[Travel Museums]

Overall I’m feeling foolish for being cautious in the crypto market. Even though it was well reasoned. I could have made a ton of money if I defied my own rules.

I invested a modest amount in May. My only goal was to double my return. I did that. Then mostly pulled out by late summer. Only leaving in small profit to ride on some alt coins.

Here’s what drives me nuts: I might have put my initial investment on any one of the following dozen coins, left those initial investments through all the dips, then cashed out. I’d be a crazy baller for life...

Assuming I could get it all off the exchange, not hacked, taxes paid, and not kidnapped. All legit concerns.

I got burned as a kid investing in the dot com bubble. Lost about a third of my net worth. I was determined not to let that happen again. Sure I made great returns in crypto. But I’m actually depressed looking at what I could have made. It’s nuts.

It was hard to watch the market go up and down. So I did some active trading which was profitable. Maybe $200/day. I felt better about 10-20% waves if I was profiting. But it got tiring. The market never sleeps.

After awhile I came to the conclusion that there was no rationality to crypto markets. At times it woukd be flat or down for weeks. Or I’d correctly anticipate a pump/dump. But frequently my timing would be off. Or transfers would get stuck for hours and I’d missout.

I admit I was making purely speculative and emotional trades. I read a lot of articles but it was mostly nonsense analysis. Occasionally there’d be some actual tech advance and use case. Rare.

I believe the current ATHs are due to mass society starting to buy in. Though I do think there is room to grow. Just think about how much pocket change is out there. However that makes for rampant corruption and bigger crashes too.

To be patient you must have an end goal. Like a cash out figure you aim for. So if you’re watching things go crazy you say nope, my sellout is X amount of profit. I ride it out until that point. Wish I did this with like $2million instead of just wanting to double my investment.

So anyway check out these numbers. It’s pretty crazy. Here are approximate returns if you invested $1k, $100k in May. Then cashed out near the recent Dec ATH.

BTC $20k, 2mil
ETH $9k, 1mil
LTC $18k, 1.6mil
XMR $18.5k, 1.7mil
XRP $16.6k, 1.6mil
STR $6.1k, 675k
ZEC $6.8k, 682k
ETC $5.4k, 541k
NXT $200k, 20mil
BCH $10k, 1mil
DASH $14k, 1.4mil

Not many of us guys have $100k laying around. I bet a lot of you have $1k though. While turning that into 10k might not change your life it’s a good start!

Crypto seems too good to be true. That makes me very nervous. Particularly when you consider that these gains are coming without a corresponding surge in anyone using these currencies to buy goods and services. It’s still 99% speculative and unregulated. The gap between use and value is growing wider.

It’s important to understand that the same volatility that causes coins to rocket up is the same that causes it to come crashing down. Most people are buying/selling crypto based on its current and potential USD value. They are overlooking everything else both in regards to the coin and fundamental market rules.

So when I analyze crypto going rapidly up and down I still question the inherent value. I question the inherent value I question the solvency of the exchange it’s on. I question holding it offline in wallets.

Nothing really seems secure besides cashing out to fiat. So if that’s the case, then how valuable is crypto really. I mean think about it. We are still valuing it in US DOLLARS.

If crypto was actually doing what it is supposed to do you could use your profits in the actual crypto currency. It’s a glaring issue everyone seems to be ignoring.

[Ice]

I see it this way:

The public is increasingly waking up to crypto because they are hearing about the insane profits people are making. This means I expect more money flowing into crypto in 2018.

I don't think this whole crypto surge has anything to do with real utility or value though. Instead I think it's similar to the self-improvement & bootcamp trend we've been seeing in the last years. I'm talking about gurus like Tai Lopez or Wallstreet Playboys, or all the coding bootcamps out there that have popped up. They all promise a better future, more money, success. People are looking for that, and it's a huge market. Crypto plays into that.

Crypto in like 95% male. It makes sense, because if you want to market to men you have to promise more money and success. (If you market to women you have to sell beauty). So to me the whole crypto market is just the male equivalent to the market for beauty, haircare and fashion products for women (which is huge). There are definitely amazing success stories in crypto though, so it's not all bullshit. That's why I'm pretty bullish on crypto as a whole.

