Welcome To Crypto: I’m Making Crypto Make Sense
BY CRYPTOKARP ON 4/16/18 AT 4:30 PM
Welcome to this series, where you’ll be introduced to the crypto sphere by me — CryptoKarp. Regardless of what you may or may not already know, I’ll do my best to cater this series to beginners, either regarding trading or crypto itself.
A Little About Myself
As you might know, I go by CryptoKarp (@CryptoKarp — twitter). I am a cryptocurrency enthusiast, novice trader, and an eager learner. My journey started in crypto a little under a year ago and I’m excited to share my experiences during that time and any insight that will benefit you in the space.
Let’s Get Started
I was never too excited to come out of University into a 9 to 5 job and slave my way into pension, retirement, and trying to enjoy the last years of my life.
I’ve always tried to find my way around, but — like many — I’ve havent’ had the best start. I got a summer job and even did some odds and ends so that I could have some spare cash to work with and alleviate the pressures of failure. I’ve always “looked up” to successful business owners. I didn’t really admire any of those people, but they possessed a certain kind of knowledge that I could see making my life better. Plus, they were able to become wealthier than most anyone could dream of.
No matter what these people did, spending big wasn’t one of the things they were doing on a daily basis. So I started there. Accumulation of any wealth took a while, but I did manage to save some cash at the end of these occasional jobs.
Then I went through some very hard moments — or trials of fire as I’d call it — with the money I’d saved up. The first thing that happens, when you expose yourself to the world, is that you’ll get found by the predators first and all they want is to use you to their advantage, especially if it involves money.
Through the unpleasant experiences came some very valuable lessons. The world is filled with scamers wherever you go, and after these, I’m fairly confident to say that now I can call BS when I see it…well most of the time.
During this period, I made new friends, that were doing more or less the same thing, and so we continued to stick together. Since then, I benefited greatly from their company and experiences and I definitely wouldn’t be where I am today without them.
With them I went through my first trading experiences, they showed me the ropes, and for a while I was trading binary options. It never appealed to me as much as crypto does today, and I’m convinced it was because it just didn’t make sense to me really. The way traders make money, just didn’t add up to anything that I previously knew. We were just clicking a few buttons on the screen based on some lines in charts, and if done well, I would have at least as much money in my account as I’d make in my part time job. But trading on the other hand did nothing for anybody but myself.
Through this period I felt like something had always been missing. I really felt like there wasn’t much point to what I did. That’s why I wanted to do something else.
And that’s when it happened.
Welcome to Cryptocurrencies
It was at this point that I was reminded of this thing — which is a big deal today — called Bitcoin. I remembered I heard of Bitcoin before, but I was way too young to comprehend what it was, what it did, besides “oh it’s some kind of internet money”. Back then I had no idea why it would be valued and thought it was silly. This time however, I was better informed — I had smart people in the space telling me about it. I did some digging around it myself too, but as I like to call the first part — ignorance — I didn’t really care that much besides what was told to me. That was simply enough. To be able to control my money 100%, without having to trust anyone, was enough. I never liked fiat money, banks, the establishment, government and that lot of people in general. So being shown something that was outside of that system, was new, exciting.
Initiation Period — Ignorance
As I mentioned, at first, I didn’t care about more than that. I had a clue about what it was, what it did, what it could do, and mainly that it could make me money. Lots of it and from the little I had to start with.
At first, I didn’t take any of this seriously and it could be argued I still don’t — not to the extent I should anyways. I bought my first fraction of a Bitcoin a few weeks before its first fork. The market was very much indecisive about it, and therefore the price fell from the buying point by 30–40%. And that’s the very first lesson I learned (re-learned I guess): Do NOT invest all of your money into one single asset. I know what you’re thinking…
Friend: “But if this works out then I’ll have this much money!”
Me: “How can I know that?”
I did that too, and well, I didn’t make that big number the first time around. But, a few weeks went by and it sure paid off well. However, if I’d put everything in on the first entry, I wouldn’t be in such a good position; both financially and mentally. As you continue forward, keep that in mind.
