What goes up must come down.
Similarly, what goes down must come up.
Such is the case with crypto, and it looks like maybe – just maybe – we’ve kicked over to the second part of that endless cycle for this particular cycle.
Naturally, for millions of hodlers out there, that’s good news. Great news, even. But not everyone is thrilled. Sure, certain traders banking on depressed prices are never all that pumped when the numbers start inching up, but we’re not talking about the pros, here. We’re talking about the Joes.
We’ll use ourselves as an example.
For weeks (or months – we stopped counting), we’ve been telling you to buy the dip. We’ve said it over and over and over again. We explained that the crypto crash is temporary, that the bottom appeared lately to be pretty much the bottom, that now is the time when millionaires are made, and so on.
We told you not to worry and to double down instead.
And that was great advice. We wished we’d taken it.
As happens with so many crypto less-than-pros, we sat on the fence for a little too long. A lull at the bottom is just like a lull at the top in that it lulls you into a false sense of security. Or, if not security, then a false sense of an unchanging and eternal status quo.
Even when you know better.
So now, crypto’s crawling back up.
Just a few days ago, Bitcoin – the trendsetter today and (probably) forever – was under $29,000. Ethereum was under $1800, and Cardano was under $0.50 per ADA coin. We had every intention of doubling down.
In my personal case, I mean that literally. More than literally, actually.
To date, I’m $4000 into crypto. That’s the aggregate of my entire principal outlay, dating back to 2017. This weekend, I moved $5000 over from my savings account to my checking account with the intention of shoveling all that hemorrhagic USD into Coinbase, from where the getting would be good and easy and fast.
But I never followed through.
I got distracted, and one thing led to another and here I am on Tuesday with everything I’d intended to buy up fairly (and annoyingly and infuriatingly) significantly.
This is when one of the lesser-known psychological snags re crypto creeps in.
We all know that older folks tend to have a hard time embracing cryptocurrency because “it’s not real money” (presumably in some different way than fiat currency isn’t real money, either, but whatever).
And if you’ve ever been on the receiving end of a late-night telephone correspondence wherein you had to somehow explain the TV remote’s “source” button to your old man after he accidentally sat on it during his favorite NCIS rerun, you know how hard it must be to adequately explain something that’s technological leaps and bounds beyond that.
Convincing these folks usually comes down to just begging for a bit of trust and then doing all the legwork to set them up.
Then there’s the folks who won’t jump in until they “fully understand” what crypto’s “all about,” and no amount of gains will ever convince them otherwise. And because they’ll never understand all there is to know about crypto (because that’s impossible), they stand pat.
These are the people that have the disposable income to make life-changing bets but haven’t got the trust in themselves – or in you – to see it through.
The only way to get these kinds of folks into crypto is to gift them some of the stuff.
Finally, there’s the crypto-positive people like all of us here at SportsBetting.Legal. We believe in the stuff, we understand it well enough to put it to work for us, and we encourage others to dive on in.
But we’re not always the best at practicing what we preach. We get complacent because we pay more attention to the stuff than we should during the week, and then we tune out over the weekend.
That’s how I personally lost out on the latest dip.
Sure, the coins I’m into could dip again (and, to some degree or other, they surely will), but it’s tough to buy when a few days ago you’d be getting 15% more for your money.
That’s true even when you know – without a shadow of a doubt – that you’d trade meaningful parts of your anatomy a year from now to buy at today’s prices.
Here’s what waiting’s cost me, assuming these prices hold steady between now and the time I get home from work, move my cash into Coinbase, and kick off my crypto buys.
For the record, I’m going to put $625 (fees included) into each of the following, most of which are actually supported at the top legal online sportsbooks:
- Bitcoin – Saturday: $28,786.00; Today: $31,805.89; 10.49% increase ($625 = $690.56)
- Ethereum – Saturday: $1755.51; Today: $1951.79; 11.18% increase ($625 = $694.88)
- Cardano – Saturday: $0.455; Today: $0.613; 34.73% increase ($625 = $842.06)
- Ripple – Saturday: $0.385; Today: $0.422; 9.61% increase ($625 = $685.06)
- Solana – Saturday: $41.39; Today: $45.87; 10.82% increase ($625 = $692.62)
- Tron – Saturday: $0.079; Today: $0.082; 3.80% increase ($625 = $648.75)
- Avalanche – Saturday: $22.50; Today: $26.41; 17.38% increase ($625 = $733.63)
- Uniswap – Saturday: $4.72; Today: $5.71; 20.97% increase ($625 = $756.06)
Not including money lost to fees (which, in most cases, should be comparatively trivial), had I moved on Saturday as intended and then – for some inexplicable reason (aka sloth and apathy) – neglected to, the $5000 I’m going to spend today would be worth $5743.62.
So now, do I wait for a drop that may not happen, or do I take the L and move full speed ahead?
I know I’m not the only one in this stupid boat…
