Profiting in Cryptocurrency

  I was deciding if I should share my experiences with the crytocurrency world. I hope it doesn’t hurt me, and I hope this can help any others that are new to this strange stuff like I am. 

  I did complete a few bitcoin transactions back 2014, but just small ones. I pretty much thought “I would invest in this if I had the money.” Ha ha, even ten dollars’ worth of bitcoin back then would be valued at like 400 dollars or more now. I even met a few friends that traded bitcoins. They probably bath in bitcoins now. I recently decided that I wanted to get back in it. I saw bitcoin was at 4k and on the rise and wanted to buy some coins as fast as possible and skip services that require verification. I bought bitcoins at a premium for 5-6k each and barely purchased one tenth of a coin total. I already had two wallets and one of which was a decent trading platform. I began trading bitcoins and other coins that seemed popular. I happened to even get in on the Dash and Bitcoin Cash increases and that made me think “Should I really be trading bitcoins when bitcoins do not go up 100% in a single day?” I suppose the only down side to that is that I could also lose 100% in a single day, but I’m not scared of losing money. I made that near 1/10 of a bitcoin deposit and did not intend on depositing more money – especially if I lost it all.  

  I started looking for alternate coins (aka shit coins). The only problem here was to find exchanges that I did not hassle me, as I like to do things quickly without taking the time to send my light bill. I found a small exchange called Coingather. I deposited some bitcoins coins and began trading for alternate coins. I realized my account balance had dropped very low (maybe around $4?). I figured out that one of those alternate coins quickly dropped in value. I deposited more bitcoin, but unfortunately would later realize how much of a mistake that would turn out to be. I suppose I need to be more diligent at this if I want to actually make money, and not lose it. I sought out other exchanges and found a few good ones. I used my Bitcoin Cash and Dash profits to deposit $100 or so worth into these other exchanges. I recall something my finance teacher told me that meant something along the lines of good investments being spread out. Having an account on several different exchanges helped me with this since not every exchange has all 700 or so coins/tokens. I took that advice seriously and began trading with over 40 different coins at a time. I saw some balances go up and some go down. I thought “I don’t want to lose money, just earn money, so I have to figure this out.”  

  This is around the time the Coingather thief made off with my cryptocurrencies. I was accessing coingather every single day, and then could not access my account for some reason? I have bitcoins and bitcoin cash on this account. I remember the overall btc was valued at around 0.03. I have to figure out how to get into my account. I’m not trying to lose money here. That’s when a friend told me “you need to stop using shady exchanges.” Later, I saw that nicely written article about the missing Coingatherer. Now for the next step. I leveled up, I became slightly more diligent. I figured out that I can view the daily trade volume of the exchanges which might help me determine how many people trust the site. So maybe I should get on the exchanges that have higher trade volumes as to hopefully avoid giving some nerd free money again. I also realized at this point that I should not withdraw btc. That 0.001 btc charge is still a lot of money to me.  

  I am obviously not doing this completely wrong, as I am making some profit on my trades. Although trading 0.001 bitcoins a time is not much. I am not an expert at this. I am a complete amateur. I only took a few business classes. I don’t think those classes were a waste of time now, but I also don’t believe I can simply say “well, in economics, there is supply and demand, so if people want the coin then they will buy it?” No, I don’t think people are buying these shit coins just to have them. My classes never gave an example of trading cryptocurrency. I must take a guess and say maybe they buy them with some goal in mind. I think it’s probably to make a shit ton of money. 

  I have to consider certain factors when I choose to buy a coin. I should consider:

The graph: Historical data will tell me what has happened to this coin, when has it gone up, gone down, past high prices, initial price.

Market Cap: How many of these coins are being traded, the amount of btc or cash flow per 24-hour span, the price of the coin, the circulating supply, and the overall rank of the coin.

  Then ask, “Why should I buy this coin with my hard earned very small amount of BTC? Why are other people buying this coin? Is there something in the news about this coin? Maybe being listed on large exchanges like Bittrex? Is the coin itself actually useful? As in, do people actually have a practical value for the coin? Okay, well the coin is going up, I make money if it goes up right? I suppose I just need to make sure my overall BTC value goes up, but what if the coin just plummets and I don’t make a profit? How will I know when to sell it if I am just trying to make a profit? I just figured this out and I know if I am stupid or not, but I hope this helps other people. People that buy those shit coins have a target price. I am trying to figure out that exact moment that I should sell my coins to maximize my profit. One problem, I still have to go to work and then what? Well, that’s just great. Howe do I react to the value of a coin that is so volatile, that it only takes maybe 30 minutes to half its price? What about when to even buy the coin? Do I just buy coins just because I see positive BTC percentage increase? The answer could be as simple as just leaving my coins in or conditional sells I suppose, but that could potentially reduce my measly profit margin. So I will focus on learning about when to sell for a while and share my experience when I get the answer.

 

 Thanks for reading. I hope this helps anyone that is a noob to cryptocurrency. If I’m wrong about anything I wrote then I don’t mind feedback. I am just learning and sharing the thought process of someone that is new to the crypto world.   Note: I’m not sure about mentioning names except when necessary or well known names, so I avoided doing so if it was possible possible.

Also, this is my own writing and everything I wrote here are my own thoughts.