---
title: '7 Years of Crypto Trading Knowledge in 50 Minutes'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=QKdbH4333wc'
video_id: 'QKdbH4333wc'
date: 2026-07-19
duration_sec: 2979
channel: 'VirtualBacon'
---

# 7 Years of Crypto Trading Knowledge in 50 Minutes

> Source: [7 Years of Crypto Trading Knowledge in 50 Minutes](https://youtube.com/watch?v=QKdbH4333wc)

## Summary

This video compiles 21 essential lessons from seven years of crypto trading and investing, covering market cycles, trend analysis, portfolio management, and risk mitigation. The creator shares personal experiences of both gains and losses to help viewers avoid common pitfalls and improve their trading strategies.

### Key Points

- **Understand Crypto Cycles** [00:41] — Crypto cycles are not strictly four-year cycles tied to Bitcoin halving; they are influenced by macro liquidity cycles like M2 global liquidity and Fed balance sheet changes. Beginners should track these real metrics instead of relying on historical patterns.
- **Trend Is Your Friend** [02:07] — Buying dips only works in uptrends. In downtrends, sell the rips. In sideways markets, avoid trading. Always identify the market structure (uptrend, downtrend, or sideways) and follow the trend.
- **Don't Let Choppy Markets Destroy Confidence** [03:14] — From March to October 2024, Bitcoin traded sideways between $55k and $70k. Many traders lost confidence by overtrading. Protect your psychology by avoiding trades when the market gives no direction.
- **Compare Altcoins Against Bitcoin** [04:46] — Always check altcoin performance in BTC terms, not just USD. Use CoinGecko's denomination setting to see which altcoins are gaining or losing value relative to Bitcoin. Holding Bitcoin may be better if altcoins underperform.
- **Learn Basic Technical Analysis on TradingView** [07:13] — Knowing support and resistance levels is crucial. For example, Solana's bottom around $12-$13 was clear from its consolidation. Basic TA helps identify value ranges and entry points without complex day trading.
- **Use Coin Tracking Apps** [09:14] — CoinMarketCap and CoinGecko help find where to buy coins and discover similar projects via categories. Use the Markets tab to see which exchanges list a coin, enabling early access before major exchange listings.
- **Use Multiple Exchanges** [11:13] — Top exchanges like Binance list only 428 coins, while MEX lists 2,500. To access low-cap altcoins, sign up for multiple exchanges. Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) also provide early access to new tokens.
- **Don't Fear Decentralized Exchanges** [12:33] — DEXs like Uniswap allow trading of any token immediately after creation. They offer earliest access but come with higher risk. Use them to find gems before centralized exchange listings.
- **Value Tokens Correctly** [14:19] — Market cap and fully diluted valuation (FDV) matter, not unit price. For example, Dogecoin and Shiba Inu have similar market caps despite vastly different unit prices due to supply differences.
- **Spot Good Tokenomics** [16:42] — Check circulating supply vs total supply. A rule of thumb: if less than 25% of total supply is circulating, there is high sell pressure from unlocks. Compare similar projects like Sui (27% circulating) vs Aptos (46% circulating) to gauge potential.
- **Exchange Listings Indicate Quality** [20:01] — Coins listed on Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, or OKX are generally high quality and not scams. Instead of buying new listings at high valuations, find bottomed coins already listed on major exchanges as they have passed due diligence.
- **Bet on Market Leaders, Not Copycats** [22:05] — In each category (e.g., RWA, gaming, layer 1), only 1-3 top coins outperform. For example, in gaming, Superverse is up 1600% while others are flat. Focus on leaders rather than diversifying across many similar projects.
- **Invest in Categories, Not Specific Projects** [24:27] — During bull runs, entire categories (DeFi, gaming, layer 1, AI) pump. Picking any coin in a hot category often yields 3-10x gains. Use TradingView's screener to identify strong categories: gaming, AI, meme coins, layer 1, and RWA.
- **Gain Information Advantage** [27:43] — Find catalysts early by checking project docs, Discord, or Telegram. For example, Worldcoin's World Chain announcement was planned months in advance. Beginners wait for price spikes; informed traders enter before news breaks.
- **New Projects Outshine Old Ones** [30:11] — Historical data shows that older layer 1 projects (NEO, EOS, Polkadot) lose dominance to newer ones (Solana, Avalanche). New projects have better technology and vested founders who still hold tokens, incentivizing them to build.
- **Price Driven by Attention, Not Fundamentals** [33:14] — Crypto tokens rise due to user attention and narrative, not revenue or technology. For example, Pepe (a meme coin) has a $4B market cap despite no utility, while technically advanced projects like EigenLayer may underperform if they lack a strong narrative.
- **Meme Coins Have a Place** [37:34] — Meme coins are easy to spread and can act as cultural icons or prediction markets. Examples: Pepe (cultural meme), MAGA (political prediction). They thrive on community attention and can be profitable if timed correctly.
- **Form an Exit Strategy Before the Bull Run** [41:12] — Set realistic price targets and time-based exits before euphoria hits. Avoid holding through downtrends due to 'super cycle' narratives. The creator recommends exiting around Bitcoin $200-250k or by a specific date in 2025.
- **Always Stay Liquid** [43:04] — Never lock up funds in long-term staking or crowd loans. The creator lost money by locking DOT in Polkadot crowd loans for 2 years. Use flexible staking or provide liquidity with the ability to withdraw anytime.
- **Hold at Least 50% in Large Caps** [44:53] — Keep 50%+ of portfolio in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. This curbs FOMO and provides steady gains. Bitcoin alone went from $16k to $66k (4x) from 2022 to 2024. Large caps also reduce panic during dips.
