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For my first entry, I thought I would just give some background on myself and my experience. I currently live in the Pacific Northwest, but I'm from the rural Midwest. I grew up lower middle class, and knew nothing about stocks or investing even up through high school. Like most people I had no way of even trading stocks let alone the money to buy them. I have known about the existence of crypto for years, one of my friends was among the first people to mine Bitcoin and he still has some of them today. I didn't believe that it would be anything, much to my chagrin now. I wanted to just make some short entries for crypto newbies and explain why people recommend some of the things they do and how to avoid some of the same mistakes I made.
First thing is, NEVER invest more than you can afford to lose. EVERYONE will tell you this, and they're right. Inevitably, for all who get in the space, you will find yourself staring at what you think MUST be a golden opportunity to make huge gains. Someone you know has a hot tip, or you see a story about a certain coin or token, etc. You must still adhere to this first rule. Crypto is unbelievably volatile, and you can lose everything in the blink of an eye. This even applies to moving your cryptocurrency. If you have your life savings freshly turned into Bitcoin and you send it to the wrong address, you're out of luck.
My first time was with Dogecoin back when it was a modest 1.8 cents. It skyrocketed up to 5 cents after Elon Musk mentioned it early on, and a friend told me I needed to get on the train, I was missing out. I bought at the all time high (ATH) of 5.4 cents and it IMMEDIATELY started to dump. I felt sick to my stomach and I had only bought $100 worth...could have easily turned out much worse. There is nothing worse than watching your money evaporate in real time when you know you need it for something else, and trust me, if you overextend, it WILL happen to you.
Eventually you will gain enough knowledge to navigate the markets and read charts somewhat competently. Do not let this give you a big head about investing. It becomes easier to get involved with leveraged trading, or shorting, and so on, in which you can not only lose what you have but also what you don't have. Always keep an even head, don't invest emotionally, don't panic, and read as much as you can.
Thanks for giving me your time, for my next entry I will probably cover some of the wallets you can use and some of the easier, low risk ways to get into cryptocurrency for new folks. There are many free faucets and distribution mediums you can use to test things out at no risk to yourself and I will go over some of them in detail. I'd also be happy to answer any questions I can although I am by no means an expert in any of this stuff.
Stay safe, be patient, and don't just HODL, stake it too!
