My Year-long Crypto Experience | How Did I Do?
From The Beginning To The Obsessing
Let me start by saying that last year was the most stressful year of my entire life, and I attribute 99.99% of that to Cryptocurrency. In the beginning, it wasn't all that bad. I mean, I had a couple of Bitcoin, and it was super exciting. In fact, I was even getting a full night's sleep back then.
However, as months went on, I continued to purchase more coins: Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Verge, etc. Because I had so many, I eventually downloaded an app that listed every share of every coin I had purchased. I was refreshing that baby every couple of minutes, day in and day out. It got so bad that I was, in time, waking up in the middle of the night to check that app.
I felt like I was living out a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde movie. One minute, I was the happiest person in the world. All my coins were up, and I would think, "I'm the most talented investor alive. I should probably open up a friggin' Crypto school, or something."
The next minute would hit, though, and I would refresh that app, I would see all my profits slip from fingertips.
Then, not too long after, I would refresh again to see that my coins were still down, and I would regret not selling when my coins were up.
Looking back on it, now that it's all over (I'm referring to the year, not my obsession with crypto), my emotions pretty much looked like a candlestick graph. When those candlesticks were green, I was the life of the party, spewing out crypto-facts left and right. You know, drinks were on me when we were having a "green day". But, when those suckers were red, it was probably best not to talk to me.
From the Obsessing To The Profiting
I'm not going to lie, I made MANY mistakes last year. There were nights when I'd lose $50,000, and I'd have to spend the next several weeks, or months, trying to claw my way back out. But, in the end, here were the numbers:
In total, I invested just over $10,000. (Note: I didn't do this all at once. So, please don't be discouraged from investing if you don't have this much to invest.)
However, this amount slowly grew over time, and when it grew to an amount I was satisfied with, I'd sell off shares of certain coins, and I'd buy smaller ones with the profit I made. I'd wait for those smaller coins to appreciate, sell off some of those shares, and then I'd buy some even smaller coins with that. I continued this process throughout the year.
In case you need a fancy formula to understand my advanced tactics, see below ;)
Buy small coin. Wait for small coin to become big coin. Sell big coin. Buy small coin with profit from big coin. Rinse and repeat.
By December 31st, I had $185,000 in my portfolio. That is around 18x my initial investment. Though I made many mistakes along the way, and though I'm a little baby fish in a sea of whales, I am VERY satisfied with the outcome.
I will continue investing this year, and I hope to make similar returns to last years, but hopefully without so many Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde moments :)
If anyone has questions, or they need help with anything crypto-related, please let me know! If you're looking to invest in cryptocurrency, you can signup at Coinbase or Binance (both affiliate links). If you're against using affiliate links, I'm not offended in any way, and you can use the following two links: Coinbase and Binance. Both of these exchanges are my favorites, Coinbase for Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Ethereum, and Binance for several altcoins.
If this post has entertained you, please follow, upvote, resteem and/or consider buying me virtual dinner:
BTC Wallet - 1soLg1LvBeziwzV1MX1RqaCco1B413LQ8
BCH Wallet - 15uhdzZvhHEEtZhtUCdSQZcJNahvC4ZnE2
ETH Wallet - 0x9962b39345388221478901D19A5657464F542445
LTC Wallet - LSURN6E6NHC3WxGduGM1wbLAbabKR9Veks
Legal Disclaimer: This is just my story, and these are the facts. I am in no way telling anyone to invest, but if you do, please do it responsibly.
Thanks for sharing your story!
As you offered to ask anything, I have some questions :p
Have you figured out what exactly your mistakes were? (besides things like buying at too high price and selling when the price drops down instead of waiting? )
And what kind of "small coins" do you buy, do you have a special strategy?
Are you investing 10000 again this year, or even more? (or less?)
I also got a question on a more personal way, if you would like to answer.. How does it affect your everyday life, beside what you've mentioned? Are you talking about your crypto trades a lot, with people around you in real life? How do they react? Cause I think (or experienced) that there is still much skepsis towards this topic, I even know people who get angry if I just mention the word "coin".. Could imagine that one year ago it was even more like this, but maybe you got another environment that is more calm about this topic? :)
Did you have a special whish that you now have fulfilled with the earned money?
You're very welcome!
