Investing in cryptocurrencies may be thrilling, but many novice investors make typical mistakes while trading and purchasing cryptocurrencies. New innovators risk losing money rapidly for a variety of reasons, including weak security procedures and ignorance of crypto marketplaces.
We’ll go through the top ten errors that novice cryptocurrency investors make and how to prevent them.
1. Inadequate understanding of cryptography
The excitement around Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies may draw in new crypto investors, but doing so needs knowledge of the asset class and how it operates. A formula for disaster is trying to trade bitcoin or invest in an asset you don’t comprehend without having a fundamental knowledge of how cryptocurrencies operate. You will become a better investor if you take the time to educate yourself on various cryptocurrency projects and the objectives of each cryptocurrency business.
2. Not Paying Fees
Although there are several ways to acquire cryptocurrency, novice investors could merely buy cryptocurrency without knowing how exchange gas costs operate. For instance, using a credit card to purchase cryptocurrency may result in significant surcharge costs (3% or more) as well as possible extra fees from your card provider. Long-term financial savings may be achieved by learning which cryptocurrency exchanges have the lowest fees and the most efficient way to buy and trade cryptocurrencies.
3. Momentary Perspective
Many new investors are only thinking in the short term due to the market’s promise of “get wealthy quick.” And although investing in cryptocurrencies has the potential to yield enormous returns, it also has the risk of causing you to lose all of your money in the event of a poor investment decision.
You’ll be able to pick your cryptocurrency investments more carefully and concentrate on selecting higher-quality enterprises with established track records if you adopt a long-term investing strategy. Trying to get wealthy within 90 days is a surefire way to go bankrupt, but seeing cryptocurrency investment as a multiyear process will enable you to create a more strategic crypto portfolio.
4. Maintaining Bitcoin in Online Wallets
Cryptocurrency must be stored in a digital wallet since it is a kind of electronic money. While using an online wallet is more practical, doing so carries much greater risk than keeping your cryptocurrency offline. Online wallets are more vulnerable to security flaws, making them targets for cryptocurrency frauds and attacks. An offline hardware wallet, which is simply a USB stick with cutting-edge hardware and software encryption to safeguard your crypto private keys, is the safest place to keep your cryptocurrency.
5. Forgetting Seed Phrases or Crypto Passwords
Since bitcoin is stored in a digital wallet, passwords are needed to access these wallets. It’s possible that your cryptocurrency won’t be recoverable if you lose your password. Although most wallets offer a backup seed word to access the cash, if the seed phrase is misplaced or forgotten, there may be no other way to get your money back.
6. Mismatched wallet address
It is possible to acquire possession of your cryptocurrency from an exchange or move money from one party to another by transferring it across digital wallets. However, novice investors frequently make the mistake of trying to transfer cryptocurrency assets to their wallets only to write the address incorrectly. When this occurs, the cryptocurrency may be lost since it was sent to the wrong wallet address. Recovery services may be able to help with this, but they may be quite expensive.
7. Getting Scammed
The bitcoin industry, a brand-new asset class, is rife with con artists. Actually, just in 2021, the FTC stated that approximately $700 million in stolen cryptocurrency assets had been recovered. These crooks enter your cryptocurrency wallet using sophisticated phishing tactics, then they use persuasion to get you to transfer money to their wallet.
Scammers that operate in your best interest might conduct cryptocurrency scams using email or messaging services. By just granting an application access to your online wallet and integrating them together, you can jeopardize your wallet. However, fraudsters can use this method to steal money from cryptocurrency wallets even if it is a standard practice for many crypto programs.
8. Use of Leverage
Stories of people making it rich through cryptocurrency trading may tempt new crypto investors to attempt using leverage to increase their earnings. Leveraged trading has the drawback of requiring upfront security, and if a deal fails, you risk losing all of your money. Keep in mind that leverage has two sides and can increase both your gains and losses.
Leverage trading is best avoided by inexperienced cryptocurrency traders, who should only use it once they have enough trading expertise.
9. Complex Trading Methodology
New cryptocurrency investors who attempt to get into complex trading methods right away because some YouTuber encouraged them to risk losing money and giving up on cryptocurrency altogether. Learning technical analysis, conditional orders, and how the cryptocurrency markets operate takes time.
Actually, buying cryptocurrency may be easy. You don’t have to have a complex trading plan in order to try to increase your wealth. You may dollar-cost average into cryptocurrencies similarly to traditional investment without engaging in active trading or keeping a constant eye on the coin charts.
10. Order Mistakes
Even though some cryptocurrency exchanges, like Coinbase, focus on making it simple to buy cryptocurrency, many of them have convoluted order forms and trading interfaces that might befuddle novice users. A single decimal point inaccuracy while placing an order might result in hundreds of dollars in damages. In fact, a vendor recently lost approximately $300,000 as a result of selling a premium NFT for 0.75 ether rather than 75 ether.
Always double-check your orders or transactions before submitting them to prevent these expensive errors. Since cryptocurrency transactions are irrevocable, it is essential to double-check before submitting one.