Week 3 - HODL Experiment

It's been quite the learning experience for me this week. I've lived through my first true dip in the market - watching my crypto crash by as much as 40% over a period of a day.

It brings to the forefront that first piece of advice received:

"Only invest what you can afford to lose"

Because let's face it; there is no real value to any of this cryptocurrency. It's a theoretically value at best. And your wish to sell any crypto is entirely dependent on someone willing to purchase the same at the agreed value.

On the flip side, riding out this dip has brought up all sorts of feelings and emotions. Can I find some spare cash to make some sneaky purchases while the prices are low? Will they get even lower than this? When was the last time I actually smiled when I opened Coinbase to view my Portfolio balance? Have I really made such a loss?

I read a saying in one of the articles recently: "Investing is like a roller coaster. You don't get hurt unless you jump off." I.E. you don't lose money unless you sell. So I here I sit at my desk, puffing out my cheeks as I repeat those words like a mantra in my head, watching my crypto devalue further.

The joys of HODLing!

Speaking of the word HODL - for those of you reading this that doesn't know how or why this word exists, The term originates from a Bitcointalk post entitled ‘I AM HODLING’ written in 2013 when Bitcoin was (fittingly) crashing as it is now - though to be fair, it was valued considerably less at the time.

In the post, a drunken rant from forum user ‘GameKyubi’ complained about failing to take advantage of the volatile swings of the market. Admitting that he was a bad trader, his preference was thus to simply hold his BTC as an investment, as opposed to taking advantage of the market's swings.

As is the wont of the Internet, other forum users quickly fixated on the misspelling of the title, responding with a series of quick-fire, increasingly irreverent memes.

And thus "HODL" was born.

So what did I learn this week?

Crypto gas fees are extortionate!

Put simply, “Gas fees” are the transaction fees that users pay to miners on a blockchain protocol to have their transaction included in the block - and works on a standard supply and demand mechanism.

There are entire forums and articles dedicated to this subject. But suffice to say I would suggest you avoid the mistake I made of using Ethereum to swap on a Decentralised Exchange (DEX). I was only experimenting with $20 worth of Ethereum (in case I lost it) so we are not talking big money here. But the fee to purchase Ethereum Meta or Shiba Game amounted to $170 - £190 - to swap $20 worth of Ethereum(!).

There is still so much for me to learn on the subject, and the material I have could write its only blog for several chapters.

So how am I doing?

If I had a heat map of all my assets, it would be showing red across the majority of them. Only 3 currencies managed to survive the storm and show growth during this week.

Overall Growth -1.48% as at Saturday

Best performing GALA @ 224.64%

Worst performing DogeCoin @ -17.20%

Here's hoping the coming weeks sees a massive recovery.

Happy Trading