Crypto Trading for Beginners: My Bitter Experience You Shouldn't Even Try

The topics of cryptocurrency in general, and Bitcoin in particular,  get an enormous amount of attention globally. Before August 2017, I was an ordinary observer who knew something about the topic, had some vague ideas about how things worked in the world of crypto trading, and followed the news out of pure interest. However, in August 2017, the rate of Bitcoin experienced a massive increase and  managed to cross the $5,000 mark.
 

This meant that people all over the world were not only interested in Bitcoin, but also believed in it and invested large sums of money in it. A desire to become a part of the hype took over me and I decided to give it a try and begin trading on the market.
 

I had never worked as a trader before and  had no idea how stock exchange transactions were performed, but since Bitcoin and the market of cryptocurrencies differed substantially from everything else that the financial world has seen before, I believed that this made my chances of succeeding in the new sphere better.
 

Having decided to start trading in October 2017, I was both excited and worried. Everyone had heard something or other about cryptocurrencies and expressed their ideas about them, but no one had a playbook that would work for those entering the market.
 

For this reason, I tried to find and analyze as much information as I could online. This was no easy task since only the laziest people would not write something about cryptocurrencies to attract traffic to their website while the topic was experience so much hype.
 

Having spent a significant amount of time on research, I managed to form my own idea of what the market was like and how it worked.
 

As I finished my research, I decided that I had had enough theory and it was about time for practice. I bought some different coins, namely: OmiseGO (OMG), Monero, and Dash.
 

My initial experience in trading was rather controversial. As the whole market grew, my portfolio volume increased as well and allowed me to double my investment over the next few months.
 

One of my colleagues told me about his experience in trading Signals in Telegram. I learned that he tripled his investments within a month. I found this success story fascinating and decided to give it a try and follow his steps.
 

Once more, I turned to the Internet. This time I searched for «Top Crypto Traders» and came across an article about the performance audit of crypto signals from five Telegram channels on the smartoptions.io website. I browsed through the described channels and tried to search for some more, but the sheer amount of them was  overwhelming. I checked about twenty of the most popular and stopped.
 

Inspired by the audit of smartoptions.io, I immediately purchased a subscription for PALM BEACH VIP and Cryptoland Elite channels. I distributed my portfolio between the coins, following the signals of the above-mentioned channels carefully. The first channel, PALM BEACH VIP, gave five signals a day. Those signals were mainly short and mid-term.
 

Unfortunately, I learned too late that there were ShitCoins and other shell fakes. Sometimes the coins had already reached the first or second target by the time the signals came in. The second channel, Cryptoland Elite, gave three to four signals in about three days. Those signals were only midterm.
 

Soon enough, some coins reached the target while others started to subside. There were also coins that reached the target at the moment of the signals. All the coins reached the stop-loss order by the middle of January. You can find the detailed signals report for January and February here.
 

There was a major break in the market at that moment. However, I continued receiving signals from these channels even in the conditions of the unstable and declining market. I went on making purchases and followed the recommendations of the signals closely.
 

My hopes to scoop a large profit were high. At a certain point, I realized that something was wrong. I noticed that all of my purchases reached stop-loss order several days after the signals. Stop-loss usually meant -20% of the purchase. All of my coins (BAT, GNO, ADA, XEM) were falling, and I was losing my portfolio rapidly, both in Bitcoins and dollars.
 

Eventually, I lost around 75% in dollars and 50% in Bitcoin. This loss amount was critical for me, and I was shocked and determined to find out what went wrong and who was to blame. Of course, I wasn’t an experienced trader, but there were things that seemed strange and suspicious even for a newcomer.
 

First of all, the administrators of the channels sent signals at all times, regardless of the conditions of the market. They also published only the positive results of their signals, sweeping any negativity under the rug.
 

Their strategy was to share the results only of the coins that grew on the market, but their share of the market was not more than 10-15%. For the rest of the coins, the losses were enormous, but the administrators did not speak about them at all.  If any user decided to share their negative experience of following the signals from the channel, they were immediately banned, and their comment was deleted.
 

As a lifetime subscription was more beneficial to purchase than a monthly one (0.05 BTC and 0.03 BTC respectively), the administrators had amazing opportunities to take the money and come out clean. The banned users, who lost their investments just like I did, would go and complain about it to other groups.
 

Unfortunately, very often they did so only to discover that the administrators of those groups were the same and banned them too. This was a perfect scheme: there were no websites or any web pages to complain about the scam and warn other people, and any negative feedback led to a ban.
 

All I could do was watch more people subscribe to the channels and get robbed.  I stopped following the advice of these channels because I could no longer trust them and because I had spent my entire portfolio.
 

There were also thousands of free Telegram channels, but it was impossible for me to analyze all of them on my own. However, I wanted to get my money, that had I just lost so quickly, back- so I started researching.  I came up with a set of criteria that allowed one to choose traders successfully. You can read more about it in my next article.
 

Several channels stood out based on my criteria (the titles of the channels are left incomplete because this post is not sponsored and does not intend to promote any of the channels):
 

Asian channels stood out because of their unique strategy: one signal every five days, sometimes even less. When the market experienced major fluctuations, they simply waited for things to even out and did not give any signals at all.
 

I followed these channels for some time and realized that they actually were making money! Taking a last leap of faith, I bought the last subscription to the Asian channel Asian Whales.
 

Splitting expenses with my friends and coworkers was a great  idea, because I had already lost my personal portfolio. Having paid 0.12 BTC for a lifetime subscription, I hoped to get a part of that lost money back.
 

My friends and I received access to the channel’s archive  once our subscription was activated. We drafted the stats and analyzed all the signals. The results of the audit we performed are shown below. The analysis period is January 2018 - March 2018.
 

Having discovered this, I wanted to take a risk once more, regardless of the fact that I had already lost a lot. It is sad to think about how many people probably gave up and never took this next step. I wrote this article to let beginner traders know that there are channels that generate profit without any scams or schemes.
 

I also wrote it to let you know that it is getting harder and more expensive to find these sorts of channels amongst the overwhelming amount of scams that are spreading across the market. Have an objective idea about your portfolio before you start.
 

If your portfolio does not exceed $1,000, buying subscriptions on your own won’t do you any good. Try, instead, to share subscriptions with someone else.
 

In hoping that my experience might be useful to others, I decided to create a platform that will show the real results of signals as distributed by traders,  safetrading.today. This platform will also allow you to leave your feedback about the work of this or that trader, which will help the service to be transparent.
 

Also, every week I perform analysis of signals of a new trending channel and upload the results to my Telegram.
 

Subscribe to always know who helps to earn money and who is a scammer. It will help me improve its performance and will also remove a significant amount of scams from the market.
 

I hate to observe how administrators of paid signals scam people and not be able to do anything about it. Let’s take action together and make the game fair.