From blindly entering crypto to novice trader.

Previously posted on https://www.publish0x.com/?a=46dBr8Dod7

Good morning/evening.
 
Sometimes in crypto it feels like the husband and I have learnt so much, then it feels like so little, so this post is a summary really of going from, what is 'fiat'? to crypto holder and trader (in training). 
 
My/our crypto journey started in May 2021 when we ordered my first helium miners. As we are rural and there were no other Helium miners within 100km we got them in 3's to triangulate. Just buying them, for us, was a challenge! I mean we knew nothing about crypto and here we are sending money on some sort of chain that we knew nothing about, that keeps telling us if we get it wrong, we will lose it! 
 
Helium chart when we joined.
 
While we were waiting for delivery the amount of research we did on this was unbelievable, we had maps of surrounding villages, we plotted distances, line of sight (even trimmed some of our trees!) we used hotspotty to find the best locations, we had to learn about the best antennas, the best cables to use and rssi signals. We talked to many potential hosts. Eventually as the miners arrived (late) we spent a lot of time on our friends' roofs, replacing many ancient routers and miles of internet cable.
We did everything to the best of our ability. Then we were watching our HNT roll in and the price just kept going up.
What we didn't know was ........ well everything! We had no idea about cycles, we were not paying attention to crypto as a whole, just our little bubble. It was fun and we were looking at our profits every day.......unrealised of course because we HODLed on the most part.
 
We started to watch youtubers talk about crypto as a few had Helium miners, they told us about all these projects they were in and making loads of money from and yes, you guessed it, we jumped into a few projects and became someones exit liquidity. Node season was bad for us, even though I believed I was researching everything well, I was not looking in the right places or using the right tools, reading white papers every day as well as audits was also hugely time consuming. Don't get me wrong, we had a couple of wins but definitely more losses.
 
June 2022 It was around this time I found PublishOx and then some faucets and was earning a little free crypto and reading a lot. A while later I found Bulb and have also had some great tips and advice from people here.
 
 
This was the point that we said that's enough of Defi, we need to rethink what we are doing, I was looking at long term holding of tokens as a better option. We had been in Helium for over a year by now and it was going down faster than a sinking ship.
 
This was our first small portfolio and the tokens we chose.
 
10th Sept 2022.... I remember that this was when there was some bad news about Helium and at 4am we watched a video and the sell off was starting. We sold most of our HNT that night and I cried. 
 
Some of that money went in to yield nodes.....yep I know, but luckily not much but this was around the time I started to see BTC as our best option and I was not focused on much else....I set my mind on building up the BTC bag. This included me spending more time away working so I did not have to use the regular income or the savings to do this.
 
This was also when I got some great advice about altcoins, elastic bands and micro caps. I spent more and more time researching, the BTC bag was growing, most of the tokens we did have (the KDA, ADA, XRP soon got swapped out).
 
2023 Most of the year was all about BTC but research was endless to find a few microcaps and look at the altcoins. The HNT/IOT we would switch to SOL or BTC but it was not huge amounts, around $1 per day from all the miners! We had learnt about the cycles now and for the first time in our crypto adventure it felt like we were actually getting prepared for a bull market.
 
Although the year was really busy, we knew that by September we would have time to try and learn more about trading and not just holding tokens. So even though we had dabbled a little in the past, we had not really delved into this area a lot. The hours we have spent each day watching, practicing and trying a few things out have been immense and enjoyable. We know we have more to learn though.
 
Even in the last month the portfolio has changed a lot because as we were organised, we had a trading fund, a fomo fund and all the profits we earned from Defli went into some more of the microcaps. We got in early on a couple of things and took some profits that have been re- invested. We sold the ETH that I didn't really want at a decent profit and reinvested that too. We actually have profits earning profits now. We have a plan for entries and we have a plan for exits.
 
For me, we also took what was a huge step back into defi. The SOL had somehow built up, I even found half a SOL on a never used wallet that I got for $10 to use for gas and never used so that and all the SOL we accumulated went into Kamino and is earning. (There is also a possibility of an airdrop from using Kamino).
 
 
The dip we had a couple of days ago was also a good buying opportunity so we topped up on a few things. If I had seen a dip like that a while ago I would probably be panicking but no it was just move fast and buy.
 
As much as we think we have learned nothing at times, we have learnt a lot. Even how to on ramp fiat, how to swap that to a token/coin, learning about wallets, getting a hardware wallet and using it, what chain to use, CEX's and DEX's, blockchains, how to research properly, crypto cycles, narratives the list could go on and on. 
 
As for trading, that is a whole beast in itself so when we get frustrated that it feels like we know nothing, that is not the case it is just a different thing to learn and that is the goal for 2024. Firstly deciding what sort of trading and then how to use all the tools, the latest we are looking at is the RSI but have gone through moving averages, margin trades, isolated trades, leverage trades, stop losses, take profit areas. Again this could be another endless list.
 
The time seems to have flown by quickly and it is still fun with a lot of learning to do and as always, I will continue to post progress here on Bulb and PublishOx (hopefully the writing will improve too!) as I see it as a sort of diary of the things we have done. 
 
Thank you to everyone for some great articles and advice and wishing everyone a fantastic 2024. 
 
Image by ://pixabay.com/users/jeshoots-
 
As always thank you for reading and feel free to comment.