Bitcoin Forum

I often read lists of tips and other best practices in the Bitcoin world, but i thought it would be interesting to share the worst Bitcoin advice you may have received throughout your adventure in this incredible monetary revolution.

"Keep your funds in exchanges. They are far more secure than keeping your coins yourself."

I was just starting back then, and stumbled upon the bitcoin IRC channel (idk if it still exists to this day). There was this discussion about personal wallets vs exchange wallets. One guy insists that exchanges invests hundreds of thousands of dollars for the security of their platform, so how would they be hacked? Initially, I thought it makes sense, not until I stumbled upon an article regarding Mt. Gox. Since then, I just tell myself, "third-party bad, own wallet good" and has been an advice I'm giving newbies ever since.

altnets are bitcoin(facepalm).. glad i was never fooled into that one, but many have

other terrible 'advice' i have seen people give each other:
'buy the hype'
'pruning still supports the backbone of the network'
'locking up funds in a co-signed smart contract is still permissionless'

People who doesn't have much understanding about cryptocurrency gives advice. The recent being an incident from a known person who have started investing into cryptocurrency this year. More cryptocurrency exchanges and investment access were open to citizens of my country.

He adviced, you invest and take back the profit within days. I asked if the market crash, and he's not ready to accept it. Someone who have introduced him to cryptocurrency have told him it is a way to become rich. It happens, but not in everyone's life. Another thing is the dogecoin hype, he adds invest into dogecoin. It is the coin of Elon Musk.

I cannot tell which one was the worst. I can remember I was advised to use Binance as my wallet because of their Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). It is a sort of an insurance fund which could be used to refund users should there be any hack or something which would affect the users' funds. Of course, such feature was nice but it never was a wise advice.

The rest of the bad advice that I got was trading related. A call is given to sell or buy because the bear months are coming, correction is expected, the ghost month is approaching, and so on. Many of them wrong calls. As usual.

'Don't HODL'

not really a piece of advice that was said to me and I don't really remember the name of the thread but I've seen/read a thread here in the forum advising people that they should take a screenshot of their seed phrase or save it on their email so they could have an extra backup in case they needed to use it.

Here is mine: "Sell your Bitcoin as it will be crashing anytime." This happened almost two years ago when a friend of mine told me then that Bitcoin will have a big problem days after...only to find out that the news he was referring to will not be making any impact on BTC's price but I already sold all of Bitcoin and at the end I lost some money because I decided to buy back my Bitcoin at a higher price. You see, when we are just following what others may say, we can end up losing money.

It'll dip, don't buy it. Did the exact opposite, I bought it on the dip. On that note, it's actually pretty good advice if you consider it? After all, if it dips then that's an opportune moment to buy-in. Though not that it mattered much tbh, I bought 2 years or so back already so even if it did dip or pump, just considering the price then and now, I'd have profited pretty well. Other advice were pretty much about trading. Didn't really worry about my wallets and storage and the like, I did enough research about that on my own since my paranoia wouldn't stop bothering me if I didn't.

It actually happened pretty recently for me, maybe some time a year ago exactly when the bull run started with 20k coming again after 3 years wait?

The advice? Protect my Bitcoin by storing it in a company that pays me something like 10% a year or something as interest. Guess what happened to them recently, they LOST customer money and closed down. Lied about insurance. I can't even remember the name.

Bitcoin is a scam. Never-ending definition of Bitcoin.

My response? just simply ignore them. It's not my responsibility to feed them some real facts. Let them think the way they want because soon they will realize what they are talking about. On the other hand, if the time comes that they need some awareness, I will gladly help them with the basics.

Bitcoin is really a scam why it achieves many milestones since it was offered in public. :)

sell now or you will lose big. This is the worst advice I've ever heard from a friend. I believe because at that time the market was not very good. if I'm not mistaken it was around the middle of 2019. At that time bitcoin was just starting to rise slightly. I've been waiting years for this, and I got such advice. So I followed suit, but after that bitcoin didn't really get so bad. even got pretty good after that, if i just kept holding on. maybe it will be the biggest profit i will get.