- **Don't Forget About Taxes** [47:29] — Crypto-to-crypto trades are taxable in many jurisdictions. Plan for tax bills in the bull market year to avoid selling at a loss in the bear market. Consult a tax professional.

### Conclusion

The video emphasizes that successful crypto investing requires understanding market cycles, following trends, managing psychology, and focusing on narratives and tokenomics. The creator's 21 lessons aim to help viewers avoid common mistakes and build a disciplined approach to trading and investing.

## Transcript

investing in crypto over the last six years. But before I made the millions, I also lost it all multiple times. If there had been a video like this that existed when I first started trading in crypto, I would have saved and made so
much more money. So, here are the 21 most important lessons I've learned about crypto trading and investing over the years, and how you can use these lessons to make more money and lose less. Welcome back to the Virtual Bacon
channel. My name is Dennis. I'm a crypto angel investor for the past 6 years and I have invested in over 100 crypto startups. On this channel, I share views on market trends and investing strategy to build wealth in crypto. Let's get
in crypto to make life-changing money and start trading right away, but you need to understand first how the crypto cycles work. And that's my number one lesson, which is to understand the myth of crypto cycles. You see, crypto
markets come and go, but they are not exactly four-year cycles each time. When beginners first get started, they try to follow this exact timeline and use it to predict where Bitcoin will bottom and where it will top. This is a terrible
way that can leave you to ruins. Back in the 2021 bull run, there was this super psycho thesis which essentially was that all the money printing because of COVID and crypto adoption would lead to a massive pump that uh causes crypto to
run for multiple years and completely forego the bare market. This thesis looked so real, especially in the second half of 2021 when Bitcoin had the second wave up. Even I got trapped in this narrative and this has led me to hold
way too many positions all the way down until Bitcoin bottomed out at 16K by the end of 2022. The real lesson here is that the bull run patterns following every four years with the Bitcoin hings are mostly just coincidence. The real
deciding factors are the macro liquidity cycles which clearly ended in summer of 2022. And these are the real metrics you can track with things like M2 global liquidity and how the Fed is increasing or decreasing their balance sheets. You
liquidity indicators by going to my video about the myth of the Bitcoin cycles. Number two lesson which closely follows that is the trend is your friend when you are investing and trading. Think about this scenario. They always
tell you to buy the dips even when markets are going down consistently. So you end up buying the dip, buying the dip, buying the dip, but each dip becomes lower and lower. This is because buying the dip only works in an
uptrending market structure. And similarly, when the market structure is trending sideways, you want to avoid trading. And when the market structure you don't want to buy the dips and instead you want to sell the rips or
sell on every time price bounces. This way of trading is called trend theory and following trends. And we have a full course on this on the coiners our community which is linked down in the description. The most important takeaway
here is that you need to know at all times if the market is in an uptrend, sideways trend or downtrend and you want to focus on following that trend whether that's buying the dips on an uptrend or selling every bounce on a downtrend. Now
what if the markets are choppy and only going sideways? This leads us to the third important lesson and that is don't let the choppy markets destroy your confidence. You want to avoid trading when market is doing nothing. From March
2024 to October 2024, Bitcoin has been trading completely sideways. This is trading completely sideways. This is what we call the chop and it ranges from 55k to 70k. If you zoom out and look at this period, Bitcoin is essentially
trading at the same price that it was at 7 months ago. However, many traders are losing their confidence because they keep trying to outperform the market and trade when there is nothing going on. This also leads you to lose confidence
you should be holding for the long term instead. For example, after the major runup on Phantom to $1, it came all the way down to 31 and so many people lost confidence in this coin right around the bottom. And now you see this is ticking
back up again. Similarly for Superverse after it rallied to $150 it came all the way down to 40 cents and a lot of people sold in this last phase before now it's
back up to $140. We all know that the bull run is coming and we all have long-term positions that we want to hold on to. So why are people giving up now when Bitcoin is at exact same price 6 months ago? Protect your psychology and
don't lose confidence from overtrading in the choppy markets. Psychology is the number one influence in trading and investing. And without a plan, the volatility will make you trade and take the trades that you wish you hadn't.
