Bitcoin Forum

Hi All,

I'm a pretty new miner and have been making some decent income from it.  I tried trading recently because I thought that that was the natural thing to get into after mining.  I was wrong.  I don't have the patience or the grit to trade.  

I was wondering: Have you tried trading only to realize you should stick with mining?  How much did it cost you before you realized you're not meant to be a trader?

I originally mined on Butterfly Labs ASICs, and pretty much kept my BTC.  I didn't start to trade until the miners became unprofitable and obsolete.  I was kind of forced into trading because at that time because I wanted more.  I had around 400 LTC stolen by Big Vern at Cryptsy.  If you are making a profit mining now and are happy with it, then stick to it.  I just hope you are banking something for the future.  If you feel the need to trade just take a small portion of your profits and throw it at altcoins for long term holds.  Don't try and beat the market, make a portfolio and see what happens.  Do not leave your coins on exchanged. You also might want to try acquiring some staking coins to help out with passive income.

Good luck!

Luckily, not much.  I don't have time to watch charts all day, so mining is a great (mostly) passive way to be a part of this circus.

I've always been curious about trading bots, but I'm skeptical at the same time.

I stay away from trading.   Usually its small wins and big losses. 

yea i learned really quickly that i don't have the patience for trading. lost a good ammount of bitcoin with OKCash :(

I started as a simple miner myself, but then I go to exchange much and much more
and now I can see that 50% of my income comes from exchange and mining gives me like 30% as a support role, another 20% I'm getting from PoS, nodes, airdrops
so all in all i'm very happy how things are going!  ::)

hahah "passive way to be a part of the circus".  great way to put it, i'm going to start using that phrase

Yes, I have tried to trade on poloniex and I can say it was somewhat successful  ::)
Of course there were some losses< while I was getting experience,  but all in all I think I'm earning like 30% each month from exchange.
For me it is a good  deal  :)

ha, ha.!
exchanges! this is a disaster for some unprepared people! you may loose all you have mined there within seconds!
so you have to be extra careful! I just sell there what I have mined, cause it is really dangerous to play.
you do not have power as big whales have and that means you can't control what is going on there.

That makes a lot of sense.  I'm really glad to hear everyones perspectives.  One of my close friends told me that you have to trade to make money faster.  I tried trading and lost money and learned my lesson.  It's really nice to hear from you guys that trading is not for everyone and that some of us should stick to mining.

In mining you do research and then implement
In trading, you need to learn first, you need to learn constantly, and you need to have patience and you also have to learn to do nothing, just sit on your hands. And learn meanwhile :)

Yes, you are right, we do not have any power and control.  :-\
We are common miners and some times traders.  ::)
We are just trying to do something new and interesting. And can earn on this.

That is right. I trade the coins I mine.

I just mine and wait and only sell on parabolic moves. Buy more gpu's, rinse and repeat.

This strategy works great for me. Very passive income and doesn't stress me out or take much of my time.

Mining is a race, to find the next hash, trading is about patience, whether you go short or long, this takes time and obedience to observe the markets, try not to follow the crowd, for the FOMO is strong with them, this can incite an early, or late click and thereby easily loose when ahead.

Tried, and found it easier than mining, so no I mostly stick with trading :)

ohh man trading bots are awesome, BUT here is the thing, that's if you find a good one but that's easier said than done. I happen to be in the right place right time and got in while the project was still really early, turned out I found a really good one even made my btc back that I spent on it, but I'm one person, btw the one I use I believe is advertised here on bitcointalk somewhere he has a post up that talks about it and explains it, etc.

Yeah, while I have timed some of my sells pretty good, I am not a very good trader when trying to predict when to buy. I think for now I will stick to mining and when I send my coins to an exchange I am not usually in a hurry so I set the sell price to what I want. Sometimes it takes days or weeks to fill, but that is probably why I am more successful doing it that way than actively trying to trade the day to day fluctuations.

