The Best Thing I Did in Crypto This Year
2022 has been a year in crypto that most people would like to forget. The bull market ended much sooner than many of us anticipated, and prices have seemingly been nothing but down the entire year. If that weren’t enough, then came the summer of insolvencies. Where some of the largest companies/funds in the space went bankrupt and froze users’ withdrawals. Resulting in them losing their crypto, without knowing if they’ll see it again. Just when we thought the market had finally overcome the chaos we saw during the summer, that is when FTX/Alameda/BlockFi/Genesis being insolvent hit the market.
If you could survive this year unscathed without losing crypto, you were a winner. I would even argue that if you lost only a little portion of your portfolio, you were also a winner. I was part of the second group when a small portion of my portfolio got caught up in the Luna/UST debasement.
Looking back at this year, many of us made quite a few mistakes. Perhaps it was buying crypto at the top of the market, only to see prices drop significantly from that point onwards. Or maybe you became greedy and took a leveraged loan against your crypto only to be liquidated when the market crashed. And then there are those of us who cared too much about earning a passive yield with our crypto that we forgot the large counter-party risk this involved. We have all made mistakes. It is important to reflect on them so that you don’t repeat the same mistake in the future. Anyone who had their entire portfolio frozen on a service like Celsius or FTX would not want to repeat the same situation in the future.
While it is important to learn from your mistakes, it is also important to reflect on what you did well.
The best thing I did this year in crypto wasn’t something that increased my wealth as most would expect. This means it wasn’t buying the newest hyped coin, earning a yield, or even sticking to the blue chips in crypto. It was actually something incredibly simple but saved me from having my portfolio collapse.
It was simply being an extremely active participant in the crypto market.
Some might call it an addiction, but crypto is my biggest passion and I love to always be involved with it. This means writing articles, always being up to date on the latest news and rumors, listening to podcasts, watching youtube and the list goes on. At any random moment of the day, I know exactly what is currently happening in the crypto market.
The truth is that I was a heavy user of many of the platforms that became insolvent this year. Even still using FTX right up until this whole mess began. But, I always knew the risk I had by using 3rd party lending services and exchanges that offered interest rates just for keeping crypto on their service. I always knew that I needed to watch these services like a hawk, just in case there came a time when things when south and I needed to withdraw in an instant.
As I mentioned before, I did lose some money with UST. However, if I had been a passive member in crypto I would have never noticed anything was wrong until it was too late. My UST would have gone to zero. Instead, I was watching closely and did not hesitate to withdraw or sell off my coins. Along with always being active; trusting your instincts and not hesitating, being able to pull the band-aid off quickly even if it means you will take a small loss is incredibly important. A small loss is much better than losing everything.
The great thing is that being active in the crypto market doesn’t only benefit you from suffering great losses. It also helps you to discover new projects, qualify for airdrops, increase your knowledge of the market, and be able to determine which crypto projects are great and which are junk. All things that will increase your chances of being in this market.
How about you? What did you do well in crypto this year?
As always, thank you for reading!
It may sound like a weird "best thing I did in crypto this year" comment, but I did two things. I did not sell any and fortunately did not lose any. Except some I had on Celsius, but I did withdraw most of it before it went kaput. Is it gone forever? Who knows?
The other best thing I did was not invest any new money in crypto. I know some might say that's a bad idea, but I look at this way. I am being optimistically cautious. I want to see what crypto actually does before I fully submerge myself into the idea that it has any lasting future value.
It is still only 13-years old, and largely unproven. So, not only will I make a considerable gain still if it succeeds, I won't lose my fortunes if it fails.