Protraders are comfortable doing nothing when the market doesn't give them any direction. Number four important lesson is your alcoin going up in value versus Bitcoin. When beginners first get into crypto, they usually only look at coin
prices in dollar terms. But comparing your altcoin's value against Bitcoin actually gives you the full picture. For example, here is the chart of Ethereum versus Bitcoin. And you see even though Ethereum has gone up in value over the
past 2 years in dollar terms, it has actually gone down in value in its ratio versus Bitcoin. This means you were better off holding Bitcoin, which is arguably lower risk, and you would have made more money while taking on lower
risk. On the other hand, here is the chart of Salana versus Bitcoin. And this is a completely opposite picture because Salana's ratio has been going up against Bitcoin. This means it made sense to hold Salana up until this point because
even though you're taking a higher risk, you did receive higher rewards and your portfolio went up faster than if you had just held Bitcoin. Now, that's not to say Ethereum is going to go down against Bitcoin forever. At some point, it
should bounce. But this is a common way that you should check for the assets you're holding over long term. One simple way to check this is to go on Coin Gecko and under the settings here, there's something people really don't
settings. You want to go in here and instead of choosing dollar, you want to choose denomination in Bitcoin. This will change all the pricing and market cap and price movement percentages to be compared versus Bitcoin. And now you see
the full picture. As you scroll down this list, all the green numbers you see on altcoins are actually altcoins that are going up in value versus Bitcoin. I remember when my portfolio first hit 100 bitcoins in 2021, I just kept playing
and trading in the market until the end of 2021 and early 2022. But my portfolio number never got back above that 100 BTC number anymore. Instead, it only went up
slightly in dollar terms, but not in Bitcoin terms, which means I was actually losing opportunity costs versus if I just held Bitcoin. And because of this, those portfolio gains also came crashing down when the altcoin cycle
died along with Bitcoin. In order to outperform the market, you can't just rely on historical data and the crypto cycles. Instead, you'll need to get the upto-date information for those quick trades. So, you need to learn how to use
the most important tools in crypto. And that brings me to my number five important lesson, which is that everyone needs to know the basics of Trading View and basic technical analysis. Beginners usually skip this part when they hear
about Trading View and they look at this interface, they get really overwhelmed and they think they either have to go all or nothing and they have to become a full trader creating all these chart patterns on the chart. In reality, it's
just important to note the basics of how to use this platform because it applies on all exchanges and every coin you trade. If you don't know how to read a chart, you wouldn't be able to identify the basic support and resistance levels
when a coin has clearly been trading near the same price floor for multiple years. For example, here's the price of Salana. And when you look at this chart, you should be able to clearly see, okay, Salana was consolidating and trading
sideways from November 2022 until October 2023 before it finally started its new run. And because the lowest level that Salana got to was only around 13 to 12 and it kept bouncing from this level, even with all the major crashes
from FTX and from Luna, chances are this was near the bottom for Salana. And this isn't complicated day trading TA. This is looking at a long-term chart and finding value ranges. And similarly, now you can see Salana has been testing
you can see Salana has been testing around that $125 level multiple times this year. And every time it goes there, it tends to see a bounce. So this is a clear support level that people can pretty easily identify. These basic
levels of technical analysis is actually the most useful and it applies to all charts. You don't have to believe technical analysis can predict prices over multiple years in the future. But knowing these basic chart patterns is
super important for all crypto investors. In the coiners community, we also have a free course going over the complete step-by-step guide on how to do that out by going to the coiners.io. Now, I get asked so often where to find
a coin that I have mentioned, where can you even buy it? And this is the sixth lesson I want to teach you guys, which is learn how to use a coin tracking app like Coin Market Cap or Coin Gecko. So many times I see people commenting, "Why
many times I see people commenting, "Why is XXXcoin not on Coinbase or Binance? I can't even buy it." This is a feature and not a bug because all cryptos trade on multiple exchanges unlike the stock market where you can have one main
broker to access all available stocks. In order to find the exchange, you can buy a specific coin. It's very simple. You go on Coin Market Cap or Coin Gecko and search for the coin you're looking for. For example, uh this AI coin,
Humans AI. I know for a fact it's not trading on many exchanges. And then you go to the markets tab by scrolling down and you see here are the exchanges that have it to trade. KCO Coin, Uniswap, MEX, Gate.io, Osmosis. If you can buy
coins before they list on major exchanges like Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, Bybit, etc., this can present a great opportunity to get in early. Coin Market Cap and Coin Gecko are also really strong at tracking categories and
finding similar altcoins in the same category. For example, if you like this artificial intelligence alcoin, you can go to its categories and click on this tag and you see all of the top ranking AI alcoins by market cap and you can go
down this list and find other altcoins that you can do research on. This discovery part of Coin Gecko is also very important. Now, don't be intimidated by all the exchanges that exist in crypto. Beginners complain that
they always get into the altcoins too late, but at the same time, they only want to trade on Binance and Coinbase and don't want to sign up for any other exchange. The top exchanges will always be late to listing the new altcoins, the
altcoins that have higher potential and starting at a lower market cap. This is because the top exchanges have to do a lot more due diligence and can only list these coins once they are already at a high valuation. That's why the number
seven lesson I want to tell you guys is that using many exchanges is a good idea. Be ready to use many exchanges. This is an important tool for more profits in crypto. It's not a hindrance. Every time you go on a new altcoin and
you look at the markets tab and you don't recognize any of these exchanges or you maybe don't have accounts on any of them, don't be afraid to sign up to one of them. The more you do this process, the more access you'll have to
more altcoin selections and look at all the top crypto exchanges and the number of coins they have to offer. Binance only offers 428 coins and even the largest list on a single exchange is at MEX at 2,500 coins. But consider there
are over 5,000 probably 10,000 altcoins out there trading that are decently okay and could have potential for investments. Now, especially if you're looking for low cap alcoins, you simply cannot find that by only using one or
two exchanges. Not even all the exchanges have all of their coins overlapping. So, even some coins that are listed on Binance would not be listed on Coinbase. I have a full video on the best exchanges to use for trading
crypto based on your needs. And in here, we also cover the exchanges with the largest altcoin selections. So, make sure to check that out. Link in my description. Another tip about exchanges is that decentralized exchanges are just
