The Crypto space is full of legends, gurus, masters, and gods. But no one ever talks about mistakes. No one is perfect. No one did everything right. I decided to do this. I will share the mistakes I made when I first joined the crypto space. Hopefully someone will be able to take something away from this.
I joined the crypto space about a year ago. I was part of the frenzy that thought crypto would take over the world in 2017. I invested ~$1,000 and started trading bitcoin and altcoins and my goal was to reach to $100,000 in 6 months!!!
Lesson #0: (Thanks to @Dudeperfect) YOU are responsible for your money and securityWhen I started in crypto I was mad at everyone on twitter. I used to follow their calls and when it did not work I would be mad at them and I tried to hold them responsible for my loss. This is not the right way to do so. Be careful and DYOR. Security is another important thing in the crypto world. If you do not know the difference between public and private key, you should not be throughout money around.
Lesson #1: Do not set rather unrealistic goals!Instead of having a goal that you will probably never reach, try to be the best you can. Try to increase your investment in a rational non-risky way. Do not go all in on one coin because you missed a deadline on doing a x2 for a week. Let the growth, experience, and money, come to you naturally.
Lesson #2: Do not FOMO!I do not know if this is still the case, but back in the days, McAfee used to tweet about a coin and the coin would instantly jump to do a x2. So naturally, I wanted to get on board. What I did not know what that all these buys and sells would happen instantly with bots. I did not realize I was too late because I wanted to buy ASAP. So there you go, REKT!!
Lesson #3: Be very careful when taking advantage of market arbitrage!Taking advantage of market arbitrage is great. But you have to be careful. Arbitrage usually occurs between large exchanges (@BittrexExchange or @binance_2017) and smaller exchanges (@Cryptopia_NZ or @hitbtc) when the value of one coin in BTC is usually different from one exhcnage to another. However, what you need to know is that these smaller exchanges sometimes have issues in their system and depositing coins might take forever. ALWAYS check the status of the sites before deciding to take advantage of arbitrage. For Cryptopia go
https://www.cryptopia.co.nz/CoinInfo and check to make sure that the block height is close to the most recent block on blockchain For hitbtc go
https://hitbtc.com/system-health and make sure the deposit for your coin is not offline. I got REKT a couple of times because of this.
NOTE: The Legendary member of this forum @Velkro says: "Arbitrage is one of the most risky job in bitcoin world. If you count in transaction delays, all exchange problems, from FIAT block, BTC block/account block, exchange malfunction/downtime. Not to say about price fluctuation +30% in 10 minutes, you are safe to say its only for insane people"
Lesson #4: Do not waste your time participating in crappy airdrops/referral/bounty!I can say that 90% of all the airdrops, referrals, and bounty campaigns are pure crap. Do not waste your time with these useless ways to get some extra coins. I have many many coins in my account that I got from different Airdrops that worth less than $0.01, seriously. Try to research a little bit about the campaign you are participating. It will worth it.
Lesson #5: (Thanks to @sase007) Due your own research before participating in an ICOResearch any ICO before participating in it. I know it can be very intriguing to put all you money in an ICO by only looking at similar projects that did a x10. However, know that MOST (over 90%) ICOs fail. @sase007 suggests that "don't participate in icos unless the developers are well trusted or the source code gets released and looks worthy of the amount per token that the developers/marketers are asking for it."
Lesson #6: (Thanks to @socks435) Do not trust investment sites (doubler) or cloud mining servicesThe Legendary member of this forum @socks435 suggests that most of the investment sites that offer a daily interest and cloud mining services are either unprofitable or are an outright scam. So do a thorough research before deciding to do this.
Lesson #7: (Thanks to @socks435) Always use an escrowWhen you are trading with someone that you do not trust 100%, use an escrow to ensure you are not being scammed. Look at this link if you have no idea what I'm talking about:
https://cointelegraph.com/explained/escrow-explainedLesson #8: (Thanks to @Hagmonar): Greed is a bottomless pit!Do not wait for your investment to do a x10. It might not ever happen. Take profit on the way up. Don't be greedy. Enjoy your profit and do not think about the fact that the coin did another x2 after you took your initial investment out. I do not know if this is perfect but this is what I used to do, take 1/2 or 1/3 of my initial investment after a x2 or x3 and let the rest ride with the wave.
I encourage all the experienced people to complete this thread by sharing with us their mistakes. I will also try to update this if I remember anything else.