I just want to preface this post with the statement that I know absolutely nothing about the technical side when it comes to trading, cycles, indicators and so forth.

I make trades solely on how I think the market sentiment is going, as well as with a few lessons that I've learnt since the 2018 bull market and subsequent bear market that followed. Hopefully I can impart some of these lessons onto the newer people who have joined recently, as well as the mistakes I made as well and if that makes someone even an extra dollar of profit, this post will be worth it.

Initial - $5,000 (2017)

Exit - $265,000 (2021)

Portfolio ATH - $810,000 (2021)

So you're probably wondering, why the hell would I sell now after the market has dropped more than 50%, in sentiment that's clearly very negative and into prices that are clearly very unattractive when compared to the ones a month or two ago.

In order to understand the decision that I made to exit, you have to understand how I got to this amount in the first place. My entire holding strategy has been to be as uninvolved as possible, only looking to see if any price points are hit before zoning back out for a couple of months at a time. If I was the type of person who checked my portfolio 24/7, I would have cashed out at $100,000.

Because of this, it's really easy for me to stomach the drop from my portfolio ATH as ultimately, I would have never even gotten to my current exit value in the first place without the way I'd handled everything up until now. For that, I'm just grateful that I exited with a large profit at all.

Now I can go life my life, pay off my debts, travel to a new city and start a new job, anything I want to do without any real stress. I was stable before this money and now that I have it, it's just going to act as buffer for anything that I want to do, which is more than anything I could have asked for.

Check out a couple of things I learnt along the way below, and I hope these help any of you out at least a little.

Key Lessons:

1. Don't neglect your life outside of crypto - Near the mania phase of this bull run, I really started to neglect my actual life, my job, my relationships, my plans, in order to just fantasize about the life ahead of me. What I realized is that crypto and gains are worthless, if you don't have a great life (friends, family, goals) to pair them with. If your only source of happiness right now is your crypto portfolio, you need to re-evaluate why that is, and address it.
2. Have liquidity on the side to buy in the bear market - If I had taken even a 10% profit in the 2018 bull market, I would have been able to purchase a lot more during the subsequent bear market. My current movement from 5K to 265K was all done with a single purchase back in 2017, I have not added a single amount since then, which I deeply regret. That's why with the money I've taken now, you can be sure that I'm going to dive back in when prices stabilize and interest drops. That's why taking even a small amount of profit is important, it really makes a difference when the price is 50%, 80%, 90% down from ATH.
3. Be realistic with your goals and take profit - I can't count the number of times that friends have come to me and refused to take profit because "taking profit at 500% is stupid, this shit will take me to the moon". Even my own brother got caught up in the dogecoin hype and refused to sell until an insane number he had in his head. While crypto is volatile and you can make insane gains, you need to have a goal in place and a profit strategy to adhere to. I took my first profits at pre-ordained price points because I'd promised myself that when prices were at their all time low in the years prior.
4. Think for yourself - You're never going to make money here if all you do is listen to what other people tell you. It's different in a bull market because you can shit out a coin and it will make money. When the market starts dying and when we start hitting those 90% losses, you need to be able to make your own decisions as to how you want to approach your portfolio going forward. At the absolute low of the last bear market, every single person in my life was calling me an idiot for having any money in crypto, and honestly it's easy to capitulate to that sort of pressure.

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I'm still bullish on crypto as a whole and I'll be back in a month or a year, anytime I think it's a good time to drop back in. I've already made more money than I deserve with this and I'm just grateful that I had the opportunity to do so with like-minded people.

Best of luck to you all!