It’s 5:52 pm in late November. The night is darker than normal because of the cloud cover and I am still 15 minutes from home. I am in the middle of an action scene in “The Boy on the Bridge” by M.R. Carey.
This is an audiobook so don’t worry i wasn’t watching something on Netflix. I see my phone flash on and glance down to see why. Matt has just sent a text that leads to a hectic 10 minutes.
I immediately pull over and grab my phone, the text reads “Its Dash.” This is the cryptocurrency pick we have been waiting to find out. We want to be early to buy it before everyone else can and that means we both have to hurry. Our thoughts are if we get in early enough we can possibly make a quick trade for profit.
I will have to use my phone which will make things more difficult. I sign into my bittrex account, which for anyone who has done this before can take a little effort.
The login seems to take hours. Once I get logged in I have to decide what coin I want to see as I have no bitcoin available to buy with. Luckily I have been thinking on it all day so I move quickly to counterparty. I don’t want to sell but it will at least be for a small profit. This is where the first issue comes up
Once I get into counterparty I realize I have never sold anything before using my phone. In fact, I have only sold something once before and that was two days ago. It can’t be much different than buying so I keep moving forward.
I look at the price counterparty is selling for and think damn, it was higher an hour ago. But nothing I can do about it now. I scroll down and find the ask section. At this moment I am so energized by adrenaline that I can’t remember if I want Bid or Ask.
To clarify for people who seem to lose their mind when the adrenaline hits like I do, Bid is the price you are wanting to buy at and Ask is the price you will sell for.
The tricky part here for me is I now want to look at the bid price, which is what they will pay me for it, instead of the ask price which is where I usually look to buy.
While double checking this I find out you can click a price on either Bid or Ask and it will populate in both sections of your bid and ask menus. It’s also easier on computer.
I need to sell more instead of just holding everything. I should probably of wrote hodling, (hold on for dear life).
I find the top price that is being offered for counterparty, click it, and then click max for units. The biggest issue I found here was having to continually scroll up and down to see everything because the screen can’t fit all the info.
This will come into play big time later. I then click sell counterparty and it sells. I breathe a sigh of relief and you are free to clap for me. Now onto something I was not prepared for.
I move onto where I can buy Dash and look at the price. I look at the price again, then again. Wow, it keeps going up while I am watching it. At that moment Matt sends a text that says “It’s skyrocketing.”
At this moment FOMO (fear of missing out) sets in. I am so close but so far at the same time. I scroll my phone down to the price and click the top one offered because I don’t care.
As I click that price it instantly goes down the queue. The queue is your place in line and I already got bumped down. I try again and the same thing happens. Oh dear god how can I get this to work. Now my small phone screen starts causing me trouble.
To view the chart, bid price, ask price, the menus for both, and pretty much anything else I have to scroll up or down. When I do this I can only see one piece of information when I need to see it all.
After a minute of cussing and breathing to calm myself I remember I can just click on the price button in the buy menu and choose ask.
This lets me take the highest asking price. Note- in the price menu you will find Last, Bid, and Ask. Last is the price at which the last trade happened. Bid is the current buying price. Ask is the current selling price.
So when I choose ask I just took the next price offered. Which might not be the way you would usually want to do it but I just wanted to buy quickly. When I clicked buy my order filled and I was done.
I instantly called Matt to see if he was able to buy as well. When he answered we both just started laughing. When we finally started talking he told me was able to get in at the same price as me. We then started laughing again.
It was such an adrenaline rush trying to buy at that exact moment without much warning. The feeling was incredible. Not just the fact that we had a good chance of making money but that we got it done. Was a great experience that I will not forget.
A few things I have taken away from this. The first is to become more familiar with the exchange layout. Not only on my computer but my phone. Usually when I buy and I have plenty of time to analyze everything.
This time was completely different. Learning the layout better will help me if and when this happens again.
FOMO is for real. I have felt it before but nothing like this time. Try and remember that in the moment. Always have an amount of money you can spend in mind that won’t hurt you financially.
During the day I had an amount in mind that I could spend and when the time came I didn’t spend over that.
And finally, try and find someone you can share this experience with. They don’t have to buy and sell the same things and the same times but someone you can talk to about it.
They will understand and it will make everything more exciting. I know Matt and I will be talking about this for awhile
I hope that you will have a somewhat similar experience to this at some point. One that goes smoother than mine but one that brings the same amount of excitement we had.