The Hazards Of Trading On An Exchange

I know for many on here this is old information but I also see some new traders and this is written in the hopes of you learning from my past mistake. When I first got into trading crypto it was in 2014, I put 1/10 of my BTC into an exchange called Cryptsy. I did decently for myself, managing to triple the value within a few months and was fortunately wise enough to put the initial investment back into my main holdings.

I honestly have trouble remembering what all I traded, I do remember daytrading TAG and curecoin as well as holding a bunch of different smallcap coins including some darkcoin. What I will always remember though is the worst mistake any trader of crypto can make, I left those holdings on the exchange itself, making matters worse I had even stopped actively trading as I was taking a break from crypto when the site went under, I was just keeping them there and increasing my risk for no reason at all other than foolishness. In this space its nearly a matter of time until a site gets hacked, your account gets hacked , or a site owner decides to run off with the money. In my case it was the latter. The part that sucks is that darkcoin became Dash, so that amount would be worth considerably more today.

All in all it could have been worse, my first crypto trading journey ended with breaking even whereas some lost nearly all of their portfolio. This time around I'm going to make sure things are different, I purchased a hardware wallet and keep most of my holdings on there or in other private wallets if they aren't compatible. I do have some money on exchanges for active daytrading but that's only 5% of my portfolio. Please learn from my mistake instead of having to learn things the hard way.

Image source:http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/Getting-away-with-it.html