We have all seen the news stories reporting on the substantial wins and losses that some people have had trading cryptocurrencies. The value of cryptocurrencies is volatile, and the exchanges themselves have proven irresistible targets for hackers. But is trading Bitcoin a realistic way of earning a full-time wage? If you stick to the following guidance, it could be.

Take Stock Of Your Current Circumstances

Before you begin sinking your money into Bitcoin, you need first to take stock of your current circumstances. It is essential to know precisely how much money you have available to invest and how much you can afford to lose. Trying to invest without a clear picture of your finances in your mind is bound to end badly. Like any form of trading or speculating, buying and selling Bitcoin is by no means guaranteed to make you money. You need to track your income and expenses.

Don’t just look at how much money you have available in your bank account right now and use that figure. To get a useful picture of your financial situation, you need to know what regular payments you have and your income sources. Things like your utility bills will vary from month to month, but you can calculate an average figure easily.

Set Yourself Realistic Goals

With any form of investment or trading, you should have a clear set of goals in mind from the beginning. Ask yourself what you are hoping to get out of the process and then assess whether your goals are realistic or not. If they aren’t, you should reconsider.

A lot of people get into trading because they see it as a way out of their current career. It is possible, albeit difficult, to replace the income from a job with the income you make from trading Bitcoin. But you need to have an objective beyond just making money. You need to be specific about how much money you can realistically expect to make in any given period. It’s all very well setting yourself more ambitious goals, but just setting them doesn’t help you to achieve them.

You also need to consider how you will supplement your income. The price of Bitcoin is notoriously volatile; it has risen and fallen by thousands of dollars within the space of a day. But you shouldn’t expect to simply buy some Bitcoin and then hit the ‘sell’ button as soon as the price goes up. You will probably have to wait a while before your Bitcoin gains appreciable value if it gains any value at all. While you are waiting for your crypto to increase in value, you will need to have money coming in from somewhere.

Some crypto traders operate as day traders. In other words, they look to resolve the trades they make within 24 hours of first initiating them. To do this successfully, you will need to be investing in coins other than Bitcoin.

It is sensible to have a trading strategy. Your strategy doesn’t have to be rigid or restrict your trading ambitions. But it is a bad idea to try and make it up as you go.

Find a Suitable Platform

If you want to trade Bitcoin, you will need to register with a cryptocurrency exchange where you can buy and sell your Bitcoin. You can also use these exchanges to convert your Bitcoin into other cryptocurrencies. Doing so can be a good idea when you want to hedge your bets. But before you consider those kinds of tactics, you need an exchange to execute your trades with.

The number of cryptocurrency exchanges available has been rising steadily over the last decade. There are numerous choices out there, although the majority of traders have gravitated to just a handful of them. Before you commit to using any exchange, make sure that you vet it properly and check out reviews and reports from existing users.

Most exchanges offer the same basic features. But a few of them have something a bit different that makes them stand out. For example, some exchanges support trading bots officially, making them much easier to use on the platform. Trading bots are commonplace on the traditional stock market. Both individuals and entities like hedge funds make use of trading bots to automate their activity.

Bitcoin trading bots are exactly the same, except they trade Bitcoin instead of stocks and shares. For an example of the kind of thing we’re talking about, check out Bitcoin Revolution. Bitcoin Revolution is one of the latest crypto trading bots on the market. They offer a free demo account that you can use to verify that the bot is right for you and that any exchanges you use support it.

Learn the Landscape

If you are still a relative newcomer to the world of cryptocurrencies, the first thing you need to do is educate yourself. You don’t need to know all the technical details about how cryptocurrencies work. However, a broad understanding of what cryptocurrencies are and the basics of blockchain will help you to make more informed investing decisions.

On the surface, trading cryptocurrency can look just like trading fiat currencies on the Forex market. However, there are numerous subtleties to cryptocurrency trading that aren’t immediately obvious. For example, the Forex market is affected by multiple factors that are unrelated to currency, such as natural disasters and geopolitical instability.

Just as the value of fiat currencies reflects the state of the nation they originate in, the value of cryptocurrencies is affected by the performance of the underlying business. This effect is why knowing a little bit about the technical side of things can be so helpful. If you hope to expand your cryptocurrency holdings beyond Bitcoin, you need to be able to assess the competition. This expansion is hard to do if you don’t fully grasp the relationship between blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

Trading Bitcoin is not without risk. However, if you lay the groundwork beforehand and make sure you know what you’re getting into, you can turn crypto trading into a full-time occupation.