Bitcoin Forum

Just came to my mind and wonder to share with the community especially for newbies.

A wrong (Altcoin) selection would destroy your dream.
You may order how? I will share my experience then you would realize the concept. I can't recall the exact date but most probably it's the beginning of 2018 when Bitcoin started dumping. I was a newbie in trading and holding. Somehow it's come to mind since I am not a good trader I should hold the coin for a long time. So that I can multiply my (Bitcoin) portfolio. I did the same as what was in my mind. Rather than holding Bitcoin, I moved to altcoin. I select two altcoins for investment and holding. And almost 1.5 BTC has invested. It was my first mistake.

However, a few days it was good for me. But when happen massive Bitcoin dump all altcoin start dumping. The dumping speed was more than Bitcoin. So I didn't bother to sell due to the huge dump. It was my second mistake what I realize now. Then suddenly Exchange announced delist for one of my holds altcoin. Means I lost too much here. Then I sold that shitcoin and add a few more QTY to my other holding. That was my 3rd mistake. As a result that shitcoin value is less than $1K. I don't bother to sell this shitcoin still now, just leave it as it is.

So my wrong (Altcoin) selection lead me to break my dreams. If I were just left Bitcoin rather than move into altcoin then I should be in a good position today. Now 1.5 BTC is worth too much especially when it was above $60K.

I hope newbies can take a lesson from this story. It's not just a story, it's giving me pain sometimes when remembering it. So when you think something similar, please select the best altcoin otherwise just stick with Bitcoin. Research the market as much as possible you can during the selection of altcoin investments. And don't repeat the previous mistakes that I have done.

Best of luck to all of you guys.

I did this with a small amount of my balance when bitcoin wasn't moving much, I think I bought eth at around 0.03 and then it halved and I managed to sell the bottom because I didn't care enough to keep it open (it was just a bit of a test anyway). If I'd have kept holding it until now, it'd have doubled but at an extreme risk - so I can sort of appreciate how risky trades like yours were when you decided to hold alts instead of btc - I imagine they were up in terms of btc too (pre crash) unless you only bought them recently?

No one can say that cryptocurrency will be profitable. But what you have said is not correct. In my opinion, it is better to trade Altcoin for a limited time. Not to keep it. But you can keep BTC or top coins. If you compare it with the previous years, you can hold the top coins. It can be profitable.

It is really a sad experience, you didn't mention the alt-coin so may I think you bought the alt-coin due to hype, am logically thinking that no one would move their Bitcoin into any alt-coin without there first being a hype about that alt-coin, I have seen such hype on social media, even heard their are groups that pay interested participants to hype their alt-coins or project all over the internet, so I think -Newbies- should not make the mistake of panicking to buy an alt-coin because of hypes.

Someone somewhere told that altcoins are a way to steal your bitcoin. This is possibly true, you are one proof. However, altcoins are also good way to accumulate more BTC. I have been in a good position for the last few months unless I were not giving shit to coinbase listing. I lost around 50% of my peak but still I'm in profit. You need to be careful, have to pick the best but yeah, it’s pretty hard for newbie.

When I started, I like some altcoins, the ones with high marketcap, I remembered the time I have my 50% on bitcoin while my 50% on altcoins, I have ethereum, litecoin, digibyte and doge, but I later removed the coins and put it on an exchange to trade, it was all in tether on the exchange, I would have gained now, but I used all to trade and lost all. Trading has been my major set back, altcoins I kept all moved up like bitcoin. But there are shitcoins, these are the coins that are most risky which OP is talking about, they are low marketcap coins of no value that people can think will have value but remain valueless or even reduce more in price.

