I once had a friend ask me whether it is a smart idea to invest in Bitcoin. It was when Bitcoin was near its peak with approximately 18-19k USD per BTC. So naturally this was the question on every mind. Here is what I told him:

"You can invest if you want to, but don't expect to earn any money in the process right now. You will lose."

As a general rule of thumb, do not buy something at its peak. You will lose money and go completely broke. Most of us know that, but it somehow rarely translates into knowledge of when to invest in cryptocurrency. So my friend got pissed at me for telling him that he will lose. He works for a bank as a clerk so I thought he knew at least SOME rules of investing. Maybe that is why, after years of working there, he is still a clerk.

Anyway.

I told him to just listen to me and let me be his personal advisor for a small fee of 50 dollars per consultation. In BTC of course. So my friend agreed and went along with his life. One day, when I opened my BTC price monitor and urgently called my friend. I told him to buy as much Bitcoin as he could right now. He had almost forgotten about our agreement and wanted to back out, but I reminded him of the price difference. At that point in time, Bitcoin was worth 5k.

So he emptied his savings account on Bitcoin. Which in my opinion was a stupid decision driven by opportunism and dreams of being a millionaire but whatever. He called me back a few days later, stating that he will never pay me and that I ruined his life. The Bitcoin price dropped to 4k.

I got paid eventually when he regained double of what he invested by just having some patience. 200$ in Bitcoin as agreed. So generally investing in anything is not that hard. You just need to know a few simple rules:

1. DO NOT BUY AT PEAK

You will almost never gain money when the price is super high already. It will probably crash. At that point, I would advise to invest only for short periods of time.

2. USE COMMON SENSE

Do not invest your last money of the month into something you understand very little about.

3. IF IT HAS HUGE MEDIA COVERAGE, PEOPLE ARE BOUND TO JUMP IN

As I have seen with several cryptocurrencies, as soon as media gets their grubby hands on a subject, new coin, new investment method etc. People will try to jump onto the crypto-train. At this point, there will be a lot of scammers and shady business will start rolling. Then comes bad coverage and it all dies down. If you want to invest in something, research it BEFORE it gets to big media outlets. You will be exposed to less risk.

Hope this advice will help someone in the future.

Cheers :)