Crypto, It’s Emotional.

It’s new, it’s exciting, but sleep may become a runaway friend once the frenzy starts.

I’ve been actively in crypto since 2017, mostly kept an eye on the market throughout 2018 and 2019, and then jumped back in with both feet end of 2020.

How mesmerising it all is, but the emotions, oh yes that becomes a battle.

In 2017 ‘Initial Coin Offerings’ (ICO’s) were king. There was an opportunity to invest early in a new project before it hit the official market. Crypto companies created whitepapers that detailed their intentions along with the phases of development. These ICO’s were popping up everyday and many scams were amongst the handful of gems.

The market was so buoyant, yep, and the cliché of talking to the Uber driver about Bitcoin was a thing that occurred during my new years holiday 2017.

Fast forward a few weeks then POP! Bitcoin came crashing down and so did everything else around it.

I genuinely thought at that time I’d be retiring very soon (in fact I thought in December 2017, that by end January 2018 I would have done!)

Bitcoin went from just under $20,000 in December to under $10,000 in January, and the word on the street was that it was all a scam.

One thing I learned at the time was the art of the ‘hodl’ which in crypto speak is to hold what you have and do not sell. “For you only lose when you sell right?” Well yes, this was true with regards to Bitcoin.

However, I did accumulate a lot of what we call ‘Sh*tcoins’ and probably should have jumped those ships, at that time, but being a noob (newbie) I didn’t.

So to where we are now? Well Bitcoin at the time of writing this is in price discovery at approx $46,000+ after the news broke that Elon Musk (AKA Satoshi Nakamoto) bought 1.5bn (8th Feb 2021) worth through his company Tesla. Alts are pumping and the market is very bull-ish.

“Hey, I thought this article was about emotion?”

Well throughout the insane months of December and January I have been studying crypto everyday.

Watching videos namely from my two favourite YouTubers Boxmining and Chico Crypto, reading news via Twitter mostly and have joined various crypto groups, as well as accumulating crypto and it has been exhausting!

Exhausting, not in the sense that you feel drained, but more in the sense that you feel excited, you have lots of energy to expel but you can’t because you have to keep up to date with what’s going on in the markets — things are constantly changing.

Unlike the stock market, crypto is 24hours and being that it is a global market, if Asia wakes ups and decides to dump any said token; by the time Europe wakes up or America our portfolios could be down substantially, and then the cycle begins as we wait for another pump.

Although this may sound nightmarish, it’s also the beauty of crypto. The fact that it is not stagnant (definitely not as of late.)

New projects are always emerging, with new ways of creating finance that is different from our current centralised system. The fact that decentralised finance may most likely be the future of the world, and we are early adopters, is what keeps me hooked.

January has seen so many defi (decentralised finance) projects emerge and so much growth, which brings me on to why I have been sleep deprived, one word, BAO.

On January 29th I woke up at approximately 8am GMT checked my YouTube notifications and saw that Chico had a new vid out titled:

‘There’s only (1) ALTCOIN For WallStreetBets! Its Not Doge!!’

And that’s when I found BAO Finance. After the excitement about what Chico said, I jumped on the computer, checked it out and got a position. (This is not the best way to purchase a coin/token and this is not financial advice.) I swiftly joined the discord, my mind was blown and my life has not been the same.

I barely slept for the following weeks following this discovery. In the discord group you get to see the BAOMAN (The developer) at work, and boy does he work.

The BAO community is also solid. They’re genuinely excited about the project, very knowledgeable about it, and are a credit to BAO Finance.

So how to get these emotions under control. I have found that exercise helps, meditation and as balanced diet as possible.

This is because, a focus is needed, energy needs to be expelled and remaining calm is essential.

It is very easy to get swept up in the hype, because the market is bullish and most thing are going upwards, one may forget that this is a market and things can and do go down, which is why having a strategy helps. (We will discuss strategy in another article.)

As those of us who have been in/observed the crypto space know very well, this cycle too will end. Retraces/pullbacks will happen and gains could be lost.

Remembering to breathe, staying focused, being strategic and learning is the name of this game, there’s no escaping it.

Crypto is time consuming, to be honest it’s life consuming, but it’s definitely worth it to be part of this exciting frontier.