Trading, Investing and HODL- What's Best and What REALLY Works

I took the time to go over all the "fun" associated with cryptocurrency. When I say go over, I mean I literally spent 2 years getting scammed, gambling, buying/selling, trading with people for useful tools I needed, etc...All, although some more costly than others, were of a great value to me. I knew I wanted to get into crypto and I knew that if I jumped in with both feet without any real knowledge, I would lose my ass and my wife would kill me. So over the course of those two years, I felt that by the end of 2016 going into 2017, I was ready...so I thought

After talking to some friends who had been in the game for a while, I settled on dropping $10000 USD. I had saved, did some side work and did whatever I could to come up with this money. They and I felt that if I wanted to stand a chance, that I needed to invest a large chunk and after careful consideration I did. I bought $10000 worth of Bitcoin on December 30th at a rate of $948 per coin, roughly 10.5 BTC. I took the advice of them and spread it out across the top 5 coins at the time in the sense of volume and trading to get the most exposure ( I later upped this to the top 10, because after all, who doesn't like top 10's???). By doing this, I felt like a stock broker, but with something I could never touch. No one was going to give me a piece of paper saying I held shares. NO ONE, was going to manage my funds for me or anything like that. Nope, I was on my own and I felt EMPOWERED.

At the time, the "Top 10" in the cryptoworld looked like this as of end of the year/beginning of 2017:

Boy, how things have changed, right???

Over the past year, I have decided for the most part to hold a majority of what you see above and I watched my portfolio grow and decline several times but as of today it sits over $267000!!!!!!

Courtesey of the BitcoinPub and some of the wonderful tools and knowledge they have bestowed onto their followers here is a simple snapshot of everything as of today

Through it all, I have seen many ICO's come and go, some good some bad and I have seen new altcoins come in and lending programs and all sorts of other ways that crypto can make or break you. Ultimately, I have decided that monitoring my own accounts and being cautious not to just jump into pump and dump things or whatever is the way to go. Yes, this portfolio has been HODL all the way for the most part but not entirely. I have many other investments and trading I've done that bring the total over $380000 and growing.

Please know, I am not a professional, I am not bragging or anything like that. I am simply stating and showing everyone that with discipline, practice, and a thirst for knowledge that even someone as simple as me can make a dent in the crypto market world and learn to change their life. I encourage everyone that has been thinking about crypto or on the fence as to starting up a 401K or just sitting the money under their mattress to reconsider and look at the bright future that is here now and ripe for the taking.

If anyone has questions, comments or anything like that, feel free to let me know and I'd be more than happy to share