as important. The number eight lesson I want to tell you guys is that don't be afraid of dexes. They are your friends. They are not scams and they are not by default only trading scam altcoins. Decentralized exchanges are very easy to
use. You just need to learn this one main interface and that is invented by unis swap called the swapping feature and it applies to all decentralized exchanges on all different blockchains for all tokens. The cool thing about
decentralized exchanges is that the moment a token is created and can be transferred, it will be available for trading on a decentralized exchange. This is because anyone can add liquidity and create that market right away. even
if that token is not listed on any major centralized exchange. This means it's almost guaranteed that you can have the earliest access to the token before centralized exchange listings. Of course, this also leads you to higher
risk because anyone can create a token and have it list on unis swap for trade. But you should not avoid decentralized exchanges for this purpose. By using them as a tool, it opens you up to a much wider variety of altcoins you can
altcoin that we got into a couple months ago that has been already up more than 3x since we got into it on YouTube in our portfolio. Decentralized exchanges is also the go-to place if you want to trade meme coins at all. Look at
Mogcoin. This coin actually launched even uh in August 2023. And for all this time that it was trading at a very low market cap in the $10 to $20 million range, it was only trading on decentralized exchanges. So anyone could
have gotten into them before they got listed on the major centralized exchanges like Bybit, Gate, Kcoin, etc. With that being said, there is the other side of the equation, which is that crypto is full of noise and scam
projects. So you need to learn to read the data that matters. And this can help the data that matters. And this can help you to avoid the most obvious scams. The ninth lesson, and this applies especially for memecoins, is you need to
learn how to value tokens correctly. In 2021, many people called for Dogecoin to go to $1 simply because the unit price was cheap. This was around the time when I was making a lot of Tik Tok videos, and I got so much hate for telling
people that Dogecoin is already at multiple tens of billions of dollars in valuation, and the chance of it going to $1 is very slim. Now, Dogecoin did manage to go to 60 cents, mainly because this isn't as bad of a case, and
Dogecoin has been a very longunning memecoin with not that huge of a supply memecoin with not that huge of a supply at 150 billion tokens. But still, most people only looked at the unit price of Dogecoin and they thought it was cheap
because only it was trading at a few cents versus Ethereum was which was at multiple thousands of dollars. What they don't understand is that Doge has a massive supply and this makes it very high in market cap and already in the
top 10 crypto rankings in 2021. Market cap and fully diluted valuation are the two main metrics that actually matter and determine the value of a crypto token. Just look at this comparison. When you look at Dogecoin versus Shiba
Enu, why is Shibbainu's unit price so much lower than Doge? This is because Shibbainu has more than 1,000 times the supply of Dogecoin. So even though Doge is trading at 11 cents and Shibbainu is 0.18,
level so to speak or market cap level as Dogecoin. So the two are actually about the same value. Here's another example for two meme coins, Dog with Hat versus Bonk. Because bonk has so much bigger supply than that of dog with hat. That's
why dog with hat trades at over $2, whereas bonk trades at this tiny tiny unit price. Just because you can own millions of tokens of a memecoin doesn't anything at all. That's why you have to be extra careful when you are playing
memecoins. And if you don't know how to read the market cap and fully dilute the valuation and compare them, you are in for a lot of pain. The other important metric for a crypto's fundamentals is its supply. Specifically, its
tokconomics that dictates the circulating supply versus the total supply. This is the 10th lesson I want to tell you guys, which is you need to learn how to spot good tokconomics. Tokconomics refers to numbers like the
total supply of a token and how much of that token supply is currently in the market versus how much more is potentially coming onto the market where investors can sell those tokens for profit. You often hear of this word VC
profit. You often hear of this word VC coin or high FDVcoin or low float coin. All of these sayings simply mean that you have a very low circulating supply versus the total supply. Now a rule of thumb is that when you see 25% plus of
the total supply circulating, chances are those tokconomics is okay. Most of the time the investors will not control more than 25%. However, when you see a newly launched alcoin that have less than 10% of the supply circulating like
for example here on IE layer, chances are the investors still have a lot of tokens to be unlocked which can add to the sell pressure and that means price example of Celelesia where it launched with less than 10% of the token supply
in circulation and after this initial runup it had a very long drawdown and finally price is starting to bottom out as more and more of the token supply is finally coming out. Another good example is Tongcoin. Remember how everyone all
of a sudden were really bullish on Tongcoin. This is because Tong had its Tongcoin. This is because Tong had its market cap go up from $1 billion to $25 billion doing a 25x and this made it go from top 70 coins all the way to top 10.
However, from this one and a half year period, the price growth of Tong was period, the price growth of Tong was only from $120 to $7 to $8. So that was only a 7x gain in price whereas it was a 25x gain in market cap. So people didn't
make generational wealth on Pongcoin but yet the coin itself went up a lot in rankings. This is because a lot more tokens uh got released to the market and investors were actually able to take profit. You can also compare tokconomics
side by side for similar projects. For example, here we have SUI versus Aptos. We all know SU is the hottest new layer 1 coin right now and its supply circulation is okay at 27% of total tokens circulating. However, when we
look at its closest competitor, Aptos, we actually see that Aptos have a much we actually see that Aptos have a much superior tokconomics because 46% of the token supply of Aptos is already circulating. So, there are a lot less
sell pressure coming for Aptos. And that's why even though Aptos and Sui are that's why even though Aptos and Sui are both around the number 25 in top coin circulating market cap, their fully diluted valuation is actually 2x away.
So you can think of it like Aptose has twice as much growth potential in its fully diluted market cap versus Sweet. This is how a VC investor would see the project and this is the real metric that matters. To follow the tokconomics of a
project, you need to follow the circulating supply versus total supply on Coin Gecko or Coin Market Cap and also find out how to use a tool like token unlocks which is now called token nomist. There are thousands of cryptos
to trade and you don't know how to choose which ones. So, you need to learn how to research the legit projects and how to pick winners. That leads me to my 11th important lesson, which is major exchange listings are still the best
indicator for strong fundamentals of a project. If a token is listed on Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, or OKX, typically they are of the highest typically they are of the highest caliber and are not scams. Bybit is the
next option up, but they do have some sketchy coins on there. Now, when I say use exchange listings, I don't mean for you to go on the exchanges and look for which altcoins have just newly listed on that exchange and you buy it right away.
