You may be wondering who I am referring to when I say "the worst cryptocurrency trader of the year 2017", and you may be wondering who I am going to publically award such an unattractive title. Well, that would be me. I claim to be the worst cryptocurrency trader of 2017 and I have evidence to prove it.

Image created/designed using copyright free image on Canva

For months now, I have kept things to myself or a few friends. At that time, it felt like a great loss but it all turned out to be great lessons for me. I am sharing my painful lessons learned the hardest way, loss of money and loss of courage to invest, so that you can understand a thing or two about cryptocurrency trading and prevent a loss from happening.

So, here I begin!

1. Always Hold Your Best Coins

By best coins, I mean the coins with established market and solid backing. Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, Monero, Dash, Steem etc. etc. There are many but generally the top 20-30 coins. If you have any of them, do not sell unless that's the wisest thing to do at the moment due to an unavoidable situation (which is rare).

My first two purchases were 0.037 Bitcoin and 0.5 Ethereum in the end of May, 2017. Over a periof of 4 days from 27-31 May, I had bought $300 worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum when Bitcoin was below $2300 and Eth was below $170. Later, I invested $100 from Steemit earnings in June after joining and $100 more from my pocket into Bitcoin at $4300.

Poloniex was my go to exchange in the beginning

In short, I had invested $500 to have 0.5 Eth and 0.135 Bitcoin. If I had just kept them, 0.5 Eth is $384 at the time of writing and 0.135 BTC is worth $2010 even after a 25 % price correction. I would have had $2400 from an investment of just $500, just by doing nothing but holding.

Bitcoin price right now.

Ethereum price right now.

So, always hold your best coins unless you have attained your perceived profit and want to use the money somewhere else.

2. Never Trade Good Coins for Shit Ones

That' the worst mistake I have done toward the end of my already pathetic trading experience. How I came to $108 from $500 is a story explained later but that was all I had managed to keep in October. And that too I invested in an extremely shit and scammy coin (BSN) on a pump and dump exchange in the hope to recover through good gains.

That was the last nail in the coffin of the worst trader in me.

I sold that crap for $4.35 and for the best part of last two months, that was my entire crypto portfolio. I was scared shitless to invest anything again.

The lesson is simple. Never ever invest in a shit coin. Even if you have to experiment, do with minimum amount from your investment. Never go suicidal like I did.

3. Never Sell Your Coins at Loss

I declined $108 from $500 due to this very reason. I had bought DGB, SC and many small priced coins in the hopes of gains. I remember I bought DGB at 0.00001909 on Poloniex and it went past 0.00003000 but I didn't have brains to sell at that time. I also asked Steemians about what I should do with Digibyte. Haha!

I had bought a total of 5232 DigiByte tokens at various prices to keep for a profit. The market went bloody red and everything was crashed due to Bitcoin Cash hardfork. I sold all of my DGB for pennies, under $60 at that time. If I had kept them, I could have sold them for $400 at current price, more than triple my investment in June. Even if I had kept the resulting Bitcoin balance, I would have had more than $400 right now.

Stupid me.

Look at Ripple's price right now. And it is rising.

How could anyone have imagined a $1.85 price

And I am less than proud to tell you that I had bought 550 Ripple at $0.22 in May-June and sold them all at overall loss. If I had kept, $1017 for a $120 investment. It hurts me inside but the lessons learned are valuable.

550 Ripples, I miss you!

Please, always buy good coins and keep them. Never ever sell at loss. Market always recovers and the good coins recover faster than anything else. Always have patience.

4. Do Not Get Behind Hyped but Baseless Coins

Chaincoin comes to my mind. Some YouTuber hyped a dead coin and community bought into it. They pumped it massively, taking huge profits and then dumped it. Good coins recover, shit coins stay down once dumped. I have shown you BSN example which is still lying down at the bottom.

I sold everything (Ripple, Siacoin, Digibyte etc.) to buy Syndicate (Synx) and RNS because they were hyped to become the next Chaincoins at that time. I thought I will recover my losses. I bought at highest prices and when the price kept going down, it never came back up. That's how I was left only with a few $.

Always choose good coins to invest into. I have bought some great coin in my trading exerience and since Bittrex has vanished my Synx trading history, I will show you instead what good coins I had and what they would have been worth right now if I had kept them.

• YOYOW has current price of $0.30 (came down from $0.50) and I would have had $850 right now just by keeping. I had bought it for holding but it got delisted and I sold in panic and at loss.

• Verge is at $0.163 right now and it means $460 if I had kept.

• Ethos (BQX) is trading at $2.68 right now and I would have had $182 by keeping.

• I bought Binance at $0.90 and it is trading at $8.91 right now. It could have meant $463 for me.

You don't need more proof to see what I am trying to convey...

5. Never Take Emotional Decisions, Especially Without Doing Your Own Research

They always say DYOR. I would say always DYOFR before investing in a coin. I would have owned an estimated amount of $3000-5000 from an investment of $500 from May-October. Emotional and bad decisions were key to my epic failures. I understood my weaknesses and started focusing on Steemit rather than look at Coin Market Cap.

I have picked good coins mostly but I was too fragile to keep them for long term. Please never be emotional and always think and research before you buy of sell your coins.

Conclusion

I have lost a lot of faith, courage and money in my bitter experiences. But the lessons are worth learning and sharing. I am happy to share that I decided to invest in good coins again and have stared getting into some already. My bad decisions and investments were my own mistakes. Crypto is awesome!

Steemit is a gateway to cryptocurrency. Also, the recent Bitcoin heroics have made cryptocurrency known to public more than ever before and many people are jumping in and investing their money. It is good for cryptocurrency but these newbies can suffer great losses in the process.

Share Your Crypto Experiences

Share your experience in the comments. As usual, the best interaction happens in the comments and I love to reward good comments with upvotes.

This post is an honest effort to share the lessons I have learned the hard way so that people can invest their money in right coins and take good profits. Please support with your resteems and upvotes.