sia.hackernoon.com

When I look back at my first year of trading, it feels less like a learning curve and more like a rollercoaster—fast climbs, sudden drops, and a lot of screaming in between.

I wasn’t completely naive—I’d read blogs, watched YouTube breakdowns, even followed some “pro” traders on Twitter. But nothing prepares you for the real market. My first year wasn’t about making money—it was about losing money, recovering, and figuring out what not to do.

Here are the few mistakes that shaped me, through the trades and setups that burned me the most.

Mistake #1: Picking an Exchange without research:

I didn’t compare exchanges, didn’t check liquidity, didn’t even ask other traders. A friend sent me a referral link, I signed up, and that was it. The UI looked slick, so I figured I was set.

That first week, I learned the difference between “cool” and “reliable.” The spreads were ridiculous, withdrawals got stuck for hours, and I had one deposit vanish into the blockchain abyss for half a day.

So, a clean interface won’t matter when you can’t move your funds.

💡 Important Points to check while onboarding an Exchange:

On low-liquidity exchanges, spreads can widen to 3–5%, which silently eats profit.
High-volume platforms like Binance or Coinbase Pro average 0.01–0.05% spreads.
Look for exchanges publishing proof-of-reserves (few do—Kraken and BitMEX are examples). Back then, I didn’t even know exchanges could run fractional reserves.

Mistake #2: My First Coin (and My First FOMO Buy)

The first coin I ever bought wasn’t Bitcoin. It wasn’t Ethereum. It was Dogecoin—because Reddit said it was going to the moon and Elon had tweeted a rocket emoji 😉

I bought right at the top, rode the drop, and spent days refreshing the chart like a nervous gambler.

So, if you just hear and follow without DYOR it’s gonna be a wrecking ride!

💡 Important points while chasing a Hype:

By the time retail hears the hype, whales are usually exiting. On-chain flows often show whales offloading days before the peak.
Futures funding rates above +0.1% per 8 hours usually scream overheated retail leverage.
76% of retail traders who enter during hype phases lose money within 3 months (source: BIS study).

Mistake #3: Leaving Everything on the Exchange

After buying, I just let my coins sit there. I figured, why complicate things with a wallet?

Then one day, mid-crash, the exchange went through a security breach and I couldn’t withdraw, couldn’t trade, couldn’t even log in. That was the day I finally understood the phrase: not your keys, not your coins.

So, convenience isn’t the same as safety.

💡 Important points while Holding Crypto:

Around $2.8 billion in crypto was stolen from exchanges between 2011–2020 (Chainalysis).
Hot wallets (exchange wallets) are always online. A hardware wallet generates private keys offline, cutting hack risk by 95%.
Multisig setups require 2–3 signers making rug-pulls or hacks far harder.

Mistake #4: My First 10x Leverage Trade 😖

This one still hurts. I thought I’d “graduated” to pro trading, so I opened a 10x long on Bitcoin. I was convinced it was going up.

It didn’t. Within an hour, a tiny dip liquidated my position. Gone. Just like that.

So, leverage doesn’t forgive beginners.

💡 Important to understand Liquidation and Stop-Loss:

At 10x, a 10% price move = liquidation. At 20x, even a 5% dip wipes you out.
Binance Futures liquidated $5.5 billion worth of positions in one day during May 2021’s crash.
Exchanges run liquidation engines to protect their balance sheets, not yours.

Mistake #5: Ignoring Risk Management

At one point, I dumped half my stack into a single altcoin because I was “so sure” it was about to pump. Instead, it dumped 30%. I wasn’t just broke—I was angry at myself for being reckless.

💡 Risk management isn’t optional:

The 2% rule (max 2% portfolio risk per trade) protects you from wipeouts. Lose 5 trades in a row? You’re down ~10%, not liquidated.
90% of retail accounts lose money trading CFDs and leveraged products (ESMA data).
80% of altcoins still follow Bitcoin. Diversifying across uncorrelated assets (BTC, ETH, stablecoins, equities if possible) helps.

Final Thoughts:

My first year was not at all about “getting rich trading crypto.” It was all about learning patience, respect for risk, and humility.

With my experience I learned that it was not appropriate to treat the market as a casino. The market is a kind of a mirror. It reflects your emotions, your impatience, your lack of discipline. Fix those, and the trades start making sense.

The losses? They were tuition fees. Painful, expensive, but invaluable 😇