Between Doubt and FOMO

This post will be something completely different from what I posted so far. Usually I only do some market summaries (started out with those but stoped doing them a few months ago since there are just to many people here doing them and there are a bunch of good analysts here that made my simple market summary quite useless), raffles or some work on Steemhunt. But today I would just like to talk my mind and write about my feelings and opinions about the current cryptocurrency market situation. This should me in no way any financial advice or anything like that I'm stating my feelings and opinions here. And since this will be a pretty long one (at least for me) there could be some typos or grammar mistakes (no native english speaker here) but I will try my best and think you will pretty much get what I mean.

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The beginning:

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When I first heard about cryptocurrencies end of summer 2015 (Bitcoin was at about $220 USD at that time) I was sitting at a friends place and we both were a bit drunk and all of a sudden he started to pitch cryptocurrency. He was so motivated about the topic and tried really hard to get me in (not the bad way, despite him and me being drunk I could easily see his excitement about cryptocurrency). For the next couple of hours I basically just sat there on the couch and he pretty much did it all: starting from the basic terms, explaining me the advantages of blockchains, peer-to-peer, showing me charts and market analysis,... During all this we never stopped drinking so when I woke up the next day with a massive headache I couldn't remember much. This was actually the day I was going back to Vienna (about a 6 hours drive away from my hometown) so I wasn't seeing that friend until Christmas that year.

On Christmas Eve we all were going out (me and my friends have some sort of a tradition that we all celebrate with our family and then later on at midnight we all meet up at the club). This was actually the second time I ever thought about cryptocurrencies again since that drunken night. After the classic "keep-up-talk" he asked me if I had invested some money in cryptocurrencies like he was trying to convince me and of course I didn't. At this point we decided to get together the next days since we were already drunk again and we knew exactly where this would lead again. So we meet up the next day and he once more showed and explained me everything but at this point the main focus for me was just the money he had made in that few months since Bitcoin more than doubled his value to about $450 USD at that point. This was enough for me to immediately open a wallet and purchasing 1 Bitcoin (I just moved to Vienna and started studying so my available funds were limited to the few bucks I got from my parents and grandparents for Christmas).

The world is mine:

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Once again I went back to Vienna and after checking the charts for the next few weeks and seeing my "investment" shrinking and shrinking (not really much but still I was expecting that massive gain). As I said I had pretty much no idea what a Bitcoin really is and was just in for the money (nowadays people would call this FOMO (= fear of missing out)). As time went by I seem to have forgotten about the single Bitcoin I owned up until my birthday in summer (the next time I saw that friend). At this point Bitcoin was at around $700 USD and once more showed me the massive amount of money he had made in the meantime by trading and investing in other altcoins. This was the time I decided to to sit down and really learn more about that whole cryptocurrency thing.

So as I came back to Vienna I sat down a few days and read pretty much everything I could find about cryptocurrency. A few weeks back I also was pretty convinced in a bright future of cryptocurrency and thought I was ready to start trading and investing in other altcoins (looking back to this, I can only say: No, I was definitely not). Due to the fact that I was still studying and already had to struggle financial wise I once more had only a few bucks from time to time to invest. I pretty much saw a huge potential in everything I was just to damn naive and blindly believed everything I saw or read. That was leading to my Bitcoin amount shrinking and staking up on shitcoins, investing in lending platforms (yeah I was also part of Bitconnect and thought this will change everything).

Realizing my mistakes:

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A year later in summer 2017 (Bitcoin was now at $2500) I realized the first time that what I was doing was just complete BS and I had pretty much no clue about what is going on in the cryptocurrency market. Sadly at this point I was only holding less than 0,1 BTC (which was still about the amount of my initial investment but yeah it could be much more), due to the fact I traded nearly all my BTC for shitcoins and investments in some lending scams and stuff. Looking back at this, with the knowledge I have now I really find it hard to believe that I was that naive and thought I know it all but actually never read a single whitepaper or anything similar. Once again the classic explanation of FOMO. I just didn't want to miss out on anything so I fell for the scams that where promising fast money.

From that point on I started to sell off as many of my accumulated shitcoins (was still trying to get "good" prices which took a few weeks and of course a massive loss at my end), quit or let run out all of my lending contracts and started to build up a good and diverse portfolio. The fact that we were in the middle of the cryptocurrency hype didn't made things better for me since my available funds were still limited to a few bucks at a time. Despite all that and the sheer amount of time I know invested in reading whitepapers, analyses, going on meet-ups,... I managed to stack a nice portfolio (at least from my point of view). And as the year 2017 was ending I couldn't be happier (despite that I was still from time to time thinking about what have been if I haven't done what I did).

And then came the regression:

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After a few weeks of massive decreases I still was still saying to me: "Yeah this will bounce back soon". And the few-day-long increases in between were giving me hope again only to crush it once more with a massiv decline. I was looking for exit points but never had the guts to actually do it once again of fear-of-missing-out. Once again I thought I know it all but actually I was just hunting the next all-time-high that never came (so far). The only thing that was still keeping me going was the fact that at least my portfolio was mainly consisting of top-cryptocurrency and not of a ton of shitcoins like it did two years earlier.

This was also the time I joined Steemit. I was reading analysis all day long from pretty much everybody here and saw the low end prediction shrink week by week. Up until now the regression didn't really stop. I thought the market has finally stabilized itself since there was pretty much no big movements the last two or three months up until a few weeks ago where the market once more dipped hard.

Conclusion:

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Despite all that I still kept learning about cryptocurrency and am still eager to do so. Also I personally see still a great future in some cryptocurrencies and once more despite the market movements 2018 was a big year for cryptocurrencies. A ton of good news and implementations has been made so far and just the fact that a ton of big investors including banks are still investing in cryptocurrencies is keeping my hopes high. At these times there is nothing more than we can do than wait for the next bull run to appear.

But not all share this optimism. Best example for that would be the regression itself and the fact that Steemit somehow became nearly a ghost town. But again I do see some positive outcomes here for Steemit since the spam- and or shit-posts reduced by a ton. I read this from time to time and for me personally this is so true especially in these times (regarding Steemit): Come for the money, stay for the community!

This is some sort of experiment for me. Just thought about righting a longer and more personal post, like this, since a while now and today I had some free time to do so. It is getting late now. I will quickly formate this and we will see about the engagement here. Please feel free to comment your opinions or start a discussion. And if you are still here and reading this thank you very much for taking the time to do so.