Some crypto projects do have real applications & uses cases of course. These will do very well. But also apart from that, I think 2018 will be a very good year to profit from hype alone. The general public is just waking up to it, so I think at this stage there's not too much risk in terms of a complete market collapse. It might happen, but I don't think in 2018.

[Neo]

Hindsight is always 20/20.

Great market now, but could implode at any time.

A true bear market and people losing big $$$$ has not occurred yet, and when it does sentiments will change.

Like you mentioned your fear stems from the dot.com bubble, and there's nothing wrong with that. In 10-15 years we may have people remembering the crypto-bubble.

Because of this, I think it would be good for investors to set their own rules for losses and gains. Like if it drops 20%, sell no questions asked, or always take profits when it's up 30-50%.

Of course seeing the massive gains people will challenge and say "No! I'm waiting for 1000%!" and my response would be...wait a few years.

Nearly no one buys at the bottom and sells at the top, and if they claim they do 99/100 they're full of shit.

[[email protected]]

The 6 month chart that showcased insane returns is what got me into crypto.

[Travel Museums]

Crypto made me question my financial and life goals. I kinda feel bad about “living the dream”.

I already have a good life with traditional investments kicking out a dependable retirement income. I live on a modest budget but that’s the trade off. I was cool with it.

I’ve gotten to enjoy the latter half of my 20s into my mid 30s as an independent person. I don’t have to work. I have enough money to travel. I do whatever I want with my 24/7 free time.

Thing I didn’t consider is that basically there are zero quality chicks between 18-40 in my position. So if I want an LTR I basically need to float the woman financially in order for her to travel around with me.

Throw in a couple kids and it will break the bank. If I want a family by age 40 while maintaining my current lifestyle I need to take on more risk.

In March I was about to wire a huge chunk into
Crypto. I remember being on the phone with my brokerage right before I left to trek in the jungle.

My advisor couldn’t give me any real
Info on crypto. I’d have been on my own. The chick I was with was useless. I looked at it and said fuck it. My life is great now. Why rock the boat.

I transferred some money a few months later then started out super cautious. Doing all this effort for months to understand crypto. It was smart I guess but I missed a huge return.

Had I just invested the max I was prepared to lose and forgot about it I could have enough return now to sellout and go back to my off grid life. I could burn through a working salary every month until I die.

It’s really hard to accept. And I’m wondering if I’m missing out again. And here I am holding back because I feel like there’s a total lack of fundamentals.

I still basically made a years salary in crypto. But it’s not gonna change my life. It might pay for my kids college education if I invest it now in a traditional portfolio.

Fast forward 20 years my kid will probably hate me for not putting it all back to ride in crypto.

[NewDayNewFace]

It’s not too late. I believe we have at least one more good year of good Crypto Gains. If I invested all of my money in July when I got in this game I’d be a multi millionaire now. But I’ve made crazy gains and in the next couple of months I’m going to make even more money. There is no doubt in my mind in this Wile Wild West Game of Cryptos.

Do your research and be aggressive. You seriously can’t go wrong with anything in the top 30. I mean even Ripple made people filthy rich. You better get this free money before the marker crashes.

[Heightcel]

I still believe it's not too late,

I recently bought LTC for $60, ripple right before the raise for $0.20 and raiblocks for $.50, all within november / december. This just goes to show that there are ALWAYS undervalued coins. I advise everyone to read reddit.com/r/cryptocurrency and if you see a new coin with low marketcap and low volume being praised, and the tech is good, there's a chance it could be a winner.

[Travel Museums]

Heh I bought it for $50 .15 290 and holding. I just feel super uneasy about holding this stuff. It’s like dating a hot girl with a bad attitude. My gut says get in and out. It’s got legs but no fundamentals.

[the-dream]

If you flick back through the old bitcoin threads on here, you'll see that this exact same conversation has repeated itself again and again over the past 4 years and meanwhile, the price went up and up and up.

I believe that next year there will still be lots of easy money to be made in crypto.

