Things I wish I knew when starting out in cryptocurrency!

Hello steemers, I want to give advice and share my story of cryptocurrency and I hope that you can learn from it. Scroll to the bottom for the lessons I've learned if you don't care how

A year and a half ago when I was home from college from the summer I met up with a guy I only barely knew from highschool named Ben, the conversation went every which way for a while from his chakra mediation, to consciousness, and finally to something called Ethereum (selling for at the time for 12$). He told me all about it and told me to do my own research and on blockchain technology in general. The next day I started reading and was hooked, I spend 5 hours trying to figure out how to buy bitcoin so I could buy Ethereum (back then you couldn't just use your debit card on any exchanges).

Now I had 200$ worth of Ethereum at 12$, which I was still 50% sure that I had just thrown 200 dollars away but I figured what the hell. I obsessively checked the price every single day on the way home from work, when it finally went up to 14$ I was so happy! After when it dropped to 8$ I decided to forget about it and call it a lost cause and only checked the price about once a week. But I didn't stop doing research on the blockchain technology and its potential.

Fast-Forward to spring 2017, the wild west of cryptocurrencies, and ethereum starts climbing. I sold my first four Ether at 17$ and was happy with my 20 bucks I had just made, sold more at 20, and more when it hit 30. I started reading about how it had to be a bubble, you cant have gains that fast without a correction. So I sold the rest on my Ether when it broke 40$.

Coincidentally at the same time, in my econ classes we were studying bubbles and every single aspect of a bubble. Yet it kept climbing. At 70$ I had had enough and bought back in, heavy. I put 50% of all the money I owned into Ether.

As we know, Ether kept climbing at around 385$ and I had made more money in the last 6 months than I had made working at summer camps for the last 3 years combined. And when the big crash started I was stubborn and never sold out until it hit 180 and I started to believe the sceptics saying "we are headed to zero" or "cryptocurrency is dead" and sold much of my position only for it to turn around quickly and settle at 190 and then 220 where I bough in again. And his was the first time I lost money in cryptos.

I then began to think because of how much money I made and all my research that I was pretty good at trading and started trading altcoins. And boy did I lose money. Even in the last month I have made some really dumb moves. Every one knows "buy low, sell high" but man that is so hard to do. I bough alt coins on hype and other dumb reasons.

Now I identify as a swing trader that buys and sells on dips and spikes on a weekly basis.
What did I learn from all of this?

• Don't buy into any hype, if your buying an alt coin do your research. Make sure there is a good team behind it and they have a smart plan.
• Getting in on the ground level of the next Ethereum isn't impossible but its damn hard and I think the odds of losing money are greater than making any by doing this with small market cap coins.
• If your new to crypto currency the best way to do it is to buy and hold, don't try to day trade.
• Grow you cryptocurrency friend group, online or in real life. Knowledge is power and different opinions are important.

Share your own lessons you've learned from trading cryptos in the comments!