For many of you older Steemians this is just another day in cryptoworld which you have gotten used to by now. Some of you have learned how to protect yourselves from these corrections somewhat, while many of you just ignore them cause you know what is going to happen because it has happened time after time again. You just sit back and watch it unfold and decide to not take any action.
If I had a Steem for all messages I receive during these corrections, I'd probably be able to upvote myself a few $ worth. It's always the same questions: "What should I do?", "Is crypto crashing?", "Is this the end?" and each time I usually tell them the same thing.
No, crypto is not going to "crash", this is not the end and what you can do is either trade some of it to something more stable such as USDT (tether) or fiat on exchanges that allow it or just sit back and wait. Sure the latter is not as fun, you've already gotten used to your holdings being up a certain amount and being worth this much fiat value that watching it drop might hurt you. Many seem to quickly forget all the gains that they have earned in the mean time so I often like to remind them to zoom out.
This chart represents the total market cap of all currencies listed on coinmarketcap for the last month alone. We went almost 3x up in $ value in 1 month, of course there is a correction going to take place sooner or later. Nothing can go up forever without healthy corrections, they make look brutal on days like this but it only means that the next uptrend could be even bigger. There are also a lot more people involved now, a lot of newcomers and so called "weak hands" that will sell. If you haven't traded some of your liquid assets into fiat or USDT by now, it might already be too late, selling now increases the risk a lot that you might miss the next uptrend and find yourself holding less crypto currencies than before you sold. That's how fast these move, the volatility is immense. You could wake up the next day and without having set up stop-limit orders you might find yourself buying back at a loss.
Before I was involved with Steem I used to be one of those stressing a lot about my holdings, as most other currencies don't have incentives like Steem to give you influence over the reward pool and increase your stake. They are just there and the only thing you can do with them is speculate on market movements or invest them into new projects. I found myself often getting into trading during corrections like these, before USDT existed and there was only fiat you could trade it with on a few exchanges, it lead to you having to choose which coins you thought would drop less than others. It made me stress a lot, lose sleep and find myself often coming out shorter in crypto after the correction was over than had I just not acted on it at all.
Today there are a lot more options available, I'm sure many of you are prepared for these corrections but they also come with risks. One of them being that a lot of your holdings have to be on exchanges and that you could miss big movements on their way back up after you just sold cause you thought it would correct some more. This causes many investors to only trade with a portion of their holdings but it still becomes more than a gamble than just having held onto them and not cared about these corrections. Sure there is opportunity for you to gain more crypto out of it, but for anyone to win it means there have to be others that are losing out on it.
This is why I appreciate the Steem token a lot more, the incentives of being vested and active on the platform make it possible for me to just sit back and relax while I watch many others stress or regret their actions. To me it is like a completely different world cause I don't need to try and get involved with the trading as much and gambling, I can just focus on the platform and increasing my stake by being active here. In the long run it won't matter to me if I could've made 10% more Steem by trading it for Bitcoin and maybe being able to buy in cheaper, or made 30% by trading it for fiat or usdt and buy back when it's cheaper. It would mean I'd have to take a huge risk to possibly losing out to more experiences traders, insane volatility or the risk of exchanges going down with all the funds. I'd rather just keep the Steem vested and actively influencing the rewardpool and the users here with no stress, risk or fear that I could lose it. To me it doesn't matter what the $ or € value is of my stake, what matters is how much of it I have in Steem and what I do with it.
What are your thoughts on correction like these? Do you trade actively during them or just sit back and look at the long term perspective of things?
