The Newbie CryptoRollerCoaster Story

Well, where do i start. This is my very first Steemit post, so here goes

I heard about BitCoin about 4 years ago (Jan 2013), a friend of mine told me how this was something that could be the "next big thing" As I am not a gambling man, for the most part, I am very inquisitive, so I went ahead an looked into it. Information back then, was not quite near what it is today, so i found myself having difficulties on finding easy ways to get into the game. So unless I was going to learn about how to "mine" (which i wasn't) I dropped the ball and let it roll on without me.

Circle back 4 years later, and who would have known (well obviously some people did), that that BitCoin ball would have gained so much momentum. This time around another buddy calls me up and says "there is this great opportunity" and he goes on to advise me about this Gladicoin company and how they can turn my BitCoin investment over 200% in 90 days. Well that sounded great and unlike 4 years ago, this wouldn't involve a major effort on my part. After doing some reading about the company, I found myself a bit leery to jump in with them (they didn't seem to have a solid foundation and a lot of negative press was out there) so.... I decided to go at it again on my own. But this time I found a whole new world, not only Bitcoin but so many others and this time it appears getting in the game was as easy as signing up on an exchange site, passing some security and setting up my bank (maybe it was that easy last time, but to be honest... i didnt make it that far.. shoot my loss)

So now here I am, all signed up and ready to go, I decided to put in some play money. A set amount that i was willing to loose as if I were making a trip to Vegas. The first thing you need to do, I would say even before you start your deep research into the various coins/companies, is to get setup on the exchanges. This is where you will fund your cryptocurrency account so that you can buy your desired coins. I say do this first because with all of the super hype right now around cryptocurrency, you may find that this may take anywhere from 1-3 days to 1-3 weeks (damn you Kraken). Once I was setup I got straight to buying coins.

Now what I bought and why... well perhaps that is for another day. But in the first 2.5 -3 weeks, my money went flying high (not quite to the moon, but it was heading in the right direction). Scared that this trend was going to continue, i went ahead and bought some more (Ether included) and can you guess what... 2 days after the Ether high, them prices (all if not most) came tumbling down. So now I am at a cross roads. Do i hang on to dear life or do I dump and grab what ever profit I can???

Let me take a break here for a second and advise folks that you should have a crypto buy and sell strategy in place before hand, otherwise, you'll likely be like me, making what appears to be logical decision but are truly emotional....

Ok, so I sold em, not all, just my key holdings (Ether) as it was spiraling out of control (or maybe it was just doing what cryptocurrencies do from time to time) . But now, I found my self watching the ticker every 5 min, wondering if the fall had bottomed out and it looked like it did so... i bought back my Ether....only to realize this crypto game is a damn roller coaster and for certain coins... its best you are in it for the long haul. (Ether crashed another $100 from my last buy 3 days ago, but is now up $70 from my last buy)

So what of all this... well if you are new to the game as I am, i have this small piece of advise. Feel free to play around with some coins, cause if you do it right, you can make some good profit in a short time; however, find a few companies you truly believe in, companies that you can see you and your friends using, cause if you have confidence in the company and it is truly a good product that they have, then you wont be dumping when the roller coaster starts down hill, you'll wait for the bottom and buy more.

Lessons Learned