I entered the cryptocurrency market at the end of May 2017 and I had bought Bitcoin at $23oo and Ethereum at $170 as my first two investments. Since I didn't know much about the cryptocurrency market back then, all I wanted to do was to buy some cheap coin and hold it. I bought Ripple and held it, only to sell at loss later. Bad day-trading and excessive involvement in quick-money, pump and dump coins meant that all my investment went from $300 to just $4 in just five months; earning myself title of the worst cryptocurrency trader of 2017 (I shared 5 lessons from my experiences). Story of my shenanigans up to the point of losing all my initial investment is covered in the linked article.
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I quit investing in any cryptocurrency until I felt confident again. I rather shifted my focus to Steemit and made quite a lot of cryptocurrency here, considering what I had lost due to my ignorance. It was soothing to be able to have some stake in the crypto market still. The tokens I earned from Steemit helped me return to the cryptocurrency market at the end of December and I started investing in some good projects. It was not the best time to invest though (May, July, November were the months to do so). But investing at the end of December wasn't a bad idea either, considering that the peak was reached within a week.
In the first week of January, almost all my investments (BTS, ADA, QSP, AST, REQ, POE) had gained 50-300 % already. I had a bad experience selling in 2017 so I didn't sell any of my coins. Bad bad decision not to liquidate in an extremely bullish market. I could have cashed out and kept money for a bear market like this. I held on through the extremely painful crashes ever since without selling much. If I sold, I did it on profit or bought back even lower.
I have not only held on to my coins so dearly over these three months of excitement and panic, but also added positions in the falling marketed. I think FOMO had me quite a few times and I still bought at considerably higher prices than what I could have bought for right now. Nonetheless, I bought towards the lower side of things hopefully and will be able to enjoy some gains in the next big bull run. I am going to cash out this time though!
Few of the coins I bought more are ADA, SUB, QSP, BTS, REQ, NANO, and SMART. I wish I could afford to buy more coins. If I could, I would buy a lot of STEEM, EOS, VEN, INT, and NLC2.
Exchanges & Sluggish Blockchains
I like Binance because it is the fastest growing exchange, with forward-looking team behind it. I like KuCoin too for the volume it brings from Korea. Poloniex sucks because it disables STEEM and SBD very often; something I have been seeing again and again since June of last year. Bittrex is irrelevant to me because my support ticket to re-enable my account is open since December. It is of no use to me. Most other exchanges are load of crap with scammy pump and dump coins. It is very easy to list coins on these exchanges and that is part of the problem.
But sometimes, these crappy exchanges have some great coins listed which are not available anywhere else. The thoughts about exchanges and blockchain fees arose when I bought SmartCash via a rather hectic process. It cost me a lot of unnecessary fees along the way. SMART is my latest investment but how I bought the latest chunk exposed the deep lying problems within the cryptocurrency market; namely centralized exchanges and high transaction fees. The example below should clearly show how costly it is to move Bitcoin from one wallet address to another.
Buying SMART from SBD!
I have suggested to @smartcash team to enable buying of SMART directly by paying in SBD on the blockchain by coding the @smartbot in a way that it can process buy orders and send coins to wallet addresses specified. But that is not how I bought SMART using SBD. You may be guessing that I used Blocktrades.us website to shapeshift SBD into BTC but that is not the case as welll (reason, high fees). Here's what I did. Note the fees involved.
- I sold 100 SBD for 100.522 STEEM (Zero fees).
- Then I transferred 10o Steem to Binance.
- All of which I received there in less than 10 seconds (Zero fees).
- Then I waited for STEEM to rise a little which it did (about 12 %). I sold it to get BTC. (0.0123 BNB fee worth $0.12)
- I got 0.0259 BTC (sum of all the value in last column) but I was able to withdraw only
0.0254 BTC (est 0.0005 BTC fee worth $4.5).
- And when I received the amount on HitBTC, it was just 0.0248 BTC (another 0.0006 BTC deposit fee worth $5.4, wtf?)
- I bought SMART and had to pay another 0.000024 BTC in fee and rebate. It's just 21 cents but if my order had been a large ones, the fee would be multiple dollars again.
- Finally, I withdrew all my SMART coins to my SmartRewards wallet and it literally cost nothing! (0.4 Smart worth less than 7 cents).
