profit

Choosing an alt coin

| roger nunn

I am happy to see that bitcoin is once again above 60000 US $. It means that hodling has proved to be a good strategy.

Now I’m looking for something that could give me a 100X return. I know that it’s risky but I accept the possibility of loss.

So how do I choose?

There are thousands of alt coins. I search for those with a Market Cap of at least 1 Billion and a token value of around 1 cent. I then look at the exchanges used and the daily turnover, selecting only those that are actively being traded on reputable exchanges.

Once I have a list of possibles, about 4 or 5, I then read about the uses of each one. At this point it becomes a bit subjective and I choose one that I like.

I then buy a bit and put it into a wallet.

Next I ignore it and wait and see.

I sometimes gain but have never had 100 X increase in value. I have also lost but I’m more likely to gain in the wake of an increase in the price of bitcoin.

That’s it!

To Hodl or not to hodl

| roger nunn

The crypto world is full of opportunity, opportunities to strike it rich and opportunities to lose a lot of money. The problem is to know what to do.

The control of money rules human activity, so there are huge numbers of people wanting to jump onto the bandwagon of easy money through crypto. The easy money idea is great but it is never guaranteed, it mostly comes with the luck of owning the right crypto at the right time and then selling at the right time.

The easy money idea is thwarted by our own greed and emotional involvement. We FOMO in as soon as free money seems to be on the horizon, like Dogecoin, where many people bought huge amounts after it had gone up. The extra buyers put further upward pressure on the price, increasing the FOMO induced purchasing even further.

It’s easy to find people online explaining how they got rich through buying Doge but not many are willing to admit how much they lost by buying at the top and watching its value drop. They perhaps had not realised that the price rise is fueled by new fiat money coming in, so when others sell their Doge and remove the money, prices drop.

I watch the daily fluctuations in the coins at the top of the market capitalisation tables. The prices have being going up and down like a yoyo recently but I have found that you have to monitor them constantly to make a profit over and above the costs of trading.

My decision for the moment is to HODL what I have and only sell when a coin gains more than 100%. Life is less stressful and it seems to me that having some crypto is important to be able to gain in the longer run.

So I HODL a selection of different coins and try hard not to suffer from FOMO.

Crypto in a falling market

| roger nunn

For the past couple of weeks the crypto market has fallen quite a lot. Actually, Bitcoin took a huge dive and the rest of the market followed.

I look at it like a set of planets hanging on elastic with the market capitalisation of each being equivalent to the gravity of each. This means that as one crypto is affected by an outside event all the others are affected too, one way or another.

The analogy isn’t very good but it gives me a way of watching the value of coins relative to others that I hold, rather than just watching the price in $.

For me there are far too many coins and tokens to monitor so I have selected about 25 that I watch. I add or remove them as news changes my focus.

When one of my trading coins goes up relative to another I trade, regardless of the hype, and so increase my overall holdings. It is slow but it steadily builds a portfolio.

I get my share of FOMO when I see a coin going to the moon but I don’t buy after it’s gone up. I only buy the red ones. Green means sell.

Btw, it doesn’t always work. Sometimes I buy and it goes on dropping. Then I wait.

Crypto prices, finding a new normal?

| roger nunn

In the last couple of weeks Bitcoin has gone from an all time high (ATH) of over $ 60 k to around 40 now.

There have been stories in the news of what a failure bitcoin is and its lack of stability, etc.

It’s only a couple of months since people were questioning whether Bitcoin could get to 40 k and being delighted when it happened.

I consider this to be ridiculous, as we react happily to an upward movement in prices and dream of being rich and then despair because of a correction, partially caused by people taking out some of those riches.

Now the prices seem to have settled and started going green again, heading upwards.

I get around the problem by making a strategy and putting in buy and sell orders that generate a profit without me having to sit and watch all day.

I don’t make 100 X gains but as they are few and far between I can manage without them.

Remove emotion from trading and hodling.

Bitcoin has crashed.

| roger nunn

Bitcoin has just dropped by about 10%. It’s a disaster, we must sell quickly!

I don’t believe that at all, I’m just mimicking the feeling that a get from the press whenever bitcoin dips. I also chose 10% as being representative rather than exact because it has happened many times and fully expect it to happen again.

