Cryptocurrency Trading - Week 1

After a few months of tracking Ethereum and BitCoin, I finally decided to take the jump and buy my first cryptocurrency. I figured I would put up a post about my experiences both good and bad of my adventures in crypto investing.

To get started, I joined Coinbase through a referral, which made taking the initial plunge much easier. This was not like investing in stocks, which I have some base experience in. I decided to start with Ethereum and purchased it at $219.00. I put in only $1000.00 that I was willing to use as my learning funds. I was surprised when it popped up that it would take 6 days for the initial coins to appear in my account.

Within two days, Ethereum jumped to $305 and as you can imagine, being new to cryptocurrency, I was anxious for the initial coins to arrive so that I could capture the abrupt gains. This jump also gave me the confidence to jump in for another $1000.00. This time I grabbed LiteCoin at $44.39. This time the wait only indicated 4 days till the coins arrived. During this wait, I watched a number of coins on the market tracking websites and read a ton of white papers about different blockchains. My friend Brian was intrigued with cryptocurrency and jumped in with me so that we could discuss the different currencies.

The day my Ethereum finally arrived on a Thursday 10 August, and I was able to finally do something with it. So of course, the first thing I did was sell it back to USD on Coinbase at $303. This was my first mistake because in order to move the coin around it has to be in cryptocurrency form. So I ended up purchasing BitCoin and moving to the Bittrex exchange.

The Bittrex exchange was vastly different then Coinbase. There were a lot of cryptocurrency available to choose from. It also took me an hour of exploring to get familiar with the system. I was ready to jump into the exciting world of trading cryptocurrency. In the first day of trading, I moved into NEO, which they had been talking about on the Bad Crypto podcast. I had a small gain of about 10% in a few hours and jumped back into Ethereum. This was also a mistake, because while I realized a nice small gain, I missed the big upswing where I would have nearly doubled my initial investment. While, I am happy to have a gain, I did not make this mistake later in the week.

I gave Brian the tip on NEO as well and he bought and held it, which he has pointed out a number of times. This is the first time I came across the phrase HODL (HAHA). I looked up the original post where someone used the term as explained by Brian. I also have heard the Bad Crypto guys phrase it as "Hold on for dear life", which made me laugh.

Since the NEO sale, I have moved in and out of GLM, QTUM, LTC, CRB, STRAT, and ETH. Each time taking a 2% to 15% gain depending. Each time, learning a little more about what to do and not to do.

The next big break came when Brian recommended buying GAS. In order to do this, I had to jump into another exchange (Binance). This is where things get complicated, because now I am spread out all over the place. I am waiting on a wallet from Amazon to move some funds into, though I have not amassed much wealth as of yet. Back to GAS, this was by far the biggest win I had to date. I did hold as opposed to immediately selling and was able to realize a 48% gain on the investment.

All in all, my first week in crypto has been a good one. I took my first $2000 and turned it into $3600. I am sure that all weeks will not go as well as the first. At the end of my first week, I have spread out as follows:

BitCoinCash, Ethereum, NEO GAS, QTUM, BitCoin, and LiteCoin

I will try out HODLing this week.