Hmmmmmm I think the "Bitcoin is a scam" quote is by far the worst advice that I've seen in the internet in the last 4 years. I said internet because nobody in person gave an advice for me since I just learn myself with the help of the internet.

Well, its good that I didn't follow what they are saying because if I did then I might not know Bitcoin until now. Its just good that I stopped what I'm doing 4 years ago which is being involved in an MLM company to focus more in Bitcoin and crypto in general. This scam that they are saying are the reason why some investors are getting rich right now and many more will be in the future but of course if there will be rich ones, there will be ones that will lose their money. Well, its part of the investment that there are losers and gainers :D.

Bitcoins are decentralized digital currency. Thanks for posting!

a lot of bad advice about bitcoin that I've ever gotten but I can prevent it with many cases that I study. along with the price correction, there are many issues that make people afraid to invest because of the issue of investors' losses, it turns out that investors' losses are measured by the price when it soars and when there is a correction, the actual value of their assets remains the same as when they bought it.

Honestly, can't really say any bad advice has beem targeted at me. I usually am the more experienced person when it comes to Bitcoin discussions and I don't tend to share much unless asked, and even then, really dislike giving advice other than not to get in with more than you can afford to lose.

But I can recall an old hand saying he was liquidating at 10k and warning me to do the same if I had a lot. He genuinely thought that was the end for BTC.

I guess mine was that Bitcoin's old news and I should move to altcoins now. It was back in 2017, during the altcoin hype, and I must admit I believed that altcoins were slowly taking over and were more promising for the future. I didn't lose much with that attitude because, luckily, I didn't invest much, but buying Ripple at $3 per coin still was one of the worst decisions I've made, and it was because of following that sentiment of Bitcoin slowly fading and altcoins coming to replace it. It's been a long time since then, and now I firmly believe that altcoins will never win.

Back in 2017, I stumbled upon a friend who somehow compelled me to invest into USI-Tech, a ponzi-scheme, showing me his results after six (6) months of investing 20 BTCs in his wallet. I was amazed on how the returns were promised (60% after 6 months) and my friend further told me about his experience on investing into such.

After the fifth (5th) month of the investment, the website crashed and all the BTCs I invested were gone! Moral of the story: never trust ponzi-schemes in any manner. While most of us have their respective experiences, generally, ponzi-schemes will definitely steal your investments.

I think the advice of saying there is "no right or wrong time of buying bitcoin" has to be the worst for me! It might have been good advice at the time when bitcoin was still getting known but today I think we have tools and skills like chart analysis to help pinpoint the best time to actually buy bitcoins with less drawdown....like the saying ==> "not everything that glitters is gold", which I interpret that You cant buy every dip and remain profitable.

The worst advice I have unfortunately listened to is that Bitcoin reached its maximum when it crossed $1000, and that it will never be worth nearly as much again. What to say, I was very inexperienced and the price was around $200, it seemed that those voices were right - I sold most of the BTC I had bought until then with little profit. A few years later, I realized I had made a bad move - and that Tim Draper was right when he said in 2014, "Bitcoin will be worth $10 000 in 3 years.".

The lesson of the story is that we listen to our reason, and maybe sometimes a smart person who still has some results behind him that give him the right to give advice - in other words, it is not wise to listen to random people on the Internet ;)

That was also my case, with the difference I wasn't advised by random people on the internet, but by my own family. I've sold some decent amount of bitcoin for 300$ or 400$ that would worth nowadays 5000$. It was a big mistake to not believe in bitcoin's potential due to others opinion and that is why it's very important to have our own personality and conviction very well consolidated.
Anyway, I think somehow it had a positive impact on me, because I learned a lesson from this mistake that I don't want to commit again futurely.

