Everyone around me asks where to learn crypto?
To get the answer, some hazardly assume an inordinate amount of available resources (time, work capacity, learning patience, even money) just to learn the mechanics of how to achieve the lifelong dream: how to make money for nothing?
I send them all to learn, but where? Usually, for the simplicity of my answer, I send juniors to the binance academy but, I know, the volumes of information there are overwhelming and you still need a little guidance when you are a junior.
Others are more specific: What should I start with? Here, when I want to play wise, like on TV, I say to my interlocutor, in a serious tone: OK. Remember four words, in this order: 1. Bitcon, 2. Smart-contract, 3. Defi, 4. NFT. It’s still a correct answer, but for those who see the world in bullet points
Another repeated requirement is: Give me some sites, some influencers, help me get to the essential information. It’s hard to explain that I don’t have any, that absolutely every influencer I’ve followed has given terrible grief, and that I don’t recommend summaries except in rare situations.
But to those who are willing to learn methodically, my favorite, I say so: Start with decentralization. Decentralization is a very difficult concept to grasp, for those of us who were raised in the paradigm of centralizing all areas of life. Most candidates unfortunately stumble right here. How to understand a DAO?
Deeply understanding the decentralization of money through blockchain is equivalent to understanding the concept of addition in mathematics. It all starts here. Decentralization is a hard lesson, and unfortunately it is the first and obviously the most important. As seen daily on crypto groups, most of our community members have skipped this lesson, but have already put their money on the table. Some of them, have now gone back to failing back to class zero. Almost everyone else follows immediately.
To those who have understood decentralization, I recommend further learning and following the projects behind the coins. The projects they can pick at random, the important thing is to study them, understand them and decide later whether they trust them or not. Take them one by one, learn thoroughly about two or three projects in a month. I think that’s enough. I started in 2017 and it was a different world then, but of course I started with bitcoin and ethereum, then went through cardano, litecoin, stellar, neo, tron, eos, monero, bitcoin cash, ripple, dash and continued with a few dozen more, which I won’t list here. They all seemed cool but some of them have stuck in the meantime, another good learning.
Lately I’ve been doing more defi, I’ve also been slacking off, so there are a bunch of projects I have no idea about, like SOLANA, LUNA or Avalanche. I just haven’t had time for them. I can’t say I missed them, because I’ve been busy with others. And I almost missed EGLD completely, precisely because it was a Romanian project and, when I found out about it, I didn’t trust it. By the time I got informed, the coin value had already increased and I only got $30 and $50.
Any project can be studied on the official page, but established projects communicate in several media. The main medium is twitter, which I also consider to be the most effective. A first overview of the project, as a first summary, you can get from coinmarketcap, where besides the price chart, you can see the markets and volumes traded, the networks on which the coin works or, moving on to the blockchain explorer, you can find out how many users there are or how centralized the coin is. This is important information that a trained mind retains and makes use of. Personally, I don’t use youtube anymore except to understand a technical functionality, not for analysis and predictions, which I consider a big waste of time.
When you study a project, the fundamental questions you can’t find answers to might have already been clarified on reddit, or explained at length, on medium. If you still don’t understand, get a ticket on discord and hope a volunteer will enlighten you. I personally gave up on Telegram long ago, it had become too complicated to follow and I don’t think it serves any purpose other than waiting for airdrops. Wikipedia, for those familiar with it, can be a good medium, but it has already become too many mediums, which already leads me to the conclusion at the end of this text.
For someone who wants to invest in a project, whether trading, staking or simply hodling, it is therefore important to know what that project is about, as it is more than just a mere joining of 3 capital letters. This will allow the investor to develop a sense of confidence in the project’s ability to return to the attention of currency buyers, in dips or corrections. If you have confidence in the project, don’t sell, period.
Tracking that project in the above environments is equally important. It is not enough to just track the evolution of the project’s currency, as this is (often) just a consequence of the project’s development. On a personal note, I recommend reading the twitter comments on the project team’s official posts. You can find there real issues raised by commenters, answers to them and links to arguments. Following up means updating the data, i.e. maintaining or withdrawing confidence in the project. Yes, trust does get lost, of course, that’s what happened to me with TRX and BCH (XRP never appealed to me).
