🚀 10 Things I WISH I KNEW When I Started Crypto!

What is up? I am Crypto Mason and welcome back to the Crypto Mason YouTube channel. Shout out to the Gold Squad. We look for gold in every single aspect of our lives and we always find it. Now today's video is going to be one of the most valuable videos you could ever watch, whether you're a beginner or more advanced in crypto. Um, and we do have to thank Coinbase for sponsoring today's video. Make sure you're watching until the end. We're gonna go over 10 things that I wish I knew in 2017, 2018. I wish I knew at the start of my crypto journey. I would have been extremely rich, 10 times richer if I would have known these things, literally. So drop a like. If we hit 444 likes on today's video, um, I will give away 100 XRP. Now let's get into it. Okay, so right off the bat, we're gonna start with number 1. Okay, number 1, you can see it on my screen. Number 1 is the meme coin profit illusion. This is one of the most prevalent ones, okay, especially right now where there's a lot of meme coins going on. You know, it's just insane. So for this, we're actually gonna go to a website called DEX Tools, uh, and you can look at this on CoinMarketCap, but we're gonna go on Dextools, right? And we're gonna check some of these coins, okay? So look at these daily gainers, right? 3,500%, 500%, Spyro coin 300%, V like— how are these going up that much, right? These people are making so much money, blah blah blah. Now the illusion here, okay, this is why this one is called the meme coin profit illusion. People think that they're gonna make the most money pursuing meme coin profits, and it's not true, okay? So some of these only have like $3,000 worth of volume. So for example, right here, Lunar New Year has $4,000 worth of volume. So even if this rocketed up 200% and now, wow, my tokens are worth $30,000, you can't even cash that out. Because there's not enough liquidity. And this is a lesson in liquidity, okay? The lesson here in liquidity is that, you know, every market has a buyer and seller on each end. So there, there's only $4,000 up for grabs here for someone to sell. So you, you would only be able to sell $4,000 worth. And this is why it's always important to check the volume and the liquidity for your token. So for example, Ethereum, you can always sell it any time of the day, right? Because there's $20 billion worth of volume. So even if you had $10 billion worth of Ethereum, you could sell it. So that's the meme coin profit illusion, right? Don't believe the hype on most of these meme coins. It's, it's just not true. When people flex their million dollars or whatever they made, they can't even cash it out because there's no one that wants to buy that crap from them. Number 2 is the 3-tiered portfolio and the 3 hats. Okay, I made a video previous to this one, um, you know, or, you know, it should be on my channel called, called, uh, How to Build a Solid Portfolio or Generational Wealth, going over the 3-tiered portfolio. This is building a solid portfolio, um, and a solid presence in the crypto space. Okay, and go watch that video if you want to know more about number 2 there. Number 3 is definitely one of the most important as well: privacy illusion. The privacy illusion is that people think that crypto is private. No, it is not. By the— from the minute you open your wallet, every single wallet that you you ever transact with in the history of time with that wallet is viewable by everybody. So imagine doing your finances and the world can see it. That's what crypto is. It's an accountability system, right? It's transparency. It's blockchain. It's the ledger, right? Immutable ledger. So don't for a second think that your crypto is private or under the table or any of those that, that stuff, right? Another point on this is since every transaction that you ever do can be connected, the government can connect them too. So make sure you're paying your crypto taxes. Now the next one is fees. Everything in crypto has fees. It's everywhere. And this is something, you know, for someone like my dad, this pissed him off. That he was paying fees on everything. And this is just how some of these protocols sustain themselves, right? Now, we don't like Ethereum fees because they're like $20, $30, sometimes $40. I've seen like— I've myself have paid a $100 or $150 gas fee on Ethereum. Like, some of these NFT mints can get pretty crazy with gas fees when the network is clogged up. But just right off the bat, everything has fees. You're going to get fees on exchanges, on every single swap that you do. There's gas fees to send certain cryptos. This is why I like the low-fee cryptos like XRP, like HBAR, Algorand, all of those. Into the next one here, which is using the right exchange. So using the best exchange possible. Now, one that has lower fees than most others— now, one that has very competitive fees is Coinbase Advanced. And Coinbase is the sponsor of today's video. Let's roll the clip of me showing you Coinbase Advanced. Coinbase, the sponsor of this video, is the largest publicly traded cryptocurrency exchange for beginners and now has an advanced trading platform with highly competitive fees and deep liquidity for sophisticated traders all around the world to use, called Coinbase Advanced. Coinbase Pro is now Coinbase Advanced, and it's easier than ever to access right on the Coinbase website and the Coinbase mobile app. It is a great platform for advanced traders who perform their own technical analysis and want access to powerful tools to execute their trading strategies, from scalping to API trading. Place limit and stop limit orders, or utilize indicators, or perform technical analysis on advanced price charts powered by TradingView. Check it out. Simply log into your Coinbase account, click the profile button in the top right, click Advanced, and then click this dropdown to choose from their huge selection of over 550 50 cryptocurrency spot pairs such as CHZ. Here we have an advanced price chart, depth chart, order book, trade history, and the ability to place limit, market, and stop limits all in one clean dashboard. To place a limit order, click Buy, Limit, enter the price you want the order to execute, choose the amount, and then click Buy CHZ. Simple as that. Just by taking a moment to learn how fast and easy it is for advanced traders to start using Coinbase Advanced trading, whether it is performing technical analysis, and more. So sign up and log in using the links below to check it out. And to learn more, go to advanced.coinbase.com. So as you can see, Coinbase, obviously an awesome option, uh, to get you started in crypto and for more advanced traders. So let's keep it moving. The next one is one of my favorite ones. It's the market cap illusion. I wish I knew this because I've been so caught up before in looking at market caps