There are times I feel like trading, but as you say, I too have no time to look at charts and follow the whole shazam all day long. Made a very profitable long trade with BCH this week-end though. But I mostly stick to mining as well and just try to sell some coins when they are high enough.

The volatility of cryptos means you'd have to watch the exchanges all day long to spot the right time to move. Too much panic sellers out there for the average Joe. Looking at my CMC app, there are days where I'm +1500$ and the next -2000 lol. What goes up goes down and comes back up. Just look at Signatum, made a 100% return over the last 7 days...

A good place to keep an eye on: cryptopanic.com

Same happened here. Took my 12 ETH coins i've been holding and put into Bitcoin cash during that insane price rise, saw my profit rise about 2 grand over what i put in then went to sleep woke up next morning to see it had crashed and I lost $1000 of what i put in originally. Awful. But lesson learned you gotta skim what profits you can. The thought of "it may go higher" it always a nasty one that will lead you to lose money like I did.

Interesting topic. Like most of post on here, I am on the mining side and a bit scared to try trading .... Very few people manage to get rich quick

If you don't have the patience or the courage to take the occasional loss then the trading it's not for you. Getting to know how to trade profitably is way harder than putting together a miner, but profits are bigger as well.

Mining and holding I believe actually makes more.money than actively trading if done correctly. Here are my reasons why.

Mining and holding pays off big time on tail end. 2-3 years. Traders will have most likely sold by then and miss a few Rally's.

Mining forces you to mine new coins on the cheap. Pro traders only buy in after price moves up and their market movement.

Mining when done on a large scale farm is very profitable. Most people don't see mining as profitable bc they only have a couple of video cards earning 2 bucks a day and see traders making that quick cash.

Mining diversify is important. Get GPU and asics. I've made 1 extra bitcoin on hashnest after selling three of my s9 hashpower.

Not saying mining is more profitable than trading but just letting others know that mining with lots of patience does pay off well and has given me  coin price of 4x to 10x gain's of my electric cost to mine them.

I've seen pro traders do this full time as well as large mining farms go full time for financial independence.

Be good at both for the win.  That what I want to do

Word of advice, never buy on the rise (unless it's very early), buy on the dips. Some basic trading tools will help you here. FOMO plays a big role in this too.

Also place stop orders to take the profit when you're not in front of your computer.

Yep exactly for short term profits those are great strategies.

  I would also like to further add Fomo buying is okay also if you fully believe in the project and willing to wait long term.  For example I fomo bought litecoin at $12 all time highs for that time frame when it went from $ 4 to $8 then to $12,  This was right before segwit activation.  Yes it did dip to $9 and could have got a better deal but at the end of the day it's currently at $64 and I still have those coins.  Something just triggered in my head that it's a legit coin and it's okay to fomo buy when comming to that conclusion.

You never lost money if you never sale at a loss,  Trading eth for bcc is like trading a porshe for a ferrari,  Both are good investments but will win races at different time frames.  And ya always best to put in fresh usd money instead of trading one coin for the other coin so you never lose position.

I bought BCH @ 0.20 on its first rise 2 months ago so I know about FOMO. Was on a winning streak as I bought early on the rise, sold right before the dip, did that again and then the 3rd time well it crashed like poop :-p. The problem is not so much to buy a coin you believe in when you trade, the problem is buying something when it's high up and getting stuck not being able to sell because you're not willing to take a loss. It's all a game of patience...

I would have tripled my money by now if I had just bought BTC instead of buying mining gear.

trading is not for me too. It is best to mine a coin you trust and hold them.

I bought mining gear after my  btc has trippled in value:),  I don't see btc trippling any time soon so best to shift those profits to mining gear now.  Rinse/Repeat.

Ideally I wish i can use my day job money to buy gear and keep my bitcoins,. But I'm low on usd cash,  so I think it's good to take some btc profit after 3x gains to buy mining gear.

