DYOR, which stands for Do Your Own Research, research yourself, don't follow the crowd. The crypto world is full of "shill," which means promotion dogs, on Twitter, Reddit, Telegram groups. When you see someone say "this coin will 10x," first ask why, don't FOMO and rush in to buy. Check if the project has been audited, whether the code is open source, and how active the community is. I chased several meme coins like Dogecoin back in the day, made short-term profits, but most of the time I was just a bag holder.

Safety first, keep your wallet and keys secure. Use hardware wallets like Ledger or Trezor, don't leave coins on exchanges. Exchanges are prone to black swan events; remember the FTX collapse? Enable 2FA, avoid clicking suspicious links, beware of phishing and fake customer service. I lost a small amount of coins once because my phone was infected. Backup your seed phrase, but don't store it in the cloud—write it on paper and hide it well.