You may be wondering who I am referring to when I say "the worst cryptocurrency trader of the year 2017", and you may be wondering who I am going to publically award such an unattractive title. Well, that would be me. I claim to be the worst cryptocurrency trader of 2017 and I have evidence to prove it.
Image created/designed using copyright free image on Canva
For months now, I have kept things to myself or a few friends. At that time, it felt like a great loss but it all turned out to be great lessons for me. I am sharing my painful lessons learned the hardest way, loss of money and loss of courage to invest, so that you can understand a thing or two about cryptocurrency trading and prevent a loss from happening.
So, here I begin!
1. Always Hold Your Best Coins
By best coins, I mean the coins with established market and solid backing. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, Dash, Steem etc. etc. There are many but generally the top 20-30 coins. If you have any of them, do not sell unless that's the wisest thing to do at the moment due to an unavoidable situation (which is rare).
My first two purchases were 0.037 Bitcoin and 0.5 Ethereum in the end of May, 2017. Over a periof of 4 days from 27-31 May, I had bought $300 worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum when Bitcoin was below $2300 and Eth was below $170. Later, I invested $100 from Steemit earnings in June after joining and $100 more from my pocket into Bitcoin at $4300.
Poloniex was my go to exchange in the beginning
In short, I had invested $500 to have 0.5 Eth and 0.135 Bitcoin. If I had just kept them, 0.5 Eth is $384 at the time of writing and 0.135 BTC is worth $2010 even after a 25 % price correction. I would have had $2400 from an investment of just $500, just by doing nothing but holding.
Bitcoin price right now.
Ethereum price right now.
So, always hold your best coins unless you have attained your perceived profit and want to use the money somewhere else.
2. Never Trade Good Coins for Shit Ones
That' the worst mistake I have done toward the end of my already pathetic trading experience. How I came to $108 from $500 is a story explained later but that was all I had managed to keep in October. And that too I invested in an extremely shit and scammy coin (BSN) on a pump and dump exchange in the hope to recover through good gains.
That was the last nail in the coffin of the worst trader in me.
I sold that crap for $4.35 and for the best part of last two months, that was my entire crypto portfolio. I was scared shitless to invest anything again.
The lesson is simple. Never ever invest in a shit coin. Even if you have to experiment, do with minimum amount from your investment. Never go suicidal like I did.
3. Never Sell Your Coins at Loss
I declined $108 from $500 due to this very reason. I had bought DGB, SC and many small priced coins in the hopes of gains. I remember I bought DGB at 0.00001909 on Poloniex and it went past 0.00003000 but I didn't have brains to sell at that time. I also asked Steemians about what I should do with Digibyte. Haha!
I had bought a total of 5232 DigiByte tokens at various prices to keep for a profit. The market went bloody red and everything was crashed due to Bitcoin Cash hardfork. I sold all of my DGB for pennies, under $60 at that time. If I had kept them, I could have sold them for $400 at current price, more than triple my investment in June. Even if I had kept the resulting Bitcoin balance, I would have had more than $400 right now.
Stupid me.
Look at Ripple's price right now. And it is rising.
How could anyone have imagined a $1.85 price
And I am less than proud to tell you that I had bought 550 Ripple at $0.22 in May-June and sold them all at overall loss. If I had kept, $1017 for a $120 investment. It hurts me inside but the lessons learned are valuable.
550 Ripples, I miss you!
Please, always buy good coins and keep them. Never ever sell at loss. Market always recovers and the good coins recover faster than anything else. Always have patience.
4. Do Not Get Behind Hyped but Baseless Coins
Chaincoin comes to my mind. Some YouTuber hyped a dead coin and community bought into it. They pumped it massively, taking huge profits and then dumped it. Good coins recover, shit coins stay down once dumped. I have shown you BSN example which is still lying down at the bottom.
I sold everything (Ripple, Siacoin, Digibyte etc.) to buy Syndicate (Synx) and RNS because they were hyped to become the next Chaincoins at that time. I thought I will recover my losses. I bought at highest prices and when the price kept going down, it never came back up. That's how I was left only with a few $.
