The Best Time to Buy Crypto was A Year Ago - The Next Best Time is Right Now

Did you invest in Bitcoin back in 2015 when it was around $200-300 per coin? Or Ethereum in early 2017, when it was moving gradually from $10 to $50?

If you did – kudos to you, you’re probably pretty well-off now. And if you didn’t… there’s pretty good chance that you may think that you’ve missed the boat.

Prices skyrocketed to new all-time highs and then crashed substantially over the last few weeks. That’s it. The bubble has burst. And while there's some truth in this, it's important to understand that it's just a normal market cycle, which ebbs and flows just like waves.

So maybe you’ve missed this boat but what’s important is that the next boat is about to arrive and there are a few things you can do to make sure you won’t miss this one too.

Since mid-May, things have definitely cooled down a bit in the crypto space. BTC down 40-50% from the recent all-time high, ETH over 50% down even on a good day, most altcoins down 70-90%.

Around 1 trillion USD wiped out from the total crypto market cap. What’s worse is that even very bullish news, e.g. Salvador making Bitcoin a legal tender, don’t seem to be causing any significant upside movements. BTC has been range-bound in the 30-40k bracket since 19th May.

And yet, this is exactly the time when you should consider putting your money into crypto. Someone said that bull market can make you money but bear market can make you rich… or as Warren Buffett has said

“be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful”.

So, what does this mean in practice?

Let’s look at the whole crypto market. I divide all tokens into 5 categories, based on their market cap:

1. Bitcoin

2. Ethereum

3. Other top-20 altcoins (in terms of their market cap)

4. Large & mid-market cap altcoins (above 100 mil USD)

5. Small market cap altcoins (below 100 million)

Yes, it’s somewhat arbitrary but it works for me. As we go down this list (i.e. from large to small cap), the potential for gains increases but so does the risk. So, in a bull market, when pretty much everything is going up, my focus is on small and mid-cap projects as they have the potential for the biggest ROI (at least in the short term). But when the market goes bear, it’s all a bit different.

In the current market conditions, my focus is on the ‘safest’ coins (as much as anything can be safe in crypto and investing in general ;-) For me, these coins are BTC, ETH, and ADA.

Why these particular coins? Well, BTC is and likely will carry on being a safe store of value for long-term investments (4-5 years minimum). While it certainly can be extremely volatile when looking at its short-term movements, once you zoom out, the price only keeps going up.

To illustrate this - even if you bought Bitcoin at the top of the previous cycle (2017) when the price was almost 20k USD, you would still be 50% in profit, even at the worst points of recent massive corrections when the price dropped from around 60k to 30-35k range. It’s a bit like buying a house – short term the price can swing up and down but long term it is very likely to go up.

It’s also a similar story with Ethereum. Although it was created much more recently and therefore we don’t have quite as much data, the long-term pattern is similar.

Also, the update is coming soon, which will make ETH deflationary (and therefore scarcer) and should help with reducing the crazy high gas fees we currently have whenever the Ethereum network is congested. These factors should help in pushing the price up.

And finally, Cardano. I’m extremely bullish on Cardano. During the recent dips, ADA held much stronger than most other coins. It hit ATH of $2.45 but I think it will skyrocket way past this number once smart contracts are deployed on its mainnet. Cardano is a great project and once its ecosystem starts growing, I expect it to go parabolic like it happened with ETH, BNB or DOT.

With that being said, there are other great projects in the Top 10 or Top 20, which are also worth considering - Chainlink, Solana, Polygon, Polkadot and some of the others also have huge potential for growth. I just personally think that Cardano is the strongest contender.

So why I picked these particular coins? It’s all about finding a balance between an acceptable risk level and attractive enough potential for growth.

My expectation is that by mid to late 2022, BTC will hit around 100-150k USD (3-3.5x gain), ETH somewhere between 7.5k and 10k USD (approx. 4-5x gain) and ADA around 7-9 USD (5-7x gain).

Sure, these numbers may seem VERY modest compared to what's possible in the crypto space (100x and bigger gains are not unheard of) but nonetheless, these are very decent ROIs with relatively little risk attached to them.

Worst case scenario, I’m perfectly happy to hold these coins for a bit longer, knowing that eventually, they will go up. Their current prices are oscillating around 50% of their respective ATHs (all time high) so we know that they should quite easily at least double in value.

In the meantime, I’m also staking ADA which is giving me around 6% APR (paid in ADA). Sure, it’s not a huge amount but it certainly beats 0.25% UK banks are offering for their savings accounts ;-)

So, what’s with mid and low-cap tokens? Well, I still have a lot invested in 8 or 9 other projects. All of them are currently somewhere between 30% and 90% down.

But you only lose money when you sell. About half of them I don’t have huge hopes for (luckily these are my smallest holdings as I was aware that they were the highest risk) but the other half has a lot of potential to skyrocket once we’re in a full swing bull market, so until then, I’m waiting patiently.

However, I’m certainly not looking to invest in any new small caps at this point in time because the risk is way too high. Once we start seeing signs of return to a bull market (BTC going above 20-week and holding it as a support - this is currently around 42k), I may start looking to in some of them.

This whole article is just a really long way of saying that times like this are a great opportunity to accumulate more crypto in preparation for the next big move up.

And I’m not just saying this. I recently sold my house as I’m preparing to move abroad and, in the meantime, I put a significant chunk of that money in these 3 coins.

It may sound like pure madness for some people but for me, this is a well-calculated and well thought out risk I’m willing to take. Let’s see how it’s going to work out over the next 12-18 months ;-)

Disclaimer

The content covered in this article is NOT to be considered as investment advice. I’m NOT a financial adviser. These are only my own speculative opinions, ideas, and theories. Do NOT trade or invest based purely upon the information presented in this article.

Always do your own research and due diligence before investing or trading. I’ll never tell you what to do with your capital, trades, or investments. I’ll also never recommend for you to buy, sell, long, or short any asset, commodity, security, derivatives, or cryptocurrency-related instrument as it's extremely HIGH RISK!

You should always consult with a professional/licensed financial adviser before trading or investing in any cryptocurrency related product.