Hi all, I just wanted to post this as friendly advice on how to trade effectively and stay out of the jaws of the greedy scammers. First a bit of background info which is important you read and understand! personally I'd love this to be made a sticky for anyone new on the forum to read as I'm sick of the scams.
As most are aware the altcoin scene has gone from a serious alternative to bitcoin into a circus! Gone are the good old days of coins being released every now and then! instead a ridiculous amount of coins are being developed (i use the term 'developed' very lightly). Its important you understand that anyone can release a coin and by understanding that you will have the knowledge that most of these coins are owned not by some tech savvy developer but someone who most probably wouldn't have a clue how to code a coin without the use of copy and paste. So basically most coins are simple clones of other useless, worthless coins and yes, with out any training you could release your own coin this week! thats how simple it is. So now you understand that why pump your hard earned money into them?
Lets take Bittrex exchange as an example! you have pages and pages of coins and the coin sitting right up the top in volume and woth say 30,000 sats is probably no different than the coin on page 6 with hardly any volume and only worth 1000 sats. What makes the first coin worth anything is the amount of people trading and buying the coin, therefore its people that say what a coins worth for the most part, not the innovation of the coin itself. That coin will eventually get dumped and eventually the lower coin will possibly have a pump and be worth more than the other. What I'm trying to explain is the market is heavily influenced by us, the buyers and sellers unless it is a genuinely good coin then obviously it will rise as its a solid investment and this is the coins you should be focusing on to make profit, all the others which are influenced on market behaviour are nothing but a high risk gamble and only around 5% of holders will make a profit from it! why? simply because people play the market by playing people and unfortunately those people being played are new traders who don't fully understand how these markets work. Whales, sharks etc whatever name you want to give them are people who pump a coin by hype or throwing btc at it in order to make people buy and increase the price, then they will slowly sell into those buys making good profit, but as their btc is removed from the market the price drops, people panic and sell and the price plummets leaving tons of people holding worthless coins! thats just a simple method used, there are more advanced but thats the basis of it you need to understand.
Like I said I'm sick of all the scammers in crypto, they will kill it if it continues and that would be a great shame as its something that can explode and be very exciting times, but if this continues it will become a known scam industry and new people will simply give it a wide birth and the real good developers and adopters will lose out. So I've compiled a little list to help you trade smart and reduce the risk of losing money, the following list you need to keep in your mind when purchasing a coin, use it as a check list if you will!
1.) Dont use twitter as your source of information
Although there are some very genuine traders on twitter, understand most are traders who want your BTC, they are not there to help make you money. If someone is relentlessly promoting a coin, I guarentee you they have bought that coin and are trying to promote to reach a slight increase in price and when it does they sell! simple. Always ask yourself, why would people giveaway their trades for free? they won't! the world of making money/business is about looking after your own interests not others! Very important you remember that when scrolling through twitter.
Of course there are some genuine ones but twitter should be used as a source of info not advice.
2.) Never pay for info/advice or join groups
These groups are designed for one reason and one reason only, to pull in enough BTC to influence the market of their choice, using YOUR btc! They will use the btc to pump the coin which works, but its only the people at the top or group owners that know their exit price! everyone else gets dumped on! yet refuse to admit its a scam as they did see the price pump and blame themselves for being freedy and not getting out in time. Traditionally these group leaders will tell you the coin should reach around a certain price to make sure you don't sell too early! when asked to join these groups have it in your mind that its effectively a ponzi or pyramid scheme if you like! you will get scammed. As a rule of thumb you should never pay anyone for anything unless you have done research and checked their history fully.
3.) Do proper research, how?
Twitter people will promote the coin they are holding, the same as forum posts, facebook posts etc! so how do you check? Several methods, Simply by using the Ann threads on this forum for each coin! don't just read the last couple of pages, spend time! remember its your money going into it, read every bit you can. Always check out the front page, their website, get info on the developer if you can, if you can't I DM via the forum, twitter or IRC straight to the developer, ask who he/she are, name, experience anything. If they don't reply move on, these guys want you to buy/support their coin, if they can't do that for you then why buy it? Once you have a name, do a google search on them! I know it sound suspicious but I have avoided several coins because unsavoury characters get flagged up! try finding them on facebook, linkedin or other social media. Check the website of the coin! has time and effort been put into it? most scamcoins use a basic template as its just a token site to look official. If a coins thread has little talk about innovations or the dev doesnt reply to posts then that should also set alarm bells ringing.
