Verily, verily, I say unto you, If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death.
John 8.51

I believe the Man named Jesus Christ Who said these words.  I pray and study and work to keep His saying.  I believe I have eternal life because of the blood of Jesus Christ Who died and purchased this eternal life with His sacrifice.  I believe He came in the flesh.  I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.  I believe that Jesus Christ is God.  I believe that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin.  I believe that Jesus Christ not only gave His life to pay a ransom for our lives, but I believe the Bible where it says that by His death He went to a spiritual prison and preached to disobedient souls and I believe that He picked His life back up again and walked around for forty more days, sending shockwaves around eternity that have not stopped reverberating today and which will continue unto all eternity because JESUS CHRIST IS LORD. 

m a r a n a t h a

I believe that this very same Jesus Christ is the One and only Way, Truth, and Life.  He says so.  He says no man comes to the Father but by Him.

I believe that the Bible is true, and I don't need any other book aside from the King James Version, and a few others that God has used along the journey as a blessing.  I know God meets me in the pages of the King James Bible and it is pure water, and why would I go anywhere else?  Where else would I go?  This being said, the Bible does not say to judge people by the cover of their Book, but it tells us that we will know a Christian by their fruits.

There are some Pastors and other friends that I know of who read from more than one version of the Bible, and they have good reliable Christian fruit in their lives.  There are a lot of people who like to clamor around those who have good Christian fruit in their lives, and they enjoy the good Christian fruit of others, because that's what it's for, but sadly many people seem to be wary of opening the Bible for their own self and seeing what God has to say, and they only rely on other peoples' interpretations.  It does matter what version of the Bible you read, but, some people have met God from finding a scrap of a piece of a page from a Bible in a dirty dark room somewhere like jail or a bathroom or in some other place right when God needed to tell them something, and He says His Word does not return void.

God's Word is both like a light to see by, and the mirror in which we look to see what we look like.  I pray that people who read my words will be like people who look in the Word of God and remember what they look like, and who pray to look more like Jesus Christ every day.  It's funny to think of Jesus Christ maybe sitting with "perfect" posture in an office chair, arms hunched over a keyboard and mouse, buying and selling crypto.  But He did tell a parable that was set in His day in which He referenced the markets and usury of His day.  The story is recorded in Matthew 25, among a rich dialogue of lessons that Jesus presented in story form for His followers.  I don't think that the main point or theme of His story had to do with cryptocurrencies, but He does bring up in the story about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, in the part about the unfaithful guy who buried his talent that his master had given to him.  In the story, Jesus says that guy should have at least given the money to the exchangers, so that it would have been profitable for his lord when he returned from his long journey.  This is not an explicit 'permission' to use cryptocurrency, but it's one Passage from the Word that supports it.

We have a liberty as Christians not to sin and not to use what God gives us to satisfy our own gains, but we have a unique liberty which allows us to go forth with confidence each day to tell others that every day is a new day because of the love of God.  I have stepped away from cryptocurrency before, and my heart is right with God so that if I learn that it is distracting me from Him or His purposes for me then I will step away from it and be content.  For now, I'm seeing where these systems take us and I'm glad to be able to report that so far it can be profitable and blessed by God.

In an earlier post, I mentioned that I would explain more about my approach to trading.  I needed some time to articulate a few things, and to refine a few ways of thinking, and some of my thoughts have changed somewhat since back when I first started writing, but I still agree with everything that I wrote before, it's just that I'm looking at some things with a little more depth and on a bigger scale.

If you were a friend of mine who was in a sit-down conversation with me at any point where they've heard me telling them about the basic tents of trading according to my point of view, something I've stressed like a tenacious old man is "buy low and sell high!  that's just what you do!" and I've stressed it perhaps a little overboard sometimes, but it's to make a point, and to drive home the fact that this is our primary cause for trading: we want to be the winners in this game, not the losers.  the only people who win the game of trading money are the ones who walk away with more money.  you don't do that by buying high and selling low, it just doesn't work in general.  

