The Trials and Tribulations of a Noob Crypto Trader

Hi folks. I am still what I consider to be a noob in the crypto space, I have been dabbling a bit since about August 2017 but I guess I have been balls deep since Nov/Dec.

This is my journey so far and as it goes on, to give other noobs insights as to some of the mistakes that I have made and maybe, just maybe I will get a couple of helpful comments from experienced traders. (That is, when you decide to take pity on me after shaking your head at my mistakes)

Full disclosure, I am not doing too bad overall. Up until the start of January when the bull run ended I was nearly 20x my overall investment (which is only a few thousand dollars. No whale here ). The blood bath over the last couple of weeks has eaten into that considerably and I am now sitting at about 8x. I read contradicting predictions about where the prices are going, I really hope that the more optimistic ones come to fruition sooner rather than later. There a few things I want to pay for with crypto, but I would rather wait until the highs return.

The beginning...

My journey almost started a few years ago, if only it did. Colleagues and I were talking about Bitcoin and how it had sky rocketed to $50 and how we really missed the boat on that one. My wife reminds me of that often, never more so than when the BTC price approached $20K.

Fast forward a few years and the same group of us were talking about Bitcoin again. It was on the move and we really did not want to miss out. We googled the best way to get int the game from Australia and stumbled across a medium article about how to buy Ethereum in Australia, written by an Aussie, @jamieskella.

https://medium.com/@jamieskella/how-to-buy-ethereum-in-australia-dd49c555dd00

At the bottom of the article was a mention of a thing called Horizon State, democracy on the block chain. I did not realise it at the time, but Jamie Skella was one of the founders of Horizon State and this was to become both my first, and most profitable ICO. Check out HST on coin market cap, https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/decision-token/ Low circulating supply, real world use, great team. Theses guys deserve great things and I think that I owe Jamie a beer or two. His article pointed me towards ICOs and the money that can be made with them.

I made a lot of little mistakes in the beginning, that cost me $$. For example, when I deposited my initial fiat, I bought bitcoin, converted it to Eth, sent it to my exodus wallet where I then converted some of it back to BTC, and others were shifted into others, like OMG and Golem. The fees were horrendous.

I bought Ripple at $0.20 and ended up selling at $0.24, I had Lightcoin at about $70 which I ended up selling for next to no profit so I could use the funds to buy PowerLedger (after its initial rise post ICO).

The worst of all, I dipped my toe into the murky waters that is BitConnect. I say that I only dipped my toe, as I really did not put much into it. It was only a bit over $100 as it always seemed too good to be true. Like most things, this turned out to be the case. It was one of those things that would have been nice if it played out right, but I did not invest more than I could afford to lose. I was pissed off when it fell down, but I was neither surprised, nor totally distraught in the way it played out. @trevonjb , I know that you have been copping a lot of hate, but I for one don't hold it against you.

With all of the mistakes I have made, some things have turned out pretty well.

I was able to pick up Snovio on EtherDelta at under the ICO price. I have been able to sell and buy back on dips to improve my holdings.

I picked up Verge really cheap. From what I have read it will either go really high or be worth nothing. I got it cheap and my fingers are crossed.

Other ICOs that I have invested in :

Simple Token - I got in pretty early so I was able to do pretty well out of bonuses.
Quantstamp - I thought that this one would have performed a little better but it is still early days.
Crypto20 - I don't know what to expect here. It is only newly unlocked and about 3X but I just don't know.

There there are a few that still are not in the exchanges - Zilla, Cashaa, Lympo and TravelFlex.

I am holding other alts as well, NEO, Verge, Reddcoin, Powerledger, SelfKey, Dragonchain and Telcoin and jump at any airdrops that I can.

There. Fairly quick and nasty but that is me. Far from perfect but not doing too bad. Although to be honest, in that time just after xmas, if you were not doing well there you were doing something seriously wrong.

Feel free to offer up any feedback, good, bad, or ugly. I am learning and by no means should anything that I have written be taken as investment advice.

Cheers