--- title: 'These Rookie Mistakes Are Costing You Thousands of Euros a Month (And You Didn''t Know)' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=PcMuPZGxUB8' video_id: 'PcMuPZGxUB8' date: 2026-08-10 duration_sec: 809 channel: 'Descentralizados Crypto' --- # These Rookie Mistakes Are Costing You Thousands of Euros a Month (And You Didn't Know) > Source: [These Rookie Mistakes Are Costing You Thousands of Euros a Month (And You Didn't Know)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=PcMuPZGxUB8) ## Summary This video outlines seven common rookie mistakes in cryptocurrency investing that can cost investors thousands of euros. The speaker emphasizes that these mistakes are often made unknowingly and provides practical solutions for each, aiming to improve investment outcomes through better planning, risk management, and self-awareness. ### Key Points - **Investing Without a Plan** [00:43] — The most common and costly mistake. Investors should answer three questions before buying: Why am I buying this asset? When will I sell? How much am I willing to lose? Without a plan, investing becomes gambling. - **Investing More Than You Can Afford to Lose** [02:27] — A common mistake among newcomers, driven by the fear of missing out on gains. The rule is to never invest money you will need within the next 12 months. An emergency fund of 3 months of expenses is essential before investing. - **Putting All Money into a Single Asset** [03:53] — Two versions: over-concentration in Bitcoin/Ethereum or in a single altcoin. The recommended structure is 60-80% in Bitcoin/Ethereum, 10-20% in solid altcoins, and about 10% in high-risk projects. - **FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)** [05:32] — Buying an asset because it's rising rapidly, often at the peak. The key question to ask: Would you buy this asset if it hadn't risen 200% this week? If not, don't buy it now. Buy when there's fear, not euphoria. - **Panic Selling** [06:52] — Selling in fear when the market drops, often at the worst time. Bitcoin has fallen over 50% at least six times but always recovered. Ask if anything fundamental has changed; if not, the drop is an opportunity, not a reason to sell. - **Following Influencers Without Your Own Judgment** [09:27] — Making decisions based on what someone says online, which can lead to pump-and-dump schemes or simply bad advice. Before buying, ask: Can I explain why this asset has value? If not, don't buy it. - **Not Keeping a Record of Transactions** [11:06] — Most novice investors don't track their trades, leading to repeated mistakes and no improvement. A good record includes entry/exit dates, prices, position size, results, and the reason for entry and exit. ### Conclusion The seven mistakes—investing without a plan, over-investing, lack of diversification, FOMO, panic selling, following influencers, and not tracking transactions—are the main reasons investors lose money. By addressing these, investors can significantly improve their performance and avoid costly errors. ## Transcript and it's inevitable to make mistakes from time to time. You lose money, you arrive late, you miss an opportunity. Normal things that happen to all of us. But even if you've been investing for years, there are some rookie mistakes that many of you are unknowingly making that could save you thousands of euros in losses if you learn to spot them. And in this video I'm going to give you seven mistakes like these, easy to fix, most people aren't even aware they're making them and you'll notice an instant improvement in your investments. Mistake number one, investing without a plan. The first mistake is the most common and the one that destroys the most money. Investing without a plan. And when I say plan, I don't mean something complicated, I mean three basic questions that most novice investors never ask themselves before putting money in. First question, why am I buying this asset? It's not worth it because it's going to go up, it's not worth it because I saw it on Twitter, it's not worth it because a friend of mine recommended it to me. You need a concrete reason, an analysis, an investment thesis. Second question, when am I going to sell? You sell when it reaches a specific price, you sell within a certain timeframe, you sell if the project fails to meet any condition. If you don't know when you're going to exit before you enter, the market will decide for you, and the market always decides at the worst possible time. And the third question is, how much am I willing to lose? Because in crypto there is no such thing as a risk-free investment, and you need to know in advance how much pain you are willing to endure before closing the position. Without these three questions you don't have a plan, you have a gamble. And the difference between investing and gambling isn't the asset, it's whether you have a plan or not. The solution is to be simple. Before each investment, write down the answers to these three questions on a piece of paper or on your mobile phone . Why do you buy? When do you sell and what is the maximum loss you can expect? And don't touch that investment until one of those conditions is met. It's that simple, but at the same time, that powerful. The second mistake is the one I see most often in people