Have I figured out what my mistakes were? I certainly haven't figured out all of my mistakes, and I know there is still so much for me to learn. But, I have figured out several things that make doing this a bit easier:
Have a plan: The first coin I traded into from Bitcoin was Ethereum. I bought into Ethereum around $10. When I first started, I didn't have a plan, though. One day, the price of Eth jumped to $50, and I was ecstatic. I couldn't believe I had made so much money, so I sold almost every share I had without thinking about what the future price could be. In time, after I continued to see the price climb, I knew I had been too hasty. So, I started planning and setting reasonable price goals. For example, I bought back into Eth at $220, and my goal was $850. So, I didn't touch Eth until that goal, and that's when I sold. As you know, the price of Eth is now over $1200. I never expected it to go this high. And, many people have criticized me for selling "so low", but this leads me to my next point.
If your goal is to make money, you don't need to be a loyal coin holder. Holding a coin for the sake of holding a coin isn't going to increase the value of your portfolio. Sure, I sold Eth "low", and I could have made more money by continuing to hold my Eth. But, I took my profit from Eth when I felt comfortable, and I moved into other coins that have also increased in value since I bought them. Being loyal to a coin will certainly pay off in the cryptocurrency world because most coins will increase in value given enough time. However, you can make much more buy setting goals, and then moving that profit to a coin that you've done plenty of research on and one that has a bit more potential.
I'll do one more for the sake of time: It's great having a plan, but setting arbitrary laws for yourself isn't always the best. Yes, it's always great to buy low and sell high, but that doesn't work out during an extended bull run or during a major correction. For example, I sold Bitcoin at $7000 (again, my goal I had set), just before it's massive pump to $19000. I sat there for days telling myself that I couldn't buy back in when the price was so high. At some point, though, you need to realize that the market will continue to do what it's been doing regardless of your actions. So, I realized that, bought in at $13000, and then sold at $15000. So, I made a quick profit, didn't get too greedy (another valuable lesson), and then I got out.
My favorite sub $1 coins are Verge, Cardano, and SIA. Do I have a strategy when buying coins? Yes. I use Cryptocompare daily. I always have the BTC and USD toplists open, and I monitor the top 50 coins in each. I like to research 10+ coins a day within the top 50 (you'll start to see that a majority of the coins are always the same) by doing the following:
Make sure they have a website. If they don't, I would stop researching right away, to be honest. If they're not going to take the time to create a website, I don't want to know about the other corners they're cutting.
If they do have a website, read over it. Are there any misspellings? Blatant errors? If so, this is another red flag. This makes it seem rushed, which could lead me to believe they have created their coin for the wrong reasons. This could also indicate a small team. Regardless of what it means, though, it's not a good sign.
If you don't see many errors, the next thing I check is their team and their white paper. Do some research on their team: What were they involved in prior to this? Trustworthy? Ambitious?
One more: Check their social media! Most have their own twitter account. Is it active? Are they updating their users often?
Will I invest the same amount this year? You know, if I see a seemingly "good" deal on a coin, I will certainly invest in it. I am too comfortable with this market now to not invest, so I won't be nearly as "strict" and conservative with my money this year as I was last year. That being said, I don't think I'll need to invest much my bank account this year. I have so much more to leverage already within my portfolio that I don't need to pull from my bank account. My bank account seems so small when compared to my current portfolio, as well, so I'd rather sell off some of my larger coins to buy some smaller ones because I can leverage way more money (way faster) doing it that way.
Personal question: I love this question, and thank you so much for asking. I actually don't bring up cryptocurrency unless it's brought up to me, but that is something that has been conditioned into me. In the beginning, I was talking about it with everyone I could, but in time, it seemed too tedious of a task. Every time I mentioned it, I had to not only tell them all the facts (blockchain, cryptography, distributed ledger, consensus, pow, pos, exchanges, etc), but I always had to defend myself and my beliefs. And, I hated doing it, but eventually, the only way to combat their negativity was to tell them the amount of money I had made. This usually made them far more curious. And, it minimized their "know-it-all" mentality. That all being said, I receive at least one email/text/phone call a day regarding cryptocurrency, and it has become far more positive and inviting than it was in the past, which is a great sign.
Finally, I'm a big dreamer, but I wasn't always that way. I was your typical "will-amount-to-nothing" type of kid growing up. There was so much negativity spoken about me and toward me. But, one day, I decided to give it my all in everything I did (and everything I would one day do).
I want to do as much as I can in this life, and I don't care about the limits people think I have. I don't care if everyone else in the world tells me I need a job until I'm 65. I won't live in the mold that everyone wants to place me in.
Cryptocurrency was, and is, a huge risk. But, this is allowing me to live out my dream. I get to show people that it doesn't matter what you're born with, and it doesn't matter how gifted and talented you are, if you want something bad enough, and you work hard for it, you'll get it. So, that's what I encourage everyone in my life to do: If they want change, they need to go change it themselves!
I hope this helps, and I apologize for the lengthy post :) I loved the questions, though. Please reach out with more!