I can imagine almost everyone with hands of steel at one point or the other sold their Bitcoins too early or traded them for a shitcoin which they expected would increase in value far more than Bitcoin and ended up losing out in the long run. Almost all the altcoins which I have ever held are not trading on ay exchange at this point, with zero value.
Holding Bitcoin is risky, but altcoins are pretty much gambles or wild guesses on which could rise within the short term as almost all become valueless in the long run

this is the obvious reason why most altcoins are called shitcoin.
You as campaign manager probably know what altcoin teams ask from you, usually bumps, spreading a nice word about projects etc... often and without cover and the actual product behind.
to be honest, I myself had a lot of failures while believing in altcoin projects.
at one point I had altcoin worth 7-9 in BTC, now that I would try to turn that same amount of altcoin into BTC, it wouldn't be enough for either 0.1Bitcoin. Plus, many of these projects are dead now even if they sound very perspective and they had great support.
I think only the top 10 ^{maybe 20 from} on CMC are worth being considered as trustable and to hold.

There is a right time to invest in an altcoin though. But it might not be good for longterm investment for there will be a bear market to come every now and then and you are left with less valuable tokens. Bitcoin still is the best investment especially for newbies that don't really want to research anything.

There are exceptional tokens but it will take years before you could really see its growth. The top altcoins are somehow exceptional these days like the BNB, Polkadot, and UNI but this is because they got a good use case.

Thank you for sharing your experience with us COOLCRYPTOVATOR.
I am sure most of us here made at least one of those mistakes at one point. The problem isn't always the lack of experience but the inability to control our emotions especially the fear of losing our hard earned money.
At least by now you know that whenever the price of bitcoin start falling you should either stop trading and wait for it to recover (if you can hold for a long time) or to exchange to one of the stable coins. Any one who follow should realize that most altcoins always follow the trend of bitcoin.

Well, a great experience of you that we should also learn but fortunately on my portfolio --the largest amount is in bitcoin and I have altcoin too but only a selective one with the amount that I can afford. The problem is you totally left the bitcoin even though we know that bitcoin is less risky than the altcoin. This is supposedly the allocation amount in your portfolio, ^{[85% for bitcoin and the best altcoins]}. There is nothing wrong if we try to invest in altcoin for the amount we can afford but this is not good for a long-term holding and anytime some of the altcoins will dump and cannot recover.
However, thank you for sharing --as they said, you must learn from your mistake because more experience will lead us to success.

If you've hit a shitcoin and the person doesn't know about the pump and dump scheme, his money will be dead, which would really destroy his/her dream. If being practical, you shouldn't convert any of your assets to something new or "looks" profitable because it's not always a win-win situation in cryptocurrency especially in the altcoins, even ETH or BNB can go down 50% like what happened recently. I've noticed that people are easily FOMOd in an altcoin investment, especially in a shitcoin that's been promoted as an x10 gem; he'll lose a lot if whales dump because x2 is enough for them.

Sometimes you have to think like a whale even if you aren't a whale; altcoins are full of whales; continue dumping if they have already profited from that altcoin. I also have an altcoin investment, but it is separate from my BTC investment; I am still holding ADA, which I purchased at a low price, and I am confident that my research will pay off someday. I don't usually invest in an altcoin that is already undergoing a pump because it is too late and I could lose a lot of money in a single mistake.

Lessons we could deduce from this:

1. If you think you could make use of altcoins to increase your Bitcoin holdings, think twice. It is more likely that altcoins would reduce your Bitcoin holdings rather than increase it.

2. A wrong altcoin selection could destroy your portfolio. However, there is only one good in a thousand altcoins. That's like looking for a needle in a haystack. Needless to say, there is much higher probability that you end up choosing the bad one rather than the good one.

3. Altcoins are not for long term. Just like OP's experience, it could happen that the altcoin that you bought could increase in price in terms of BTC after days or a few weeks. Should it happen, grab the opportunity and sell it. There are abundant proofs that altcoins are short-lived. It is better to make a little profit than incur a big loss.

4. If those who made careful research fail in choosing the right altcoin to invest, how much more those who are lazy enough to do research? If you are lazy, just stick to Bitcoin and HODL.

