I know, it's just so simple & effective to forget about it & hodl for years.
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..But, I don't have years. I already spent 9 years (I'm still in 20's so it's mostly fine) losing money to a not-so-expensive-but-still 'variable-rate' learn-the-hard-way tuition fee. I need to make each slice of $$ within days, maybe weeks at most, not months nor years. And I'm not the only one. It's just difficult, not impossible. Some are making it.
And +, there's always that half of my capital that's sitting in low-priced alts for long-term. That's a sufficient hedge against any trading loss.
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..But, I don't have years. I already spent 9 years (I'm still in 20's so it's mostly fine) losing money to a not-so-expensive-but-still 'variable-rate' learn-the-hard-way tuition fee. I need to make each slice of $$ within days, maybe weeks at most, not months nor years. And I'm not the only one. It's just difficult, not impossible. Some are making it.
And +, there's always that half of my capital that's sitting in low-priced alts for long-term. That's a sufficient hedge against any trading loss.
People are going to speak in certainties to you here. Remember this: nothing is certain. If you dump in now, you could wind up wealthy in a few years, or you could wind up deeply in the hole never to return if this whole thing turns out to be one huge bubble in the process of popping. If you disappear for a few years and come back, you could find that you were wealthy for a while, but then bitcoin got destroyed. Then again, you could find bitcoin at $2500 and be up a nice chunk. Who knows? The point is, again, nothing is certain. Take any advice that guarantees something, such as "bitcoin to single digits," or "bitcoin to $100,000 within 2 years," with a grain of salt and a lot of skepticism.
Others will talk up their position, screaming bitcoin is dead or bitcoin to da moon based on their position.
[..]
Hmmm
And how well I know, about them. Their posting, and trading/thought patterns, are predictable, at this point...What I haven't revealed so far is that I've read this thread almost exclusively, 15-30hrs a week on average, since Jan 11th this year. I literally read every page (good bit of skimming at times, admittedly - no other way, if going through that much..) since back when we were at the 3900's of posts & Arcas, Empowering, Luno, 'Doc' Holliday (I miss his wry humor..) & Goat/Loaded were still seen posting in here.
I just made the acct not because I just 'discovered' trading or crypto/etc, but because I simply don't like to waste people's time w/ yet more repetitive dribble, there's already 6k of it in here ffs.. lol. If I'm gonna post, I want it to have some effort put into, so there's a small chance at least 1 person might find it of any value, instead of moar spam. So.. that effort? THAT is why I waited that long to make this acct. I procrastinated. The Activity:5 is a lie.. xD
But, I love this place. I truly appreciate it, esp. TER, BJA, Keyser, Adam, Amino, Blitz & even Jorge & Fonzie's trollishness. And I did learn some tricks from it. Nevertheless, I find myself rolling my eyes knowingly, with a faint smirk, to all these ignorant grand proclamations of 'sUingle d1gitz dAwq' '$9.99' & '7-50k within 2014' from the same amused cognizance that all you veterans experience ;p I just did it as a 'Guest', until yesterday.
As for BTC itself, I didn't know it existed until Sept '13. In Oct. I knew about prices weekly. By Nov., I knew about them twice a day. In early Nov. I bought my very first BTC. In very late Nov., after some epiphany of curiosity & googling, & came upon Cryptsy. I sent them .01 only, thinking they may easily be a scam. After couple test trades & withdrawals went through fine, only then did I send moar in.
I missed the wave. Could've been a thousandnaire like you guys by now had I got in most of these small-time alts back in Oct-to-Mid-Late-Nov at the latest. But by the time I was familiar w/ it all, it was too late. Nov 18 Congress 'endorsement' & all the crazy Cryptsy/alt price explosions had mostly taken place already, it was dumping time, and I indeed lost a good portion of the equity I had been lucky enough to make.
[..]
I've got to tell you, though. You seem desperate. If you're desperately hoping for a ton of money to fall in your lap in a couple of weeks, that leaves you vulnerable to panic buying when you see it going up. You also seem kind of poor, which means if you over-invest, you will be very vulnerable to panic selling. All of this equates to a personality that is very likely to buy high and sell low.
