As a PSA to those who have yet to experience the emotional and psychological extremes of a Bitcoin bull market, I thought I'd share my prescription for maintaining sanity during what is shaping up yet another parabolic market move both up and (inevitably) down. I'm sure many of these will seem obvious to the veterans among us, but this is for those who aren't:
- KNOW YOUR PRICE TARGETS: Everyone needs to know ahead of time, what prices are important to them. Whether just for curiosity or your target buy/sell prices, you should know even approximately. You may need to update these weekly, monthly, annually, etc., but the point is, you need them, otherwise you necessarily will impulse buy/sell. If you are some kind of active trader, set your targets based on whatever indicators you use, but both traders and HODLers need targets. Once you've determined your targets, set your alerts, don't watch the price move. Only look when your phone notifies you. Simple. Watching the price is a waste of time. I have both short-, medium-, and long-term price alerts, and I don't waste much time looking at the price beyond occasionally updating my technical analysis charts to hone my price targets.
- SET PRICE ALERTS: Download a mobile app onto your phone that allows you to set alerts when the price hits user defined prices. This will allow you to set both UPWARD and DOWNWARD alerts that will keep you from hitting refresh literally every 2 minutes for hours on end. Anyone who has been in one of these crazy market cycles will understand how compulsively the price checking gets. I've missed time with my family and friends during the last cycle over Thanksgiving and Christmas 2017. Set the alerts and don't look at the price until they are triggered, saving you hours of time and the psychological stress. I recommend Blockfolio for this and use it to track all of my purchases and their individual rates of return, dates, spot price, etc.
- KEEP YOUR COINS OFF EXCHANGES: This is not only important from a security standpoint, but will also dissuade you from impulse selling or actively trading (unless that's your thing). Some exchanges have limits and wait times for transfers, which will keep you from making stupid trades. Any extra steps you can put between you and impulse will be helpful.
- GET A HARDWARE KEY & ROBUST SEED STORAGE: As a corollary to the previous point, a high-quality and simple hardware key directly from a reputable vendor is critical to your peace of mind when holding a substantial sum of tokens. If even modest projections of future prices are accurate, you could be holding 5-7 figures-worth of coins in this wallet over time. Spend $200-300 now to ensure your key(s) are safe. I've been using Ledger Nano S for years and can confidently recommend as far as hardware keys are concerned, and just recently acquired a Cryptotag Zeus to store my BIP-39 seed words, which I've liked so far.
- SET UP A DUPLICATE HARDWARE KEY: This is one I haven't seen said anywhere really but is a cornerstone of my basic security strategy. I've set up two Ledger Nano S devices with the same seed phrase and PIN both of which work perfectly normally with the software. In the event I lose my hardware key or my seed phrase is compromised, or both, I can QUICKLY use the backup to transfer funds to a new wallet with no latency that would be required if I had to order a new hardware key. It's crazy simple. Basic instructions can be found here if you have a Ledger.
I've learned each of these through experimentation and found that I'm most comfortable with it and it works best for me and encourage you all to find what works for you, but everyone has their own preferences. While this surely isn't an exhaustive list, I hope this is at least a little useful to a few of you during what I expect to be a crazy 2021-2022. Happy HODLing!