Probably the worst piece of advice I've ever heard is to use bank loan money to invest in Bitcoin. Even though I have a steady income from my job,
it is still very risky to use borrowed money to buy Bitcoin. We sometimes have to think about the worst that will happen if we insist on using
borrowed money to invest in Bitcoin. What if we suddenly lose our jobs and the price of Bitcoin drops, we will find it difficult to pay our debt
installments. Always invest money that we can afford to lose, that's what we should do. So buy Bitcoin according to our respective financial
capabilities, it's much better than forcing ourselves to borrow money to be able to invest in large amounts.

I never consider it an advice, but it always stands in my mind. I was briefing about bitcoin to a brother and I showed the growth of it with time. By the time mentioned of making some profit through trading. When I said, out of the fluctuation it is possible to make an earning. The fluctuation might be in large scale or minor fluctuation. All the sudden he said, ohh this is gambling. I tried the best, but he wasn't able to understand it and adviced me try to take away the invested funds and stay safe.

Actually seen this one too and I did really laugh just myself on telling on my mind on how the heck these people do realize on what they  are saying?

Trying out to reverse on whats been commonly be suggested when it comes to those positive recommendations and when I do hear out  this line

then I do start to chuckles and telling for myself  that what would be their reaction if that certain exchange would be hacked?
This is where people starts to learn when its already too late.

''You're too late''. Thank God I didn't follow up on that, but I can only imagine how many people heard that from crypto casuals and just backed off. Such a shame. But as crypto is progressing, more and more people are realizing that there is no such thing as too late. I think more and more bad advice is being fleshed out as time goes on.

In the past, when I was just starting to jump into bitcoin, a lot of people told me to sell their assets even though I was in a loss state with words that knocked me down by saying that they would not come back again and became a scam.
it's happened since a few years ago and the proof is now they are talking scam not bicoin :D

Right. No one is late in any investment particularly with bitcoin that is still in its progressive phase. Well, for me its not really a good advice but definitely the opposite of it. One of my friends had told me before there's no where i can go with bitcoin but a huge mess in the end because bitcoin is a scam. So as expected, i never believed on him because i know i have more experiences than him. And to think that i'm already making profits from it before he knew it, so i think he's the real scam. People like them don't really know that bitcoin is already staying for good.

^ Unfortunately I did not listen to them and continue my interest in BTC and other cryptocurrencies and that time.
The negative piece of advice that I have received is that (that is a scam don't invest, you will regret it) but I know this is not because I already understand the system because I am here in the forum for quite a few months before they told me. And now, who is regretting? THEM.
If I listen to them I did not have financial freedom, because of BTC there is a lot of improvements that come in my life.

Here is mine and I am so sorry about this:
- Hold this coin because this project is very promising, I am sure enough that one month later, the token price will be back to its higher price again. I am also still holding them so far. Their team is exactly great and they have a good roadmap to follow.
And a few days later, the project wallet was hacked and the price of the token dropped -60% and until today, the price still cannot be back to its early price when I was suggesting. And this is not only once, but third times. Others were because the prices keep dropping and there are still no altcoin seasons
That is greediness. I really regret about this and learn so much that we must set a target at least to take profits at first to back the capital.

The worst advice that has ever been and has often been told to me so far is that bitcoin is haram, bitcoin is a fraud scheme created by several people but I am still confident in my decision to stay here because I know bitcoin is not like that

I don't think if all of their advice's are the worst as they simply give me the warning to be careful about Bitcoin, they just call it "scam" before. But for now, as they saw what happens to me, they now believe that I was right and they are definitely wrong. They now going to believe what I see but still, their doubts sometimes exist especially when hearing some bad news talking about scamming issues and even hacking. And then someone tells me that "I need to share some of my Bitcoin with them"...I think, this is it.

I believe everyone have notice that nothing like delay on investment platforms of any coin invested, my advice is that immediately investment profit reflect don't hesitate not to cash out, because i noticed that what make some people not make a profit and also adventure into lost is because of greediness and delay, someone has made a huge of point buying saying that no time you purchase bitcoin is wrong, actually i strongly believe on that conception, no matter when you purchase bitcoin you definitely make your profit.

