Eight years in the crypto space—if you ask me which period was the most thrilling? 2017, hands down.

Back then, I had my eyes on ADA and started buying in batches when it was $0.03. In less than three months, it skyrocketed to $1.2—a nearly 40x gain on paper. Honestly, the first thing I did every morning was open my trading app and stare at those numbers, even calculating down payments for a house in my head several times.

The result? I didn’t sell a single coin.

You can guess what happened next—ADA crashed all the way down from its peak to $0.2. Those “paper gains” in my account vanished by 80% overnight, and dreams of buying a house went cold.

That experience taught me a lesson: in this market, knowing how to buy is just the entry ticket. Actually pocketing the money depends on your selling skills.

After years of trial and error, I’ve developed my own take-profit and stop-loss strategies—hard-earned lessons with real money on the line. They’re especially suitable for people who can’t stare at charts all day.

**Let’s talk about taking profits first.**

Now I use a “laddered take-profit” approach—say a coin goes from $1 to $2, I’ll sell 30% to get my principal back. This way, no matter what happens next, I’m at least not losing. If it keeps running to $3, I’ll sell another 30%. The remaining 40% is set up with a trailing stop—if it drops 15% from the peak, it’s automatically sold.

The benefit of this method: you can ride the main rally but don’t end up with nothing at the end.

**Now, let’s discuss stop-losses.**

I set a hard rule for myself: never lose more than 5% of my capital on a single trade. In practice, I like to preset “conditional orders”—the moment I buy, I also set a -10% stop-loss, basically buying insurance for the trade.

Some people worry that stop-losses might make you miss the next pump—don’t be. There’s never a shortage of opportunities in this market, but if you lose your capital, no amount of opportunity matters.

To be blunt, in these eight years I’ve heard countless “overnight riches” stories, but far more people end up riding the rollercoaster until they puke and can’t even recover their original capital. The ones who actually pocket profits are those who execute their rules like machines—no exceptions.

I remember once exiting with a stop-loss, and that coin doubled afterward. Friends laughed at me for being timid. But I didn’t feel bad at all, because three months later, it went straight to zero.

In this space, surviving matters far more than making a quick buck.