Here's some reasons why:

- I consider myself to be a very internet savvy guy and my main source of income and interest for the last 5 years has been the internet. However, I only just got into this 5 months ago. I know there's a lot of people like me who are not into it yet but will be and "normies"/ non internet people are certainly not into it yet in a major way. There will continue to be lots of new people discovering and investing into crypto for the foreseeable future. So the price will go up.

- Crypto still isn't really used for anything other than speculating prices and buying illegal drugs, which isn't any different to 4 years ago. With all these massively funded new companies with cool ideas and powerful partnerships, Crypto will start to infiltrate every day life in the real world. When it does, the price will go up.

- Bitcoin is terrible to use as an actual currency with high fees, slow speeds and complicated unintuitive processes. Once this improves and Bitcoin is actually a viable alternative to banks, debit cards etc then prices will go up.

- Bitcoin is very complicated and intimidating to hold, especially for a non technical person. Once this changes, people will be much more comfortable with trading lots of their fiat for crypto.

- ICOs are very profitable again which will keep people interested in discovering new cryptos and keeping their crypto flowing and trading. Also, the allure of tens of millions of dollars in 60 seconds will encourage the smartest minds who can push crypto forward to experiment with and develop new products and uses.

[fiasco360]

Don't worry about missing the boat.

Back in 2010/2011 when I was a broke ass student I was using a family members computer to mine bitcoin on a Radeon 5770 and bought a decent chunk of them. When I first heard of bitcoin it wasn't even valued a dollar yet. I sold it on the spike in mid 2011 before MtGox got hacked. Planned on making a few mining rigs at the time but I was set up to move in a short time and didn't have the spare money for them. I made a few grand thinking I got out at the right time. For a few years - looked like I was right.

Woops.

[Travel Museums]

It’s obviously the Web 1.0 for crypto. I know there’s gonna be lots of opportunity and growth and the technology is great. BUT

-Countries will develop their own blockchain version of fiat. A duh!

-Banks will use their own blockchain solutions or partner with a few key players.

-Bitcoin may remain a slow behemoth reserve cryptocurrency like physical gold. Or the split will cause devaluation.

It feels so wrong to get majorly invested in anything that is still working out such major uncertainty and problems. There’s zero regulation! And at the same time the price growth is all speculatory. I mean common. The only way I trust actually getting money out back to dollars is sticking with Coinbase.

Think about it. We’re still all talking about millions of DOLLARS. and CASHING out. If it’s a real currency then I’d be rich in bitcoin and using it for all my purchases. It’s a total mind fuck.

[Enhanced Eddie]

(12-27-2017 06:44 AM)Travel Museums Wrote:  

Countries will develop their own blockchain version of fiat. A duh!

They will, but nobody who got into crypto currencies for their USP (no trusted third party) will be on board with that. It defeats the very purpose they were created for in the first place.

Quote:

-Banks will use their own blockchain solutions or partner with a few key players.

Same as above.

Quote:

It feels so wrong to get majorly invested in anything that is still working out such major uncertainty and problems.

Crypto is having problems, but they will be solved. It's impossible to predict, however, if bitcoin will solve these problems first or if some other project overtakes it completely, the way Google overtook Yahoo for example. This is probably likely to happen EVENTUALLY... but for the foreseeable future, bitcoin is still the undisputed king. Which is why it's important to observe the market and be ready to diversify.

Quote:

There’s zero regulation!

Some would argue this is a good thing.

Quote:

And at the same time the price growth is all speculatory. I mean common.

A lot of the current price is based on speculation, but not all of it. Many people buy only because the price trend has been consistently going up... but as a result, bitcoin et al. will be more widespread which will then make them more viable as an actual currency.

Quote:

The only way I trust actually getting money out back to dollars is sticking with Coinbase.

Coinbase is the one exchange that's MOST in cahoots with the government. By the way, if you hold long enough, you will be able to just spend your crypto currencies in the free market rather than having to trade them for fiat toilet paper.

[Que enspastic]

I’m going balls deep in crypto from Jan 2018, exit most of my funds in Dec 2018

[Beta Blocker]

Plenty of opportunity in alts bro. Chin up.