I thought that i am a good trader, but after that i added my bittrex account to http://3commas.io and realised that i lot much of my mined funds. Compared to hold strategy... That's sad

I was mining and holding ETH waiting for the price to rise, meanwhile BTC price is climbing, I realized that I loosed a lot of opportunities to make some good profits.
So I decided to sell my ETH for BTC when it crashed during BCH fever. Now BTC is up again, if I buy ETH again for BTC i will get more ETH so will make some good profits.
I placed a buy order  a little higher because I think BTC will continue upwards.

So very true. FOMO is a biggest driver of that occurrence. Trading responsibly, not being greedy and golden rule "buy cheap - sell high" are 3 best advice's I received.

Thats why we now have SMART phones, where you can download some apps and set the alarm which goes off, when the price has rissen or fallen :))

Btw. I know how u feel :) i had my lesson too :)

I tried trading and i have absolutely no talent.. so i stick with mining..
But still need "practice" researching good coins to mine, you know those who have low difficulty, and are profitable a lot after a few weeks..

Started mining BTX lately.. but i'm not sure it'll be profitable..

Well, something similar happened to me too.
I'm a miner and I don't know for what reason I bought the rumours that BitcoinCash will be termed as Bitcoin and original Bitcoin will become Bitcoin Classic and in that fuss, I bought around 1.8 BCH for 13 ETH at all-time high and the next day it was not even 7 ETH worth. What a bump! Never did I ever think about trading now.

I think trading and mining are part and parcel. Of course one can look at Whattomine then select the most profitable coin and mining it. But it's not the best way to make money in cryptoworld. Trading requires a huge patience and at least "steel balls" but it can give you much more profit than mining alone. Mining "right" coins hold them and sell them at "right" moment can give at least 2-3 times more profit than regular mining. But it's like a 6th feeling and hard work with price plots, news and so on.

if you want to trade, there is a good bot that does it for you - you can check it out

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1715214.0

also I found a free platform that helps with day trading - it has a referral program as well

https://3commas.io/?c=bitcointalk

I only mine coins that are on polo margin markets, then use them as leverage to trade on margin.  I NEVER have more out on loan than my actual margin value, don't leverage at 2.5x.  Gives a nice buffer to ride it out when the market goes the opposite direction that you thought it would.

I do a bit of both but like mining as I can mine good quantities of newer coins and then hold them for the long term.

I'm also looking into more POS coins now and like the idea of a return on your investment with Masternodes too.

Day trading or short term trading is risky, in stocks and crypto.

I think you should do both (but buy and hold the crypto) - you can go 50/50 or 60/40 split (mining/buying), do what's best for your budget and vision.

I tried day trading and had some moderate success, but i gave up on it.
The reason for me is that you can't compete against pump and dump group and also the bots are pretty annoying.
Now my strategy is to stick in mining only, participate in some very promising ICO's out there and invest only in the biggest coins out there.
And to tell you the truth i live a better life now, do not miss the stress for sure.

Ive noticed that i make alot more money when i dont try to hard. During some weeks on my dayjob i get to stressed and i cant think about crypto, thats normally when i dont sell and make alot more than if i sold  ;D

I just took part in my first airdrop and was totally overwhelmed when I saw how many coins there were and how much I would need to learn in order to do pretty much anything at all. there's a lot going on, and honestly, I think it's over my head for now. I'll probably figure it out someday, but for now I'll stick to mining.

I've been mining for awhile now and had accumlated a decent size portfolio of coins. Just like you, recently started to get into trading. Its a full time job for people i believe. But i have gotten slot of advice and tips, to date my trading portfolio is in the positive. I think you need to have patience and do not over trade! Make some short trades when possible. You should be fine.

really great advice indeed but I suggest you to do some staking and masternode running as well based on your investment volume.

Its really tough to trade crypto coins. I mean, its great if you are on the right side. But awful if caught wrong footed.

Unlike conventional equities, cryptos can move 20% easily.

thats true because trading cause of lossing money but mining is waitin profit.