I was just talking with a friend on twitter about DASH cryptocurrency. Before the rebranding to DASH, it was called DARKcoin. It was during this time that I made the most expensive mistake of not only my crypto trading career, but probably my life. Apparently my friend had made the exact same mistake. I'm going to share with you the most expensive lesson I ever learned. 

When DARKcoin first came out, there was a lot of controversy about pre-mines, and who owned what as far as coin holders. This caused a lot of price volatility and created plenty of opportunities to pick up some really cheap DARKcoin at times. Even with all the FUD, most people involved in the cryptocurrency space immediately seen that this coin and it's developers were onto something as they promoted the DARKcoin, and tried to tackle the problem of TRUE cryptocurrency anonymity. 

The Dood bought a bunch of DARKcoin on one of the dips. A really low buy order got filled and I got some really cheap coin. It wasn't a large amount, maybe about 1500 coins, I can't remember what the transaction cost me, but I remember I got them cheap. 

As usual I bought and sold them several times. I was fairly new to trading crypto then and I would sell the "TOP", then buy back on another dip. Often, I would dump my entire position and buy back later at a much cheaper price. This is called "shorting your position" 

 When DARKcoin rebranded from DARK to DASH I learned the most expensive lesson of my trading career. **Never dump your entire position** unless you're planning on completely exiting a market. Even then you may want to re-think dumping everything, because this is crypto trading, and anything is possible. 

 I learned this the hard way, and a year or so later I was watching a stock  trading video on youtube and the guy said the same thing. NEVER DUMP YOUR ENTIRE POSITION on a short.  The reason for this is very simple, if the price continues to rise, you will have to buy your position back at a loss. Now this also breaks my second rule of trading. NEVER CHASE AFTER COINS. If a coin gets away from you, let it go, the market always presents a re-entry point. Usually! 

So DARKcoin rebrands to DASH and like so many coin rebrands it was met with rising coin prices, lots of hype, and the price rising considerably. This is where I made my biggest mistake. What I thought was certain to be a pump, and all the hype of the relaunched coin under a new name, I dumped my full position at what I thought was the "TOP" and it just kept climbing and climbing. Not willing to break my second rule, I never bought back in! What amounted to no more than a few dollars in trading profits would of traded today at well over $60,000 ! 

![dash.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQMMMp5ywPEZ6ksivXvYyuGkjuhAJzoFzwBNTdrCgqKTL/dash.jpg)

DASH continued to rise and rise, and after it climbed to well over $10.00 I just stopped paying attention. A lot of people made this same mistake during the rebrand and you can imagine the emotions that arise when they realize the opportunity that they missed out on. For me it's the one that got away, and for this reason I rarely sell more than 50% of any position I have in a coin. No matter what, I always hang on to at least 25% of any coins position just in case. 

Today, if I would of sold my 25% position of the original 1500 coins, I would of had about 375 coins worth about $42 each for a total of around $15,750 dollars. Live and learn! 

![facepalm.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmVRoWTNoQSEbusX5Q4mvWSKqgA4eRoT5vKb5Z3Gq1zuHB/facepalm.jpg)

Thanks for reading. Thanks for following! Happy trading everyone!