To give a positive example though, I mention ADA. I hold 10k ADA since the first quarter of 2018. I had more but traded with them and they wore out. I held those 10k because I liked their project, I trust Hoskinson, with all his blunders, and I constantly follow the progress of the project, in all environments. I don’t sell even if it drops back to 9 cents. And that’s because I believe the project will unravel, as Charles proposed in the most complicated roadmap I’ve read. So I’m committed to staying at $5, no matter how long that process takes (in the fall, when it went up to $3, I was already thinking of waiting until $10). If I have faith in the project, why not?
I’ve left behind the funniest interlocutors, i.e. those who just want some straightforward coin recommendations, whether to put on red or black, like whether the market rises or falls or whether or not any shitcoin is “worth it”, boss. These guys, when I send them to learn and start with Romanian, because it’s simpler, they get angry and make me arrogant. But if they are nice and persistent, I tell them to buy any coin in the top 100 and hold on to it for 3 years. I don’t tell them that there are stablecoins, that confuses them, and the risk of hitting just that, is small. But I also know that these investors will find it simply impossible to hold on to them anyway.
As some of you have already learned, making hodl is the hardest in crypto. Hardly anyone can do HODL. But how do you apriori convince a junior, that he won’t be able to hold 1 eth, even 6 months? He’s convinced he can. You know the nice ones who ask the group what to invest in, then specify they want “long term”. LOL.
However, for the 1% of them who don’t understand blockchain but are still able to bury their keys in grandma’s yard for 3 years, the above recommendation is valid.
I kept hesitating to write this text, because I had no original suggestions of my own to communicate, only the cliché “learn, study, follow”. In the meantime I found one, perhaps the most useful learning I’ve understood in 5 years.
Information is plentiful and chaotic, you can be hopelessly wrong or simply mugged. You want to get simple and concise information and, most of all, you want to hear others confirm your opinion.
You never know if the market is up or down, and most of the time it seems to make you angry. Buy low, sell high, fine-well, but how low or how high? There are many voices speaking a convoluted language you’re not even sure you understand. Yes, I confirm, that’s how it is in crypto.
The solution that worked for me was to deselect the information. At some point I realised it was too much, so I started deleting. I was already following about 1,000 twitter accounts, about 50 youtubers, hanging out on discord and telegram, had data concentrated in excel and kept detailed lists of upgrades, releases or ICOs. Over time, I realized I was following influencers who just wanted some likes and analysts who talked a lot and invested little to nothing.
Hide, unfollow, block.
Later, also through deselection, I gave up all measurement with specific indicators, through graphical methods, when I realized how big and unpredictable this market is. EMA, MACD and Fibonacci, will you give me a break? Zero usefulness, zero money made from this, randomness cannot be predicted with past indicators, because cyclicality does not exist in chaos. It looks like it does, but it doesn’t.
And to all those who were gravely announcing to me that “if resistance breaks we jump to 25, and if support breaks we fall to 15, but you never know anyway”, I gave them the block. I’m not interested in wasting my time with stupid truisms like “it’ll be okay if it’s not bad”.
Basically, I’ve given the hide to everyone I don’t think I have anything to learn from. On this group alone I’ve given about 100 blocks, generally to everyone who asks for opinions, thinking they’re doing research that way, to those who don’t understand decentralization, and to those who post graphical analyses or make unsubstantiated predictions just to publicly test their intuition, i.e. just to be in the know. I have nothing to learn from them, so I blocked them, no regrets.
I think it was beneficial for me to silence about 80% of the voices screaming about crypto, on my screen. My space has cleared up, my wasted time has reduced, and my portfolio looks much better.
Learning by unlearning bad information worked well for me. The big problem is not getting information, but rejecting information junk. What’s the point of me yawning at the ravings of someone who predicts bear market in February and bull market in the fall? How did you calculate it brother?
In the rush for information at the beginning of learning we have to be realistic and accept that 80% of the subject matter being taught is junk. All the frustrated have found in crypto an environment where they can make themselves important, launch lemmings (and memes) and create confusion. That’s how it is everywhere. Lots and lots of bullshit. Here’s decentralization means jungle without rules, here morality doesn’t exist, and the world is big and diverse, so opinions galore.
The most logical, practical and philosophical question in the world is “How do you know?”. Nothing in this world should be believed unless it answers this absolutely legitimate question. We now live in “the golden age” of crypto, skill is pretended, not demonstrated, and this essential question is addressed too little.
Deselecting the bumbling fools is (I think) tantamount to maturing in this area. When you become sure of yourself and your opinions, when you’ve read with your own eyes and validated with your own head, then you’re good and don’t need to waste your time with the unsubstantiated opinions of ignoramuses.