Yet, there are times when buying some coin at a higher price eventually necessitates selling it at a lower price, such as for the trader who is a day trader and decides to sell and buy the dips and gains from day to day, but who is using capital that he invested months ago when the markets were higher.  That trader, if he is a good trader, is still following the principle of "buy low and sell high," but he's hopefully temporarily suspended the long-term requirement to cash out that capital at a higher value, with his sights set on the numerous multiple short-game gains he is expecting to get by buying and selling multiple times during the overall dip in market value; he is hoping to end up with more capital value in the interim, rather than simply wait for the overall markets to go up again, thereby missing the day-to-day opportunities to make profits from the volatility swings at the current value levels.

Even though in this situation, the trader would be selling the coin at a lower price than what he bought it, the motivation and expectation and principle behind his actions is to sell it higher, though it requires more manual work, rather than simply waiting for the markets to go back up.  It requires him to time his current purchases and sells at the right times, at whatever lower-than-before overall level the markets are sitting at.  

Different people are happy with different daily profits each day.  My goal is to make somewhere between 2.5% and 10% each day, more if possible.  Following this, doing the math, anybody can be a multi-millionaire in less than one year, no matter where the overall cryptocurrency markets take us, as long as there is enough volatility to justify making trades, enough to overcome the fees of the exchanges and to pay for the time it takes to sit around staring at screens and trading.  It is not difficult to make 3% every day.  In fact, starting with $250 today, it would only take 282 days to have a million bucks, if you continuously added at least 3% to your capital every day by the time you go to sleep.  Less than 100 days later, continuing to add 3% each day would put you at over $11 million by the time you reach day 365.  This is simple math.  Some people just need to be told it's this easy, so I'm telling you, it can be this easy if you can figure out how the markets work, or if you can figure out other ways to add 3% to a savings account every day.  Being a millionaire is not as fun or as useful as being a multi-millionaire and a billionaire for a little while, so that's what I'm going to do, Lord willing.

Here are the main, core tenets of my approach to trading cryptocurrency:

Starting with the caveat regarding the inevitable, and perhaps imminent danger of the day when cryptocurrencies become unavailable, through network failure, policy, catastrophe, or some other intermittent or permanent reason, here are some of the things and beliefs I approach trading with:

1) Crypto will crash.  When I am "getting in" to trading with new money, my first goal is to more than double that money and take it back out to use for anything other than crypto, so that I can take less impact mentally and financially when it all crashes.  This way, when it crashes, I can honestly think to myself that it was profit that was lost, and not any actual funds, because once I've doubled that seed money and take that money out, the only thing I'm working with from there is profit, so as long as my trading is successful, I won't have to put more money in again because I'll be regularly multiplying what I have made as profit.

2) Life and blessings are meant to be shared.  I enjoy giving cryptocurrency away.  The first time I did was as a thanksgiving gift back to God, and since then, I have seen that it's a good thing to give cryptocurrency to people who seem like they're interested in learning about how to use a hardware wallet and all.  I don't want to teach anyone about cryptocurrency who is going to get upset with me when they lose all their money, so I tell everyone to prepare for as many possibilities as possible, and if I'm giving someone crypto, it's on a shiny new hardware wallet and it comes with as much education from me that they can handle.  So much of the journey for me has been very highly valuable as a knowledge experiment in many ways.  I cannot expect people to understand how to use crypto or what it is, because I've been paying attention for years and I still struggle to understand it some days.  A friend gave me my first crypto as a gift, and I think it's a great way to get into it, so that there is no personal feeling of risk or heavy loss, because it's not based on your own savings or anything when someone has given it to you, and for me I think I was more ready to trade it, rather than if I had purchased my first crypto with my own money to get started.

3) Bitcoin is the only non-altcoin right now.  I would nominate a few others.  Anybody interested in this discussion, or other fun topics, please send an e.mail to me at [email protected] and you can join the brand new forums for a new online community I recently began putting together to discuss cryptocurrencies from the everyday person's point of view, with a few other goodies to go along with the message forums.  It would be great if we could somehow get a conversation going to have a sort of decentralized peoples' forum where people could say things like, "I think DOGE and SHIB and ETH and LTC and XRP and ? ought to be included in the "maincoin" definition, and no longer be considered "altcoins" because they have proven staying power," and where people would be able to communicate and collaborate in other ways.