To summarize, I paid more than $10 just to buy a coin that I wanted to buy. Did you notice that it all happened due to two factors? Bitcoin and exchanges. I don't know why the crappy HitBTC should charge a deposit fee! Binance is not operating on SegWit yet so withdrawal fees are still considerable. I like Binance because they are trying to solve the problems in the current cryptocurrency scenario. They are even launching a decentralized exchange of their own soon. It will be based on their own blockchain and Binance token will also move to that blockchain. However, the fees will remain.
Why do I have to buy at least 1oo SMART, or a number divisible by it on HitBTC? Why can't I buy whatever the number I want to buy? Doesn't make any sense to me.
Bitcoin has exciting technologies under implementation and development. Transaction fees have lowered significantly after SegWit adoption but the Lightning network is essentially needed to reduce fees and increase transaction times.
STEEM's Advantage
Steem blockchain is just incredible.
- It has zero fees.
- 3 seconds blocks (transaction confirmation time).
- Truly peer-to-peer.
- Only less than 0.2 % of its total capacity is used despite processing millions of transactions everyday.
Bitcoin can only perform half a million transactions at its full capacity in a day. Steem can perform 1.238 billion in the same time. That's 2600 times more than Bitcoin. Sluggish blockchains need to be improved and transaction fees need to be reduced. And investment in the blockchains performing well should increase.
Blocktivity.info compares performance of blockchains. Steem is at the top! A reason why investing in STEEM may be an idea worth considering.
Why SmartCash?
I took so much pain to buy some SmartCash. The first time I came across this token was this post by @lukestokes. He had been buying up at 2 and 3 cents in October. The post shows price at $0.47, whereas the price went above $3 in January. He has made some serious gains.
My first ever comment about SmartCash, on Luke's post.
I wanted to buy but was short of money. Glad I waited long enough to buy in this bear market. I had placed an outrageous order at 1500 Satoshi but the price went back from 1620 Sats. I was caught by FOMO and bought slightly higher than I wish I had. Still, better late than never!
Price has fallen slightly below my purchase but I am not worried much. Buying at $0.40 would have been disastrous.
I have added SMART to my wallet address which is SmartRewards enabled. Every month on 25th, snapshot of wallets is taken and holders of at least 1000 SMART for 30 days are reward from 15 % of block rewards. I chose SMART because it gives me an option to earn dividends on my investment, just like STEEM and unlike all other coins that I am invested in. Otherwise too, it is a great project with a developing community. Many Steemians are actively participating in their community.
If you wish to know more, here's the link to their website: https://smartcash.cc/
I will check smartcash. Thank you! :)
@smartbot tip @ilyastarar 20
Σ$$$ Tipped @ilyastarar
Σ20 SMART! Comment@smartbot helpto claim. Currently the price of SmartCash in the market is$0.154 USDperSMART. Current value of the tip is$3.08 USD. To find out more about SmartCash, please visit https://smartcash.cc.@smartbot help
You can use the following commands:
balance- displays your current wallet balanceaddress- displays your deposit addresswithdraw <amount> <address>- withdraws the amount of SMART to addresstip <username> <amount>- sends the amount of SMART to usernameterms- displays terms and conditions for using @smartbot@smartbot address
Your deposit address is
SNABk1JD17Dq8hwTDkzhM2wAeyPntLXiNB.@smartbot withdraw 20 SioMAqZPHovKisGY1sfKKzGtN3juzVsNN3
Thank you! I was able to show how the bot works! :)
The current price of SmartCash is: $0.081516, I think it's a good sign to invest at even lower price than you bought. I have already converted some of steem into ETH on binance and I was thinking to hold it until I get some profit when I convert back to STEEM. So far I am going into loss. I put around 11 STEEM and as of now if I convert it back I will get 8 STEEM. I would like to know about the results of your investment. If its a healthy one I might jump into the SmartCash too. :)
I think you earned the title "the worst cryptocurrency trader of 2017"may be because you didn't LEarn before Earn. With me, i invested in crypto then spend 3 weeks to learning how to trade before i started trading.
SmartCash looks a great project tho.
Haha! I did a course on trading and learned things too. I like learning. It was the psychological side that failed me. Crypto market is a game of nerves more than anything.
Ahh! i see.
Very True!
excellent explanation, thanks for sharing with us.
Welcome. Thanks for reading.
Great decision.for currency investment. @ilyastarar.. Hope that smartcash price grows up and it will be your effective decision... I also thinking about smartcash investment.
Thank you. I am quite positive in the longer run. Current situation is just temporary.
cryptocurrency market now slowly down.
Let's see whats going on but i hope it's will be fix asap!