Then Came The First Alt-Coin
My first alt-coin, Buying the blood, looking at prospective cryptos and reinvesting my Bitcoin. Time went by and it seemed like I was getting the hang of things, but I wasn’t. I made my share of mistakes; I chased pumps, different coins, if you can think of it, I’ve done it. I really did learn the hard way. But, considering I had no idea what I was doing — just using common sense really — it had gone really well. My strategy was simple, and that’s how I made it work. Not it’s simplicity, but just the fact that I had a plan. In addtion, having a plan made things even more simple for me starting out and that’s how I produced the results I did; I looked ahead and planed.
Besides going away for months of learning and simulated trading, having a plan, i.e. if A happens I’ll react like this and if B happens, I’ll do that, is surprisingly a lot better plan than most people that come into the space had. Of course if your expectations are grounded and you don’t want Ripple to go to $1000 a coin, then it’s gonna work. Will you make money — guaranteed? No, that’s not what I mean by “work”.
A plan requires two components — strategy and allocation, or risk management. The latter however, is the more important of the two. Even with the best strategy, you’ll lose some trades. Add bad risk management and it will not only wipe the 10 successful trades, but your initial capital as well. Again, do not put all your eggs into the same basket. These were the rules I learned at the beginning, forgot a bit later, got reminded by the market and re-learned them again through self research — because it’s what I did as work.
Curiosity
This brings up the next section — Curiosity. I got all too curious about trading and this space in general. I started digging deeper into how to trade, and learning more detail about Bitcoin, various alt-coins and crypto in general. I joined crypto twitter, followed my first OGs (Any cryptocurrency trader and investor that is still around after the 2013–2014 Bitcoin bear market.), watched things unfold, and it was all just too exciting. Like a shiny sparkling stone you find on a beach. It just stands out so much from everything else — like crypto did in my life.
Rabbit Hole
To put things simply, I embraced crypto with open arms, and started learning more and more, almost each day. Whether it would be newsletters, podcasts, scanning through potential alt-trades, their fundamentals, price action, more about Bitcoin and latest developments, or even simply scanning through twitter, public telegram / discord groups, or lately reading books. All of them offer a slightly different learning experience and as I found it, it does help with learning. I explain it by the fact that you can only do so much of one thing. For example, you can listen to only so many podcasts, you simply can’t focus on the message that’s being told after a certain time. Same goes for reading newsletters or books, whether it’s on screen or not it has an impact and that applies to charts as well.
There is a limit to how much you can practice charting patterns, going through different strategies and plans. My advice would be this: “Too much of everything hurts”. Do not over-do it from the beginning. Think of it as a long distance race. You don’t go blazing out of the gates, you need to save enough energy for the end during the run, while conditioning yourself to be still in the race, and you don’t want to be full of energy but one lap behind either. Balance is the key. Some days you’ll feel overwhelmed by the work-load, others you’ll feel like you can go on for hours. Just stick to your plan, build a routine — it helps…a lot.
Also, it will be your first discipline test. If you fail in this stage, you’ll definitely fail to stay disciplined during trading when you’re overwhelmed by emotions from the P/L on the trades, risk you’ve exposed yourself to and so on…
There is so much to go through, but for the introduction, I’ll have to cut it here.
Last thing I’ll mention, is that the way you trade, invest, should adapt. As you learn more and more, you should review your positions and adjust according to the new information you earned during the learning process. Also never blindly follow anybody. Question everything and everyone.
Keep these few rules I mentioned close, I’m sure they’ll be of use to you, and should you forget them, the market will remind you.
Also few of my favorite resources include Marty’s Bent (a daily newsletter), Tales from the Crypt — a crypto podcast with a big variety, where you’ll be able to learn many about the fundamentals of crypto/ bitcoin, as well as enhance your knowledge regarding many topics. A great start to trading, first rules and introduction, where I started as well, can be found on the DataDash youtube channel.
I highly recommend checking out these resources. I and many others found big value in what they’re offering, so I’m sure you’ll be able to find something useful there too.
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More on me 👇
I am a cryptocurrency enthusiast, novice trader, and an eager learner. My journey started in crypto a little under a year ago and I’m excited to share my experiences during that time and any insight that will benefit you in the space. Feel free to reach out to me via Twitter or Discord
However I can make this process easier for you I will 😎
I’ve Got Socials Too
Discord: MaGiKarP#8865
Twitter: Crypto Karp