who are new to the crypto world. They put in far more money than they can afford to lose. And I understand that because when you see that Bitcoin has risen 300% in a year, the temptation is enormous. You want to do everything you can so you don't miss that opportunity. But there is one rule that experienced investors never break. And it may seem very simple, but never invest in crypto money that you will need in the next 12 months. Because? Because crypto is one of the most volatile assets in existence, and that's a fact. It can drop by 50% in weeks. And if the money you've invested is money you need to pay rent, cover an emergency, or live on, when the market falls, you're going to sell, and you're going to sell at the worst possible time, at a loss. The investor who puts in money that he doesn't need can afford to wait, can withstand the fall, can even buy and average down. The investor who puts in money, who needs it, doesn't have that option and almost always ends up selling at a loss. The solution is to have what is called an emergency fund before investing a single euro in crypto, between three months of your monthly expenses in an untouched liquid account. Once you have that financial cushion, what you invest in crypto is money you can afford to lose, and that completely changes your psychology as an investor. In fact, it will make you more likely to win. The third mistake is putting all your money into a single asset. There are two versions of this error. The first version is that of the investor, who puts everything into Bitcoin or Ethereum because they are the best known and he feels safe. Little diversification, little exposure to opportunities. And then we have the dangerous one: the investor who discovers an altcoin that seems revolutionary and puts 80, 90, or 100% of their portfolio into it. I've seen this dozens, if not hundreds, of times, and it almost always ends the same way. The Alcoin can multiply by five or it can fall by 95% and never recover. And if you have 80% of your portfolio there, in the second scenario you're ruined. Diversification is not a conservative strategy, it's a smart strategy. So, how can you diversify effectively in crypto? Well, this is a structure that works for most novice investors. Between 60 and 80% of your portfolio in Bitcoin and Ethereum. They are the most solid assets, with the most liquidity and the highest probability of surviving in the long term. Between 10 and 20% in altcoins with solid fundamentals, projects with a real product, a well-known team, and adoption. And the remainder, around 10%, is in high-risk projects, small altcoins, new projects, and speculative bets. Here you can lose everything because it only represents 10% of your portfolio and it won't destroy you. With this structure, if an altcoin falls to zero, your wallet survives it, and if that altcoin multiplies by 10, you also notice it in your wallet. The fourth mistake, and this is the one that has destroyed the most money in the history of the crypto market, is FOMO. Fear of missing out. The fear of missing the opportunity. The pattern is always the same. An asset starts to social media, on Twitter, on Telegram, in WhatsApp groups. The price has been rising for days and you see it going up and up and you think, "Okay, if I don't buy in now, I'll miss out." And you enter right at the peak and the price starts to fall and you get stuck with a losing position waiting for it to return to the price you bought at. Sometimes he comes back, and other times he never comes back . FOMO is not an investment strategy, it's an emotion. And emotions are the worst financial advisor there is. There's one question you can ask yourself every time you feel FOMO. Just one question: Would you buy this asset if it hadn't risen 200% this week? If the answer is no, then don't buy it now. The opportunity you are seeing is not an opportunity, it is the end of an opportunity that has already passed. The best entries don't happen when everyone is talking about an asset; they happen precisely when no one is talking about that asset, when there is fear, when everything seems to be going wrong. Buy when you're afraid, not when you're euphoric. The fifth mistake, and this is the most psychological of all, is selling in a panic when the market falls. And before you think this doesn't apply to you, I want you to know something. This mistake is not only made by beginners, it is made by people with years of experience. I've done it, everyone does it at some point. Because when the market falls 30% in a week, the human brain doesn't think logically, it thinks with fear. And fear logically, it thinks with fear. And fear tells you only one thing: get out. Get out now, before it gets worse, and you get out and the market rebounds and you're left outside watching it rise. That's the panic cycle, and it's the cycle that destroys the most money cryptocurrency sector. Let's put it into perspective with real data. Bitcoin has fallen by more than 50% on at least six different occasions throughout its history. Six times. Each of those times seemed like the end. Each time the headlines said Bitcoin was dead, and each time Bitcoin recovered and reached all-time highs again. The investor who panicked and sold during each of those drops not only