When we invest in altcoins, take a look at the basic situation of the currency, and don't invest because of its high ranking.
You can hold more Bitcoin or Ethereum. If you keep holding altcoins, you may lose more, because altcoins are not suitable for long-term development. Everyone makes frequent transactions through altcoins to make profits of.

• When we fail to invest, we must think about the reasons, control our emotions, and don't invest emotionally. This will make us lose too much.
• While paying attention to altcoins, we must also pay attention to Bitcoin. In many cases, altcoins fluctuate with the fluctuation of Bitcoin.

Majority of us all made that mistakes, it'll be unwise If the newbies coming into the space today do the same. Altcoins are just there to steal your bitcoin at the end of the day. You'll think you can easily double your investment with them.

Well that's somehow possible if you're lucky to go in and come out without having an attachment to them but that's unlikely. The very moment you leave Bitcoin and start investing in altcoin, it'll be hard for you to come back. You'll keep believing the very next altcoins is the Golden one and keeping drowning in that section of the market.

Just stay focused, keep accumulating Bitcoin, if you just want to feel other aspects of the industry, go in with just the mindset of experimenting and just throw in few bucks that won't affect your investment. At the end Bitcoin is the only true cryptocurrency out there, the rest are just inferior and duplicates of each other. Don't ever use your Bitcoin to buy alts, you'll always regret that action in the long run.

This is something a lot of newcomers have done at some point mostly because when they come into this world they are usually bombarded by a lot of advertisement that is telling them to buy shitcoins promising to perform like bitcoin. They usually believe it after looking at bitcoin price (being high) and compare it with the shitcoin price (being low).
The hundreds of topics telling people to "be patient" (translation: baghold the dumping shitcoin) during the dumps like 2018 were also the reason why so many newcomers lost a lot of money.

I am a newbie, but I want to emphasize that the "wrong" altcoin will make you regret it. if you choose the "right" altcoin, you will get more profit than Bitcoin

The price of Bitcoin is now 40,000 usdt. You can imagine how difficult it is for Bitcoin to double to 80,000 usdt. But many newly released tokens will easily double.

So what a novice has to do is to find the right token, just like you found Bitcoin a long time ago.

Of course, Bitcoin is always in my investment choices, .But I only have 50% of my assets in btc. I use the other money to find new tokens.

From the first time I knew bitcoin 2017, until the end of 2019, more than 94% of my cryptocurrencies saving were in bitcoin but the problem was not invested using DCA.

Hodling bitcoin is not the fastest way to achieve crazy profits, but the problem of altcoins is difficult for them to return to ATH if its price fail and therefore Bitcoin is the only one who does.
Betting on the historical data of altcoins will lead you to the loss of your money.

Yes, but the risk also doubled. Also, In terms of volatility, it's wilder.
The point is, the cryptocurrencies spaces are already crowded. There is indeed some revolutionary ideas in this space, but most altcoin being made only a rehashed version of what has already been done. And that is the risk when the newcomer come to this space with a get rich quick mindset. Lack of experience also contributes to what mitigate them to find the "right" token.

Honestly, I don't want to discourage anyone from trading or holding altcoin. As I said in the title, a wrong selection. This means if your selection is right and bought the potential best altcoin by researching yourself then it would multiply your portfolio. If that altcoin eats your portfolio means your selection was wrong. That's the concept of my post. The newly released token would double within an hour, and it has been happening. But what is the percentage? Have you seen a few newly released tokens dumped 4x? Hope that is a lesson for you. Best of luck.

All selections of altcoins are wrong, there's no good altcoins that will bring reliable profits. Go to coinmarketcap, pick as much altcoins as you want, look at their price and switch to displaying price in BTC - in pretty much every case the price goes down over time. If it didn't, it means it's still a very young shitcoin that will eventually, and likely sooner than later, go down. Altcoins exist for short-lived pump and dumps, and you can't outtrade manipulators who orchestrate them, so better just stay away, don't be greedy and enjoy the massive gains of Bitcoin.

