Bitcoin losing value

[jammed_d_armstrong]

Does anyone have a way of managing your overall bitcoin assets so you do not lose money?  I use Gemini to purchase and then Blockchain as my wallet.  It takes like 5 - 6 days to get a bitcoin purchase completed.  After I became comfortable using bitcoin I thought it would be a good idea to keep a certain amount in my "wallet" so that if I decided to purchase something, since it takes so long to make the bitcoin purchase, I would have some bitcoin ready.

It was several months between loading my wallet and the decision to make a purchase with bitcoin, but when I checked my wallet the value of the bitcoin had declined by perhaps 5 - 10 %.  Recently I was going to make two purchases from two different vendors and I thought I had it calculated that I would have enough bitcoin left after the 1st purchase to make the 2nd purchase from the 2nd vendor.  But that was not the case, I may have calculated wrong but after the 1st purchase I was barely short of what I needed to make the 2nd purchase.

I thought I had taken the transaction fees into account in my calculation.

So I have not made that 2nd transaction.  Today I was thinking of purchasing more bitcoin to add to my wallet to make the 2nd transaction because I running short of this product that I use from the 2nd vendor.  But when I looked at my wallet I found the value had dropped again.

My knowledge of Bitcoin is just that of a person who uses it to actually purchase items, not as a trader.  I don't really want to try bitcoin trading, I don't want to put the effort into it that is needed to understand it.

So my question here is, can anyone offere advice providing the best way to use bitcoin without losing a lot of money?  I know of "Bitcoin Cash" which was supposed to be speed up the transaction process.  Should I be using that instead of standard bitcoin to make purchases?  Thanks for any help.

Here is a recent article from the NY Times that discusses the declining value of Bitcoin but how it is still favored by "criminals".
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/technology/bitcoin-black-market.html

 

[Godzilla]

Using a method that allows instant access to the coins is better. You can buy them with Cashapp, for the simplest method I found. Coinbase with a debit card (not a bank account, this WILL hold the funds) let’s you send the coins around immediately. Don’t buy any BTC until the trade needs to be made.