# What ten years in crypto actually taught me

Not the lessons that sound good on a thumbnail. The ones that cost me money first, and that I still use every time I open a position.

- URL: https://pushpendra.info/articles/what-ten-years-in-crypto-taught-me
- Author: Pushpendra Singh
- Language: English
- Topics: personal, risk, lessons

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I started making videos in 2013. Crypto came later, and it came the way it comes for most
people. Through someone who would not stop talking about it.

Ten years is long enough to have been wrong in every available direction. These are the things
that stuck, and I have tried to write only the ones I actually use, not the ones that sound
wise.

## Being early is indistinguishable from being wrong

Every position I have been proud of looked like a mistake for months first. That is not a
motivational line, it is a problem. If early and wrong feel identical while you are holding, then
conviction alone cannot tell you which one you are in.

What helped was deciding, before buying, what would prove me wrong. Not a price, a reason.
If I bought a project because the team was shipping, then the team stopping is my exit, whatever
the chart is doing. Writing that down turned an emotional decision into a checkable one.

## The size of the position matters more than the choice of the position

I have picked good projects and still lost money on them, because I bought more than I could
sit through. A 60% fall is survivable at one size and forces you to sell at another. Same
project, same fall, completely different outcome, decided before either of us knew anything.

Most people spend their effort on *what* to buy and almost none on *how much*. It is the wrong
way round. You can be mediocre at selection and do fine with good sizing. The reverse is not
true.

## Nobody is coming to save the trade

The most expensive habit I see in my community is waiting. The position goes against you, and
rather than act, you look for a reason to hold, a tweet, a video, someone confident. That is
not research. That is looking for permission to do nothing.

I now decide the exit at the same time as the entry, because the version of me who is down 40%
is measurably worse at deciding than the version who has not bought yet.

## Most of what I learned, I learned in falling markets

Rising markets teach you nothing, because everything works. You cannot tell skill from luck, and
neither can anyone selling you a course. The falls are where you find out whether your process
was real.

That is also why I am suspicious of anyone whose track record starts in 2020, or 2023. Not
dishonest, just untested.

## Tax is part of the trade, not paperwork afterwards

In India a 30% tax and no loss set-off changes what a good trade even is. If you gain fifty
thousand on one coin and lose fifty thousand on another, you are flat and you still owe tax on
the gain. Trading more frequently is therefore worse here than it is almost anywhere else,
independent of whether your calls are correct.

It took me embarrassingly long to treat that as a strategy input rather than an annoyance.

## The thing I would tell myself in 2015

You will not lose money because you failed to find the right coin. You will lose it by holding
too much of something you did not understand, at a moment when you could not afford to wait.

Everything else is detail.

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Written by Pushpendra Singh, crypto educator and founder of SmartViewAI, Top Crypto Educator at
Consensus 2025. Not financial or tax advice. https://pushpendra.info