4) Cryptocurrencies are programmed to go up in value.  This is why they exist.  This is a major distinction which sets them apart from stocks. Stocks are not software programs. Stocks are certificates of ownership in a company, in word and deed if nothing else. Cryptocurrencies in general are not certificates of ownership of anything more than a few entries in a ledger. The software that governs these ledgers is managed by centralized teams of software developers and they all have put in place mechanisms and controls to ensure stability and profitability of these coins, such as ways to limit supplies, make it more difficult to procure as time goes on, and in general the overall programming works to increase demand, and all of this works towards driving up the values of these coins called coins. It is human consensus which gives the system its power. If we all at once decided it was bad and had no value, then the system would cease to function on its own, and it would eventually stop. It takes maintenance to keep it running. This system has a lot of engineering built into it with some of the latest technologies available to mankind right now, to ensure that it continues to go up in value.

5) Cryptocurrencies will go down in value and up in value if they are more actively traded. It is neither "good" nor "bad" for a cryptocurrency value to go up or down, because I am only interested in the timing between when I am "in" or "out" of the stream of transactions. During a time period when the overall market movement is up, I want my money in more than out. During a time period when the overall market movement is down, I want my money out more than in. I want my money both in and out of the markets whenever there is predictable volatility. There is always more potential for more profit if there is more volatility and especially the more that volatility is predictable. It is important to set thresholds and boundaries for trading so that trading does not intrude upon personal time with others, or distract from important events and responsibilities. Cryptocurrencies are a money that will increase and decrease in value, and this is intrinsic, and it is not worth stressing over or getting bent out of shape for any reason. Watching several cryptocurrencies concurrently gives a broader view of what patterns the trading bots have been establishing. It's best to spend time studying the charts for a while before jumping in and trading most of the time, although there are times when it is an obvious "buy" or "sell" situation when glancing for a moment at a screen and seeing a pattern emerging.

6) All of the altcoins are tied to Bitcoin, especially during the doldrums. When the markets get more active, coins decouple somewhat and take on their own distinguishable characteristcs more profoundly than when there isn't as much trading happening. Maybe DOGE has decoupled more recently from BTC than it was before, but in general, it seems like most coins, such as SHIB, LTC, ETH, and many others, grow to look more and more like BTC as time goes on. I think it is a healthy sign for DOGE that it appears to be taking on more of its own trading patterns that are separate from BTC. I have only noticed this in the last couple of months, so I'll have to keep watching to see if DOGE is decoupling due to it maturing, or due to an anomaly in trading volume, or due to a large increase of automated trading that could be skewing the way it usually tracks with BTC. Presently, until this condition changes, I treat all the altcoins like they are mini BTC in one way or another, even though they don't all track on a visually similar graph. It seems apparent that almost every smaller coin is affected by the overall progress of Bitcoin, and this is a condition that I base a lot on when making decisions.

7) Buying low and selling high is the game. Perpetual awareness of timing and goal-setting helps keep the game sane. Keeping some coin always going into cold storage is a good strategy to guaranteeing a savings that is excluded from the perils and risks associated with day trading crypto on the open markets using custodial wallets. Keeping track of your own mindset, and being aware of what mode you are currently operating in is usually imperative to having good success with trading. If you have a mental mode for when the markets are in an upward trend for three days or more, remember that to avoid the FUD or FOMO that comes from a short-term big loss that will obviously be corrected at the end of your current mode of operating for those funds. Being flexible and patient with yourself and always considering everything as a learning experience will go a long way towards helping you have longevity in this game of trading. Some people might struggle because they'll learn a principle or strategy, and then stick to it without allowing their self to adapt and adjust for developing situations they observe. As long as a lesson is learned, nothing is wasted, unless it's more than $50. Then it should have been avoided, in most cases. Yet, a lesson may still be learned. In a day of trading, one decision may not stand on its own as wise or profitable, but one decision based on reality with the intent to make more good decisions is better if it loses $50 in the short-term and gains $100 in the short-term. If it loses $50 in the short term and makes $100 in the long term, it's maybe a wasted effort. $50 should make $500 in the long term. These numbers are arbitrary and illustrative. The point is to keep track of intents and time frames and to be authentic with yourself and able to adjust expectations according to present market conditions.