Unfortunately the disaster type of comment sells stories and in so doing creates more selling and price drops. It’s very sad for those who get emotionally involved with their holdings and sell as the price drops, thereby losing money.

I like the volatility of crypto as it allows me to make money. I sell some of my holdings as the price rises, thereby making some profit.

When the price drops I buy some more and then wait for it to rise, so enjoying the volatility.

Stable prices are more boring, something that will happen as the market matured. In the meantime long live volatility.

Bitcoin is going through the roof

| roger nunn

Bitcoin is currently worth around $46,000 each. As usual, most of the altcoins follow suit with some dropping in value and some making spectacular gains, far higher than Bitcoin itself.

It is a rising market, where it starts to feel as though the sky is the limit. I prefer the expression of going through the roof as it indicates a barrier and brings the expectation that there will be a drop afterwards.

As far as making money is concerned, sitting and hodling in a rising market is just asset appreciation. It looks like a good money maker but it’s only real when you sell the bitcoin and realise the profit. It’s a good feeling when the market is rising and you can see yourself getting richer.

However, being a trader is something else. It means studying the different coins, buying low and then selling as they rise to take the profit. It is less exciting because you can always imagine how much more you could have made if you had waited a bit longer.

The harder thing is how to make money on a falling market, something that happens often. It means building a buy and sell strategy that makes use of the relative difference in value between various coins, buying and selling to take advantage of price changes.

How to do it? This is the trail that many of us are hoping to follow. It’s not easy.

What is an altcoin?

| roger nunn

History shapes language. First there was Bitcoin (there had been previous attempts at electronic money but no real success). Just ask most people about cryptocurrency and you will get comments on Bitcoin being a criminal’s money. Most people are not even aware that there are other forms of crypto.

The development of Bitcoin spawned a lot of interest in developing alternatives, supposedly able to address its short-comings. Disagreements in the mining communities resulted in copies (hard forks) of existing coins and developments of new ones. Extra ideas, such as programmable inputs were also brought in.

Now there is Bitcoin, Etherium and lots of alt-coins. Lots and lots, measured in thousands of new coins and tokens. I have separated Eth from the altcoins because of its huge market capital and because it is used a base for the creation of many other forms of crypto.

Bitcoin has increased hugely in value over the past 10 years (large fluctuations make it more exciting), so it is now considered a store of value, rather than a currency. However, its increases are dwarfed by some of the increases (and price drops) in many of the altcoins.

The problem is knowing how to choose an altcoin to buy and then when to sell it. Even when you find one that is increasing quickly, it is exciting enough that your inclination is to go on riding it up to the top. Where is the top? Nobody knows?

So what to do? Build and apply a strategy (logic not emotion) systematically. Usually this means researching a coin, buying it and then selling when it reaches a pre-determined price. Not very exciting, but it can be profitable.

Apparently it is now an alt season. Try to figure out what that means.

I’ve made a profit

| roger nunn

There is a very good feeling that comes when you sell coins for a higher price than you paid. The same thing happens in lots of businesses but few of them happen so quickly or directly from your phone. I like making a profit, but it doesn’t always work.

So let’s say that you have bought some crypto, watched its value 5X or even 10X and you sell it. Great, you have now improved your finances by making a profit. It is very satisfying if you are very clever (or just lucky) and sold just before the price dropped. However, it is unlikely. You are more likely to sell and then watch the price go on up and up, which brings a feeling that you should have waited.

Now you have your profit and feel successful. The problem is, what next? The difference between when you started and now is that your capital value has increased, but you still need to decide what to do to make more profit.

This is why you need to have a strategy that includes buying, selling, extracting profit and using it to build your portfolio.

My strategy is fairly simple. I don’t sell at a loss, and sell some of my holdings as the prices rise. Of course the outcome of this is that I accumulate various coins that have not risen since I bought them and that I never have a really big profit that comes from a large investment that goes up 100X.

I listen to various youtubers who devote a lot of time to forecasting the most likely big gainers. The ideal would be to find one who uses our money to make a profit. There are lots of people offering this possibility but it doesn’t fit with the idea “not my numbers, not my crypto”