Always choose good coins to invest into. I have bought some great coin in my trading exerience and since Bittrex has vanished my Synx trading history, I will show you instead what good coins I had and what they would have been worth right now if I had kept them.
- YOYOW has current price of $0.30 (came down from $0.50) and I would have had $850 right now just by keeping. I had bought it for holding but it got delisted and I sold in panic and at loss.
- Verge is at $0.163 right now and it means $460 if I had kept.
- Ethos (BQX) is trading at $2.68 right now and I would have had $182 by keeping.
- I bought Binance at $0.90 and it is trading at $8.91 right now. It could have meant $463 for me.
You don't need more proof to see what I am trying to convey...
5. Never Take Emotional Decisions, Especially Without Doing Your Own Research
They always say DYOR. I would say always DYOFR before investing in a coin. I would have owned an estimated amount of $3000-5000 from an investment of $500 from May-October. Emotional and bad decisions were key to my epic failures. I understood my weaknesses and started focusing on Steemit rather than look at Coin Market Cap.
I have picked good coins mostly but I was too fragile to keep them for long term. Please never be emotional and always think and research before you buy of sell your coins.
Conclusion
I have lost a lot of faith, courage and money in my bitter experiences. But the lessons are worth learning and sharing. I am happy to share that I decided to invest in good coins again and have stared getting into some already. My bad decisions and investments were my own mistakes. Crypto is awesome!
Steemit is a gateway to cryptocurrency. Also, the recent Bitcoin heroics have made cryptocurrency known to public more than ever before and many people are jumping in and investing their money. It is good for cryptocurrency but these newbies can suffer great losses in the process.
Share Your Crypto Experiences
Share your experience in the comments. As usual, the best interaction happens in the comments and I love to reward good comments with upvotes.
This post is an honest effort to share the lessons I have learned the hard way so that people can invest their money in right coins and take good profits. Please support with your resteems and upvotes.
Thank you for sharing. Overall I have two sentiments to share in response, number one is that holding the bit coin that I bought and doing nothing would've been a better investment than spreading it out to other coins. When buying you should simply purchase bitcoin with currency to buy the new coins, not use existing the coins you already have. Sure you might have turned a profit on your previous investment, why not sell a little? Don't be the guy who sold 1700 btc at $0.30! Hold! My great grandmother used to say that when she was a little girl if they couldn't afford something then just didn't buy it. Same philosophy here, don't buy new coins if you have to sell other coins to get it. That's not accumulating that's speculating. If you want to hundred dollars of a new coin then take $100 that you earn in the real world. Start a shapeshift transaction with a permanent deposit address to shift assets to whatever you want immediately. Take the QR address they give you to the ATM and insert cash, automatically shape shifting the transaction.
The second comment I have for you is that the biggest risk can sometimes be not risking enough. Personal story would be that I bought a dollar worth of Dash when It was six dollars. Also not buying more even when it was rising and rising and rising. Regret is that a path you want to avoid. Whatever you decide to do , make your decision and hold conviction that you made the best educated decision you could. Do not let greed overwhelm you. Do not lose sight of the fact that this is about freedom not being rich. Bitcoin is going to set the world free or destroy the world, maybe both. What are you going to do with it? And will you let it destroy you? Or will you be the master .
If there was no money we would all be rich.
I learned a lot about trading in the dot com bubble 2000. it cost me half of my savings while i was a student. but these learnings paid off.
there are some basics to trading and especially to crypto trading:
Agreed with everything in this post! Definitely do your due diligence!
I only invest in cryptocurrencies where the team behind it has already produced some progress. An example is REQ, I did not invest until I saw that Colossus came out and they came out ahead of schedule. Anything before the release on test net was just screen shots and air talk for me. I may have missed out on some gains, but seeing their dev team gives me confidence that the value will rise in the future.
Day trading will also burn you sometimes. If you do your research and believe in the team and the project then long term holdings will win out over day trading a majority of the time.
Good luck trading all :)
Extremely good article specially for newbies in crypto world... i have just two things to add here
Very good...