lost money, he missed out on the recovery, and that is doubly painful. Why does this happen? Because how much they are willing to endure. They don't have a plan. And when you don't have a plan, fear makes the decisions for you. And the solution to this has two parts. First, before investing, define your time horizon. You are investing for one year, three years, or five years. If your investment horizon is long, a 30% drop is not a loss; it's a normal fluctuation within a volatile asset. And the second, when the market falls and you feel the urge to sell, ask yourself this question. Has anything fundamental changed in the project I invested in? How's the team? Have they found a critical flaw in the technology? Has the use case changed? If the answer is no. If the project is still the same as it was when you bought it, then the market is giving you an opportunity, not a reason to get out. Panic is the patient investor's best friend, because when everyone is selling out of fear, prices fall to levels they shouldn't be at. And that's exactly where the best portfolios are built . Buy when there is fear, hold on when there is panic, and sell when there is euphoria. That's what separates winning investors from losing ones. The sixth mistake, and this is the hardest to admit, is making investment decisions based on what someone says on the internet. An influencer with half a million followers posts a video saying that a certain altcoin is going to multiply by 20. He has charts, he has arguments, he has confidence, and you buy it, and 3 weeks confidence, and you buy it, and 3 weeks later that altcoin has fallen by 60%. What happened? Well, several things could have happened. First possibility: the influencer bought it before posting the video. When his followers buy and the price goes up, he sells. You get trapped, and that's called organized pump and dump . And it's illegal and it happens constantly. Second possibility, the influencer has a paid agreement with the project to be able to promote it. He doesn't tell you, or he tells you in small print that nobody reads. And then there's the third simply mistaken. He has an opinion like you, like me, and that opinion may be completely wrong. The problem isn't following people who give you knowledge and perspective; that really has value. The problem is completely delegating your investment decision to someone else without understanding why you are buying that asset. The solution is very simple. Before buying any asset that you have seen recommended by someone, ask yourself this question. Can I explain myself why this asset has value and why it should go up? If you can't explain it in your own words, don't buy it, because if you don't understand why you bought it, you won't know when to sell it either. And we come to the seventh mistake, the most ignored of all and probably the one that is costing you the most money right now without you knowing it. not keeping a record of your transactions. Most novice investors don't know how much they've novice investors don't know how much they've good trades, forget the bad ones, and form a distorted image of their actual performance. This has two very specific consequences. First, you repeat the same mistakes without knowing it. If you don't have a record of why you made each decision, you can't analyze what's working and what isn't. And second, you can't improve. Trading and investing are skills, and like any skill, you improve by analyzing your performance. Without data, without metrics there is no analysis, and without analysis there is no improvement. What should a good transaction record include? the entry and exit date, the asset, the entry and exit price, the position size, the result in euros or dollars and as a percentage. And something very important: the reason you came in and the reason you left. That last column is the most valuable of all because when you have been recording for 3 months and you review it, you start to see patterns. You see that your worst trades always have the same entry reason or that your best trades share characteristics, and this allows you to adjust your strategy with real data. And you don't need anything sophisticated. A Google Seats spreadsheet is more than enough. Start today with the next transaction you make. Record it and don't stop over time. So these are the seven mistakes that are costing thousands of euros and investors who could easily avoid them. Investing without a plan, putting in more money than you can lose, not diversifying, buying out of FOMO, panic selling, following influencers without your own judgment, and not keeping track of your transactions. Now I want you to do something very specific. Take this list and ask yourself an honest question about each one. I'm making this mistake right now because the difference between an investor who loses money and one who grows it is usually not technical knowledge, it's usually these seven simple points. And if you want to go a step further and learn how to apply all this within a specific method, with strategy, risk management, and with people who are already generating real results in this market, you have the link in the description to join our community. So see you in the next video and a see you in the next video and a decentralized hug.