Why you need discipline trading cryptocurrencies? Why you need contacts and information?

I have lost a lot of money and gone through hell because lacking the discipline, contacts and information. I lost 92% (BTC) / 89% (€) of my capital from the highest to the lowest point over November 2017. It took some strong beating to be finally able to act on my conditions and not when the market “tells” me to. Seeing the absolute bottom and managing to stand up again is enlightening.

I started with X BTC in September after putting all my planned cash in, then started to trade, learn & lose while I was thinking I was winning. I was looking at € which was going up and allowed me to take profits.

I was down 35% in BTC, but nicely up in € around BTG hard fork. Following the herd and with great luck (that I did not understand), I shot up almost 100% by 1st of November.

Then I lost it all and some more.
First I was clinging to the alts that took me so high in denial and disbelief.
Then took some more € out as profits.
Then Segwit2x surprise cancellation cost me some.
Then the event with bitcoin plummeting and bitcoin cash pumping in Korea.
Then rushing into some good picks like NXT and ADA, but panicking out of them in loss.
Finally I had some more expenses needing coverage and I carried out some aggressive experimentation.

At 29th November I bottomed out. Went heavily in on something that briefly crashed, before jumping higher. I was a bit too eager and 6 hours too early.

My cryptoportfolio was down full 92% in BTC from the highest or 76.6% in fiat from initial investment, after all the profits taken out and losses made.

Then I went to bed, not sleeping but wondering "what the hell happened? Am I going to be just another participant in the "lost everything" section?”. I ran the ending month through my mind, looking at every detail that I could remember and setting some rules in place.

All that fall was happening, while I was busy and distracted, building up my knowledge and, more importantly, contacts. Start of November I knew nobody local in crypto and was just scratching the surface of international community and following the herd No discipline behind my actions. End of November – I’m in several communities, learning from those, way more experienced than me, reading up on the in-depth discussions and made contact with my local promising crypto-community.

Through failure, access to discussions, ideas and information my fate is finally starting to reverse.

Now my trade positions have been limited, diversified and based on technical and fundamental analyses, not just “YOLO, everybody’s getting on-board, I must too”. Profit taking has been my best friend and ensures that I don’t get attached to any single coin unless it’s a coin that I understand enough and have chosen to keep long term, for better, for worse.

That has helped me to get back on feet pretty fast. Yesterday, just 3 weeks after the bottom, I touched over 3.75 x increase from my lowest point in BTC and 6.8 x in fiat, which triggered my “Take profit back to fiat between Y–Z action. Also, following my more solid and informed plan, the current storm has not done much to upset my portfolio value. 100% in alts, 5% down in BTC value from the latest high, adjusted with profit taking. In fiat, the protfolio is 1.16 X from the initial investment that I started with or 1.4x if I add all the profit taking.

Information & contacts is everything in this game.
Planning and sticking to the plan is how you avoid being tossed around by bigger fish.

I still FOMO and rush in and out of fast moving coins, but do it in a very limited way, just to get a taste of something and setting the stage for my next moves. If a good coin starts pumping that I don’t want to miss, I satisfy the FOMO and buy in with a small sample. From there, if it dips as it usually does, I can load up more, but if it just reaches for the stars, I’m at least somewhat invested and content. Similarly, during drops, I might sell a small part at a loss to enable myself buying back in even lower. If it never dips so low, then I’m probably getting back to green with the majority of my stack.