8) A lot of people have to lose for me to win. They would have been putting their money in and losing anyway. Every decision I make is profitable because I follow these few principles and I have patience. I have made mistakes and I have had to learn lessons by going through some situations that were unexpected, and I'm still learning. I have total confidence in what I'm doing when I click the 'buy' or 'sell' buttons because I have done the calculations and I know at that moment it will be a profitable action, either then, or in the near future. Using spreadsheets is highly informative, but not on an every day basis. They are good at first to get some general ideas going, and then I use them from time to time to reference various thoughts or calculations, or to compare figures or to keep track of my progress. Aside from spreadsheets, there are news aggregator sites like cryptopanic.com or coindesk.com or finance.yahoo.com that contain various stories about various topics to sometimes keep track of. This much information can overwhelm a single person, and I don't consume nearly all of it because I don't really need to, but I do like to check in from time to time and catch up on some of the bigger stories that are taking place in the crypto spheres around the world.

9) Market sentiment can be segmented by timeframes, so there is the in-the-moment sentiment that comes from a sudden spike or drop in value, and this immediate sentiment is influenced by the greater sentiments that existed before it. This immediate sentiment and the last few seconds of any trading session is an ever-changing thing, from moment to moment. There is a little bit more stable sentiment for how the market has been doing over the past few minutes, up to about 5 minutes or so. Then there is the sentiment that comes into play when the markets have seemed to be following a pattern or setting a consistent trend for longer than about 5 minutes. There is a sentiment which is observed when a coin has been trending downwards for several hours, and then suddenly dips by several percentage points, before turning skyward and beginning to rise in value. There are many different conditions and situations that are able to be described as parameters in software programs which have been give very vast sums of money to trade with, and these parameters all go towards forming the computer brains' views of our collective and segmented sentiments, and there are more than just a few of these software trading bots active, 24/7. Of course, they are paying attention to our sentiment because they are wanting to form their trading strategies around what we're going to do, and while we are influencing the bots, the bots are influencing us by causing the markets to make wild swings or by setting predictable patterns for people like me to notice and trade by. Whatever you call it, market sentiment is a thing which is considered by the humans and the bots which are trading, and it is good to be aware when the markets shift their view of sentiment. You may not always have a label for what you'd call the sentiment, but being aware of when it shifts is a good way to pay attention to what's happening, so you can tell what's coming up next, based on whatever dynamics you're paying attention to.

10) DOGE and SHIB are enough for me to trade with, but I also pay close attention to at least BTC, ETH, LTC, and DESO during a typical trading session because by watching what they are all doing at any given moment gives me insight into what they are all going to do in the near future, and it helps me make decisions about when to buy or sell DOGE and SHIB. There were days when I was happy to make a dollar or three on a trade. Then I was happy when I was making $10 or more. When it got to the point where my life is changing hundreds of dollars by the hour, I had some internal adjustments to make, and I'm still adjusting, to keep balanced in my attention to other things in life outside of cryptocurrency trading. For me, I believe I happen to have a personality that is fitting for cryptocurrency trading, because I enjoy it and it's profitable for me, and I am able to point out some things that are helpful to acknowledge for others who are learning. This game definitely is not for everybody, and my approach is not a good approach for everybody to use. Based on my observations and experience, DOGE and SHIB have the best markets for the way I like to trade, and I believe that even non-day-traders will be happy and handsomely rewarded because I believe these two coins are going to have an astronomical rise in the near future, along with BTC and many others. DOGE and SHIB may have special bots crafted by some very rich and interested people, like Elon Musk, to cause certain artificial market conditions, to cause people to view these coins as especially valuable, which, in turn, will make them so. They could easily turn them on and watch as the well-funded bots persistently nudge the markets higher or lower, by forcing buys or sells as the ask values. This is ok with me. I don't care who is running the bots, and I have noticed that the more bots there are running at once, the more volatile the markets are, so it's better for the way I like to trade. Also, when there is less bot activity, there is a different kind of predictability. It's like the difference between analogue and digital.