Don't listen to McAfee, Decentralize your Trust
Every morning, after giving my wife and daughter a kiss, I kick off my day by perusing the interwebs for the latest blockchain news. And I must tell you, not a day goes by that I don’t see someone asking when a token is going to “moon”, should I keep “hodling or sell”, and even the “Omg I lost $X, please feel sorry for me” posts. If you are like me and have done this for long enough, it starts to feel a bit like groundhog day, doesn’t it?
For some reason in the crypto investing world, unlike any other market I have come across, users put so much value on the opinions of complete strangers. More often than not, they are putting their hard earned money on the line based on what a single user posted in a subreddit, a tweet, facebook group, or <insert social media platform> here.
Let’s actually back up for a second, and remove the “complete stranger” term I used above. Why you may ask? Because you also need to be aware of prominent figures in the community as well. For example, John Mcafee recently stated on a podcast that he gets paid to promote tokens on twitter. How do you think he is getting paid? It shouldn’t take much thought to realize it is via the money you are now pushing into that position he promoted, in a roundabout way of course.
In these communities, a large share of the user base is willing to risk it all as long as someone, anyone, echoes the sentiment they want to hear. The information doesn’t even need any factual evidence to back it up and it can make the markets move.
Then, when the “moon” doesn’t happen as expected and we are faced with the scenario we have experienced over the last couple months, ala Coinageddon. It’s almost as if these “traders”, if you can call them that, go through the phases mentioned above.
Example Phase Flow Chart:
The main detail, which is the most important, that is missing from this chart is personal research and education ie: using a body part we all have called a “brain”. Here at Crypto Fizz we write about everything crypto related, but as I have said before, you need to do your own research. It's not that you can’t use what we have detailed, but you need to diversify and get information from different sources.
Even as tapped in as we are here, we can’t get everything right, cover every piece of news, or see every update. If you are willing to risk your hard earned dollars on something that could be considered a gamble, wouldn’t you want to come to that decision on your own via knowledge and research you have done yourself and not off the word of single person you don’t even know. I know I would. #EndRant
Fortunately, there are many resources you can use to do this, below I will detail a few:
Coin Market Cap (https://coinmarketcap.com/) - On this site you can find what tokens are valued at, how many are in circulation, the exchanges they trade on, and access to their social presence. It’s one of the most widely used/known sites.
Coin Calendar (http://www.coincalendar.info/) - This site is great to keep in the know on upcoming catalysts and events for various tokens, which can move markets.
Coin Checkup (https://coincheckup.com/) - Recently this site was presented to us and we love it. It details for each token the 1hr, 24hr, 7day, 30day, and 90day % gains and losses. Also, you can sort and filter based on target market the token falls in.
Taylor Academy (https://smarttaylor.io/) - Taylor is an application that helps you make trading decisions, and will perform the hard work for you. But the team behind it will also releasing the “Taylor Academy”, which will be a platform with educational courses taught by major influencers within the cryptocurrency community that will help bring users up to speed on investing in this ever changing market. We actually had Rafael Salmon from Taylor on the “Our Two Satoshis” podcast to discuss this recently, check that out here.
Bitcoin Talk (https://bitcointalk.org/) - Don’t let the blast from the past, older forum structure, fool you. This site is chalk full of good information. Don’t sleep on it.
Official Discord/Telegram Communities - Official is the key word here. Most projects have a dedicated community platform. It is always best to get the information straight from the team behind the project than some random Facebook Group, Subreddit, or Twitter account. Join their platforms, its free!
Crypto Fizz (https://CryptoFizz.com) - Shameless plug here, but we try to write about major tokens along with some that aren’t mentioned as often. Our research is done in a manner that is fact based and when we make mistakes that are brought to our attention, we update the content accordingly and in a timely fashion.
TLDR, Moral of the Story: Don’t take a single persons word for it. Diversify your research just like you should diversify your portfolio. Then, once you have taken in information from multiple different sources, make your decision.
Posted from my blog with SteemPress : https://cryptofizz.com/dont-listen-to-mcafee-decentralize-your-trust/
Nice to have you here cryptofizz. It is just as good to diversify your advice as to diversify your coins themselves.
Thanks DrPuffnStuff. It totally is, we wish everyone would read this.. Maybe it would cut down on the "When Moon?, Should I buy, Should I sell" posts.