Wow, @ilyastarar, I appreciate your honesty and good will in this post! Thank you for sharing your hard lessons, this is very educational. I learnt something today thanks to you, I will think about all this very carefully! I'm sorry you had these experiences. But I'm very glad to observe how successful you are here on Steemit! I'm happy for you! Looking forward to more of your content :) All the best Ilya! In 2018 and in general! :) Klaudia
Congratulations for this honorable title Iliyas! :D
No, but congratulations that you got new knowledges, new experiences and to get the chance to do it better in the future.
We all make mistakes, the important thing is, that we learn from them.
Also you couldn't have known how the cryptos will develop. Nobody could and still can't.
Hope you have more luck with your investments in the future.
Your rule number 3 "Never sell your coins at a loss" is the most important one to me. I'm by far a good trader, but I managed to have nice profits in 2017 because of this rule.
You might want to have a look at this article where I explained high level some of the basics that helped me a lot in 2017 being a newbie myself: https://steemit.com/cryptocurrency/@teamjoe/so-you-want-to-be-a-cryptocurrency-investor-10-rules-of-thumb
I made this for the starting crypto investor, but it applies to traders as well.
I wish you better luck and good profits in 2018, good health and all the best for you and your familiy.
Thanks for being so honest and willing to share your experiences!
Almost every time I try to "flip" some Bitcoin, I screw up astronomically on the timing.
Very nice of you to share with us, So that many of us don't make the same mistakes....
So sorry to hear about the losses you have to bear but the good thing is that you look at all of this positively as a way of learning....
I would not call you the worst trader, just one who had gone through all the experience and it is very humble of you to share it all. DONT GIVE UP! this experience will only make you wiser and all the best in 2018! it will be a much better year of gain for you!
Thank you for sharing
happy 2018
Cryptocurrency year
Wow. That's one hell of an experience there. Just when I thought I had seen it all. My trading experience is almost similar to yours. Just that I only ride on the waves of shit coins on etherdelta, idex and co. Now I'm wiser. I will focus my attention on one or two coin at a time for trading. Not the many coins one would start monitoring like a spirit. While giving more time and attention to steemit. Thank you for sharing, not many people will have the courage to share their experiences like this.
Thanks for sharing your experiences. Invest in Steem. Even if it doesn't rise as dramatically as the others, at least the currency is worth something because of the value of this site. The idea itself is worth investing into.
Good point. And we haven't even seen all the early adopters come to the platform. We are just on the very beginning of growth!
Oh that does hurt reading about those moves. As a newcomer to Crypto, I must give a big thanks for sharing.
Learning from our mistakes is all we can do sometimes. These are pretty minor in the big picture of things.
very informative article for me so ...when i invested money in first coins the BTC was on $4500 and I did not get BTC and got first coins ..anyway right now I have 50 first coins which I bought at $14 but now its $16. so thinking to hold only 10 and left of them change into another good one......so suggest me what i have to do next? thnx
So unfortunate. Firstcoin is a scam with MLM sammers behind it. I did a post against them on my Fb to alert Pakistanis. Sell them and get Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum, Cardano, Bitshares, Steem etc
Thanks for sharing, its always sad when we have to learn from other peoples loss or mistake. I have yet to dab into crypto currenctmy at all, may do so next year but so much to learn first.
It is so nice to see someone from my country doing such good and authentic work here on Steemit. This post is really helpful especially for a person like me who has just begun to understand cryptocurrency trading. Thank you for this.
I'm humbled. Grateful to have people like you in company. Thank you so much I wish you a wonderful year ahead.
Another one think I phrased better
It's a good idea to share your bitter/hard experience with community so the other abstain from same mistake. sharing is caring and you care this community alot. Stay blessed
Very nice thank you for the advice
This post is sponsored by @appreciator in collaboration with #steemitbloggers. Keep up the good work
This article while informative is a bit of a read. I skimmed it and found some great key points, but overall would love a more condensed version.
I understand. Attention spans are squeezing each passing year. Mine was terribly small as well. I have improved my capacity of reading and it helps. Glad you skimmed through because I always try to make my post skim-able.