Disclaimer BVNews:
This essay was created & submitted by a “Bitcoin OG” who has been an active part of the Bitcoin community & industry since several years.
The identity and claimed industry experience of the author has been verified by BitcoinVN News team.
None of the statements below shall constitute investment advice – you are fully responsible for your own decisions.
We all started our journey somewhere and we all made – some more, some less – plenty of (expensive) mistakes along the journey.
The following points are condensed experience of my over 8 years closely observing this space.
There was a clear path to early retirement for most people – and most of them threw it away by not following these simple principles.
Some of these mistakes I might have made of my own, some mistakes I might have observed others doing.
The patterns and the lessons to be learned remain the same.
Ignore them at your own peril.
“What do you think about Coin XYZ??”
Nothing and I don’t really care.
This question is usually asked within the context if some coin/token makes a “good investment”; not what it actually “does” (which most of the time is vastly different from the usual hyped-up marketing claims you hear about).
After hundreds, thousands of “projects” coming (and often going) who promised to “improve upon Bitcoin”, all that remained is vaporware which could not live up to its hype.
These schemes are designed that you give other people your precious Bitcoin in exchange for some random made-up token/coin.
They end up with your Bitcoin – you end up with their ever-depreciating shitcoin.
Can other Tokens/Coins “outperform” Bitcoin price wise?
On the short term this is indeed a possibility – over the long-term the odds are stacked firmly against you.
Most traders/”investors” end up with less Bitcoin then they started with.
Not even talking about all the time spent (wasted) on reading up on obscure “projects”, watching shitcoin charts for hours on end… – all for a game which you most likely will end up losing some or all of your Bitcoin.
This is stupid – so don’t do it.
Unless you have fun staying poor of course.
To summarize:
Time is more precious than even Bitcoin, so wasting time on any of these other schemes is not something I am keen to do.
And neither should you.
“Nothing wrong with some trading to make more Bitcoin, right?”
Sure.
Just be aware that you will most likely end up with less Bitcoin than if you never touched them.
“Trading Bitcoin” to make more Bitcoin is as solid of a strategy as going to the Casino to fund your retirement.
Guess what – it does not work for the absolute majority of the people.
I can count at 1-2 hands the people who ended up with more Bitcoin by constantly trading – while I know hundreds and hundreds of people who tried their hand and lost some or all of their Bitcoin.
All the while you spent a whole lot of time staring at charts and “doing research”.
Better read a book, go for a gym session or spend time with your kids (or make some more).
Invest in your future and the future of your family rather than gambling it all away at some Chinese shitcoin casino which pays half of their profits to the CCP which uses the funds to build more slave camps in Xinjiang.
Your time is scarce – your Bitcoin are scarce.
Treat them as such.
“Should I sell my Bitcoin at price XYZ?!”
No.
First thing:
Get rid of this fiat mentality.
In order to make it you must understand:
You are not making “an investment”.
You are exchanging bad money for good money.
You are not here to make more fiat funny money (be it USD, EUR, JPY…).
It is meaningless.
There is an unlimited amount of those, it costs nothing to produce it – and if you sell your Bitcoins for worthless fiat money, you are in the same position as the natives in Africa and the New World when they sold out their land, gold and wifes for a bunch of cheaply made glass pearls brought over by the colonizers.
You are giving them your best for something which costs them basically nothing to produce.
They have literally unlimited fiat at their disposal to convince you to hand them over your Bitcoins.
All these corporations who start owning larger and larger chunks of the limited supply of Bitcoin?
Guess what, they didn’t own any of those Bitcoins just a few years ago.
Random, “little guys” sold it to them.
Now they have your Bitcoins – and the little guy ends up with some of that fiat funny money which is essentially worthless.
Don’t be stupid.
To learn more – read:
Robert Breedlove – Masters & Slaves of Money
Friedrich A. Hayek – Denationalizaton of Money
“Where should I buy my Bitcoins?”
Somewhere where you can withdraw your Bitcoins to your own wallet.
Not Paypal, not Robinhood or any of these services.
They don’t let you own Bitcoin.
You own some IOU with them which they might honour – or not.
Again – don’t be stupid.
We have been here before.
Do not trust third parties to hold your Bitcoins for you.
Learn about the “Not your keys, not your Coins” principle.
And then go about learning on how to properly secure your own keys.
Ideally you are going to buy your Bitcoins with as little KYC as possible.
Privacy will be important – especially with regular database hacks of services in the space which might otherwise expose sensitive personal information to the whole world which puts your personal safety at risk.
Also do not store any significant amount of Bitcoin on internet-connected devices.
Make sure you have sufficient Backups of your seeds & passwords with sufficient failsafe precautions.
And yes – this is where you indeed should “do your own research” and invest your time to understand these principles and safely act upon them.
It is time well spent.
You must learn to protect yourself (and your Bitcoins).
*BitcoinVN News comment:
If you are based in Vietnam, we operate a variety of services which allow you to purchase Bitcoin.
We also have various beginner-friendly solutions for hardware wallets on offer which we deliver countrywide.
Where can I learn more about this?
As a newcomer all the information can be extremely confusing – especially online where a lot of loud-mouthed clowns demand your attention and lure you into all kinds of scams and traps.
To discern who is “real”, who is full of shit and who is just a plain old scammer (and there are many of them – and they all want you to give them your Bitcoin…)… takes a while.
To get started on sound footing check out this list of local Bitcoin Meetups.
These are generally vetted Meetups where you most likely won’t come across Shitcoin projects & casinos advertising to give them your money.
Connect with people who look for more than “making a quick buck”.
You will be better off long-term.
In every imaginable way.
So what should I do?
The most solid strategy always has been:
You obtain some Bitcoin – and then you obtain some more.
And otherwise you spend your time making sure to secure them – and go on about enjoying your life.
It is by far the safest and soundest strategy on a risk-reward basis.
Everybody who has followed this very simple plan has done very well for himself over the past couple of years.
Even if you were able to outperform Bitcoin’s value appreciation with gambling your money on some random shitcoin – it is *still* on a risk-reward basis not a prudent strategy.
You take on much more risk – for a possible upside which does not justify this risk.
Keep it simple.
Get some Bitcoin. Secure them. And then get some more.
And that’s all there is.
You will understand these opinions as you proceed on your journey.
You are free to make your own mistakes – but if you are looking for the honest opinion by somebody who has been observing the space over 8 years now: This is my condensed experience for you.
Read More: What is the Bitcoin White Paper?