I pretty much agree with you, well said. But the situation will be more worst if we choose shit of shitcoin. I am not saying all are shitcoin like Ethereum isn't shit coin at all. I am not a big fan of any altcoin though and the major part of my portfolio is in Bitcoin. Sometimes just shorting Bitcoin and hold USDT. I know comparing price in Bitcoin of altcoins are just dumping as you said. The altcoin is just to increase your portfolio by trading or short time holding. It's not much useful holing for a long time.

I feel you COOLCRYPTOVATOR , i did nearly the same as you some years ago when Bitcoin was crashing down.
Invested in some Altcoins and into some shares of an exchange , the Altcoin crashed more and the Exchange was going into Liquidation.
Got my BTC out there before but the Altcoins still there and waiting for it to get it back.
Maybe i have luck and they are something worth when i get it .

So if the choice is between losing your money quickly with shitcoins or losing slowly with less shitty coins, then why choose at all and not go 100% Bitcoin? Almost every newbie nowadays knows to stay away from "shitcoins", but because they are newbies they lack fundamental skills like determining if a coin is shitcoin or not, or the basics of trading like having a strategy, taking profits, cutting losses. If they just buy and hold Bitcoin, they will have a guarantee that they are investing in honest project not created for pump and dump.

A wrong (Altcoin) selection would destroy your dream

In my opinion, this is a situation that maybe can/not avoided by new investors
depending on risk -taking factors and investment selection.
which I believe, is an important point that they may pay attention or ignore.

from what i have seen, when crypto projects are equipped with big deals
like high returns through defi programs, PoS and etc,
it really gives hope in improving their finances.
but they only get what they harvest,
the larger the size of the investment then the greater the yield or not get anything.

but, we cannot anticipate what will happen in reality.
such as in some cases where a crypto project that initially received high response
but ended up not meeting market demand
or fails to meet investor requirements
or legal disputes or the inability of the developer
and other situations that could affect the reputation of the coin/token .

this situation presents a high risk to the investor
where it can bring the coin / token into a high level of the depressed market price & liquidity crisis
before resulting in loss of value and eventually being listed as a shitcoin.

but we also can't anticipate if there is a situation where shitcoins start to gain influence and come out of their black circle. but this situation may be 1 in 100k. :o

I also had same experience most especially during February/March this year when Bitcoin fell from $60k to almost $30k lossing almost half of my investment, then foolishly swapped my bitcoin to one shitcoin, which never
did I know that coin will follow suit for the great fall, making me to lose almost 60percent of my investment, and I went.
Thou, actually that was my first time investing in bitcoin, and I got the worst experience ever. But currently now I guess I have known a little

It's a lesson that almost all newbies will learn or experience one way or the other, the first dream of a newbie is wanting to become a future whale, having 1000 BTC in your wallet in the future, yeah I was there as well, the point here is OP got in at the time of existing, you don't buy coins when they are high in value, I lost 3500$ this way in 2018 too

When it comes to investments, there are dangers everywhere you turn. Especially in the crypto field where there are lots of vulnerabilities due to the anonymous nature of it and with the fact that, its a growing field, people just take the opportunity to put out anything, pump, take profit, dump it and move out. So uncool and this could be very damaging to a beginner trader or investor.

The fact that, most persons don't see the need for a bitcoin investment as, they tend to believe bitcoin has gone way far beyond reach as per its price, is what has earned many investors a lot of problems. It goes to scare people into investing in altcoins for which they know nothing about and just believe it pumps some day. In the event that it doesn't,  cryptos get termed scam. They ultimately forget the risks that comes with investment and just like that, they are gone..

At times like this, it's better to realise that you failed in one step, pick your axx up and go about tracing and fixing your mistakes because, you must have kept a lot of analysing on the sidelines.

Actually it can be avoided, read the OP again and 90% of what others are saying on the thread. By simply resisting the argue to invest in the trending over hyped projects flooding around the industry. Just by doing that you have avoided similar experience other has expressed here.

