Seeking a smart way to trade as a newbie

[TedMosby]

I can't give you a smart way to make money from crypto trading, but I can give you things you shouldn't do (or at least need to reconsider) based on what I did before, so you can minimize or prevent potential losses. I've been in crypto for 10 years, and sometimes I made the same mistakes because I'm too greedy. I want more money in a short time.

Here are the mistakes I made...

1. Selling my BTC just because of bad news and a bad chart I saw, believing BTC would go down further, and then thinking I would catch it again at the bottom. Most of the time, I didn't actually buy it back at a lower price because I was still not confident whether the current price at that time was already the bottom or not. I just didn't have the guts as well. Another reason is that once you sell it, you have cash, and you'll start thinking about what you can do with that cash. You also don't know if you'll need the money urgently in the future, so you can't buy back the BTC you sold before. Once you sell and the cash is gone, it might make you lose some of your motivation.

2. Trying futures trading. Based on the stats I read on the internet, roughly 90% of traders lose money in the market (5% loss, 5% breakeven). If you don't have the skills in trading, it will end up just like gambling. And as with gambling, chasing losses could happen in your trading activities. Don't think about joining channels (paid/free) in the hope of making money by using their signals. I did that and lost money. They are just traders, not the owners of the market. Even big fund managers or traders only make a small percentage of profit annually in the long term.

3. Using AI and relying on AI decisions. Been there, done that. I built an AI agent using OpenClaw to automatically trade futures on a CEX. AI can't predict the market well by only relying on algorithms you build based on technical analysis theories. I've tried backtesting many strategies, and the best I could get was roughly 400% in 8 years. I used BTC price datasets from Binance from 2018 to 2026 [2] as the data for the backtesting. So, don't blindly believe social media posts saying, "This AI agent made xxx from trading...". Search for the truth first. It's possible, but the way it makes a profit is usually not from the trading decisions it makes, but could be from exploiting systems, speed, price differences, etc.

4. There are actually many more, I just can't remember them for now. Will edit this post later if I remember

Source:
[1] https://papertradingjournal.com/2026/04/06/day-trader-failure-rates/
[2] https://www.kaggle.com/datasets/novandraanugrah/bitcoin-historical-datasets-2018-2024

[Jostle]

I have been trying Grid-Trading, but the returns are not high. If you run it long enough, you will get positive profit. But only grid trading on bitcoin is safer. Grid trading on altcoins are very risky.

[Rebirth01]

Looking at the Bitcoin volatility this days, do you think is favourable for young traders especially the newbies to trade or should they hold their Bitcoins pending when the price will appreciate, then they sell out their Bitcoins.

Or is it better to indulge in a calculative trading hoping one might be making little earnings since investment takes some considerable period of time to cash out the profit.

As a newbie, you don't need to rush into buying or selling the ones you have already accumulated. Moving forward, you need to learn the intrigues of Bitcoin before buying or selling. Like you rightly said, Bitcoin is volatile and can give you a broken heart if you are not careful. You need to ask questions from those who have been there and had gathered enough experience about Bitcoin. If you have already accumulated some,i will advise you hold on it until you have gotten positive answers from the questions you asked from more experience bitcoiners.

[Gozie51]

I have been trying Grid-Trading, but the returns are not high. If you run it long enough, you will get positive profit. But only grid trading on bitcoin is safer. Grid trading on altcoins are very risky.

I think it is also risky with bitcoin. Bitcoin fluctuates up and down and if you have set a grid sell on $50k and same price for buy, then it took the order of buy up to $100k, either your sell order that has also been triggered will keep running in lose and either end in SL (if you use it). The point therefore is that it won't be profitable using grid trading just like you are hedging your order because you don't want to lose out. It is not the best from the way I see it, except I don't understand what you are trying to say.