Sell bitcoin and buy shiba.

That's from someone I know personally who's just new to cryptocurrencies. He thought that he's good enough already and I've just asked him what's he's invested with cryptocurrencies since I've seen his wall which is full of crypto posts.

I didn't give him an idea that I've been holding for so long and just told him that I hold a few bitcoins which is approximately 0.002 BTC.

What I've told him that I might consider that but I don't want to tell him a feedback because it might hurt his ego.

since you said the worse, I am going to tell you the absolute worst someone told me which from one of my friends "bitcoin and crypto is a scam and you'regoing to ende up sooner or later with nothing" and that was back in 2016, thank god I didn't listen to him and I kept grinding and investing in crypto, I started talking to him about it and few days later he told me, jokes on him though for not listening to me, he's been taking crypto seriously only last year, I think it's the worst advice anyone could give you.

There is random advice that I've heard since I'm in crypto especially in Bitcoin. 
And until now I've been regretting it because I sold my Bitcoin way back in 2018 when Bitcoin started to drop and some of my colleagues advised me to sell all my Bitcoin because the price will not rise up again.

That day my mind wasn't mature when it comes to crypto, I'm pretty new in the crypto field so I didn't hesitate and sell all my holdings including some altcoins.  But now, upon looking at my wallet on my previous transactions, it seems I supposedly gain in how many folds with the Bitcoin that I sold earlier.

Lesson to learn; take the advice but don't take any action first, think first before you will act. 

Series of advises from people that doesn't really know much about bitcoin. Mine was that, crypto or btc is a get rich instantly investment. You invest now and in a twinkle of an eye, you're rich. Worst advise ever.

The worst piece of advice that I received was from those promoters on NFT on youtube where they themselves are investors and they talk about the project as if they were true to their speech but in reality, they were just creating false hype to cover their investment. Poor people often listen to them because most of their viewers are ignorant of the volatility of the crypto market and they only found about it when it's too late. the price has already dropped and there is no way to recover their capital.

"KEEP HOLDING " this is for me the worst advise that i followed through out this year and made me regret .

Because the volatility of market is an advantage specially in Bitcoin , because the mere fact that Bitcoin can grow so much high and dump so much low in a span of months , in which made me realized that if i sell when the price going to dump and buy when the price starts to climb is advantageous than keeping the holding.

I don't like when people recommend me to sell Bitcoin as I truly believe in it and I am going to hodl it at least 5 years more so when there is a crash, I don't think that it is reason to sell this fundamental currency. It is better to get rid of altcoins and accumulate stable coins so as to buy more Bitcoin when it is a full dip. One more bad piece of advise is to stake Bitcoin on some platforms. I had better leave it in my wallet than I trust it to any defi-project.

These types of threads are not advice but more of attempt to scam people ;D like seriously is this how you backup the seed phrase? God knows how many could have believed it but still can say some might be thinking it to be true.Screenshots are the first thing which should be avoided.

There are lot of worst advice but i don't care them as those who are giving such advices are the one which accepts btc or lost them later on.So be your own decision maker.

To hodl. Jk, that would be the best. The worst would be that going all in on Bitcoin with credit cards. I thought that was a bit extreme. I'm all for some extreme and borrowing small sums of money from people you can trust and pay back slowly, but I wouldn't freaking max out any credit cards or line of credits. That is a bit much.

