Market timing is never an easy thing to do. I really got into the crypto world back in May and as you could imagine it was tough not to put money in anything, as everything was shooting to the Moon, or at least that's what people thought. Be patient, I was so worried on missing out on the ship at the time, that I got in a herd mentality. I made two investments which I still hold, Siacoin and Ripple. Though hindsight 20-20 if I had waited for the market to simmer down, I would have a few more coins (thousands...) of each. Instead, I should've took a breath and stepped back to examine. All I was thinking was that prices might never come down this low again for a long time and was only looking at this event from one side. "What goes up, must come down", and looking back to June when cryptocurrency prices peaked, this statement stands true. Like everything else in life, markets have cycles. I should've kept my eye out on the horizon for the scaling debate for bitcoin. For those who don't know, bitcoin has had major issues with a slower network since the block size is limited to one megabyte (MB). For the past few months it was unknown if there was going to be User Activated Soft Fork (UASF) or a User Activated Hard Fork (UAHF). Basically, a soft fork would allow the old version of the chain to co-exist still, whereas a hard fork would create two separate chains; similar to what happened with ethereum last year, and now we have ethereum and ethereum classic. Some people were predicting ethereum to overtake bitcoin even. Back to timing, this should've been a clear indicator that the market was going to have a lot of uncertainty as the August 1st deadline came for miners to approve of which route they were taking. This led to a cryptocurrency bloodbath for the last two weeks of June and the first weeks of July with people spreading a lot fear, uncertainty, and doubt on the future of crypto. We saw the cryptocurrency enter a bear market with prices tanking on nearly all coins.
"Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful," from the GOAT of investing, Warren Buffett. This stands true in stock markets just as much as it does in the cryptocurrency market. If you ignored all the fear and uncertainty, the bear market that just happened was a blessing to many traders. It was easy to scoop up any coin at a major discount to what it was a few weeks prior. Ethereum got to a low of around $136 on July 16th, which poised a great buying opportunity for anyone ignoring the masses. Within two days it shot up to $244 and now it is sitting around $225.
Below is the price of the top 21 coins as of July 23rd.
The cryptomarket has come back full force since the miners started to signal that they were in support of BIP-91 earlier than expected. This just goes to show that the cryptocurrency market is tough to be on top of since it is open 24/7/365 versus traditional stock markets that are open on week days only.
The lessons to be taught here is be patient, keep emotions out of your investments, keep your powder dry (have cash ready to use for investing), and avoid herd mentality, as it never ends well. And remember, there are always other buying opportunities in the future.
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Disclaimer: this is not investment advice, always do your own research. It is very important to do your own analysis before making any investment based on your own personal circumstances.