This is the wrong way to do it. When an altcoin first launches on the biggest exchanges, even for things like Binance, they usually launch at a very high valuation. Uh you can observe most of the projects on Binance launch pool.
Most of these altcoins don't go up in price right after launch. They go eventually finding a floor. Instead of hunting new listings, what I like to do is I go on Coin Market Cap, Coin Gecko. I use some other search mechanism and I
find alcoins. Then I go to their markets tab and figure out which exchanges have them listed. If it's an altcoin that's not that often talked about and it looks really bottomed but it's already listed on Binance, Coinbase, Upbit, Bybit,
etc., chances are these are quality altcoins and they just haven't started a major marketing push. That is usually a sign that these projects have gone through tight due diligence and likely are not scams. Very good example
recently that I have just picked up is Orion Protocol. This is a project that had a lot of traction in 2020 to 2021 being a DeFi project, but now they're rebranding their token to a new name called Lumia. And uh instead of doing
purely DeFi, they're doing uh centralized exchange and decentralized DeFi all together targeting RWAS. And as you can see, this coin is pretty much bottomed out over the past 2 years. And the fact that it's already listed on
Binance and Coinbase is a very strong sign that this coin will come around again in this next cycle. The next important lesson and the 12th lesson I want to teach you guys is you want to bet on the market leaders instead of the
copycats. Take a look at the RWA category on Coin Market Cap. You see the top coins performance here. Let's expand this. And here are the top RWAL coins. And you see here only a couple of them really stand out in terms of performance
over 30 days over one year it's even more apparent. And the biggest winners here number one is Mantra and number two is Onondo. In most altcoin categories is Onondo. In most altcoin categories there are only one two maybe three top
runners that will outperform everything else and all the liquidity goes into those top coins. This effect is even more apparent in older narratives like gaming that have existed for multiple cycles. Here are the top coins
performance in gaming. And let's take out notcoin cuz that's not a gaming coin. And Faky is also not a gaming coin. EGO is not a gaming coin. And you look at the rest top seven in market caps. And you see most of the gaming
coins are not up. They are actually sitting flat on the floor over the past year. And the strongest performer by far is Superverse, up over 1,600% over the past year. Then you go down the list, you have IMX at 184% and Gala at 57%. So
you don't need to diversify in 10 other different gaming coins. That actually hurts your gains. You want to continue to bet on the market leaders, one to three of them in each category. In the layer 1 category, this is even more
obvious. If you just bought Salana, you would have outperformed every single layer one out there except for Sui, maybe Apptos. That's about it. All other altcoins have not run faster than Salana. This same effect also applies to
memecoins. Each ecosystem may only have two to three major meme coins maximum. When you look at the top memecoin rankings, you have ShibaInu, PayPhat,
have Faky which is on BSC. You have Brett on base. That's about it. all of these other ones that's trying to come up. They will have hard competition going up. That's why in crypto bet on market leaders instead of copycats. You
have to understand why we talk about so many buzzwords. Real world assets, gaming, AI layer ones. Why do people use these buzzwords all the time? This is because crypto investing is all about investing in the right categories, not
in specific projects. Let's take a trip down memory lane to summer 2020. From summer 2020 to the beginning of 2021, the hottest category of altcoins, in fact, all alcoins that were going up the most were DeFi altcoins. And as you can
see, Maker Dial, one of the top three DeFi projects out there, gone up exponentially over that period. If you have been around at that time, you would know that if you launched a D5 altcoin or if you just went on the DeFi category
and picked any altcoin, you would have had 3 to 5x gains over that few months period. Then fast forward to summer 2021. This was when Axi Infiniti was going exponential from $5 all the way up to $150. This was the gaming and gamefi
and metaverse hype wave. And if you just threw a dart on the gaming category, all of your altcoins have gone up 10x plus. Right after that, by the end of 2021, we also had the layer 1 wave, namely Salana, Avac, Luna, Phantom, bunch of
other layer 1 networks were all going up a lot in price. And if you went on the layer 1 category during this time and picked just any altcoin, you would have had 5x plus gains in a matter of 3 months. And last but not least, in Q4
2023, when chat GBT really became popular, AI projects like Bit Tensor popular, AI projects like Bit Tensor started to go parabolic from $70 to $700. And again, if you had just gone to the AI altcoins and you picked anyone,
it had gone up more than 5x, often 10x within a matter of 4 months. The lesson here is that it's much less important to pick specific AI alcoins that can outperform the rest or specifically the best gaming coin. It's much more
important to know which altcoin categories are strong and have a narrative going for them and will likely run during which time and usually these are bull market times. Beginners will buy coins from very old narratives
because they think they will make a comeback or they might buy very obscure narratives and I have fallen trapped to this before like heavily investing in layer 2s or in social or in BTCI ecosystem. But if those have not shown
strength in a previous uh uptrend, chances are they are not going to outperform the other categories. There's a very handy tool you can use on Trading View under their main products. Uh you go to the screener and you go to crypto
coins screener. And on here you can filter by the altcoins with the strongest performance over a 6 months, 12 months or multiple year period. And then you just need to glance over the categories and you'll see there are only
five main categories that most of these strong alcoins belong in. These five categories are gaming, AI, meme coins, layer 1, and RWA. And these are the five categories that I will be heavily
focusing on for this cycle. I have made multiple videos about my stance on this that you can go ahead and check out on the channel with the best altcoin sectors that I'm investing for 2025 as well as uh the most popular narratives
