My story of Cryptocurrency beginning in August 2017 until now

In this post, I will tell a bit about my journey and myself but mostly the things I’ve learned to do and learned not to do.

I began crypto in July/August after a relative of mine came over one day and said buy xvg , at the time it was half a cent, not knowing sat value or BTC pairs, I was like “holy shit if this thing reaches a dollar I’m a millionaire” later I realized I bought it at 180 sats, in the previous bull run . BTC at the time was somewhere like 3.5k USD, I’m not 100% on BTC price because I didn’t follow it the noob that I was.

So I had roughly 150k xvg , didn’t look at it for 2 months, then BTC’s rise caught my attention, I said I missed that boat, so the next best thing was ethereum, Bought a few of that at 250 USD, alongside other coins that I got shilled on by the “OG’s”. To my luck my coins were ADA at about 300 sats, xlm at 250 sats, dgb at 130 sats, redd coin at 11 sats, I really did go for some shit coins my mindset was these are bloody cheap lol but they turned out pretty good never the less.
Followed by some laggard coins like Stratis,waves, pivx (turned out good because of the binance listing)
Alongside my winners my losers were; zerocoin, hshare, xcp, srn which I either bought late or timed it wrong and got rekt. There were more losers but I only put a little into them so the loss was minuscule
The coins that I could’ve bought and didn’t buy; XRB was on bitgrail, I was lazy to make an account etc. And ZCL I saw it at like 20k sats, but at the time I was looking at shit coins below 1k sats mostly.

So the November/DECEMBER bull run started I was like HODL HODL HODL, yes it turned out very good, I, however, sold only a small portion of my stack because of my greed, luckily sold all my xvg, and did very well on dgb, ADA, and XLM.
I had small trades here and there in the Bull Run, bought and sold coins like power ledger, block tix, EMC2, elastic etc. Most of my buying and selling was chasing the pumps lmao but they turned out all right in the Bull Run to my luck.

So what happened next, the bear market started, BTFD BTFD (Buy the fucking dip), all these guru’s and supposed OG ’s, you don’t even know who is an OG lol or not, in an uptrend you buy the dip, in a bear trend you sell the rallies. Everyone is supposedly a genius. That turned out bad. Luckily I got my initial investment out in the Bull Run, at this rate BTC can head to zero and I would watch it with my stack.
I was in shock, making so much money and losing it so quick the 22-year old that I am, took me 1 month to get over, at which point I realized my losses mostly came from my ignorance, listening to others and blindly following. It was my fault. BECAUSE IN A BULL RUN EVERYONES A GENIUS!
I didn’t know this. Hell, I didn’t know what a bull and bear market was, but I managed somehow. I made up my mind to prepare myself, and not to whine, opportunities come and go, the next run I would be ready.
I took the past 7 months or so and began to teach myself and practice (a lot of paper trading), when and if that bull run comes I will exit, I don’t care If I’m a little early a little late or on time I will exit (when I say exit I will sell coins to either BTC or USD depending on situation)
Firstly, I went through the babypips educational course which was for free.
Followed by watching videos, reading books such as Trade like a stock market wizard (which wasn’t too applicable to the fast past crypto market), The art and science of technical analysis which seems all right and a few more books.
Had some sessions with people that I know who trade personally (these people I trust)
RISK MANAGEMENT if I can stress anything enough it would be this!
And in the past 7 months, I did tonnes of paper trades and very low capital invested trades, to test my newly learned abilities and skills, which areas am I lacking and should build on. Often I still have a hard time controlling my selling emotions. Because If I buy a coin and it goes against me and I didn’t set a stop loss my decision would be HOLD, but If a coins price went in my favor I would be like “should I keep holding or sell”.
In no way am I a professional, but it beats not knowing shit and following others hoping for the best.
Largely I focused on when to enter and when to exit. Nowadays, I do my own trades, I don’t try to catch the bottom or sell the exact top, more like ride the waves that appear, like recently, DGB, COLX and a few more small trades.

My mistakes
1- Getting shilled on – even if a project is good, wait for a week, and see price action especially in a bear market it can dump hard on you (generally there will be a better time to buy)
2- Greed – control my emotions – if it gets euphoric it probably is time to exit
3- No one can care about my money more than me
4- Most of the time large paid groups are scams, there will, of course, be small paid groups out there for whales or big players but will I discover them –probably not
5- Pump and dump free channels – I’m in them just in case they pump my coin, and I can dump on them
6- FOLLOW your own indicators and STRATEGY (happens even now, where my strategy and indicators point the opposite direction to the majority and as human emotions tend to follow the crowd it works against me). So follow my own plan.

My lessons learned which I’m truly grateful for
1- Most traders in stocks experience bull and bear markets which take years to play out, I received these lessons in crypto in a crash course in just one year. If I’m in a bull market next time I will know what comes next and vice versa whether it would be in crypto, stocks, forex or housing boom.
2- Emotions that I need to control
3- Risk management
4- I don’t need to catch the bottom and sell the top, I just need to be there for the bigger wave

This 1 year has been an amazing experience in my life; I’ve been in both ends of the spectrum.
I haven’t included everything, actually left out a lot of things in this post since I didn’t want it to be too lengthy.
Hopefully, in the following bull and bear markets, I will be ready to take the full advantage. I won’t be fooled twice (hopefully) 
It was a quick write up, excuse me if I’ve misspelt or wrote something that doesn’t make sense.
I’m not a whale or a large player, but I’ve learned lessons which I will hopefully use for the rest of my life. And I hope I have friends here who have also done the same