I wish I would have known this before, but if I wouldn’t have committed these mistakes when I first got into Bitcoin, I would not be writing this now. When it first happened, I took them as “they are no big deal” now I realize I could’ve done it better, but still take them as a learning process.
My First Bitcoin Blunders: The $10 Mistake
The first time I got into Bitcoin, I remember I downloaded Binance and bought some bitcoin, just $10USD and I was like: “Wow this feels weird”. I didn’t even dare to learn how to use Binance because I just watched a video on YouTube on how to buy bitcoin and the guy in the video said I could do it through Binance.
It was not the first time I used an Exchange because before I was using Uphold. This was because Brave Browser was giving BATs (their own token) to watch ads on their browser. I remember I made $12USD worth of BATs and guess what? I didn’t even know how to withdraw the money from Uphold.
I felt great using Uplhold and telling all my friends that I was earning money online. Now, when I bought Bitcoin at Binance, I remembered I had BATs and searched online how to buy BTC with BATs, I found it and I did it. Now I had like 18USD worth in BTC, sounds good right? Well, here’s where I screwed up.
I wanted to have everything on Binance, so I didn’t know how to transfer the funds from Uphold to Binance and once I followed a tutorial and did it, I had around 15USD worth of BTC, why? I sued the main network and paid a lot of fees without me knowing how it worked.
I should’ve researched more about it and it was not until I had already paid the fees and the transaction was completed that I noticed that I had only $15USD worth of BTC on my binance account because the price went down and I had paid fees. I felt it was a scam.
The Emotional Rollercoaster: Am I a Millionaire Yet?
I was into BTC and also looking at other coins like Solana, Cardano, Shiba, XRP, among others. I still had my binance account and had bought some of each coin with the expectation that each of them would go up and explode and make me a millionaire.
The first thought that always comes to mind to someone who needs money is: Is this going to make me a millionaire? Well, it depends. There have been cases where it happened like that, but does not happen to everybody.
Once you have that desperate mindset, you go all in without looking at the possible consequences it may have. It happened to me, I was so desperate that everytime I saw the bars go red and prices go down, I was like: “I lost my money” and that mindset was creating a sense of fear on Bitcoin too.
I later sold everything, even Bitcoin because I couldn’t stand the fact of checking the prices every single minute. I watched videos of people who were into that 24/7 and wondered how they did it without worrying about it. Of course I went back to buying Bitcoin and this time I stayed only with it.
This was very important because it opened my mind more towards learning about how bitcoin worked and how it was used. Of course, all these examples were before the Chivo Wallet was announced in El Salvador.
I used to think that Bitcoin was the same as Solana and Cardano, of course if you read this right now, you may get upset or laugh about it, but to be honest, that’s the reality of many people out there. Don’t think of Bitcoin as a short term investment, see it as your life savings.
Drowning in Jargon: How a Friend Saved Me From Mainnet Fees
When you get into Bitcoin, it is ok to do all kinds of research on your own, but as there is too much information, you may get overwhelmed, this happened to me.
Bitcoin, Onchain, Lightning, Mainnet, Mempool, Block Chain, Proof of Work, Seed, Blocks, all that vocabulary was so difficult for me to understand that I even watched several videos and still didn’t understand what it was.
I didn’t understand what was the difference between the lightning network and the Mainnet up to the point that I had a lightning wallet and was still using the mainnet to transfer BTC.
It was not until a friend said: “I see you have this wallet, open it, click on receive, choose Lightning” and he sent me $10USD. There I learned how to use the lightning network and thanks to him, I managed to get transactions faster.
Gather with people who know about the topic and let them teach you. One thing I remember of a preach that I listened to at church was: Let yourself be teachable. It is true, it’s ok to try to uncover everything on your own, but there are some things that would be better if you had some help to understand them.
I have the perfect example of a girl at Walmart that I wrote in one of my previous articles that shows perfectly what happens when you let yourself be teachable.
You may think that reading and watching the news about bitcoin will make you an expert, the reality is that it only stresses you out.
Stop Stressing
I used to watch and read news everyday about bitcoin without even being a trader. I used to watch daily live streams of traders in both languages, Spanish and English and it was only to feel like I was a trader.
The sensation of consuming that kind of content makes you feel smarter when in reality, you don’t use that information for anything, unless you’re a trader. I used to read news at crypto news, Coindesk, Cointelegraph, among others.
I only had like $20USD in bitcoin and I was watching that kind of content because some of the people I knew were also doing it.
I let myself be influenced too much, I know I said let yourself be teachable, but that does not mean that you have to be influenced completely. Bitcoin was built to give you freedom, so you have to keep it like that, you are free to do whatever you want with it, but be careful of not falling into others traps.
Many people will tell you to do this, to do that, to watch this, to listen to that, but only you decide what to do. Take the advice but don’t follow them all because what works for some, may not work for you, so be teachable, but don’t let yourself be influenced so easily or completely.
The Subtle Art of the “Orange Pill”
One of the most important things that I have learned during the time I’ve been into Bitcoin, is that not everyone will like it and not everyone will be ok talking about it.
Just like many other things, if you don’t like something, you don’t want other people to talk to you about it. So, it is better not to try to “orange pill” someone who doesn’t want to be “orange pilled”.
Let people be, especially in your family. If they tell you that Bitcoin is a scam, let them be, let them think that, but you keep your beliefs strong and don’t let them down. This may happen to you and has happened to many people.
Reactives are the most complicated to orange pill because they don’t think what you are doing is correct. Friends are also very complicated unless you both have similar likes, if not, don’t even try it.
The best thing to orange pill someone is to let them see you using bitcoin, pay for a coffee with it and talk about bitcoin smoothly, don’t tell them the whole information or technical details because you will overwhelm them. Remember what I said that I felt overwhelmed when I was learning about Bitcoin? Well, people feel the same way when they hear the word Bitcoin.
Keep Calm and DCA
The Bitcoin world is vast and don’t rush other people into it. I know right now the whales are talking and talking about how they buy Bitcoin everyday and maybe you can only buy a small amount every month, don’t worry, don’t look at the charts, don’t listen to all the news, don’t believe everything you see on social media, just HODL (keep you bitcoin and don’t sell it) and DCA (buy bitcoin whenever you can).
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