If you're a crypto newbie, Read this
A guide that will help you navigate through the tricky world of cryptocurrencies and avoid all the traps. Enjoy.
Hello and welcome, hope your journey so far hasn’t been too confusing. If you’re feeling overwhelmed then don’t stress, it’s normal, everyone has been through it, me included. Just before you continue reading this post, I want to warn you that I’m not going to be telling you how to trade, or how to invest, or what coins to pick long term, or how to organize your portfolio. This is more of a disclaimer to warn you about the traps you need to be avoid as a newbie and retail participant in the cryptocurrency world. This industry is unregulated and absolutely nobody is your friend. No matter how nice they seem, 98% of the time they have an agenda to make money off of you. Even when you want to do the right thing and learn everything yourself rather than copying other traders/investors/developers, there are so many places where information is simply blatantly misleading and in the long run you will miss out. So I’m going to try and make this disclaimer as comprehensive as possible and hopefully I help some of you go through an easier onboarding process than me.
· First off, making it in crypto is probably not as easy as you’ve been told. You may have seen a friend, or influencer, or your barber put $500 into some random memecoin and turn that $500 into $20,000. I’m not going to lie, that is more than possible in this space, you can see a 50x-100x almost everyday but chasing those pumps will almost always result in you getting burned down the line. Only very few and very experienced traders can successfully catch these pumps on a frequent timeline. When I talk about making it, I’m not talking about your random pump, I mean making ‘fuck you money’, building the type of wealth where you don’t have to worry about money anymore, your family will be good for life. Building this will take patience & a lot of genuine hard work. Not just looking at what coin Bitboy crypto spoke about on his youtube channel and buying that only for him to dump on you. Mind you, making it in crypto can be done much quicker than almost any other industry but I promise you it’s not as easy as you’ve been told. You have to put yourself in incredibly risky & tricky situations, you have to accept that there is a good chance you may get burned or rugged[1] at some point simply because of how early it is. As most OG participants will tell you, it may take you 1 or 2 market cycles to get to grips with how the market works and how money rotates and then things start getting a little easier. But, YOU HAVE TO PUT IN THE WORK. As one anon put it, “Crypto is marathon disguised as a sprint”.
· The next disclaimer is to do with information. Information on crypto is everywhere you look, but meaningful and actually valuable information on crypto is few and far between. Trust me, when I just started learning I was also watching youtubers, following influencers, and reading pretentious article. Basically, all my information channels were somebody who at some level was trying to sell me something and I was watching because they spoke about random coins and all I wanted to do was make some quick money. In my experience so far, the best channels for information is Twitter, Discord, Telegram, certain media outlets, and independent blogs. Twitter is useful for all around information about the industry because literally every big player is on crypto twitter everyday, Discord and telegram is useful for being involved in the community of projects or other groups who work on research, investing etc. The media outlets and independent blogs are fairly self-explanatory. You find the good ones and read interesting articles and learn more. But, yet again, beware when using these information channels as well because they are filled with fraudulent actors. I will be putting up a recommended list towards the end of this article which you can refer to for good/honest information.
v In this part, I will be talking about the red flags or warning signs when you’re navigating your way through learning about this space:
1. Paid Groups & Paid Group leaders – You will see these guys everywhere, on twitter, Youtube, TikTok, and discord. Simple rule here, if the person running this PAID group has made it and is a god tier trader/investor who is only trying to teach people how he made it then why would he take money? If he has made it he doesn’t need to take your money to teach you. The playbook of these paid groups is usually this - the monthly subscription you pay is their income, because they have a decent following they are approached by scam projects who give them a token allocation before it’s released/ or they are simply paid in dollars to promote the project, after this they promote the project to their followers who buy it but they only buy into massive sell orders by these very leaders sending the price to 0 and leaving the innocent retail participants completely burned in addition to taking money from them to join the group. BOTTOM OF THE BARREL SCUMS.
2. CryptoTwitter (CT) influencers & Marketers – While twitter is one of the best sources for information about crypto, it is for that very reason that it is also filled with influencers and marketers who act like traders and investors. What happens here is these influencers form an almost inner circle like group and get paid decent amounts of money by projects to advertise. Now you may think that’s not a big deal, every influencer does it. The problem here is that when they shill (or advertise) the project they do not disclose that it is a paid advertisement and if they have received an early allocation they will always dump on their followers. Yet again, innocent retail participants get Rekt. If you want a fairly comprehensive list of these scammers then Follow @ZachXBT, @CoffeeZilla, and @2Dinvestigators on twitter.
3. Youtube & TikTok – Please don’t take trading and investing advice from crypto youtubers and cryto tiktokers. Most of the time they either have absolutely no idea what they are talking about or it’s a similar situation to the influencers scams I mentioned above. Platforms like youtube are great for learning things. If you want learn things what is a blockchain? Or, how does a blockchain work? Or, specific DeFi concepts. Then youtube is a good place to learn especially if you’re a visual learner like me. But please don’t take investment or trading advice. Most of the times you will be dumped on. A Youtube channel that I have found useful to learn about DeFi concepts is finematics.