I've got to tell you, though. You seem desperate. If you're desperately hoping for a ton of money to fall in your lap in a couple of weeks, that leaves you vulnerable to panic buying when you see it going up. You also seem kind of poor, which means if you over-invest, you will be very vulnerable to panic selling. All of this equates to a personality that is very likely to buy high and sell low.
I do panic-buy, and short, and sell. Too much in fact. But I've done too little before, too. A balance is crucial. Here's an example : The last time Stamp was around 533-537, that was a great time to get out. I didn't. I knew I should've, but held. The 540's high was not able to be reached again. It had to not only reach it, but BREAK thru it in order to be safely confident about a greater high, the new bull minitrend continuing, etc. It didn't even have the fuel to reach it. Obviously Huobi & Co are desperate to not correct further, and keep going up, but it's just not happening. The correction has to occur, and at least a moderate bit farther than merely 3020/481.
I do over-invest, it's easier to be on the safer side of trading when one has more capital to play with. But that will come in due time. A good thing about smaller sums is that, well, if you do get wiped out, you can find the same small sum to invest again within a month or a quarter's wages. I've done it before, sadly, and it's far from people here's mortgages money & life savings etc
Too desperate and you lose. Too complacent/long-term and you lose too. I've lost since 2005. (stocks & FX, not crypto....) Some years w/o any trading, some w/ holding on to bad practices, 'holding on' for 'long-term' in various ways. Balance is key, speaking from experience.
[..] Now is not the time to be investing in bitcoin to get rich quick, that time was at $5.
No question. Too bad I was doing FX & not crypto, back in '11-'12 & most of '13.
[..] ..so if you get skilled, you can presumably make a killing. I can tell from your posts that you are very unlikely to be skilled, so be careful.
Claiming to glean anything of insight on 7 posts made over ~24 hrs is like trying to predict the price trend over the next few weeks by looking only at the 1-minute chart on 'Wisdom
..So! Thanks for your attempt, it was actually very entertaining ;p Seriously, no offense taken, you could've have truly known I was that far from a newbie. I appreciate the intention to help, I trust it is genuine. And what you said is absolutely good advice ..which I already knew. Just have hard time applying the knowledge. Discipline, & capital.
You may want to consider a form of dollar cost averaging. That's what i do. You can tailor the dollar cost averaging to your budget.
I had a similar situation to yours, in that I started with my research into bitcoin in November 2013, yet I had $30k that I could invest into bitcoin. Accordingly, I decided to spread that $30k over 6 months, b/c I knew that BTC had just had a pretty large bullrun (at the end of November 2013).
Anyhow, my point is that you could budget as little as $50 a month for your investment, and it will add up over time. Then you could invest daily, weekly, monthly or whatever increment is comfortable for you. In the beginning you may want to front load a little bit. So let's say you have $2,000 and then thereafter $50 per month. You determine your strategy, but you may say that you want to invest the whole $2000 right away (which I would NOT do, but to each his own), or you may say that you would strategically invest $500 for each of the first two weeks, and then you would invest $250 per week for each of the four weeks after that and then go to your $50 per month plan... or you could figure out something more active. I did daily purchases for my first three weeks or something like that.
Surely, you seem more eager than planning out a strategy, but once you figure out the variety of your expenses, then you should NOT feel compelled to leverage (or borrow money) in order to invest. Leveraging is more of an advance player's move who is really familiar and confident in his/her ability to make the money back b/c of experience in having had done it repeated times and having a back up position in case the leverage does NOT pay off.
Anyhow, my point is once you build up various systems of investing, then you build up a nest egg.. and maybe one or two or five years down the road, you can transfer that nest egg into something that is really ground floor and where you have built up your capital (that is how I had gotten my $30k that i had available to invest into btc in the end of 2013 and that was NOT my total available money, only the money that I had consciously allocated for crypto investing).