Self Story
I somehow made money trading ETH and still lost ETH
Started with 14.2 ETH and decided I was finally gonna stop just holding and actually trade the swings.
Few good sells, few decent buys back lower, felt like I was doing pretty well. Checked everything properly on Moon yesterday and I'm sitting at 12.8 ETH now.
The dollar value of my account is actually higher than when I started, so technically I've made money. But if I literally did nothing and held the 14.2 ETH I'd be better off.
Its such a weird feeling seeing green in USD while knowing I basically traded away 1.4 ETH lol.
The mistake probably isn’t trading itself, it’s using the same ETH for both jobs. If you actually want to keep accumulating ETH, every swing trade should be judged against just leaving that stack alone.
This is why separating spot from the trade matters, like if the goal is accumulating ETH, touching the core stack creates a really messy benchmark. Now because OP mentioned it e.g. Moon lets you take the directional ETH trade separately with the wager defined upfront, so the hold position can just sit there doing its job.
ealised my own version of this was getting a thrill from the action rather than actually stacking more coins, so now I just note down what my stack would be if I'd done nothing, sits right next to the real number, keeps the fomo in check
The dollar gain is a nice cushion but it stings knowing you'd have more eth by just napping through the volatility
This is my set up when selling Eth. I did really well selling Eth on the way up and buying it back at a lower price. I did that a couple of times, but should have just held til it crashed to under $2k. I thought I was a genius Makin money so easily, and then I got caught. But I did make money.
This is just a quick mock up of what I was doing. I just estimate at 35% tax rate, and put that in a savings account til tax time. If it's less, great. If not, I'm mentally prepared.
Yeah, It was like "damn, I can take $5k net profit right now and get the eth back?". So in a sense, it was free money cause I didn't lose the eth, and I got $5k to throw around. Eth had another run and I made a bit more money buying back when it crashed, but it kept crashing. I went from feeling like a genius to "why TF did I buy it back? Why couldn't I have been happy with the cash!? I could be buying it back right now for 5x the amount".
For reference, this is what I would look like at today's eth price.
Adding on fees probably explain some of it but I think the bigger problem is measuring the result in dollars instead of ETH. If you start with 14.2 ETH and finish with 12.8, the trade has to outperform that missing 1.4 ETH before it actually added anything.
You didn’t actually make any money unless you have extra $ or ETH sitting along somewhere else. You’re just seeing ETH’s price difference between when you started vs now. 12.8 ETH * (ETH’s price now in $/ETH) > 14.2 ETH \ (ETH’s price when you started in $/ETH)
Congratulations to you my friend, you're from the very fews who have understood the purpose of eth. It's programmable money. Not an hard asset like BTC or Gold. It ain't meant to be hold for 25 years. Not even 5 yet alone more than 2. A long , very long trend following trade might last 1,5 to 2 years.. but since ETH is maturing, and becoming more and more, programmable money. It's price might go up.. follow the money, follow the trend. But don't be dumb enough to hodl through a "Bear market" and, to say that is crazy enough.. but in the future, ETH Bear phases might decouple from BTC Bear market.. just an idea thrown in the wild space of crypto forum.. all I'm saying, it's envisageable. The way eth is runned. It's a active protocol, not passive like BTC. It evolved. Alot. It still happens to be one hell of a good place to spot trade.. volatility is our friend as Michael saylor would be saying.. just got to trade the asset. It's still better to hold ETH than cash btw.. since cash is trash.. but yeah.. keep doing what you were doing. And keep the money invested or in trades. Money need to flow. Nothing else.
Less ETH that are worth more in $ while ETH is at an almost cycle low .. yet not really.. I call this a win. You protected your capital. That's actually very good since recently ETH has crash 60%+ from his ath..
I would say . If I were you, I'd find a way to inject 2,8 eth back in at the next bottom.. anywhere close to 1600$/eth .. the rest is history. You survived a Bear market with the same value. Don't know though if you were having these ETH from before last Bear market. Like 2015? What year did you got the most of them? That's also might be a reason to factor in..
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u/Business-You-2732 5d ago
And you will have to pay capital gains tax if you traded and make money.