What I learnt in 4 months of crypto hodl/trading.
I started mid december 2017 in a FOMO.

Why crypto?

• Hedge against fiat inflation (like gold/silver/real estate)
• Hope of multiplying them thanks to good trades (better than gold/silver/real estate) - to balance with higher risk because of scam of some altcoins
• Sort of storage of value (but still a bit unclear. "Risk what you can lose") - Bitcoin is kinda old now, it's a bit "proven".
• It's easy to travel/relocate yourself with your crypto (even easier than gold, and muuuch easier than real estate)

How to have more crypto capital

• Buy crypto from fiat (I use coinbase and cex.io)
• Hodling coins with good fundamentals
• Good trades (I like binance, Kucoin, gate.io, Trade Satoshi and coinexchange) but it's not so easy. The principle is always the same : buy low, sell high.
  • Learn some TA...
  • DYOR on fundamentals. Try to understand what value brings each crypto coin. Do your own rating (I do).
  • Have patience
  • Try finding good analysts on twitter. (don't follow blindly)
  • My preferred option is to buy unpumped coins with good fundamentals, that are not yet on binance, and sell after listing.
  • Buy 2 weeks before a big announcement and sell the day before the announcement.
  • Have open orders (buy, sell) in case you're lucky
• Faucets: not much money, but on a regular basis - Don't use them if you are already rich
  • AELF
  • Coinpot faucets: you can currently earn around 50 DOGE every 2 days if you run them all and convert to DOGE (all the following faucets gains go in a common account)
    • Bonus Bitcoin
    • BitFun
    • Moon Bitcoin
    • Moon Dogecoin
    • Moon Litecoin
    • Moon Dash
    • Moon BCash
  • There are tons of others but I did not find any good enough
• Giveaways: some are legits, but you need luck. You can look for them on twitter.
• Sell products or services in crypto (I do) - Cryptopia has a marketplace for instance where you can sell items in crypto
• Staking: do your math before investing much! Gains are not so high.
  • NEO for GAS - see https://neotogas.com/ (my preferred option for now)
  • Waves leasing
  • Exchanges coins : $KCS, $BCO, $COSS. You get a small fraction of their transaction fees. See this useful tweet for more info.
  • Lots of other coins that I don't know
• Investing in ICO can be very profitable. But it's also quite risky. I have not tried yet.
• Ah yes, mining. But gains seem low to me.

How to have less crypto capital

• Sell to fiat, exit crypto
• Bad trades
  • Buying at ATH
  • Follow scammy callers and buy $BCD for instance
  • FOMO trades (FOMO buy, FOMO sell)
  • Participate to Pump and Dump groups
  • Buy scammy coins / beware of scam exit (Bitconnect $BCC, Centra $CTR) -> DYOR and don't be too greedy.
• HODL coins with bad fundamentals (their value slowly go to 0)
• Gambling (typically HI/LO)
• If you keep the coins by yourself
  • Get hacked your private keys (see Ian Balina)
  • Lose your private keys (hard-drive crashed, lost in a boat accident, there are many stories like that...)
  • Use a scam-wallet, that is not the official one
• If you keep coins on an exchange or a shared staking pot
  • Got your account hacked (same password for a scammy website and no 2FA ; password) - see Philakone
  • Got your exchange hacked (MtGox, Bitgrail for NANO)
  • Got your API secrets hacked (binance Viacoin)
  • Got your coins stolen by the person/entity you trusted (see @WizOfCrypto for PAC)
• Invest on ICO scams
• Pure scams (guys on twitter claiming to multiply your crypto, pretending to be celebrities)
• Pay for a paid group (for information that you can get free)