Well Good Morning, Crypto
I woke up early this morning to a pleasant surprise as many of my favorite cryptocurrencies are on the rise. Bitcoin, STEEM, BitShares, PIVX, and my most recent fascination, Stratis.
I wanted to do a quick post because I just powered up a bit to get above 50,000 Steem Power (#228 on the richlist!) which feels like an important milestone I should have on the blockchain somewhere. I try to avoid so many "Hey, look at me!" posts, so I'll add a little value for you here as well.
Have you heard of Coinigy? It's a pretty amazing trading platform that I see in so many of the YouTube videos I've been watching to learn about crypto trading. Not only does it give you detailed charts, trading tools, and alerts, you can actually hook it into your exchange accounts so you can trade right from their interface via API keys! It's pretty cool to see all your various crypto balances right there as well.
Here are some screens that put a smile on my face this morning.
STEEM
BitShares
PIVX
Stratis
Edit: this screenshot was taking at 2pm while the others were in the morning. @nutela noticed I accidentally had the wrong market in the original with BTC/STRAT instead of STRAT/BTC
Coinigy is pretty impressive. I'm on a thirty day trial right now, but if I keep using it and find it useful, I might end up paying for a subscription.
Another tool I wanted to let you know about is Blockfolio which is a mobile app for keeping track of your portfolio holdings and their current value, similar to the spreadsheet I created which you can copy for free.
Trading Cryptocurrencies Is Amazing Right Now
I've blocked out the balances and amount of increase, but you can see from this screenshot how much my portfolio of crypto holdings have gone up in such a short period of time. That's exciting stuff! Hopefully it's not an indicator of larger global problems with North Korea, Syria, or any other country the US may be bombing today to keep their strangle hold on the world reserve currency.
I get so excited about cryptocurrencies doing well not just because I love seeing my personal net worth go up (and trust me, I really do love that part), but because I see it as one of the most practical steps toward increasing freedom in the world. Humans free to provide value to one another and control the result is a beautiful thing. Fiat currencies (i.e. those created by government decree) are losing purchasing power via inflation at the benefit of some and the detriment of most.
Crypto provides a path towards a future where we can all benefit.
I hope you have a great Easter weekend!
Steem On
Here's a question: when do you sell? Or are you a hold forever type of guy? That's what gets me wondering about crypto, should we just hodl all coins forever?
That's a great question. I'm learning as I go, but I think it's somewhat of an art. You try different things in different situations and find something that feels right. I can't answer for you, but I can show what I did with PIVX:
(That's from my copy of the spreadsheet I linked to in the original post). I bought 6k PIVX, starting staking and eventually sold 1k. Then I sold another 1k higher than that to get all of my initial investment back, plus a nice profit. Now I have 4k PIVX essentially for free that I can stake and keep long term. Obviously, it won't always work out that nicely, but it's a great example of when things go really well.
Some of the bitcoin I got from selling PIVX I used to buy Golem which I road up a little wave and sold for profit also. It's fun when all the candles are green, but when things go red it can be rough. I held all my bitcoin from $1,200 in 2014 down to the $250 range. Being emotionally involved isn't helpful for profit.
Just some random tips for beginners:
Emotion really kills the profits. Makes one sell low and buy high and that is when your trading account gets slaughtered. Have tight stops and don't put all eggs in one basket, cut the losses quick and let winners ride but don't hesitate to take profit!
And one more, if something is getting hyped from the the rooftops by many people, you're probably buying a top as they are unloading. Wait for a pull back, this time you can spend on actually reading about the project.
Excellent advice. :)
Me personally, it depends on the product you are holding. There are some things I just flip for profit regardless of what the coin or token use is. If I think it has long term value, I still may sell a small % to recoup my original investment cost (and maybe some quick profit) and hold the rest long term. I think it truly varies on what you financial goals are, what your immediate financial needs are, and what your long-term plan for savings/investments are. It's a true balancing act. Sometimes you need to sell for capital into another great opportunity. In the crypto space there is such a thing as holding too long. Only certain products have true long term value.
Best advice I've ever followed is - when the time comes, you won't have to sell to fiat.
One of my all time favorites.
Haha it may well be from that image I remember it from.
I swear by @Coinigy - great product/service.
That seems to be what I keep hearing. Thanks for giving your nod to it as well. :)
Great stuff @lukestokes I've looked into Coinigy too and it looks pretty slick. What are some of the features you like the best?
I just set up the account last night, so I'm not even sure yet. A few minutes ago I just did my first API based trade on Poloniex via Coinigy so that was pretty cool. I like the alerts a lot as well. That way, instead of just having your buy hit, you can get an alert and take some fresh eyes on it and possibly change tactics.
Cool. Perhaps you can post a review of it after using it for a while. That would be interesting.
Yeah, good idea. I'll be tinkering with it for the next 30 days to decide if I want to pay for a subscription or not.
Yup, I signed up last night. I will have to dig more into it but I like what I see so far!
I signed up last night also. I created API keys for polo and bittrex and got those hooked up also. I hope they get a connection to Open Ledger. THAT would be fantastic.
That Blockfolio app is pretty cool. I just added my coins (which are scattered around in different wallets). Having them combined into a total value plus the combined 24 hr change that will fluctuate with the market will be a nice thing to watch rise over time.
I'm really enjoying my spreadsheet for that, but I think I'd like to have it on my phone as well. I wonder how long it will take to get everything in there.
Yeah, I really like this app too! I wish the dev had a tip address so I can give back a bit to them!
Love this article, thank you for sharing 😎
You're welcome! Thanks for reading and commenting.
Was hoping to get some more cheap steem on Poloniex... looks like that ship has sailed!
Sometimes it just takes a little patience. There's plenty of liquid STEEM sloshing around right now, so I wouldn't be surprised to see prices come back down again at some point in the future.
Great time for crypto! I will have to look into COINIGY, looks interesting I am not a huge fan of the UI on the exchange I am currently using.
I think you'll be impressed. I've seen people on videos do some incredible things with it.
Why is BTC/STRAT but PIVX/BTC, I thought you were comparing all to BTC?
Ah shoot! Great catch, I didn't realize I had the wrong market there. I'm still getting used to the interface at Coinigy. I'll update it.
Updated. Thanks again for spotting that. :)
I'm glad that the new data didn't alter your conclusions! And that thus I was not wasting your time.
Nah. The new photo does make it look a little less impressive because it also shows the inevitable retrace that happened after I took the first photos, but it's still the same story. Stratis went up nicely while I slept last night. :)
Thanks again.
It feels like a warm welcome here on Steemit :-)
Steemit can be great if you can avoid the a-holes.
Also dont miss out the start of this new coin and be part of the genesis creation, no ico, just airdrop: https://steemit.com/cryptocurency/@maxfuchs/minereum-a-new-self-mining-cryptocurency-on-the-ethereum-blockchain-with-airdrop-instead-of-ico
Ah, too bad I missed the deadline. Thanks for sharing though.
You can add me for new Airdrops, also i am creating my own release soon ;)
cheers