Hey guys! Today I was looking back at my crypto journey, and boy what a roller coaster it has been! I decided to divide this post into a two parts as I have an exam tomorrow I'd like to study for!
A Summary of my Crypto History
I first got into crypto around late August of last year, so it's been almost a full year since I purchased my first 0.2BTC! This 0.2BTC rose in value fast as I invested in some random altcoins (I literally don't even remember which ones), and soon I had doubled my initial investment!
However, that was when I discovered crypto gambling, and within seconds I had lost it all.
Completely shook, I had no idea what to do. I lied to my mum about my situation, and borrowed another $2,000 AUD from her to buy back most of what I had before. Luckily for me, the market was quite good and it soon doubled, doubled, and doubled again! I withdrew about $7,500 AUD and just told myself I'll let the rest sit in here until it either goes to $0 or I become a millionaire.
Within a few months, I was sitting on 6 figures. Euphoria and excitement gripped me, but greed clouded my judgement. Many people around me, including myself told me I should sell, but my money kept going up, including one day which I "earned" $50,000. I literally thought I was going to be a millionaire by the end of the week.
However, I soon realised JUST how much money I had. I decided to sell my KCS (I was all in on KCS) into BTC and "diversify". I bought VEN and COSS.
Long story short, I put 60% of my money into COSS near ATH, then DCA down. COSS today is around 98% down from ATH, and around 96% down from where I DCA'd to. I am glad I sold at a 75% loss, which I used to buy Steem (which has also just kept going down LOL). After some calculations, I realise I'm in a slightly better financial position I am now compared to if I just stayed all in in COSS, but the most important thing is with the majority of my crypto in Steem, I can sleep well at night. Price doesn't affect me anymore knowing that I truly believe in this platform. Sometimes seeing a sub $1 Steem is discouraging, but at the end of the day I believe we're worth more. This brings me to my first lesson
Lesson 1: invest in what you believe in
It sounds easy, but it's really not. I thought I believed in COSS, yet at the same time when I was all in on it, I legit couldn't sleep at night. If you're constantly anxious about your investments, you NEED to do something about it, as at that point I feel it's more gambling than investing.
You're either in too deep, or in on something you don't really understand/believe in. For me it was both.
If you are anxious about your investment, consider your position and re-evaluate your choices. However, if you do make a mistake it's not the end of the world
Lesson 2: learn from your mistakes
THIS is something that can be applied to life all round. I currently tutor maths, and I try to emphasise as hard as I can that mistakes are natural, in fact it's welcome! Without any mistakes, what can we learn from?
After an investment goes bust, think to yourself, why? Try to think about what happened and learn from it. I understand crypto is volatile, unpredictable and sometimes simply irrational, but there's always something to learn. Sometimes it's easy to blame others, but if you're finding yourself failing a lot, the common factor in all those failures is you.
Lesson 3: don't beat yourself up
That being said, it's also easy to go overboard blaming yourself. Especially when everyone around you were like "wtf are you doing with this magic internet money", your mentality going in probably involved something to prove. When this happens, and things don't go your way, you're more inclined to blame yourself even more, since everyone around you was against your ideas.
Remember, everyone makes mistakes, own up to it, learn from it and don't dwell on it. I make $25 an hour tutoring at my current job, I could dwell on the fact I lost around 10,000 hours, or I could just simply NOT!
I understand that it's easy for me to just forget about my losses since I'm young with no responsibilities, but for those out there who are in a different boat, especially for those who never got to withdraw their capital, understand that you can make your money back, and more importantly, what's gone is gone.
This comes back to lesson 2, don't dwell on it, learn from it and hopefully next time you decide to invest in crypto (or anything), you'll have more experience so you can make more mature decisions regarding your money.
That's it folks!
I had about 8 lessons I wanted to write about, but I'll just leave it here for now and list the other 4 below! I'll expand on those points in a post tomorrow :)
- Lesson 4: don't invest more than you're comfortable losing
- Lesson 5: be methodical, not greedy
- Lesson 6: money isn't everything, learn about what you're doing
- Lesson 7: blockchain is still in its infancy, and I'm not giving up
- Lesson 8: the market is cyclical
I realise a few of those lessons are quite similar, but I'll write about them tomorrow anyway!
Thanks for reading!