WAGMI Is The Biggest Myth In Crypto
These Are The Top Skills You Need To Develop As An Investor
Introduction
In crypto, there’s a common theme of unrealistic optimism and a little delusion. If you’re an active member of the Crypto Twitter community, you’ve often seen – and often see – the acronym WAGMI occupying your feed on a regular basis. For those that are unfamiliar, WAGMI is the acronym for “We’re All Gonna Make It”. It is used as a rallying cry to boost the morale of the community and encourage others to stay engaged in the market by ensuring others that because they’re so “early” to the industry, the chances of them reaching success is pretty much guaranteed. While the intentions are noble (and optimism is certainly a welcomed emotion), the message of everyone making it is not the truth.
The fact is that a number of people will reach a level of success that is satisfactory for them, and sadly a lot of people will fail. As unfortunate as that reality is, there is a ray of hope. You can greatly increase your chances of success if you dedicate yourself to growing and developing your skills as an investor. This brings us to the topic of the hour. In this article, we’re going to break down a few skills/traits that will give you a leg up in this industry.
The best part about these skills is that they cost nothing to develop, just a little time and energy.
Researching & Understanding
As simple as it may sound, one of the first skills to master when you’re on the road to becoming a competent investor is researching and understanding the projects that you are investing into.
Furthermore the best investors develop the ability to understand what fundamentals cause growth in a project or market sector - then invest as the growth narrative is starting to play out.
Be a relentless learner. The more you know about any one thing, the more you know about everything. The universe is full of repeating patterns. The more you understand one set of patterns, the better you understand them all.
Most people fall victim to listening to others or simply using market sentiment to gauge whether or not they should buy or sell a position. While there is a possibility to gain some good alpha and tips from those that are knowledgeable within the industry, increasing your level of understanding will always be one of the most valuable investments you can make.
Oftentimes, we attribute making bad investments to a lack of research and understanding. However, we rarely talk about how many missed opportunities occur simply because potential investors fail to see the bigger picture.
The best case of this is everyone missing out on investing in Bitcoin back in 2010 or taking advantage of the opportunity to grab some Ethereum in 2015.
Researching a project until you completely understand it not only does wonders for your portfolio, you also become smarter in general. For example, let’s say there’s a new DeFi protocol that seems interesting. However, you know nothing about DeFi.
Well, the first step would be to research and understand the importance of DeFi and how it works. In order to understand this, you must have some working knowledge of traditional Finance. If you’re unfamiliar with traditional Finance, guess what you have to do? You must learn about it. While you’re learning, be sure to pat yourself on the back. Not only are you learning about a new project, you’re learning about new industries altogether.
Observation & Engagement
Once you’ve mastered the art/skill of researching and understanding the industry, you need to learn how to actively observe from a close distance while engaging with the community.
It is a common misconception that observing from the sidelines is the equivalent of missing out. People in the crypto and NFT community have a bad habit of turning into a “buy right now before it’s too late” echo chamber.
Contrary to popular belief, observing a project and its community before taking a position is one of the most important things you can do.
While you’re observing and surveying the landscape, you should use that time to engage with members of the community (both bullish and bearish) to get a full scope of the opportunity or lack of.
It is important to always move at your own pace, but it’s even more important to not move too fast. At worst, if you drag your feet on an opportunity, you might miss out but you’ll still have possession of your investment funds. Plus, another opportunity is always around the corner.
However, move too fast, not only do you make the wrong decision, you can also kiss your initial investment goodbye.
Observing the market is also the key to spotting trends earlier than other investors. As we know, spotting trends early could determine the difference between a 10x and a 100x opportunity.
Practice & Mastery
Without practice, you’ll never master any activity – this is especially true when it comes to investing.
A lot of people make the mistake of thinking that crypto will make them a millionaire overnight due to some of the wild stories that they’ve either read or heard about some random person putting their life’s savings into some meme coin.
Trust me, for every newly minted crypto millionaire, there are a thousand others paying their dues in the form of losses. There’s a saying in crypto that your first big loss should be looked at as tuition.
The only way to truly master crypto investing is to practice.
When most people think about practice, the first thought is paper trading – i.e. trading using practice accounts instead of real money. While this is definitely a great way to learn to trade, we’re talking about investing.
Here are a few exercises you can start doing today:
Practice reading white papers to familiarize yourself with what a good white paper entails (read the white papers of some successful projects, as well as failed projects).
Practice researching teams.
Start keeping up with crypto news and events.
Ultimately, the best way to practice is to simply be present and participate. The longer you stay in the market, the smarter you become.
Conclusion & Closing Thoughts
Becoming a crypto aficionado is a never ending journey. Along the way, you will experience some losses as well as some wins. Hopefully, the skills discussed above will help you achieve more wins than losses.
Remember the person that cares the most about your success is you (and maybe your parents).
Everything in the universe is connected – you can learn to be a successful crypto investor by learning any other subject, so keep an open mind, and study EVERYTHING that interests you.
Prepare for losses. The biggest winners in any market take losses, so prepare yourself for them, and stay in the game. If you aren’t winning, you are learning, avoid losses so large that you get knocked out of the game.
So, for those of us that choose to put the time, effort, and consistency into developing and mastering our strategies, We’re All Gonna Make It!
One of your best, thank you.
I wish I had had access to this last year.
That being said, without my 1 year experience of losses and wins, I wonder if I could have understood it????
Best read so far (At least 4 me).
Can relate on how this ride is all about, could have used this method when a started in order to suffer a bit less due to my losses.
Wanna THANK you Ellio/Guys for keeping the effort on helping the Fam.
Pls keep the Superb work flowing ✊