So onto how you can trade effectively, firstly ask yourself are a day trader or an investor? personally theres nothing wrong with either! money is much easier lost by being a day trader simply as there is not enough time to do proper research and is often done on spur of the moment and gut feeling. The easiest way to make money day trading is by doing what stock traders do and that is by taking profits early. Its easy to get greedy and wait for 'The big money' but believe me that will lose you much more than you will make. Set your profit margin and stick to it, personally i will sell at 10% profit everytime, yes its a slow process for decent returns but it works. Human emotion will tell you to try for a bit more, but you have to be disciplined to the core and never alleviate from your plan. Profit is profit its as simple as that.
Investing is by far the most profitable and where the 'big money' can be reached and its easy to do! I'm going to give you some examples of my past investments and please bear in mind I'm not an expert, I do this part time as I'm a full time fireman and own a business too, but I'm proof by sticking to this post you can earn good money and avoid the scams. The following examples are exactly that, I'm not going to tell you coins to buy it is purely to demonstrate.
So by using the rules above, back in July I spent a few days doing full research on the developers and innovations of a few coins, two of which I've now cashed out on which were Korecoin and Gameleaguecoin. With Gameleaguecoin (GML) by doing research on the dev and innovations I found out long before the twitter brigade got on to it that they were developing a farm type game for the coin with the hope of it going on facebook as an app (which it hasn't) but because I found this out and researched the dev who seemed really focused and genuine, I decided to buy, 1btc at just under 100 sats, I new this was something quite ambitious but quite exciting too and over the following weeks as news came out this coin rose to 1250sats (I sold just above 1000 sats) giving me just over 10 btc profit. I also looked at Korecoin, it had already died once but got taken over by a new dev, so I decided to find out everything I could about him. From the research I did I saw he was a very experienced hard working individual who had some great ideas for the coin, I communicated and asked questions with people involved and made my mind up and bought 2btc at just over 3000 sats. The coin has reached upto 35000 sats in the last few days, sadly I sold at around the 26000-28000 sats mark but still gave me nearly 16btc profit! thats 26btc from just those coins alone by doing research! there has been a few others too and day trading has seen nice steady profit also.
Now I know its easy to say i did this or that after but to prove myself I'll talk about a current investment, and please don't take this as a buy or advice this is my own personal investment used purely for example to show you my process of thinking before buying. But again around the begining of July I started to research Aerocoin, liked what I saw and had positive research, unfortunately and probably stupiudly I didn't buy straight away as at the time is was just under 1000 sats, but far more extensive research has made this coin hit all my criteria. The dev team are very professional and one of them turns out to be somewhat of a crypto celebrity who has done sterling work in the world of cryptocurrencies, one of the forefathers if you like! in my mind if someone has passionately been working towards the reputation and adoption of cryptocurrencies then would only get involved with a coin that was the real deal, it would make no sense not to, mixed in with the factor of a massive innovation coming to the coin it became a no brainer for me, unfortunately like I said good research takes time and the price had risen to 2500sats, but like I said before investing I did full and thorough research and missed it really cheap, but still very happy with my investment and am holding this coin as I know whats coming. Like I said research is key and am confident I'll get proved right yet again.
But the main point is, I'm a nobody in crypto but as long as you have a computer you are all able to do research! don't jump in on someone elses word or mine! if you do it for yourself then you will feel comfortable! if you do research and still find yourself on the fence! walk away.
I apologise for the long post but as I said It makes me sick seeing the amount of scams out there, and as someone very interested and excited about cryptocurrencies as I'm sure you are too, I don't want to see this fail just because of greedy ignorant scammers.
I ask if you have a twitter account or other social media you direct people to this post especially if they are new, just so they have a basic understanding of how things work to avoid being scammed! spread the word and collectively if we all work together to expose scams we can make it harder for undesirables and less common and one day maybe we can have a flourishing market full of predominantly good working coins which have real world value! then and only then can cryptocurrencies and altcoins really hit the big time! failing that this industry will be killed before its really began!
Please share and trade carefully
All the very best wishes to you all
Louie6925