2018 has been a tough year as cryptocurrencies tanked 80 to 90 percent and about $700 billion got wiped out from the total market cap. This resulted in significant losses. The report of people losing millions after the crash made a lot of rounds in 2018.

One of the many risk-takers, Pete Roberts Nottingham, England reported of his US$23,000 investment that was worth US$4,000 eight months later,

“I got too caught up in the fear of missing out and trying to make a quick buck. The losses have pretty much left me financially ruined,” said Roberts.

Russell who had little investing experience put about $120,000 into Bitcoin in November 2017 that turned into $500,000 in just one month, only to crash to $6,300 in August 2018.

Another popular case has been of a 45-year old teacher, Kim Hyon-Jeon, a mother of one who put 100 million won (US$90,000) by drawing on his savings, an insurance policy, and loan, only to be down 90%.

“I thought my family and I could escape hardship and live more comfortably,” said Hyon-jeon “but it turned out to be the other way around.”

And of Reddit user Cryptohomie, who lives in Abu Dhabi and shared that he took out a six-figure loan to purchase cryptos and have since lost 85 percent of the value.

Treading a Bear Market

As Alex Kruger, a former banker and now a crypto trader had said,

“What the average Joe hears is how friends lost fortunes. Irrational exuberance leads to financial overhang and slows progress.”

However, according to the crypto trader, Crypto Squeeze the key to making gains is to invest in mid-market cap altcoins,

“The key to insane gains with a good hit rate, is to buy mid market cap altcoins (~$20 mil – $100 mil).”

And as another trader further shared,

“Pay attention, even write down to remember how these projects are acting during this bear market. Are they developing and communicating as strong as ever? That is how you decide.”

In the past 24-hours, Aurora has seen the highest gains of over 13 percent at the time of writing. Usually, it has been seen the coins that are down the crypto ranking as per market cap get the highest surge due to listings, announcements or other factors. Linkey, Holo, Elastos, TenX, PundiX, and Ark, are among the top gainers with 4 to 9 percent greens.

Just last week, Forbes quoted Mati Greenspan, a senior analyst at eToro as saying, “There will always be some level of correlation in broad markets. Over the longer term these particular coins are still tightly correlated to bitcoin.”

He had further shared,

“That said, when you have a news story that highlights a development, it can cause these sudden leaps. What we're seeing now is the effect of a flat market—the overall sentiment noise is dying down so individual token developments are getting more attention.”

So, it makes sense that the smaller market cap cryptocurrencies can be sought out for gains as many investors are apparently doing. However,

“As soon as there's more direction in the wider market, I'd expect that bitcoin and major token correlation amongst these altcoins to snap right back,” further added Greenspan.

Crypto investments subject to market risks- disclaimer