The Biggest Mistake Beginners Make Investing in Crypto


Bitcoin and altcoin investors tend to measure their cryptocurrency gains in US dollar terms. While this is fine to do with Bitcoin, your altcoin investments should always be measured against Bitcoin to determine whether or not you generated value for yourself.

If you aren't keeping track of how your performance would have been had you just bought Bitcoin rather than your current investments, you are measuring your performance incorrectly and may be destroying more value than you know despite the fact your portfolio has doubled in US dollar terms!

In any other asset class out there, investors compare their returns against a relevant benchmark. Whether it's the S&P 500 or the Barclays aggregate, there is always a way to measure whether or not you're under or overperforming. With cryptocurrencies, the benchmark is Bitcoin. But you shouldn't just think of your profits in terms of Bitcoin: You should also think of basic TA in Bitcoin levels too.

The reason for this is because all other cryptocurrencies see substantial amounts of volume from their Bitcoin cross-currency pair. That means support and resistance lines, channels, moving averages, RSI and many other indicators are all measured in Satoshi levels rather than USD. The USD value you see on Coinmarketcap is just for convenience rather than utility. I cannot give you the equivalent USD level, as some requested in my last video, as any given Satohsi level for a cryptocurrency will vary widely depending on price of Bitcoin.

I provide more specific examples in the video, including a failed trade of mine that (to this point) has destroyed over 50% of value! I hope you enjoy and as usual, I look forward to your thoughts in the comments.


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This is the aspect of Cryptocurrencies I've been trying to get my head around. What I have done when trading is to compare the dollar value of a coin to its BTC value and then calculate what the BTC value is in dollars. If I'm buying I use the one that has less value, if selling I use the one that has higher value. One of the pitfalls of doing this is the high volatility of BTC so it doesn't always work but it can save a few dollars.

For future viewers: price of bitcoin at the moment of posting is 9156.30USD

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