If there is only one take-away from this post and you are still interested in bitcoin, that take-away should be that having the patience in taking the effort to understand the technologies and use cases for bitcoin will be the most valuable lesson you can have to remain invested.
To open your eyes to the technology and possibilities for Bitcoin, I would highly recommend "The Internet of Money: Talks by Andreas M. Antonopoulos" as what you should immediately do next.
For those in Singapore, shout out to me if you ever needed a borrow a copy.
I first got into bitcoin probably only a couple of month's before the infamous bitcoin bubble of 2017; when prices skyrocketed from $3,000 to $20,000 within a matter of weeks. Back then, having some experience in investing but with little to no knowledge about bitcoin and it's market cycles; through pure luck and timing I had somehow managed to emerge from the 2017 bubble profitable (buying at $6,000+ and selling at $8,000+, and then again at $13,000 and selling at $19,000), just before the collapse.
However in early-2018, I began buying back at $15,000, and then again at $12,000, only to see the price eventually decline all the way to $3,200 at the end of the year. In between, I had also lost a ton of money trading alt-coins (I will publish articles about diversifying into altcoins in the future) and bitcoin futures (also, a separate article to come).
Through these two and the half years however, where countless "weaker hands" had invested in bitcoin, got burnt and swore never to get involved again, I decided that it was worth spending more time and effort to understand the underlying technology behind bitcoin, it's price movements and market cycle and more importantly, it's use case for the future.
Here are some useful directions I took in learning about bitcoin and how they helped me:
1. "Modeling Bitcoin's Value with Scarcity" - PlanB (@100trillionUSD) PlanB's article helped me to gain interesting perspectives on how Bitcoin can be valued, a useful argument to notion that bitcoin has "no intrinsic value" in contrast to investing in stocks and equities.
2. "The Internet of Money: Talks by Andreas M. Antonopoulos"
Andreas Antonopoulos is in my opinion, the Bitcoin's ultimate lightbearer and evangelist! With his knowledge in Mathematics, Finance and Computer Science, there is no other person more qualified (other than Satoshi Nakamoto himself) who understands the inner-workings of bitcoin and blockchain technology. This will open your eyes to the possibilities and potential of bitcoin and blockchain as a whole.
3. Look Into Bitcoin - Philip Swift (@PositiveCrypto)
If you have ever thought that investing in bitcoin was too risky due to unpredictability and seemingly baseless nature of bitcoin's price movement, then you're most certainly not alone. Look Into Bitcoin presents a fantastic variety of charts and metrics to consistently track bitcoin's data, transaction history and price movements which accurately place bitcoin in respective market cycles and forecast bitcoin's future price movements.
These resources were ultimately able to change my bitcoin investing mindset entirely to enable me to focus on the big picture (both price and technology-wise). Back in the 2017/2018 days, a 10% correction in bitcoin's price would have sent me reeling and on the verge of selling. These days, I approach a 10% correction entirely differently, seeing it only as a blip in the long term horizon and an opportunity to buy more!
Photo by Harrison Kugler on Unsplash