[RedPillUK]

^ Exactly.

I would kill to be in your financial position right now. You have enough money to not really give a shit about anything, and you're pissed cos you could have been stupidly rich instead?

I'm 28 and for the first time in my life managed to save up a few grand in my bank account. I hung onto it while keeping my eyes open for things to invest it in. In August I was posting here about crypto, looking at putting in 5k, I had trouble with banks and signing up and also had an opportunity to work with a friend on a new business. So I decided to put my money into the business idea and wait to invest in crypto in the future. I lost it all. Now I'm poorer then when I was a student.

I pissed all that money away and I didn't even waste it on anything remotely enjoyable. That money would have been better spent on partying, drugs and girls. That money goes a stupidly long way here.

I just moved on and didn't tell anyone about it, it was only when my ex girlfriend found out and started to bitch at me that I felt regret or anger, and started to think about how much money I would have if I had done this or that. That's partly the reason she's an ex now.

I do still feel pangs of regret or anger about it though, for example New Years Eve, when I was reflecting on my year and right now I guess cos I'm writing about it. Thoughts of revenge too. I actually still have the shell of a business so I could take his name off everything and restart it if I had capital or an idea to sell. Anyone who wants new clients/customers for any sort of business should message me.

But I have to move on, and keep going, I've been in this situation before, I will live and I will dig myself out of this and work hard. I learnt some valuable lessons. Mainly to trust my own judgement and not to trust anyone else on anything.

I've also learnt from AB and Aurini in the Gamma/Sigma thread, never to trust men who creep women out. This guy to me looked like he had game, he was in his 50s with an attractive 28 year old girlfriend. However my girlfriend started to hate him, and refused to even spend time in the same room with him, so did a girlfriend of a friend of mine. Me and my friend thought this guy was a little odd but ignored the warning signs. If I had known about women's intuition of sniffing out gammas, I would have realised this guy was a gamma fucking idiot and never have gone near him.

[Blaster]

(12-25-2017 07:26 AM)Travel Museums Wrote:  

Overall I’m feeling foolish for being cautious in the crypto market. Even though it was well reasoned. I could have made a ton of money if I defied my own rules.

I don't... a small part of me wishes I could have put some money in several years ago when I first heard about bitcoin. I knew about its deflationary nature even then. But I think cryptocurrencies are dangerous both from a financial and legal perspective. I mean, you're probably fine, but at some point there won't just be a crash but the government will get involved, and I don't want to be anywhere near when that happens.

[fortysix]

Something interesting I read today about the dotcom bubble:

"Another one of those reasons is the little-known fact that by 2004, four years after the peak of the bubble and well after it had burst, 48% of dotcom start-ups were still in business. This half of the companies were the ones that kept their eye on the bottom line despite all the hysteria, tagging along for the ride while never losing sight of their fundamentals. Almost two decades later, here in the Bitcoin bubble, those are the same companies we are looking for."

Find good projects and hold for the long-term - yes, there will likely be a crash, but that doesn't necessarily mean investors in good projects will just be left holding a bag 3-5 years out.

[Blaster]

The dotcom bubble was fueled over hype surrounding a real, proven technology that was revolutionizing the world and everyone knew it. By the late 90s, it was obvious that the world-wide web presented massive economic opportunities. By 1996, millions of dollars worth of goods were already being exchanged on ebay. Amazon was founded in 1994 and Jeff Bezos was Time's man of the year in 1999. There were search engines, hosting companies, online store-fronts, and of course pornography. This was real, legitimate economic growth of trade in goods and services. There was no doubt that there was money to be made with the internet, and contrary to failing to live up to expectations, the internet and world-wide web have ultimately far exceeded them.

The dotcom bubble happened because it was too easy to bring a company to IPO, and the dotcom hype made it easy to run ponzi schemes on public investors. There were a lot of silly tech startups in the last decade of "web 2.0" hype, but because they weren't chasing IPO exits, there hasn't been another crash.

Where are the equivalent success stories for cryptocurrency? Where's the Amazon equivalent? Where's the Ebay equivalent? Where are the examples of common, everyday use that show the same promise that the internet did in 1999?