people that share their trades, the people that admit to losing, the people that admit to being or not being invested in a certain coin. The people with a Plan(B).
And when following these guys, still DYOR
#### So my favs are:
Plan B - https://twitter.com/100trillionUSD
Willy Woo - https://twitter.com/woonomic
That Martini Guy ₿ - https://twitter.com/MartiniGuyYT
Youtube
Benjamin Cowen - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRvqjQPSeaWn-uEx-w0XOIg
Altcoin Daily - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbLhGKVY-bJPcawebgtNfbw
That Martini Guy - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCytNzxSmUqEBychgoKoQssw
So Come to the freaking point
Okay... here we go with my biggest losers:
$350 in stupid Metamask actions
$ 12 Zeppelin Dao, as I wanted to buy something worse than Safemoon and I did (Current worth $0.35).
$ 28 SAFEMOON, As I wanted to be the living proof it was a losing investment (Current worth $3.25).
$ 48 Charity Coin, Bought because it just dipped 80%....but kept dipping (Current worth $3.86).
$ 112 OUD Token As everyone wanted a green crypto it seemed smart at the time(Current worth $8.52).
$ 340 Casper Network CSPR, bought at the top of the last bull run as they were supporting WISE and the WISE team was positive about the CSPR devs (Current worth $79 but has been below $30).
So Bottom line is that the loss is about $795
Well and then of course I spend money on gass and fees in some cases...but let´s put that as collateral damage.
Because then I F@cked up about $800.
While my total investment has been $900 in BTC, $1250 in Trading and $350 in staking, which would be around $2400. So I only screwed up a third of that in my first year, well done you, stupid baby.
Now did you also make money, or did you just throw it away as your baby girlfriend said you would?
Well I have to make money so that might be a hint and this is a nice cliffhanger so stay tuned for Next Weeks Episode....
Same Baby Time, Same Baby Channel
Hope you enjoyed my one year lessons learned, if so 😘the 👍 button and have a lively rest of your day.
Post Scriptum:
Platforms where I Earn Crypto for my Content (Affiliate Links):
Torum - https://www.torum.com/signup?referral_code=bitcoinbaby
NoiseCash - https://noise.cash/u/BitcoinBaby
ReadCash - https://read.cash/r/BitcoinBaby
Hive - https://hiveonboard.com/?ref=whywhy
Peaked - https://peakd.com/register?ref=whywhy
Publish0x - https://www.publish0x.com?a=l9avg4xnbG
Exchanges where I trade Crypto (Affiliate Links):
BitVavo Exchange- European. Higher trading fees (0.25 %) & Great Customer Service - https://bitvavo.com/?a=C21A94C2FD
Kucoin Exchange - Hong Kong. Okay, trading fees (0.1 %) & Contains a lot of low cap gems. Customer Service takes time - https://www.kucoin.com/ucenter/signup?rcode=rJ821BX&lang=en_US&utm_source=friendInvite
Bitmart - Global (USA allowed) Low, trading fees if you use BMX (0.025 %) & Contains a wide variety of coins - https://www.bitmart.com/en?r=7XFCVy
Places where I do Liquidity Mining and Staking
Cake DeFi. Here you have to invest $50 dollar and you get 30 dollars for free. You can withdraw your 50 dollars at any time or use them for Liquidity Mining, Staking, or lending to earn more DFI rewards. The 30 dollars is locked for 6 months but earning you interest for the 6 months. https://app.cakedefi.com/?ref=197670
Celsius. Celsius Network provides a platform of curated services with fair interest, zero fees, and lightning-quick transactions. You can store your crypto and get rewards or lend crypto with low fees. Celsius has been around since 2017 and stated to always have the best interest of the community in mind. My experience so far has been good although I will not stake all my crypto with them...NYKNYC