It is always easy to confuse the way trading works these days. After so much digitalization some people think that the trades mostly happen through logic, algorithms and so on. However, this is not necessarily the case. One of the most significant factors about trading is the human emotions that come with it.

Try to imagine it. You’ve just made a trade and bought some Bitcoin. Now you see that the price is decreasing rapidly, so naturally, you get the sensation that it is time to sell it, but all of the advice on the internet is telling you to hold and wait. This is where the first problem is met as human emotions are starting to battle logic and hard decisions.

You may find it hard to believe if you’ve traded on other financial markets but these human emotions can have a toll on crypto prices. On other markets its very hard for these emotions to have a significant impact, because of how big the market is. But for cryptos, the market is very small, so a select few investors could make some change in the market if they buy or sell prematurely. Let’s look into the main reasons why people face emotional, moral and psychological barriers when trading cryptos.

One Primary Example

Back in 2013, Bitcoin was sitting comfortably on the $1,200 mark. But it fell 50% when the Chinese national bank announced it would ban it in its systems. Everybody back then thought it would be a killing blow to cryptos, but as you can see it was not even a scratch.

This wasn’t logic affecting the price, and it was human emotions. Investors panicked and sold their assets immediately fearing that they were now obsolete when there were millions of people and thousands of exchanges in the world still accepting them. Don’t take the info at face value, do the research, listen to the experts and find out how dangerous it is before making any significant decision. You’ll need to do this quickly, however, as the panic spreads quite fast.

Moral Problems

Cryptos and morals aren’t the first things you’d imagine to have a connection, but they honestly do. Let’s look at it with a different perspective. You’ve just invested in a new crypto company that released their latest coin, and you already see that the development team is having some feud.

This immediately lights up your good alert, if you want to call it that. This gives you a sense that maybe this company will go under if the developers continue to fight. And you won’t be the only one. Many traders are affected by the politics of the company when some drama occurs, and they find it very hard not to have some concerns. The best thing to do here is to keep an eye on how things develop, and if there are actual threats that developers will leave the company, then it’s a good time to sell. Don’t sell prematurely, wait and see.

Psychological Problems

Human psychology is a fragile thing. Introduce it to any stress, and you will soon start seeing the cracks. The volatility usually creates the cracks in the crypto market. Many people can’t handle the mental pressure that comes with prices jumping up and down all the time. We are very basic beings, we like stability and when everything goes as planned. The moment something goes wrong, we panic. Remember the first time you started trading. You probably spend the whole day looking at the charts of your investment. The same thing happened to me when I first invested in Ripple and looked at its charts the entire day. Every time it would take a downwards direction, I’d have a mini panic attack.

The best thing to do in this case is to ignore it. If you have a long-term investment, ignore looking at charts all the time, keep focused on the news and how things develop. If you continue looking at the charts it will take a massive toll on your mental situation, your conscience will urge you to sell when there is a relatively big slump, but after the sell, we always regret it.

Another problem is when we are at a crossroads of, going with the crowd or following our path. Usually, for a beginner, it is one of the biggest mistakes to trade against the trend and go on their own, as they have no experience of the market yet. Although it is taxing on the mind to fall in with the crowd, especially in our day and age, it’s best to fall in line in the beginning.

Emotions We Feel When We Lose

The reason we see such a massive slump in cryptos this year can be attributed to the emotions investors felt when they lost quite a lot of capital during the January slump. We as humans tend to avoid losses more, than chase profits. It’s psychological as well. It’s more critical for us not to lose $10 than it is to gain $100.

After the slump investors became very disappointed with the market and avoided it altogether, further selling off their assets and bringing the price even lower, which at the end created an illusion of reinforcement for their disappointment and decision to leave.

How You Can Control Yourself

If you are a beginner, it seems impossible to control yourself when the price is falling. What you need to do is try to become a bit more patient.

First things first, try to avoid looking at the price every hour or day, think more long-term. When looking at the price think about 1month from now or even one year from now. It will calm you down.

When you see a feud happening in one of the companies, do more research. Find out why it happened and see similar scenarios in the past. If the past had people leave the company, then you have a good source to back your decision. Don’t just follow your gut.

If you have lost some capital with cryptos in the past, take a moment and trace it to a specific article or occurrence that it may have caused. Once you do, you’ll know exactly what caused it and will become more prepared in the future. If you want to get back in the game, go for a minimal investment to test out the waters.