for the 2024 cycle. This next advice really applies to traders and especially swing traders. Information advantage is key to crypto. This is the number 14th advice I want to give you guys. You need to learn to look in places where it's
not obvious. If you're curious about when the project drops its next release, Someone might have asked. If you want to not available on their Twitter, go into their docs. Chances are there's a
private white list that you can sign up for. Here's a swing trade example that we have taken using this exact approach. Last month, I was building a long position on Worldcoin. Not only because of TA, but also because couple different
catalysts. Number one, there was the AI hype wave. We saw bit tensor towel was already running in price and number two openai was about to announce a massive $6.5 billion fund raise which they have announced a couple weeks ago and number
three worldcoin was likely going to have some form of announcement in October. This information was not immediately obvious everywhere. However, if you just look a little bit on a tool like Coin Market Cap or Coin Market Cal, you'll
see Worldcoin had their world chain announcement that's planned for October and this has been planned for multiple months already. And two weeks ago, Worldcoin started to make this announcement very public and they even
at this event and they'll release something big. So, combined with all of this, we were able to take a swing trade setup on Worldcoin with average entries setup on Worldcoin with average entries in the 1.7 1.8 8 $1.9 range. We kept
averaging down as price went down and now obviously this news is propagating to the retail audience and Worldcoin is above $240. The lesson here is that beginners usually wait for the price spikes and when the news actually breaks
in order to enter positions. But one of the most underrated ways in crypto to invest and to trade is to find these events early. You don't need to look that much further. If you think there's AI hype wave and worldcoin has a release
going to their discord or their telegram. Chances are people have asked those same questions and their team have answered. This is only possible in crypto because there is not that strict regulation about what you can and cannot
tease to the public. One of my most underrated videos is this one on how to do research uh using this top six crypto tools. And make sure to watch this video to this on how to find catalyst events that you can trade around using
swing trading. Now, when you are deciding which altcoins to pick up and to trade, you have to know one important rule of thumb, and that is the 15th important lesson. New projects typically outshines the old projects. Again, let's
take a trip down memory lane and look at the historical data snapshot of Coin Market Cap. Here we have the top altcoin rankings of Coin Market Cap on February 4th, 2018. This is the peak of the bull market two cycles ago. Anyone remember
some of these altcoins? NEO. This was dubbed the Ethereum killer uh which is today. Out of the top 100, even top 200 coin market caps. We have Stellar, EOS, NEM, IOTA. These were all dubbed the Ethereum killer and none of them have
killed Ethereum. In fact, all of them are out of the top 30 crypto rankings. Now, fast forward to February 2021, we have again the peak of another bull run. And here are the top coin rankings. Then remember Polka Dot, everyone was calling
Polka Dot the Ethereum killer. Everyone was super hyped up about Cardano. Chain Link was still a top 10 coin because DeFi was apparently going to change the world. Then finally, we have February 2024. And now you see we have the new
Ethereum killers, the new L1s, Solana. Cardano is still kind of up here. Avac gained a lot of market share. Now, I'm not saying Salana is the next Cardano or not saying Salana is the next Cardano or the next NEO or the next whatever Polka
Dot. I'm just saying even within the same category of layer 1 blockchains that aim to tackle Ethereum, this is not a new narrative. This is a category of alcoin projects that have existed for over 7 years now. And the stats shows us
that usually in the same category, the newer layer 1 projects will perform better than the older layer 1 projects. That's why you see Polka Dot taking the the place of Polka Dot. The reason behind this is that new projects usually
have stronger technology that they have adopted over the years and because blockchain projects are inherently very difficult to iterate upon if you start at a very base level. If you want to evolve your NEO or your Polka Dot into
the stage that Salana is at, you have to completely rewrite the blockchain. And most of the time that's not possible. There's also the side of token supply and what the founders have already achieved. New projects still have token
supply to be unlocking, which means the project founders haven't released all their tokens yet, and they haven't received all their payout. and they'll likely want to keep building a solid project and keep increasing the token
price with whatever releases marketing that they can do in order to earn more. This gives them vested interest in the company. Versus if you're running a very old coin and you don't have any coin anymore because all the supply is
circulating, you can't do much. Even if you keep pushing that project forward, why a lot of these project founders give up. So remember, new projects typically outshines old projects. You want to bet on the new ones instead of the super old
legacy ones. Number 16, important lesson. Crypto tokens go up in price from user attention, not based on project revenue or technology fundamentals. Let's look at three altcoins in comparison. And I think
these really represent three distinct categories. First one we have is Igen innovative projects in terms of technology. It's able to take Ethereum staking and apply that to reststaking and allows anyone to launch layer 2s or
different infrastructure projects by pigging backing off of Ethereum's security and that staking power. Now, that sounds very cool because I can summarize it, but I doubt that there are more than 10 people really in my YouTube
comments that really understand what Layer does and know how to use it. I is a classic case of the project fundamentals being too complicated while most people cannot understand it and they cannot really put a narrative
buzzword on top of it like gaming AI memecoins or rwas. Conversely, here is the exact opposite side of the spectrum with the Pepecoin. There is nothing technologically advanced about this.
