Roughly a year ago I stumbled upon Bitcoin, and my life has not been the same since. Since that time I’ve learnt how to buy, sell, store and transfer bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies. I’ve also learnt online trading in general, including how to use technical and fundamental analysis to predict price movements. In the process I’ve lost hundreds of dollars, sometimes in a single day, at other times making it all back in hours. I’ve also made four figure profits in good weeks, which is not bad for a fairly new trader in a fairly new market.
It has been a bitter-sweet experience full of lessons, wins and losses (in no particular order). In the past couple of months, a number of my friends, relatives and social media followers have contacted me wanting to know how to get started with bitcoin – especially towards the end of 2017 when Bitcoin hit head-spinning highs.
I don’t consider myself a crypto expert and given the young age of the Cryptocurrency market I think no one should. I consider myself a fast-learning student and given what I’ve learnt so far about Bitcoin, Crypto markets and the Blockchain technology behind it all, I am convinced that right now is the best time for anyone out there to learn about Crypto and figure out whether you’d want to invest in it for the long term or learn how to daytrade, based on your risk tolerance.
MY JOURNEY WITH BITCOIN
Last year towards the end of May, after I had just moved to the UK with my wife and unborn daughter, I came across this thing called bitcoin. I don’t recall whether it was through a blog post I read, a YouTube video I watched or a Facebook post but I once again saw something about Bitcoin. I knew that this wasn’t the first time I had seen or come across this word.
This particular time though, I decided to pay more attention to it. The entrepreneur-minded, financial-freedom lover in me had been looking for ways to make money outside of the standard 9-5 hustle, preferably working from anywhere in the world. One of the things I had been looking at was stock trading and incidentally this Bitcoin thing seemed pretty similar to that but with a bit of a twist so I decided to learn more.
I did some background reading, watched one or two videos about Bitcoin on YouTube and was convinced that this was something I could jump in on. I later learnt that whilst I was busy reading and doing my research Bitcoin had gained 5-10%. I was partly gutted about my loss of potential gains but was also very hesitant at the same time, I wasn’t about to splurge some hard earned money into something I didn’t know or understand.
My brother’s wisdom helped me make up my mind much quicker. Growing up, one of my brothers taught me that whenever you’re getting started in a new business or financial pursuit the first investment will most likely be a loss and if you’re to succeed you’ve got to be prepared for this loss and use every start-up phase as a learning period.
With this advice in the back of my mind, I decided to risk a small £20 and use that to learn more about bitcoin.I bought £20 worth of bitcoin on a peer-to-peer escrow platform called localbitcoins. That was my first bitcoin purchase and at that time that got me 0.01btc, at the time 1 Bitcoin was worth around $2000.
The key phrase there is ‘learn more’; my goal at this point was not to earn but to learn. And if you decide to get started anytime soon, that should be your goal for the first couple of weeks or months, depending on your schedule. Consistent earnings always comes after relevant and applied learning.
Through this I had learned the first key thing: how to buy bitcoin. I went on to learn how to store my coins in my ‘wallet’ (the second and most important thing), move them around, sending them to different wallets and eventually how to trade Bitcoin for smaller coins.
CLICK HERE TO BUY BITCOIN ON COINBASE
I sent that 0.01 Bitcoin to an exchange wallet where I bought some smaller coins which were trading in the cents or dollars range but because I didn’t know hot to spot a good coin from a bad one, I mostly bought under performing coins. Later on, I did some calculations and learnt that if I had not sold off my 0.01BTC for smaller coins, 7 months later it would have been worth $200 which would have been a 10x return on investment.
I didn’t complain or have much regrets though, I viewed those first bitcoin purchases as my Tuition fee into the Bitcoin Crash Course program. I learnt through doing – one step at a time, falling, making mistakes, lossing and winning. That’s the best way to learn.
The whole experience was exciting and to be very honest much easier than I had thought it would be. Today when the markets are moving I make hundreds of dollars a week trading Cryptos. I have come to the conclusion that online trading of stocks, shares and currencies is one of the best kept secrets of the western world. As an African brother, I wish more of my African brothers and sisters would learn how to trade and in my opinion one of the easiest ways to learn is through cryptocurrency.
Disclaimer: My experience was not typical, in my journey I have found out while conversing with others how difficult others found it to be to get started, but such is the case with all new things – you learn by doing, making mistakes and continuing. The more difficult part for me was now how to actually make money trading Cryptocurrencies i.e. how to make money rather than lose money.
If you’re one of the people that would want to learn more about how to buy, sell and trade Bitcoin and other Cryptocurrencies, I’ve recently put something together just for you. Using a very simple system, I’d like to help you learn the ABCs of Bitcoin and Trading. The lessons you’ll learn are priceless and will help you avoid most of the mistakes beginners make when starting out in crypto. Click here to find out more.