How I've navigated the 2017-18 run up & down as a noob vs. this time and what I've learned from it

Hey all, so I thought I'd summarize my experiences from the previous bull run, as much for myself as for anyone else, compare it to the state of the space today and draw some conclusions. Just a few points but maybe it'll be useful for some.

• First "mistake", if you could call it that, was learning about the whole crypto space a bit late. Things were already looking slightly up, BTC was over $2000 already.

• At that point I've only invested about 25% of my money because I was careful still with this whole crypto thing. (The majority went into some shit my dad got fucked over with so yeah...) Anyway, I was acting to the best of my knowledge and was trying to play it safe, which is always fine imo, I'd advise you to do the same. As they say, never invest in things you don't understand.

• Come the bull run, I enjoyed the ride all the way up to $19k. I've never took any profits, like at all, while we were bullish... As you can imagine this came back to bite me in the ass while we tumbled back down to $10k, where I took some money out, then eventually capitulated at $6.5k.

There's quite some takeaways on this point as it really is just human psychology. We all act more or less the same when we go by our guts.

Firstly, I shouldn't have been so optimistically carried away while everything was looking rosey. Should've taken profits on the way up, while everyone was out of their minds bullish and thinking this time was really, truly different. It never is. I've managed to fare better in this regard the current bull run, as I slowly but surely closed almost all my positions by the time we dipped into the 55-59 range. I've lost out on some gains but knew I'd be better off if things went South. And going south they did... ​ ​
(of course my inner bull still fucked me slightly over this time in the 40-36k range after it kept dipping and recovering, which is something I'll need to work on for next time, but still fared better overall than if I rode the dip all the way down)

Secondly, this time I've woken up to the reality earlier. This is a big one. You don't have to be a genius to notice things going south in crypto.. What the hell, it does it every time, right? But you do have to not only realize certain trends but admit to yourself that the trends are real... ​ ​ This second part is the hardest and we tend to drag it out waay longer in ourselves than we should. We cling to any hopium we can get, we don't want to admit our decision and assessment mistakes. It takes guts to admit them too, trust me. But either way, we do end up doing just that, eventually... This time I was earlier in my assessment and I'm expecting it to spare some pain in the ass in the short term for me.

I'm gonna cut this short since I feel like I'm digressing a bit. Eventually, I ended up liquidating almost everything, at (relatively) shitty prices, which brings us to the final, and imo biggest mistake I've made in '17-18 and the years after...

• So yeah, I ended up with a decent amount of cash, about 3x up my initial investment overall. Nice fiat, sitting in my bank account, I can chill tf out, life's okay right? Yeah, no. I ended up just sitting on that goddamn cash, barely using it as it depreciated over time... Never once thought about buying back into projects I thought were great at that time, hell even forgot how to fire up my Trezor wallet eventually... In hindsight, I should've used the money I've gained to DCA into crypto when it was deemed dead, ETH dipped just under $100 from ~$1200 for example (1 of which I bought and held all the way from $600 into this bull market at least).
  

In hindsight, this is the real opportunity. You skim your profits when you know it's going south but you stay vigilant and patient. You don't give in to fake rallies (I'm keeping some skin in the game so that I won't feel potential FOMO in these events) but you stay very aware and at the same time patient for things to go truly South... Investing takes a ton of discipline.

• What are my current plays and plans atm?
  

I've cut my bull trap losses, currently in 50% cash 35% crypto. The latter I expect to fold back down to around the 15-20% level. in the short run, which is fine.

I'm keeping some of my positions because I agree with Ben Cowen on a double peak but lengthened cycle. But I also think that we are in for a bear market until around the end of the year - and I'm going to DCA into it. Not into BTC, but alts, as I'm expecting a higher return from them in the mid term. At the same time I'm also aware that they'll be bloodier than BTC while we're going down. If the cycle's bull run truly isn't entirely over, I'll be better off than if I just kept it all in BTC. But of course this might not be the case, I'm just acting according to what's most fitting to my speculation.

Either way, not budging for either extreme (fully cash or fully crypto) helps with peace of mind. And I think, for the retail investor at least, that really is a significant (if not the most important) factor as we have no idea how the big guys will move the market and our knowledge and insights on the anatomy of it is limited... Be in the right place in your head and you'll be just fine.

(NB: I know I haven't talked much about the HODL mentality here, which essentially is just the "time in the market beats timing the market" mentality we all know, albeit with an asset class this extreme it gets more complicated than that, and different mindsets certainly can yield higher returns by a long shot)

Hope this wasn't too damn long, it surely felt so for me lol, just some (likely erratic in ways) thoughts I've had and thought could be interesting for someone. If you've read this all the way through then kudos, you are one determined mofo. :D

Have a good day and good luck with your investments!