It's just a picture of a Pepe and it has very fair token supply with all of these supplies circulating. Yes, it's trading at $4.3 billion in market cap, but there are no teams that will dump on your head because nobody controls any more of the
token supply. So, why do people buy this coin? Well, some people will say, "Why would I buy this? There's no utility." Other people will say, "The Pepe meme is kind of funny. I can recognize what this is, and I can tell other people that
this is funny." And the fact that I know so many people around the world in English-speaking countries know about this Pepe character, this frog. Chances are they will look up the Pepe name on Google, whatever, they find this coin,
know, but hear me out. We'll get into meme coins in a bit. Can you argue that this Pepecoin is necessarily way worse and has no utility versus IGEN layer? You can't because Pepe trades at $4 billion in valuation. And no matter how
much I en layer brings in in utility, if it doesn't fit into a strong narrative and especially if the token supply is heavily controlled by investors, it's not going to perform well. Okay, last but not least, the third alcoin example
I want to show you is Robbit. This is a coin that I have mentioned multiple times on the channel, but I have given up on it in the first half of this year. TLDDR Robbit is a crypto casino. It's one of the most profitable crypto
casinos, and the RLBcoin is their platform coin. Now, one of my core thesis was that majority of the Robbit casino revenue was going to be fed into this coin. But when everything pumped, their token was trading sideways and
down. There is no reason for this to be happening in a traditional financial sense. If you're investing in securities, you have full rights to the shares. You have legal rights. You have shareholder meetings. You have
transparency reports. You have earnings. And you can calculate accurately earnings versus uh share ratio. You can calculate book versus share ratio. But in crypto, those numbers can be totally fake. And most of the time, coins don't
even distribute any revenue at all to their token holders. This is reasonable because most cryptos want to avoid being labeled as a security. And if you have clear dividend structure, you fall into that category and you have a lot of
risk. So then the robbit project really tells us that the revenue focus and how you typically value a securities or stockbased business does not apply to crypto. Most of the time you cannot look at revenue projection and think about
how those numbers will translate to PE ratio and thus the coin price going up. narrative of the coin and the tokconomics or the supply issuance of the coin. So moral of this lesson, do not overanalyze on project fundamentals.
The only fundamental research that is worthy to do is when you're doing due diligence on the project. Is the team legitimate and are the tokconomics sound? So the project will not scam. Once the project passes the safety
exchanges and they have good tokconomics, that's all that matters. You don't want to overthink about the technology or the revenue projections. You want to focus on betting on the categories that matter and betting on
the category winners by finding out which coins have the strongest performance. Okay, like promised, we're going to talk about meme coins. And my number 17th important lesson is that meme coins definitely have a place in
the market. Remember, in crypto, a larger community equals to more price the coin and understand what that coin is and especially if they believe that narrative is interesting, they are likely to buy the coin. Meme coins by
design are the easiest to spread to a wide community. At first, you probably think it's a memecoin. It's a joke. It's a picture of a dog, a pay, a mug with glasses. Why would I actually buy it? In my opinion, there are two camps of meme
coins. The first category is just typically memes or cultural icons, things that you recognize. This brings us back to the Pepe example. When you see the Pepe, you know that this is an interesting meme. A lot of people will
search for this and a lot of people will recognize it. Just like a lot of people continue to hold Dogecoin. That's the first category of meme coins overall that I like to think makes sense. You
have things like Mog, which is a very common saying uh in the new generation. common saying uh in the new generation. Mog is like a slang word for flex in a very US uh Gen Z type of way. Wooljack is another example. One of the most OG
memes on the internet and widely used for multiple generations. You have many of these sayings like lock in. Time to lock in. This is a very common saying people have on Tik Tok. You have aura. You have this aura around you or plus
aura or I have the aura. These are all popular sayings in pop culture that meme coins. and they trade at certainly high value. The second camp of meme coins I believe falls into prediction markets or betting on things that you
can very easily spin up as a cultural icon. For example, political memes. As we go into the election, if Donald Trump gets more and more popular, chances are the Trump related meme coins like MAGA are going to go up because people
believe Trump will win or whether they believe so or not or they like Trump, they might buy his coin because they also believe more and more people will fall into this same belief. You have meme coins for Joe Biden. As you can
see, this coin peaked in April and has only been going down since as Joe Biden uh has dropped out of the candidacy and has been slowly deteriorating into an old man. You also have Kama or Kamala Harris's memecoin on Salana. And this
one really started to pick back up when she was uh pushed ahead as the new candidate and this made a peak in all-time high in July. These things are pretty much like prediction markets where anyone can get into. Of course,
it's not completely obvious and completely fair like a real prediction if you believe something is going to be interesting, you can make a memecoin about it. And if other people also think it's interesting, and especially if that
circumstance becomes true or if whatever you're trying to uh create in that memecoin's branding comes true, then that memecoin will be popular. Just chances are the MAGA coin will continue to be pretty big. And and if Camala
coin probably will go down in price because you don't have a president's coin. Instead, you just have Trump's coin. And conversely, if Trump wins the election, Camala Harris is going to fade into complete irrelevancy and the common
coin is probably going to zero. In that sense, I do believe a prediction market mechanism does exist for memecoins. And that's a cultural value that you can assign to meme coins. There is a place for them. Okay. But if you trade like a
DJ all the time, you will eventually get back all your profits. So in this next chapter, let's learn the best strategies to protect your gains. The 18th important lesson is you need to form your own exit strategy before the bull
run starts. Like I mentioned earlier, don't fight the trend and exit the market when the time is right and when Bitcoin starts to show a downtrend. We can all look at those patterns now and say, "Yeah, I will do this." The problem
is by the end of the bull market comes around, you're used to the uptrend and you're used to way too many weird sayings like the super cycle or this time is different or the Fed and Black Rockck is buying Bitcoin. Then you get a
