What I've Learned About Crypto

1. The cryptocurrency market operates in cycles, dictated by the "Bitcoin halving." This is an event every 4-years, whereby the new Bitcoin generated is cut in half. This causes a supply shock, and pushes Bitcoin upwards. In turn, more and more people become interested with the price increases and join, and the domino effect ripples out into a bull market. But it is only temporary, lasting a limited time until interest fades. The side effect is that the entire cryptocurrency market will pump, causing altcoins to skyrocket overtime.
2. Good, solid projects aren't important for the bull cycle, but for the bear cycle. Good projects will last through the dark winter, whereas the hyped coins without purpose will fade off. Why? Because to survive through a bear market, you need projects that will keep on going on, with a team and funding that will allow it to happen.
3. Once your family and workmates start crazing about some cryptocurrency coin, you're too late to the party and it's going to soon dump. Think about it. For it to reach their ears that means the coin must've already done amazing stuff. You want to get in before it does such amazing stuff.
4. There's always opportunity. During a bull market, you want to find coins that have remained relatively "flat", because 99% of coins will eventually pump by the peak of the cycle. So find the most boring, uninteresting coins (that are still being developed and worked on, so check out their Twitter and on to see interaction exists). Find a coin looking like an EKG flat-line with an active community and dev team -- that's the one that you'll profit from in due time. During the bear market, find good, solid projects, and average-dollar-cost in until the next bull cycle and reap amazing projects.
5. There's tons and massive amounts of scams. Guess what? If you search for Metamask on Google, the top results are likely fake websites (because top results are ads). Support responding to you on Twitter are very likely scam people with fake verified badges. Google Play still has a lot of issues with fake apps, so you can still easily download an app that is seems like the official one but will steal all of your money. Do not store your passphrase on your phone. And remember, hardware wallets can fail so always keep a backup copy.
6. People focus way too much on shitcoins. People are literally paid money to advertise coins, to make comments and interact with the community just for a small payout. If the shitcoin should moon, you'll probably hear about it once it already has and feel the need to get into because it's "just beginning." You must get in coins BEFORE they moon, before they pumped, for the real profits.
7. Most people in cryptocurrency lose money because they buy quick and sell quick. Stop trying to get quick profits and hold your coins for longer term.
8. Technical analysis is just saying what's CURRENTLY happen and not what WILL happen (with very, very rare exceptions). That's why you'll see all these YouTubers make comments referencing what's happening, and then they'll talk about "if Bitcoin goes up, this will happen, and if Bitcoin goes down, then this will happen", but they can't tell you what will actually happen. This is for short term predictions, because we understand long term movements quite well (well, some of us do).
9. Coins that are innovative and provide cutting edge technology means little, because it's all open source and some other project will come along and copy it. It's about marketing, partnerships and growth. Think of Mastercoin's downfall, for example.

Anyway, I could keep going, but I'll leave it at that.