⭐ Merited by vapourminer (2)
I guess that prudence and patience are among the biggest learnings and principles that those could gather who have been around for a long time. I can tell that my decisions became better over time the longer I exposed myself to the market and the more I dealt with the topic decentralization/cryptography both just for fun but also in depth scientifically as an academic.
But I can say one thing for sure: I have not really been into stocks before I got into crypto. Just a bit, but never to the extent like when crypto got me excited and I became research addicted. In the beginning, the first bull runs actually spoiled my idea of markets and investing in general. When something goes up 10x (traded alt coins as well back at the time) and you have never had any really significant exposures to markets before, you start thinking for that moment that there is some normality to such a market movement. Even worse you start thinking that markets are great to make a lot of money in a short period of time. And that is damn wrong! You can of course, but the shorter the time horizon, the more of a gamble the whole thing becomes, especially when you work with leverage, as you pointed out. Those are all important aspects that I learnt along the journey and I can say that it significantly helped me get through the bear markets. I didn't care when it dumped, I slept well. I understood that crypto is a different beast, a little child that is still prone to attacks from all angles and the price will reflect that one way or another.
But if I joined crypto just recently and I would have suffered from the price drop of roughly 70%, I would feel like trash. I know because very early on I put money on the line that I could not afford to lose. That is roughly a decade ago. The day I chose to do that was among the most volatile days I've witnessed so far and I couldn't sleep for a second and was just staring at the charts with sweat on my forehead. In retrospect it was a great and fun valuable lesson and luckily, I got through it well more or less!
But I can say one thing for sure: I have not really been into stocks before I got into crypto. Just a bit, but never to the extent like when crypto got me excited and I became research addicted. In the beginning, the first bull runs actually spoiled my idea of markets and investing in general. When something goes up 10x (traded alt coins as well back at the time) and you have never had any really significant exposures to markets before, you start thinking for that moment that there is some normality to such a market movement. Even worse you start thinking that markets are great to make a lot of money in a short period of time. And that is damn wrong! You can of course, but the shorter the time horizon, the more of a gamble the whole thing becomes, especially when you work with leverage, as you pointed out. Those are all important aspects that I learnt along the journey and I can say that it significantly helped me get through the bear markets. I didn't care when it dumped, I slept well. I understood that crypto is a different beast, a little child that is still prone to attacks from all angles and the price will reflect that one way or another.
But if I joined crypto just recently and I would have suffered from the price drop of roughly 70%, I would feel like trash. I know because very early on I put money on the line that I could not afford to lose. That is roughly a decade ago. The day I chose to do that was among the most volatile days I've witnessed so far and I couldn't sleep for a second and was just staring at the charts with sweat on my forehead. In retrospect it was a great and fun valuable lesson and luckily, I got through it well more or less!
I am a little bothered by your emphasis on trading and crypto (aka shitcoins), but I appreciate that you share aspects of your story in terms of what seems to be that you learned some things about the dangers of short term thinking and also what seems to be likely risks of leverage. In the end, hopefully you are going to be able to continue in bitcoin in terms of longer term thinking and learn to shirk off some the temptations to be involved in crypto/shitcoin trading unless it perhaps might serve as ONLY a smaller aspect of your overall approach.. but hey each fo us learns in our own way, and by the way some folks who get caught up in shitcoins, and trading in ways that seem to be gambling and leverage do not really seem to learn how to manage their gambling tendencies. .and then they end up getting fucked down the road, because sometimes when you gamble and trade with too much passion/leverage, you may well end up having a large number of "wins" (even 20 or more) and then one loss can wipe out a vast majority of your previous gains.. especially if you do not figure out ways to employ relatively prudent risk management strategies, and some of the traders/gamblers believe that they can "get it all back" if they lose it, which truly is a fools way of thinking.. so for sure there needs to be care when employing gambling, leverage and/or getting involved in shitcoins (including using the term "crypto" without specifying or actually showing that you actually know the difference between bitcoin and shitcoins).
Oh no, first of all the story I told you happened with Bitcoin actually. As I said, I traded alt coins as well back at the time. It was the time when Cryptsy was still around and coins like Darkcoin (DASH today) and ridiculous shit coins like Sexcoin and god knows what else came up. I can't even exactly tell when it was, perhaps like Summer 2013 onwards? Can't remember exactly. But back at the time it was also fun to play around a bit with whatever came up. I would say it was like a digital casino, but as at the time the number of people getting into crypto literally exploded, even the shittiest of the shit coins went up.
It was also the time when I learned "not your keys not your crypto" when Big Vern from Cryptsy decided to steal millions of dollars in digital funds and allegedly escaped to China. Frankly speaking, I did have coins on there, but not that I intended to leave them there, I had them on the exchange for a short while because I was going to trade them as I already went through the Mt. Gox drama. Out of a sudden withdrawals were blocked, everyone became nervous, the support kept saying that it is all good, and then... game over. Service not available anymore.
I very rarely trade alt coins these days and if I do, it is 99% on decentralized exchanges. I don't deem a coin like Monero a shit coin. But that's up to everyone's opinion.
Did you ever trade alt coins? I mean there is no Bitcoiner that I know who truly never touched an alt coin. Even if it is just playing around with something like Monero, but never ever? Hard to believe if that is the case.
But to sum this up, my understanding and stance on cryptocurrencies and how to manage them has fundamentally changed compared to about a decade ago. My point was that I was lucky to have made that experience so early on because that was a time when you didn't even get punished necessarily for buying a shit coin. Today you do and that is why I recommend fiercely to stay away from them, but I can understand when someone completely new to the space feels tempted. It was no different for me in the early days. That is what I wanted to convey.