dip and you think it will recover, but then it keeps dipping and dipping and don't want to sell too early. You need to set realistic expectations before the euphoria happens and know when to walk away. I have made two bull market exit
strategy videos on Bitcoin already and I made these videos last year way before Bitcoin started its run. You can check them out in these two videos. I'll have over my Bitcoin price prediction right
around 200 to 250K. And I also have timebased uh exit strategies in case the bull run uh extends way into 2025. I also want to limit myself for how long I stay in the market. Even if you are a diamond hand believer of some altcoin
like I was, uh I was a big believer in EVM layer ones that were good for DeFi and gaming. And this has led me to hold on to three altcoins way too long,
namely AVAC. I held it all the way from the top over $100 to the bottom at $10. And I held Arbitum way too long because of the layer 2 hype. And I also held on to Polygon way too long from over $2. and I believe I exited when it was 70 to
80 cents. Don't fight the trend. Have a strategy and know when to walk away. Number 19 important lesson that's very related is you want to always stay liquid. Crypto is all about accessing liquidity at all times. So you can buy
and sell at any time using a decentralized exchange if you want to cash out. Never lock up your liquidity in a long-term product like passive income, time locked staking, etc. You can provide liquidity. You can do normal
staking, but make sure you have the flexibility to withdraw at all times. I fell victim to this by the end of the 2021 bull run during the Polka Dot crowd loans. Here I am hosting a live stream going over all the top Polka Dot crowd
loans. If you're not familiar, this is a mechanism where uh you had to lock up mechanism where uh you had to lock up your DOT tokens and receive these Polka Dot parachchain projects. Most notable ones are Akala, Moon Beam, Moon River,
Fala, etc. The catch here is that these numbers looked good then because Polka Dot was at its peak of hype and it was trading out over $40 which meant all of these parachchain projects supposedly were going to be very big projects as
well. But as I have gotten to know multiple years after locking up my money in DOT was a terrible mistake because Polka Dot went down another 90% and so did all these parachchain projects and in the end I didn't even break even and
my money was locked up for 2 years. You can still find these old live streams on really see the full evolution of what I have gone through uh to make all these mistakes hands-on. That's why important to always stay liquid and don't lock up
Finally, when you're ready to create your portfolio, you can go on my channel and check out my portfolio videos. I've just released my updated portfolio one month ago going over 25 different altcoins I have on here. And for the
second last important lesson, I want to recommend everyone to always have at least 50% of your portfolio in the large caps, namely Bitcoin and likely Ethereum and Salana. For me, this helps curb the FOMO if market start to run hard. For
even though most altcoins were going down, whenever market pumped, Bitcoin was still going up and Bitcoin was holding its floor relatively well. So you always have the steady gains from these established assets. Even if I lose
hope and sell the altcoins, I still have my Bitcoin gains. In crypto, people think that's a boring idea, but just look at the Bitcoin price growth from look at the Bitcoin price growth from 2022 to now. It went from 16,000 to
2022 to now. It went from 16,000 to 66,000, over a 4x gain. These types of gains are crazy in a traditional investor's eyes. And if you have strong strong conviction in crypto like I do and you believe Bitcoin is heading much
higher, why would you not hold Bitcoin? And also I encourage everyone to start denominating your portfolio in terms of Bitcoin. This lets you see the real picture. Are you able to outperform the price growth of Bitcoin? Or is your
portfolio actually going down in value versus Bitcoin? Imagine doing all this work finding gems just to get beat out by holding Bitcoin. I also believe holding Ethereum and Salana covers you for most large cap alcoin gains. Unless
you're able to rotate between narratives all the time and you know exactly which narrative is going to be popular when chances are your individual alcoin pick in the large cap rankings, I'm talking about top 30, top 40 alcoins, they are
unlikely to outperform Ethereum and Salana both by the end of this cycle. This is because most other altcoins are still fluctuating all the time. So whatever gains you have made, you have to consider you have to buy at a very
good time and and sell when that narrative gets unpopular and rotate into everything together, the high probability of Ethereum and Solana to do well in this cycle outweighs the rotating around you have to do in large
having a large percentage of your portfolio in Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Salana is that it helps reduce the panic if prices drop. These market leaders will not have unreasonable drops or liquidation wicks like the smaller
altcoins do. Having these high conviction assets in your portfolio also keeps your sanity in check. No matter how bad the market gets, most investors believe the long-term growth of Bitcoin and can have conviction to just hold
through those choppy times. no matter what. Finally, my last important tip to protect your gains is do not forget about taxes. People think they can just stay on chain and stay anonymous forever. This is very dangerous.
Depending on where you are at, not only are crypto cash outs into fiat currency considered taxable, but also now trading crypto to crypto on centralized exchanges and even decentralized exchanges are considered taxable. Now,
obviously, you should consult a tax professional for actual advice, but I'm just saying do not forget about taxes. A lot of people get burnt by this, especially in crypto. Due to the multi-year bull and bare markets, people
haven't seen before in the bull market and they spend all of it or they get it all locked up. What they don't realize is that you could be owing a large amount of taxes in the year after, which is usually the bare market year. So what
you end up having to do is you get hit by the tax bill and you then have to sell all your coins at a loss that you haven't realized in profit in that bull market year. So make sure to plan ahead and know how much taxes you need to pay
that prepared in the bull market year so you don't get burnt in the bare market year. Okay, these are all of the 21 most important lessons that I have learned over the past 7 years of trading and investing in crypto and now you are a
content, make sure to subscribe to the channel and also follow me on Twitter or X at VirtualBacon0X. This is where I drop day-to-day alpha before I make them into these in-depth videos. And make
sure to join our VIP program called the Coiners. This is our trading community that's completely free. You just have to sign up to one of our exchange partners. anyone. We want to accommodate everyone that's possible. In here, we have chats.
We have my personal trade setups and signals as well as five other different analysts. We're hosting live streams and we have free courses. I have made over 5 hours of course content that's offered for free in our community. So, sign up
today. Go to thecoiners.io or go to the link in my bio. Thank you for watching link in my bio. Thank you for watching and I'll see you on the next