Now, to quickly do this for you, I've done this so many times on my channel, but you— but if you haven't seen this yet, market cap by definition is current price times circulating supply. Okay, so how much of the coin is circulating and what price is it at? It's just a basic calculation, right? So 2— let's get, let's get this— 2,785 That's the price of Ethereum. Now multiplied by the circulating supply, which is 120,167,306. Boom, you get a $334 million— or sorry, billion-dollar market cap there. And that's right there. Here's the, here's the market cap, right? So this, this is like the biggest lesson of all time, because many people are like, yo, the market cap has to go to this for the price to go to this. No, it works the opposite way. Price has to go here for market cap to go there. That's how it works. Market cap comes after price, not before. So it's about where is the price gonna go, not the market cap. Market cap doesn't matter. Market cap also doesn't mean that there's $334 billion invested into ETH. It's not a pool of money. Market cap is not a pool of money. This doesn't mean there's, you know, a quarter, uh, a quarter— what is that, quarter trillion? Yeah, quarter trillion. This doesn't mean there's a quarter trillion invested in ETH, right? Same with Bitcoin. Right here, $1 trillion market cap. That doesn't mean there's a trillion dollars in Bitcoin. This one breaks a lot of people's brains, right? A lot of, of people are, are— they can't get this through their head, that market cap doesn't matter, because everyone's done such a good idea or a good job of brainwashing them. Okay, so it's about price, it's not about market cap. Next one, how the market works. Okay, this is important to explain as well, and it relates to the market cap illusion. The market works by a buyer and a seller. I have 1,000 of this token. Do you want to buy 1,000 of this token? This is the price I'm putting it up for sale as. Do you want to buy it? Buyer buys it. Now he tries to sell it for more. That's all this is. We're just throwing around internet currency, right? So, uh, it— there has to be a buyer and a seller on each end of the market, and this is the only way that price moves, is what is someone willing to pay for it. $51,000 right now is what someone is willing to pay for one Bitcoin because people are trading it for that. Right. So technically, if everyone on Earth right now decides that Bitcoin is worth $5 per Bitcoin, then it's going to trade at $5. That's actually how it works. Literally, it would be impossible to get everyone to agree that Bitcoin should be $5 per Bitcoin because of psychological factors. And, you know, you can't get everyone on your side. But if everyone did at once agree and start buying one for $5 and selling one for $5, it would go to $5. That's how it works. Like, this stuff, this type of stuff breaks people's brains when we explain it to them. Next one: crypto is a scam. Come on, bro, crypto is not a scam. Scammers are a scam. Crypto is not a scam. Scammers are a scam. Money isn't evil. It's the things that people do with money that are evil, right? It's the things people feel about money that are evil. But money itself isn't evil. It's just a control mechanism, right? Which you could argue is evil. But what I'm trying to say here is like crypto in itself is not a scam. There's nothing— it's just a market, right? It's just like buying and selling pool tables to each other or some kind of garage sale. It's the same thing, right? It's peer-to-peer for the most part. So crypto is not a scam. The idiots who scam with crypto are a scam. Number 9, the big one: influencers. Okay, so there are a lot of people who make crypto content. If you're watching right now, you're watching one of them. This is actually my job, right? I do this for a living. I make YouTube videos and TikTok videos and help people get into crypto. I'm in my Discord 24/7 talking with everyone, interacting, answering questions. This is genuinely what I do. Okay, so there are influencers who make crypto content. They give their opinion online. These are not financial advisors. Don't listen to them, including me, as financial advisors. Only trust yourself No one else. Trust your research, okay? So for example, if you listen to some random influencer to buy a coin, like he says like, oh yo, I'm buying this coin, I think it's good, and then you buy it but you didn't do any research, that's completely your fault, not his fault. Absolutely not his fault. He is simply giving his thoughts on crypto. He he might be paid to give his thoughts on crypto, then he's paid. And I have no problem with influencers being paid, uh, to talk about certain coins as long as they're telling you they have been paid by that coin to talk about it. So one of the, the things I wish I knew is to not listen to certain influencers, right? If, if you see any influencer hating on another influencer, don't listen. Like just there's something up there, right? Like, you, you should be able to listen to all perspectives. I have stopped hating on any other influencers for so long now because I'm listening to all perspectives, right? If you shut out perspectives, you shut yourself out of all the opportunities. Number 10 is too good to be true desperation. You will get wrecked in crypto if you're desperate, okay? Okay, we have a lot of people that come into our Discord just completely desperate for money. Like, they think that crypto is the thing that's gonna save them or get them a lot of money. You're gonna go to zero, bro. Do not rely on investments or crypto to be income-producing. You got to get a job. You got to get a job. Run a business, you cash flow comes first and then investing. You do not invest to get rich. You have to build cash flow, get money coming in, then you invest it while more money is coming in. So that's kind of separate. Desperation is kind of separate from too good to be true. By too good to be true, I mean that some things in this industry, if they are too good to be true, If they sound too good to be true, they're probably a scam. However, a lot of stuff in crypto that is actually real sounds too good to be true but actually is true. For example, earning 10% APR on certain coins, that's not— that sounds too good to be true, but it is true. People do it. For example, on Coinbase, you can stay, uh, you can, you know, use USDC, their stablecoin, and earn 5% APR, up to 5% APR on it. So certain stuff sounds too good to be true, but then it turns out to be true. But this is also needs to be looked at backwards as well. So those are 10 things, you know, that I really— you really need to understand as you're getting into crypto. Okay, I hope you enjoyed this video. Make sure you drop a like. Thank you once again to Coinbase for sponsoring today's video. Uh, join the Gold Squad Discord, drop a like, and goodbye.