Don't let the gains trip you up! Crypto Trading Caution

               Cautionary tale on getting serious with crypto gains. I've gotten pretty good luck for the past couple weeks and amassed enough crypto to be proud. From buying BTC at lows to buying alts that have skyrocketed, I've been able to look into the more serious aspects with a cautionary eye. In this post, I'd like to highlight some things that become very important the moment you start seeing real gains in your wallet. Some can resist and keep going steady, but someone I know once told me that if I'm making money, 10 other people are losing it. Keeping this and caution in mind, I have traversed several paths, from using different exchanges, listening to analysts, forgetting trading pairs, to even using bots and pump groups. As more and more people are piling into the crypto scene, it's really easy to let a couple big gains camouflage everyone and everything that's out there to screw you over.

Never ever ever bet more than you can afford to lose. This one is hammered everywhere but in the crypto market, there are a few nuances. If, like me, you started trading with tiny amounts, you need to be really aware of fees, complaints, and limits before trying old advice like 'take everything off exchange as soon as a buy or sell'. Constantly moving funds introduces new risks such as compounding fees, having the transit hacked MITM style on multiple fronts regardless of crypto security, and trading losses on faster markets. I personally have an initial amount I lock after some time, and if I lose a bit of money I do not dip into the initial anymore unless it’s a sure thing. It’s like putting 0.02500000 BTC into an exchange and trading very carefully until it’s 0.02700000 BTC. I then continue trading the original 0.025 very carefully while taking more risks with the new .002 until I’ve made a good amount and can lock my original 0.025 offline and repeat the process. If you suffer heavy losses with either the newly made or even the original, DO NOT keep going. At this point it is super important to step back and see what went wrong and how to learn from your loss. Don’t try to find a magic(not rare at all in crypto) coin that’ll pump all your money back. Revert to being careful again and at least in 2018’s new Wild West, you’ll be fine. Also read the news about both your exchange and the coin you want to buy before buying or withdrawing, as it can lead to less headache and maybe even some day trade level upswings that are coming.

Before you go charting up Alts, chart up BTC first. Even if they coincide most of the time, it’s always better to predict your trading currency before buying a stock currency evaluated in the traded one. A lot of people seem to forget that BTC and the other major pairs fluctuate just as much as the coins they valuate. If BTC starts an upward trend or some really good news comes out, you need to make sure you know about it and how it’s going to affect your current investments. You DO NOT want to watch your altcoin fall 20% and panic sell only to learn soon after that BTC had a short term fall and was poised to rally anyway. Just remember to keep an eye on as many factors as possible that can move your price including fluctuation in the currency your coins are being valued in.

---

External Advice:

Yep, @haejin and McAfee are the big ones here but there is of course other major resources. I can’t stress this enough as it has gotten me before, actually read the advice, the comments, where the charts were made, the whitepaper sometimes, coin’s twitter, exchange’s news. If you are reading other’s advice and charts, DO NOT go into the coin fast unless you know what you’re doing. Make sure you know the time frame for the charts, and that they correlate across exchanges, etc, etc. Haejin has recently posted several coins with mismatched tickers and names causing fairly serious confusion for those who do not look into the analysis and just buy. Again, DO NOT buy into a coin fast just because a semi-trusted figure says it’s good. Even if you are still in the green playing fast and loose like that, it’s far too scary for me as I say, the fast lane is for those who are their own trusted figures. If, as in McAfee’s cases, you are worried you’ll miss a pump, you probably already have and should instead look ahead of the pump knowing a lot of money was lost in it, not just made.

---

Bots and Pump groups:

This is maybe the more underground nitty-gritty level of trading that I’ve had the pleasure of playing around in. For now, my overall experience has pointed to – stay far far away from bots and pump groups. If you wrote a bot for haejin and Cryptopia, you would’ve recently owned some commet coin instead of cybermiles because the tickers are the same and could suffer heavily. And if you’re trying to parse McAfee’s tweets with a custom bot, it’s possible and pretty easy but still really easy to screw yourself unless you write some fairly fancy safeguards. There are other, better, faster bots out there that will beat yours plus insider trading. So far notification bots and even simplified prediction bots seem better suited to the current Wild West setting that requires patience with your own finger on the trigger.

Don’t even get me started on pump groups though, as most of the time it’s a scam to screw new members and not outside investors or whatever else they say. The way they work is really simple, they get new members by showing charts of a coin pumped between 500% and 3000% and tell you it’s easy to get in. Then a select few at the top buy ever so slightly before the pump’s announcement thus pumping the coin up to the goal level, after which a few(or many) members buy either at the top or at the middle after it falls, all the money going of course to the original top pumper. If you want to play it real risky, most slightly higher volume pump and dumps have a second wave that falls fairly low because top guys want to get out with their massive profits. This price is usually between 200% and 600% over and if you buy smallish amounts then, you can catch between 30% and 300% on the aftershock. I DO NOT recommend anyone try these groups or tactics because it’s super risky, and frankly pointless with how bullish things are right now.