"Buy now when Bitcoin is pumping so you don't miss out"
Worst advice ever. There are a lot of experts in Bitcoin Twitter giving crypto advice many are trash but newbies won't know. I bought the ATH and Bitcoin came crashing down. I was new and naive then. Worse five months of my life I know now to buy the dump and sell the pump.

not me personally but circa 2012

My brother was explaining to a friend about Bitcoin and wondering if they should
get into it, the friend said: "really, you want to give a complete stranger money
and they will send you TOKENS, sounds like a scam to me"

A lot of people around me who use exchanges for their hold coins and are not interested in hardware wallets who have to buy them first.
Then my friend once told me to sell your bitcoins now before losing more. Looks like he doesn't want to lose himself if what he's done is just a panic sell

that's what people who may have known the crypto market more often say than us. but stay focused on your planning. if you have bitcoin, just keep it. even if the price goes down, but everyone has faith, bitcoin will return the price.
I have experienced the same thing. sell all assets when the market is in correction, based on people's advice. but after that, of course, regret. I experienced it all myself, and I regret it.

In 2014, fellow developers said that it was a ponzi and a means for the darknet. Since then, I don't communicate with them anymore) In 2017, it was also said a lot that it was a ponzi and it was necessary to sell it, I was still hodl and hodl. I will sell when needed, I do not like it when they advise what they don’t understand.

Aha!!! Now this reminds me of my early days when getting involved in Bitcoin. Although none of my family members and relatives have made a comment about me getting involved to BTC back then, but I got the worse advice coming from a “mentor” of a team that I belong back then in the network marketing world.

He just said that BTC is a ponzi scam as there are a lot who were scammed of that coin and advice me to stop getting involved in Bitcoin. I know that he is misinformed about Bitcoin, so I choose to stick with it as I don’t have much results as a network marketer before.

Yes he is earning millions in Philippine pesos every month, but I don’t care because he personally doesn’t help me grow anyway, so I have to change direction as I realized that this is not my true calling. So yeah, I’ve got no respect to his character and attitude despite earning millions.

In my early days as I keep sharing about BTC and cryptocurrencies, that “mentor” unfriended me (but his wife didn’t until now). And worst thing of all, he spreads the word to his co-mentors and their respective teams that I am now promoting Bitcoin and should avoid getting connected with me. And yes, I’ve experienced getting lots of unfriends and my reputation to them was no longer good because of misunderstooding the basics of Bitcoin.

They started to ignore me, so it was a great test to be honest. However, as the old saying goes, “Whenever a door closes, another one opens”. I’ve opened that new door and made even more friends than before. Not just a new breed of friends here in the Philippines, but overseas as well. As I kept my faith on Bitcoin and cryptocurrency and the value grew so many folds, I was blessed and thankful that I got the results that I’ve wanted.

I paid my debts, treating my family, traveling a lot within the Philippines and a few countries, becoming a crypto keynote speaker, part of the crypto companies as ambassador and now enjoying my career as a crypto Youtuber while under the COVID-19 pandemic.

Now those people who have bullied, doubted and criticized me before about BTC, are either just being silent or eating their own words, or some have started to jump on board and getting some guidance from me.

“You can sell Bitcoin at the right time, and remember to stop the loss when the price of cryptocurrency drops.”
 I don't think it is correct to sell Bitcoin. Should keep holding.

I feel like shedding tears seeing this thread. I have Bitcoin worth a lot of money before the Covid19 pandemic started and I decided to join a paid signal group to make profit from daily trading. I have not recovered till date from selling out my Bitcoin during the pandemic bear market because the owner of the signal group said we should all sell off reason being bitcoin will crash to $100.

The worst that I have heard was that come from one of my friends. When bitcoin dropped the price too much he said not to hold and sell all bitcoin.
Fortunately, I did not listen to him instead I split it and sell the 30% on it and the rest I hold until it reach $30k which is when I asked him he was so regretted it. He does not have patient at all and decided to sell his bitcoin.

There are a lot of advice I have heard before, there's a bad and negative but before you will listen to them just think it first.

There was bad advice I once heard from a friend of mine about Bitcoin, and I still remember it to this day. My friend once said that I should sell
all the assets I have to buy Bitcoin, he convinced me that Bitcoin would make me rich if it was a big investment. At that time I didn't really understand
how Bitcoin worked, so I believed what my friend said. And finally I decided to sell my girlfriend's car to be able to buy Bitcoin, because at that time
I didn't have any assets to sell. Then because I still lacked knowledge, I panicked when the Bitcoin price fell deep enough and I decided to sell
the Bitcoin that I have at a loss. The bad advice my friend gave me, made me have a big debt, because I had to replace my girlfriend's car.

