A lot of friends are asking these days, I’ve been trading crypto for years… Here goes:
Rule #1. If you have no cryptos at all, buy some now, price is irrelevant. Even if you buy right before a big crash, just wait, you’ll be happy you bought eventually. Exchanges I use are Poloniex, Bittrex, Cryptopia and Livecoin. For best security, download wallets to your computers and withdraw the funds you plan to hold for a while. Good multi-coin wallets are: coinomi and exodus. Or follow the links on your coin’s website.
Rule #2. Keep track of where your coins are listed in rank of market cap on coinmarketcap. This is the ultimate way to see what a coin is worth. If a great sounding project is low on this list, it’s probably going to go up in price. If a bad project is very high, probably a good one to avoid. For example: FTC, Feathercoin. Once coin #3 for at least a year I believe. No scandals. Great developer. Sits at position #171 below some projects that sound like a joke and have no developer or history. FTC at #171 is probably a good buy.
Rule #3. Only trade in cryptos you researched and know something about. Pick projects where you figure its unlikely the coin is going to disappear any time soon. So old coins, or maybe new coins with trustworthy names backing it and/or a great feature you understand and see the potential of. Don’t be fooled, lots of great writers out there cooking up nothing burgers. Best place to view the launch post thread and discussions is on Bitcointalk, but many projects also have dedicated forums and slack. Bitcointalk is the best place to start though, every developer posts their launch there and criticisms are easy to find. Beware of edited threads and things that sound too good to be true, there is a lot of that.
Rule #4. Pick the group of cryptos you trust and stick with it. You can only pay attention to so many coins, pick an amount that suits the time you want to spend watching them.
Rule #5. Spread out over low, medium and high market cap coins. The low ones have much more potential, but take longer to move. Its the equivalent of having some corporation stocks and some penny stocks.
Rule #6. Don’t buy on margin. Not if you're new to this! Sorry, I’ve done terribly with margins, but some people make it work. A bit too much like gambling for me. If you’re not very careful, you actually lose coins. When simply buying a crypto outright (no margin) you never lose coins, they just might go down in value.
One you have your coins secured, keep some on exchanges ready to trade (if you want to actively trade). Best bet is to keep track of the market cap rankings and see what is moving where. If one of your coins went up 20% today, sell some. Don’t freak out and sell too much, just a bit. Take the profit from that bit, and roll it over into whichever of your coins is down that day. If something you bought keeps going down, but you know its a good project, just keep buying. If something you have keeps going up, awesome, keep selling bits as it moves. Don’t be greedy! People often see their coin spike and start dreaming about where it might get to. Sell some! This is why you’re only ever selling or buying a little at a time, keeping long term supplies of several coins. You’re never out when it goes up and if it goes down, OK, more cheap coins is good too.
The only way you lose on this strategy of spreading out and staying in many coins is if everything goes down. This happens. 2014: Bitcoin, cryptos, all of it went down and it didn’t matter where you were. BUT, if you’re still watching the market caps and buy/selling based on positioning, you can minimize your losses a little.
When you see a big price movement. Check the threads, look at the news. See if something is causing it. A 20% gain is nothing if a huge announcement just came out, that may be the one to buy today even though its up. One of your "penny stock" coins just crashed 50%, check out why, maybe you were wrong about it being a good project and should get out.
Good timing on the post Remi. Love the 10 lane freeway analogy- that's just perfect.
Thanks man! yea this one worked out great, lots of upvotes from somewhere! Thanks everyone!.....not a ton of views though which is weird. Thinking it got upvoted by a lot of people who just picked it from the thumbnail i think. Must be a good title!
Wait though....i screwed up my images. This post didn't even have a thumbnail. I'm lost, but I'll take it! Hopefully some people did read it though and heed the advice- it is a good strategy that works and is easy to maintain.
Great title but, importantly, good advice too. Beginner articles, from what I've seen, are hugely popular.
Steemit is a great gateway drug for new crypto addicts i think. Makes sense beginner stuff is popular....hmmm, what else do i know about that is useful...
haha, that's what I'm thinking too.
True Flip [ICO] - Already running a transparent blockchain lottery! Bomb! Bonus 20%! ICO will end in 2 days! Hurry! :)
The platform is already working and making a profit :)
https://steemit.com/ico/@newico/true-flip-ico-already-running-a-transparent-blockchain-lottery-bomb-bonus-20-ico-will-end-in-2-days-hurry
This is a free social network) If my post in your opinion here is strongly not appropriate. Forgive me) You can lower his rating! :) And I'll have it in mind :)
Really like the 10 lane analogy. I've been doing this on bittrex a month or so, and my overall value has gone up. But....I'm getting the urge for margin trading on bitfinex - surely with tight stop losses there isn't much risk? Except for tilt and emotion.....err...and fear and greed?
Thanks. With the tight stops tho, I found i would just have my margin closed for a small loss all the time. Never got the amounts right. Either you leave some room to handle bumps on the road up, or your margin is too tight and you're out of the game when you step away....I think the only really safe way is to be a whale who can collateralize it with just so much you can't be liquidated. I imagine there are whales on Bitmex with a few hundred BTC on the exchange who can handle sizable contracts but never risk liquidation.
Good post! We recently sold everything but Steem. Predicting another large drop to buy low again. Good strategy? We shall see.
Personally, I never ever go all in on one coin. I also absolutely never sell all of any coin that i have (unless there is a major technical reason why the coin is dead). . . .I'm not saying yours is a bad strategy, STEEM may join the billionaires crypto club very soon and you'll do awesome. But what you're doing is much more risky than what I suggested in this post....Something goes wrong with Steem, you lose everything. It'd suck for me too, but at least i have other coins...
I see your point and we will buy back and diversify very soon. We held between 5-6 alt coins at a time. We don't have a ton invested either, so it's not a big loss for us. I can definitely see why it's not a good strategy for the big players or whales in the game.
Definitely! But I think its universal as well. All eggs in one basket, even if you only have a couple eggs, is still a sketchier place to be....
Good advice and 10 lane highway analogy is money.
Thanks!
I can help you guys as well. I research newer altcoins that have great potential to grow a ton! I post all the details you should know before investing it them.
Cool, what are you looking at now?....following you now
One thing i left out of this article, I have a huge bias against anything the least bit centralized. I don't see the point. Crypto is only in existence because decentralization makes it impossible to stop. Centralized coins are either piggybacking or waiting to be shut down. No thanks.