The reason it seems the altcoins are been hated on is because 99% aren't worth the market capitalization they have and obviously their price doesn't represent their utility to the market. These coins are just been pumps and soon to be dump then new projects are giving attention in order to shill them to create fomo and pump the coins.

We have some altcoins that have done so well in a very short period of time that could be said to be great investment choices but instead of advocating for projects that their future aren't certain and aren't trusted, it's better you promote what we know can restand all the market throws at it, which is Bitcoin.

Used by Hype and Fomo seduction can also make us easy to lose funds.  ;D
Have you ever remember the project a few years ago, which was also very popular? Ignis, yes this project. I felt so stupid at that time.  ;D
I bought it because it was really new and complacent with a fairly rapid increase of up to several dollars.
I was provoked to follow in the footsteps of my friend.
And as a result, the coin dropped dramatically and became Shitcoins.
Really sad at that time it was the first to be the first investments done, but yes already, because life must go on, yes forget it and make it a valuable lesson and experience.
That, most of us lose money because we invest in something we don't know and know, especially just following other people (where he understands the market conditions). Of course, this will be different from our condition that has just entered the world of Crypto.

OP, I think it would've been better to list the names of those shitcoins that cost you that much pain. Is there any illegality in doing so? I won't hesitate to expose and tag any project that causes me pain or scams me.

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The sad reality is that none of them will be bold enough to voice it now, thinking that they may be laughed at. No one is above mistakes or knows it all. I always maintain that every experienced person was once a novice. There's no shame in announcing our inexperience. I was a victim of this altcoins saga and shitcoin happenstance. It happened to the best of veteran investors and traders too. The dude who introduced me to BNB in 2017 when it was newly launched. I bought 270 units at less than $0.04 each but sold off at $3 or so each. Made profit from it but reinvested it in Regalcoin (which sadly turned scam). One day I got talking with the dude, thinking he was in cool cash when BNB got to over $400 only for him to tell me he sold at $16. Despite his vociferous campaigns for BNB that it was a great investment, he too sold early. And I believe he must've reinvested in another token that would've turned sour too. We are all speculators, no one truly knows where the market is headed.

Please allow me to withdraw some conclusions from your experience and kindly correct me if I'm wrong

1. Before jumping to a decision, it's an obligation for us to do our own research and gather pieces of knowledge about what's we're doing. If we know what is in our front, we can take a sane decision and we can take responsibility for it. From your example, if you know how's BTC working, the nature, the fundamentals, etc you can make a better decision based on your knowledge whether HODL or selling BTC and move to Alt or permanently leave

2. Know when to stop rather than HODL-ing blindly, especially when you invest in Altcoin. Always observe the news, anything that happened with your investment, the growth, and events related to the projects because it can affect the price. The altcoin has more challenges, so prepare your heart and mind.

3. The last conclusion is probably never to invest money that you can't afford to lose. Thank you for sharing and I hope we all can learn from these and you got repaid better.

Thank you dear for sharing your story with us this will help to many people so they can avoid the mistake which you made in the beginning I am also a beginner this will help me a lot to research the crypto coin in whichever I am going to invest and I will also do research before investing.

Maybe not all altcoins can give you such regret. If you shifted into binance or Ethereum, I think it may not affect you as you complain now. Binance in 2018 was still extremely cheap while Ethereum was still below hundred, you can see the difference in price now and you got big money for investment too which can help to put more profit to your wallet. You actually made a mistake and a lesson to learn.

Upon picking a certain altcoin to invest with, you should think it thoroughly as much as you can because your success will decided by it specially if you will go all out for it. One common mistake that newbies do is biting to the trend right away without even speculating the possible future outcomes for a specific coin. Trends are just a facade and behind lies failures and huge dumps. If you really want to be successful with your investment, spend most of your time doing your own research, it will all be worth it once you find a potential and a close to improving altcoin which you'll benefit from in the future.