That was a terrible one. Bad advices are those coming from those people who lack of knowledge but even think they are knowledgeable as legends. And if you follow them, that's when you end up losing. As for me, i was advised before to never invest in bitcoin as it was a ponzi scheme, so i doubted it at first. But when i started seeing my friend's investments growing because of bitcoin, that's when i realized that bitcoin isn't a big scam after all. Now i'm starting to enjoy all my profits in bitcoin and main altcoins and that's because i never believed those negative advices from bitcoin haters.

Interesting question, there were a few things I thought was a tip and ended up hurting me. One of the biggest mistakes I made because of recommendations from others was to sell my bitcoins and move into alt coins. The coin I switched into lost 50% while bitcoins made a few hundred percent. Its always hard to follow a tip and see the market move against me. After that I realised that even the best tip is no guarantee for success. Should be a good summary of things to avoid for beginners.

It's the same advice I received two times: first time back in late 2013/early 2014 and then again in 2017, and it was people saying that it's too late to buy Bitcoin now.

So, first time I heard about bitcoin, I naturally wanted to buy some but couldn't afford one whole bitcoin. On top of that, several people around me told me that it's way too late now to invest in bitcoin and that I should have done done when price is was at the 2 digit number. Since I was inexperienced, I ended up buying bunch of shitcoins instead, which naturally didn't end up well.

Fast forward to 2017 when I came back to crypto after 2 years break. And again listening to the same thing, that it's way too late to invest in bitcoin (at the time it was BTC was between 1-2k USD) . This time I had more experience so instead loading up on the worthless altcoins I focused on BTC. Best decision ever.

I cant forget these words "Dont invest in BTC, instead go for stock market" came from a friend who dont believe about Bitcoin because he is a stock market investor and thinking BTC is just a scam like any other money making opportunity online.

But everything changed when Bitcoin drastically increase. He was then convinced that investing in BTC is profitable as well.

The worst advice and I regret it until now is, when my friend from abroad suggested buying 1 or 2 Bitcoins in 2020, when the price is $6000, wait 1 or 2 years, that's the worst advice for me, because I didn't buy and I regret it.

So, for now I'm not going to ignore my friend's advice anymore and I have to do it, not wanting any further advice about Bitcoin to get any worse and worse.

My friend suggested good, but bad for me because of my selfishness and distrust, that's what happened.

I also get many suggestions like that from some friends but I never take my chance to go to the stock market because I feel that is more complicated to see the chart changing many times. I feel that is too difficult to learn the analysis because the stock will be related to the real conditions in the real life. So I still decide to stay at the crypto and try my best to earn more money from crypto. Later, they are not trying to suggest I go for the stock market because they see what I get from crypto while they still struggle to analyze, even using software that they claim can help them.

The worst advice I received from a friend who is a businessman whose job is to be the General Manager of PVC plastics is never to invest in BTC because it is a financial bubble that will burst at any moment like tulips and that will become a scam. Of course this was told to me by an older person, the Lord is 65 years old and I respect what he told me, but since I am an irreverent person who does not believe in what others say, I never followed his advice, and although I have not I have never had the privilege of having 1BTC but fractions of BTC I always try to gather little by little until I reach 1BTC, that makes it much more exciting.

Frankly, no one ever advised me anything regarding bitcoin or you can say I never really paid heed to any if given. I never even thought of investing in bitcoin; neither do I have such plans. Trading bitcoin works more than just good for me and so I am going to do that for the rest of my career.

The worst advice I received, and this will be unpopular here, is to ignore competing blockchains such as Ethereum and Cardano. Thankfully, I did not take the advice of only investing in bitcoin. I believe there will be multiple winning blockchains in the future.