Trading is hard, investing is not

Hey everyone!

This is my first post here on Steemit. I'm glad to have gotten my account verified (took a month lol), but I just want to get started with it! This past month has been full of loads of uncertainty in the cryptomarkets. I've shot the gammut of seeing this pause as a long stop to the $10,000 mark and then the next day thinking it will go into the ground. The truth is... I don't know!

I started getting into cryptos only around Dec 2016, and of course it started with bitcoin. I got my first full-time salaried job working on a weather satellite for NASA, and I had just finished putting my money into a Tech fund before I heard about BTC through a coworker. But he wasn't calling it BTC. He was calling it bitcoin, because he was mining it at home. It was up to me to find out that you can actually trade this stuff!

I've spent way too many hours a day over the past 5 months on these coins. I'll admit it. I absolutely loved bitcoin and the crytpos and was pleasantly surprised when my $1200 investment on Stratis at around $.60 eventually turned into a $12,000 win when I pulled out at $6.00. "Crytpo's are easy!" I was saying to myself. I was imagining myself putting my winnings into pink and some of the other speculative ones and making loads upon loads of profit... Well... turns out it's only easy on the way up...

For the past two months that $12,000 gain has slowly diminished by about 30%. The absolute love of the market has turned into anxiety and worry about whether my short term gains would come to fruition. Most of the time they did not, and I was stuck worrying how I could be so wrong...

OKAY. Here comes my advise / personal opinions. If you wanted to just congratulate me on joining, please pause here before your ears start bleeding :)

If you talk to anyone in the crytposphere, they will tell you that the last month has been a bloodbath for the cryptos. People are selling like crazy, because they simply won't rise again. Prices that SEEM like discounts one day turn out to be overpriced the next day. But I have yet to find someone that has come to this realization: ... People are not selling these coins... (wait for it)... computers are selling them. Poloniex has been virtually human-less for the past month, because people have lost interest and the computers are taking profit. So to be more correct, those that have interfaced with poloniex's API are the ones moving the markets.

AND THAT'S AMAZING! Because computers are very rational and predictable. They obey areas of support and resistance to the T. This is exceptionally true for the previously big movers like STRAT and digibyte. All you have to do is look left... to the other side of the bell curve, and that's where you can place your buys. And the sells? Yeah, those are way up by the main down-ward trendline that the coin just left on its latest plummet to the center of the earth.

Here are some more factoids from someone who has been an inside outsider for the bulk of this cryptocurrency bull (and now bear) market:

#1) All cryptos generally follow bitcoin, unless there's a short-term local speculative rush.
- This means you should be hanging around USD or Tether until bitcoin finds reasonable support.
#2) Big news is BIG on the way up, but on the way down, no one gives a fuck
- Again, the computers are only trying to seek a price equilibrium. They don't give a shit if a digibyte conference is coming up
#3) Don't overtrade.
- I've lost so much money this way. Only trade when bitcoin is recovering or on a run-up curve. Although on the run-up curve, it's probably much wiser to just hold until the peak is reached.
- Once you become a good trader, you will KNOW when bitcoin has fallen just about as far as it's going to go... but don't assume you are right. Check in a day later to make sure it's still recovering.

Another thing I've learned bitcoin will likely be worth did-ly SQUAT in the future. And you won't hear any other cryptoperson say that. Is it because there are other better crytpos out there?... Yeah, that's part of it.

But the main reason is that bitcoin is already doing what it hoped to unfurl in the far future. And that is... keeping the coins to only a select few without redistribution of coins to the masses. It's a classic story of the rich get richer. It's actually a very cyclical process:

It's a fact that most bitcoin transactions are traders seeking to take profit.
Who is most able to trade the crypto markets profitably?... Those that know the cryptocurrency market
Who knows the cryptocurrency market? ... Those that have been in crytpos for a long time.

Those who have been in cryptos a long time TEND to have a lot of bitcoin, and therefore are able to trade PROFITABLY.

It's an ironic price manipulation that happens to be decentralized. The only way that I see BTC being the future of money (even with segwit, the lightning network, etc.) is if the holders of BTC redistributed the coin on a massive scale.

And many have actually done this (faucets, etc.). But in the end, greed is still a big player. For the good of the coin, I hope they solve this problem. In the meantime, I'll still always appreciate the technology and intention of the crypto community. The tech is primed to be used by banks and companies wishing to be able to use blockchain applications.

Thanks for reading. Goodbye for now!