It is a greatly difficult task to predict this market. Positive vibes returned but a rumor has undone that.
@ilyastarar you have great thought man. your mind is too sharpe at this blockchain. cryptocurrency will be good for you as sokn i hope that. carry on.
Thank you. I am just staring to learn.
always a great post man, can you make a post about smart cash? and your experience holding that token. would be much appreciated. Looking forward to your next post.
I will make it in a month or so after receiving some rewards. What happened to your reputation score, though?
@berniesanders happened. a whale just flags all the post @berniesanders upvoted, mine included :(
cool, the smart rewards system pays dividend right? have u heard of Ark? it pretty much do the same thing, the community seems to be strong as well, 10% p.a. return is really not bad. let me know what you think.
I have heard a lot about Ark but never sat down to research about it. So, no comments. Whale wars suck!
Is this smartcash a cryptocurrency too?
I was almost tipped 1 smart cash in a contest I ended up losing.
All I knew was: It's in a way connected to steemit. You can convert it into steem.
I hope I'm right.
Smartcash is a crypto on its own and not affiliated to steem but smartcash operates on steemit and have a large steemit Community of smartcash team.
you can read more. here https://smartcash.cc
and try join the team, it the best that ever happened to blockchain. thank you
Already answered above. It's not directly convertable to Steem and is not related to Steem blockchain as well.
Interesting to read your historic path in crypto. And I can reassure you that many of the 'errors' you made are in fact normal ones to make for many newcomers to the space. It all looks a lot more easy than it is to trade! Eventually we learn to simply hodl :)
Smartcash is really interesting because of the great rewards it gives. I am still on the fence if I want one of those nodes - they're not expensive. But I have concerns regarding adoption and innovation.. It is going to be a struggle for the coin to survive for the duration!
I am still learning. Much patience and research is still needed while making decisions of buying and selling. Selling not so much because I do not to sell below my buy prices.
I do wish to buy a lot more coins but my pocket says no. Hopefully, over the coming years, I will be able to invest more freely after some pressing needs are met.
Nice dividends @ 15%...
Seems like a nice investment option...Thanks for sharing...
Correction: SmartRewards are distributed from 15 % of all the block rewards collected. I'll get ny share as per the number of coins I have. That total of 15 % coins will be distributed among all the holders as per their stake.
Hello @ilyastarar
What happened to you initially is normal and always happen to those without much knowledge about a particular field. It is a learning process and allows you to redefine your approach to such field. You did And today I trust you have a better grasp of coin price movements and how to evaluate projects to determine worthwhile ones.
@eurogee
It sure has been a great learning experience. I am still a starter in these markets but I feel slightly better now after holdinh through the crash.
Worthwhile projects are increasingly easy to invest in for the last few weeks and still a lot of correction is happening.
Helpful insight indeed about SmartCash. I bought into SmartCash around January end while it was around $1.24 and have held onto it ever since enduring the free-falls in this unduly prolonged bearish run.
I think I need to read furthermore about the SmartCash project.
Pls what insights do you have on VEN. I just sold a substantial part of the stake I held in it last weekend. Any insights.
Thanks.
Sad you bought in so high. I am hoping it to reach this point and cross it in the next big alts cycle. I do not have VEN because I didn't have anything to buy it but I would love to hold a few hundreds at least till December. I see a lot of future in it and future is always undervalued before its time.
Hi @ilyastarar, this is why I like your post. You experience it yourself. Buying with out strategy I called it gamble. But why you so recomment to buy steem.what are the stronghold that sbd or steem has.as I know mostly are writting. May be you can explain by your own opinion.
I have covered Steem extensively. You can find the post linked in this one as well.
Outstanding post as always but seriously I cann't understand about smartcash because i never want to learn about this but you explanation is so simple and easy to understand.
Thank you so much for sharing such an amazing post.
Crypto is not your interest at the moment perhaps.
Yapp :\
nice article man, I also invested at the same time as you back in may 2017. Unfortunately I also didn't sell in December when we had some crazy highs still regret it :( Smart is a great coin and you bought at a nice price around 1600 sats we should be able to get back to at least 15000sats this year.
I have a lot to think about. SMART was a smart decision though. Could have waited a little before making my move but FOMO was strong. Let's see.
One of the main hindrence in expansion of crypto captilization is interchangeablity it should be so convninent like people do in forex.
I like exchanges that support #Dogecoin because we can SAVE a lot from fees when transferring/withdrawing coins from an exchange. #Verge is another cheaper alternative. 🙂