Whether you daytrade, swing trade, HODL or just experiment, there's in general only one way to lose on crypto. Selling the asset for a lower price than the initial buy-in. Even Buffet's #1 invesment rule says: "don't lose money", yet millions are doing it day by day. We're gonna take a look at how not to lose money, and not just in market storms.

Buy High / Sell Low

When shopping for clothes, you look for discounts. At Starbucks, you look for discounts. At McDonald's you look for discounts. You look for discounts everywhere the daily life. Yet when it comes to investments, you go all-in at the wrong times. Look for a discount before you buy. Thank me later. Higher risk, higher reward, but it's actually the time that wins you money, always. Practice patience. Practice locking a part of your coins in a contract where you have no option to touch them. Follow the market news, go through your emotional rollercoaster, calm your mind, and redeem your coins when the contract expires. In the meantime, take a note of your feelings, when and why did you want to sell? Did you feed your inner anger locking your coins in the wrong time? But finally, when the day comes, look back and check what would've happened if you sold at all the wrong times. You might be surprised.

Understand what you buy

Do you buy a sports car just because it's red? Got you. Check, what's under the hood. The latest shitcoin you're just buying into, might have different tokenomics than what you'd expect. 90% of all supply to the founders? Voting rights to take away your equity? Anything could happen, but did you check? Don't trust - verify!

Investment professionals at hedge funds take months researching new assets, go through hundreds of corporate and financial documents, then create a few dozen pages long abstract out of them. Even then they claim they aren't sure, they aren't responsible, and they cannot know. But they mitigate most of the risk by following one simple rule: understand what you buy.

Risk / reward ratio

A common misconception is someone who just made a shit ton of money is simply a "better investor". That's all lies. Going all-in in your shitcoin and luckily getting away with 5x doesn't make you any better in any way. In fact, the pride might have you pay the price later.

The only measurement of a good investor or trader is that when they get in, according to all the available information, do they make the right decision? But what is right? Not the one, that goes to the moon. The one that mitigates risk and increases reward to a profitable extent. A winning poker strategy is simply to play +EV hands - where the expected value is positive. Risk / reward ratio is the same thing in trading. You don't have to win all trades. You just have to be provably profitable in the long term.

We have to raise some questions calculating RR, but they take some elaboration. What are the probabilities of an asset going up or down to a certain level? What make certain support or resistance levels hold? How to determine the right target price or stop loss? These topics understandably have an extensive literature, but I highly encourage everyone to put the books away, and try to solve these problems on your own. You'll realize, you don't understand a lot, but you'll get better at investing substantially.

See into the future

Following upcoming changes to crypto protocols, coins and networks gives you a pair of aces to start with. Say, you learn about how ETH2.0 will revolutionize the ecosystem, know and believe the fundamentals. Congratulations! You have mitigated the most severe investment risk: yourself panic selling. It will not matter if some ETH gets "stuck in" and that you didn't "sell in time" even if you're regularly trading ETH pairs. As long as you have the fundamentals, you can be long term bullish. You will be more likely to buy at dips and sell at peaks. 

Conclusion

The very reason you lose on crypto investments is buying and selling at the wrong times. Always look for opportunities and discounts, educate yourself, understand the asset you are buying to avoid emotional rollercoasters. Every trade with an appropriate risk/reward ratio is a good and justifiable trade, regardless whether it profits or loses you money on the short term.

Disclaimer: This article does not constitute investment or financial advice. Take professional consultancy to evaluate and address your investments and financial situation. You assume the sole responsibility of evaluating the merits and risks associated with the use of any information provided.