· The next disclaimer is regarding leverage, if you’re new and want to make it by trading then be very careful of leverage trading. Leverage is a great tool to if you start with a small stack and want to make into a big one but it is by far the diciest game in crypto. You can make hundreds of thousands of dollars in a few hours but it just takes one move to go against you and your account will nuke to 0 and you have nothing left. There are very few highly skilled and highly experienced traders who can effectively use leverage but as a newbie you’ll be better off being patient and gaining more experience before you use leverage. Your net worth will go up and down like a roller coaster and it will have a detrimental effect on your mental and physical health. As a newbie you will be significantly better off if you put in the work to do your research and find newer and innovative projects and get in to those projects early before the participants with millions and billions of dollars get in. Your primary edge is being early. A quick scan over reddit, twitter, or even TikTok and you will see thousands of people who have lost every single penny because of leverage trading so be careful.
· Be very careful when you take trading/investing advice. I’m speaking from experience. Some twitter accounts are genuine and will give you actual good advice and you’ll consistently make money but most accounts are going to hurt you. When I just started off I made this mistake. Scrolled through twitter and saw a couple influencers shill the same coin repeatedly and thought “oh shit, I better get in quick” only to lose 70% of my investment. Let me explain why. Think of Trading and investing as a single player battle Royale. You have been dropped into this arena along with millions of other players. Every player has one goal and that is to maximize profits. In crypto, there are no regulations so people will do literally anything they can to make sure they profit the most. However, what is crucial here is that every player also has their own strategy to win. So, you will be better off doing the research yourself and formulating your own investment/trading thesis. Yes, you may make mistakes and lose money along the way using your thesis but you will keep learning and keep improving. All you have to do is just survive long enough so that you can implement your improved strategy. Once that is done, everything will get easier. You will make stupid amounts of money and don’t have to trust/rely on anyone else. This is a fierce game, TRUST NOBODY.
· Keeping your crypto secure – you will soon find out when learning more about this space that hacks and funds getting stolen is a weekly occurrence. Millions of dollars’ worth of crypto get stolen all the time and you have to do your best to make sure your funds are safe. Doesn’t matter how secure you think the project is, or how experience and skilled the developers of the projects are. There is ALWAYS a chance that something goes wrong and you lose everything and then there is nothing you can do. Practice keeping your funds in your personal wallet like a Metamask wallet or Argent wallet and NEVER EVER share your private keys with anyone. An additional step that you should take is to invest in a hardware wallet such as a ledger or Trezor wallet. You can withdraw your funds onto this hardware wallet where it is permanently safe and only you can access it. When you need to use the funds just connect it to your laptop and then you’re good to go but please always practice safety. This is still a new industry.
These are the main overarching general disclaimers that you need to keep in mind before you dive into this crazy, weird, but brilliant space.
I will now write a list of recommended twitter account and media channels that I have found useful.
Twitter accounts:
· @cryptocobain
· @jebus911
· @bitcoinpanda69
· @blknoiz06
· @punk6529
· @EmperorBTC
· @Fitchinverse
· @SBF_FTX
· @PastryETH
· @satsdart
· @Mudit__Gupta
· @BarrySilbert
· @CroissantETH
· @Sicarious_
· @AlamedaTrabucco
· @RektHQ
· @srinathariharan
· @CL207
· @gakonst
· @IamNomad
· @VitalikButerin
· @Melt_Dem
· @SecretsOfCrypto
· @Lomashuk
· @lightcrypto
· @HighStakesCap
· @Tradermayne
· @Lomahcrypto
· @Tetranode
· @zhusu
· @hasufl
· @santiagoroel
· @Arthur_0x
· @RookieXBT
· @CryptoKaleo
· @loomdart
· @CryptoMessiah
· @CryptoDonAlt
· @ledgerstatus
· @cryptocred
· @AltcoinPsycho
· @TheCryptoDog
· @cryptopathic
· @RaoulPal
There are tons of more account who provide high value content but this is a fairly good starting point.
Media Channels
· Messari
· Glassnode
· Deribit Insights
· CoinTelegraph
· Paradigm.xyz
· Blknoiz06.substack.com
· Vitalik.ca
· Fooo69.medium.com
· The Block crypto
· CoinDesk
· Dose of Defi
· The docs sections of specific blockchains (eg docs section on Terra, Ethereum, Binance etc)
Again, there are tons more but this is a great place to start off and you can find your way to more based on your preferences.
I hope this article helps you guys. I don’t want you guys to make the same mistakes that I did because there are tons of people who made mistakes similar to me and then lost interest and missed out on life changing opportunities. So stay safe and enjoy your trip down this beautiful rabbit hole.
As always, if you enjoyed please consider giving the substack a subscription for more articles helping beginners.
Follow my twitter @LeftsideEmiri
Thank you for reading.
[1] Rugged or Rugpull refers to when the developers/core team build up hype around their coin and wait for retail trader/investors to put money in, once there is enough money in the contract they take all the money out (or drain the liquidity) and that’s it, the money is gone.