I feel now it's a good time to sum up my results during the last bull run (I say "the last run" because I feel that today we're in a dead cat bounce and I don't want to count it until it's clearly over).
I skip my previous crypto-experience and will revise only the last year or so.
I re-jumped into crypto in late 2019, when I got a bit more free time (paid by my employer, actually) to spend on crypto things. Nothing serious, mainly reading, blogging, and doing faucets. At that time faucets were doing good and I've got quite a few pennies from them, even some BTC. Then COVID started and I had to pause my activities in order to settle some IRL problems down. But in a couple of months the COVID mania calmed down and the situation stabilized. In summer 2020 I took crypto seriously again.
I should note that I don't mix brains with the bull market. I must admit that my bull run results are (spoiler!) rather successful not because I was super-smart or did excellent DYORs. It's because I happened to be in right place at right time. Some might say that it's an imposter syndrome -- but no, I knew the place where I should be and was able to be there, but I hadn't been so successful if the bull run hadn't happened.
In 2017 I sold all my crypto bags and mining hardware off, so in 2019 I started from clear zero and didn't "invest" any serious money. As far as I can now remember, I spent 2 bucks to create an EOS account, like 15 bucks to buy WAVES, and 50 bucks on some shit (WAVES and shit were sold later with a loss). After all fiat-to-crypto fees and comissions my 50 bucks actually became 35, and I completely pissed off the idea of buying crypto with a credit card or other fiat method. So it's safe to assume that my initial "crypto investment" was, say, 100 bucks at most.
By September 2020 jerking faucets, blogging at Publish0x and Leofinance, playing Prospectors and Splinterlands, and participating in airdrops helped me to build some capital to do some trading and to buy some promicing coins. So I entered September 2020 with like a 200 bucks worth bag of various crypto shits.
And then it exploded!!!1
Even though I've made some costly mistakes and wasted pretty big amount on some utter shit, in April 2021 my bag was worth like $800-900. And then came the real game changer -- the FORTH airdrop! The airdrop outperformed all my previous crypto-investments by orders of magnitude, even though the Hotbit morons stole part of it. It's safe to say that most of my current profits is from the FORTH airdrop.
Believe it or not, but I managed to sell most part of my crypto bag right before the 14th of April. Currently I hodl a pile of stablecoins, some FORTH from the airdrop, a bit of BTC and ETH, and some crypto-pennies not worth selling. The total fiat value is not a life-changer for me, but my crypto-treasure today is clearly bigger than I would have ever spent on crypto with my credit card and large enough to work with, to get meaningful results with less risk, even during the bear time.
But the most interesting part is the morals that we can derive from my story.
We shouldn't underestimate irrationality. Indeed, the markets can stay irrational longer than we could think based on formal logic. A shit can be an utter shit from the formally logical point of view -- but can bring good profits nethertheless. If a shit makes 100x from $0.01 to $1.00 and the price now looks too high -- it doesn't mean it can't go from $1 further to $100 or $1000. Mr. Livermore once noted something like "no price is too high or too low". I even believe that there exists kinda logic of irrationality, but will not go into it here.
Mr. Livermore also noted that a really big move neither starts in one day, nor it lasts for a week, nor it ends in one day. During the 6-months-long last bull run the best strategy was hodling -- we just sit flat on the ass watching it all pumping up and sell it little by little to fix profits. Personally, had I been doing less trading and swapping during the run, I'd been much better off now. I had quite a few coins in my bag which I swapped for pennies -- only to watch them making 50-100-500x several months later... No matter how funny it may look, the crypto maximalists and hodlers with balls of steel clearly won this round.
I must admit that I missed pretty much all big deals of this bull run. I've seen BTC at $3.5K and didn't buy any (well, I had very little funds at that time, anyway). I learned about DeFi in March 2020, when ETH was under $200 and cost of entering a pool at Uniswap was under $1. I missed to enter any of ETH-based DeFi, and I missed all those UNI, YFI, 1INCH, etc. airdrops too. What moral we can get from it? I don't know, actually. Maybe that we must look for game-changers. The idea of AMM was a game-changer, and it worked out "naturally", without paid shills or Mr. Musk's tweets, and at the end of the day paid off better than hyped canine or NFT shit.
We should realize that Mr. Taleb's swans do happen, and they happen quicker than we say "Not today!" We should take profits before shit happens (but not too early!). As Mr. Livermore put it, "the only money that is ever take out of Wall Street by speculators is the money they draw out of their accounts after closing a successful deal". It seems even more important if we hit a jackpot. One professional gambler once said like "if you hit a jackpot -- grab it and run and never look back" (that's how I saved most of my FORTH from Hotbit morons).
Well, enough for now.
I would only note that even though I still believe that "crypto" is useless (i.e. it doesn't and will not solve any real life problem except making a few richer at the expence of many) -- I equally believe it will be possible to make money with "crypto", even if today we enter a bearish trend for some long time. Indeed, I have a reason for such belief, but I leave details for some other article.
That's all, folks!
