A lot of friends are asking these days, I’ve been trading crypto for years… Here goes:
Rule #1. If you have no cryptos at all, buy some now, price is irrelevant. Even if you buy right before a big crash, just wait, you’ll be happy you bought eventually. Exchanges I use are Poloniex, Bittrex, Cryptopia and Livecoin. For best security, download wallets to your computers and withdraw the funds you plan to hold for a while. Good multi-coin wallets are: coinomi and exodus. Or follow the links on your coin’s website.
Rule #2. Keep track of where your coins are listed in rank of market cap on coinmarketcap. This is the ultimate way to see what a coin is worth. If a great sounding project is low on this list, it’s probably going to go up in price. If a bad project is very high, probably a good one to avoid. For example: FTC, Feathercoin. Once coin #3 for at least a year I believe. No scandals. Great developer. Sits at position #171 below some projects that sound like a joke and have no developer or history. FTC at #171 is probably a good buy.
Rule #3. Only trade in cryptos you researched and know something about. Pick projects where you figure its unlikely the coin is going to disappear any time soon. So old coins, or maybe new coins with trustworthy names backing it and/or a great feature you understand and see the potential of. Don’t be fooled, lots of great writers out there cooking up nothing burgers. Best place to view the launch post thread and discussions is on Bitcointalk, but many projects also have dedicated forums and slack. Bitcointalk is the best place to start though, every developer posts their launch there and criticisms are easy to find. Beware of edited threads and things that sound too good to be true, there is a lot of that.
Rule #4. Pick the group of cryptos you trust and stick with it. You can only pay attention to so many coins, pick an amount that suits the time you want to spend watching them.
Rule #5. Spread out over low, medium and high market cap coins. The low ones have much more potential, but take longer to move. Its the equivalent of having some corporation stocks and some penny stocks.
Rule #6. Don’t buy on margin. Not if you're new to this! Sorry, I’ve done terribly with margins, but some people make it work. A bit too much like gambling for me. If you’re not very careful, you actually lose coins. When simply buying a crypto outright (no margin) you never lose coins, they just might go down in value.
One you have your coins secured, keep some on exchanges ready to trade (if you want to actively trade). Best bet is to keep track of the market cap rankings and see what is moving where. If one of your coins went up 20% today, sell some. Don’t freak out and sell too much, just a bit. Take the profit from that bit, and roll it over into whichever of your coins is down that day. If something you bought keeps going down, but you know its a good project, just keep buying. If something you have keeps going up, awesome, keep selling bits as it moves. Don’t be greedy! People often see their coin spike and start dreaming about where it might get to. Sell some! This is why you’re only ever selling or buying a little at a time, keeping long term supplies of several coins. You’re never out when it goes up and if it goes down, OK, more cheap coins is good too.
The only way you lose on this strategy of spreading out and staying in many coins is if everything goes down. This happens. 2014: Bitcoin, cryptos, all of it went down and it didn’t matter where you were. BUT, if you’re still watching the market caps and buy/selling based on positioning, you can minimize your losses a little.
When you see a big price movement. Check the threads, look at the news. See if something is causing it. A 20% gain is nothing if a huge announcement just came out, that may be the one to buy today even though its up. One of your "penny stock" coins just crashed 50%, check out why, maybe you were wrong about it being a good project and should get out.
