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Crypto isn’t what it used to be - Krillin on markets, macro, and adapting as a trader
124 Plays23 days ago
Krillin joins the Insilico Terminal Podcast to talk about getting into crypto in 2017, riding the altcoin euphoria, losing money through the bear market, and slowly turning that into a real trading process. We cover early altcoin trading, manual market making on IDEX, risk management, adapting across market conditions, why he moved more toward SPX and TradFi, how macro helped him sell the 2021 top, his thoughts on Hyperliquid, and why trading should be treated like a serious job - not a shortcut to getting rich.
0:00 Intro & Krillin’s CT origin story
5:52 Getting into crypto in 2017
8:19 Turning $10k into almost $200k
13:45 Manual market making on early DEXs
17:38 Rebuilding after the 2018 bear market
24:58 When to be defensive vs offensive
28:23 Using AI for stock research
33:40 Macro, liquidity, and selling the 2021 top
37:11 Why SPX fits his trading style
48:39 Hyperliquid, Binance, and DEX liquidity
58:49 Advice for newer traders
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Background
00:00:13
Speaker
Welcome to a new episode of the InSilico Terminal podcast. My guest today is Krillin. Is that how you pronounce it? Krillin?
00:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, Krillin. or Or also LSD in my coffee. Yeah, that's a weird thing. Uh, Do you actually put LSE in your coffee? LSE in my coffee was supposed to be some sort of like the real name. And then, yeah.
00:00:41
Speaker
I don't know, you know, at that time, i had not even decided that I would have ah the big Twitter account.
Social Media and Trading Beginnings
00:00:47
Speaker
i I was I was not planning to have a big Twitter account, you know, yeah and I had to I had to pick something.
00:00:54
Speaker
And everyone was like back then on city, everyone was like crypto something, you know, so you had crypto Donald crypto cry crypto, this crypto that and usually it was it was if it was a character, so you had whatever it was. And since I am short and bold and I was doing martial arts and stuff, i was like, okay, Krillin sounds perfect.
00:01:18
Speaker
yeah I became Crypto Krillin. um And that's that's that's, I started to gain followers and I never changed that. can you Can you give us a bit of and of an introduction of VR for the people that might not know you?
00:01:35
Speaker
Oh, yeah, sure. So, um I'm Kralin. I've been trading since 2017. I started with crypto, like a lot of us.
00:01:46
Speaker
um I'm almost 40 years old now. I'm going to say this. What I do with trading is different all the time.
00:01:59
Speaker
There are some peers are more focused on lower time frames. Some peers are more focused on higher time frames. We'll talk about more of that in details later, I guess. um uh what else I'm not sure what's relevant because I there are some personal like I don't I don't want to dox I don't want to give too many personal information especially if they are not relevant to our audience I think people are more interested in how I trade what's maybe my system my process so uh I live in Switzerland how uh how did you get started with trading well what got you into it maybe let's start there
00:02:38
Speaker
Ah, it's, well, there's when I actually started to trade and there's when I started to get curious about trading.
Early Trading Experiences
00:02:47
Speaker
How I really got curious about trading is actually when I had just graduated so a long, long time ago. And um so I graduated from software engineering.
00:03:01
Speaker
I had just got my master's degree. And so
00:03:07
Speaker
Uh, I had, had that internship in China and the first project for my internship was actually to build a database that would consolidate, uh, financial data for, uh, US small caps.
00:03:24
Speaker
So back then it was, it was called pink sheets. I, I think it changed. I don't think it's called pink sheets anymore, but it was, ah It was for all OTC and pink sheets, ah so all the US microcaps. So the idea was to have a single database with one front end where you'd have all the company's financials that I would import through various online APIs like Yahoo Finance and stuff like that, and mix it, combine it with technical indicators. So ah moving averages, ah whatever
00:04:00
Speaker
whatever indicator it was. So the person would be using this um this basically platform. would be able to, you know, let's say filter a list of tickers based on.
00:04:14
Speaker
um Oh, there was just not financials data. There were tons of like classic indicators like P ratio, earning per shares, all that stuff. ah So you'd be able to screen companies very quickly. There was no trading view back then. Keep in mind that was that was 20 years ago. There was no trading. Whoa.
00:04:34
Speaker
Now, actually, you know, with TradingView adding all the company's financials and everything for TradFi, this is very close to what I was building back then. I see. Interesting. And so that was my internship. And I knew nothing about trading.
00:04:46
Speaker
But, you know, discussing with the person in charge, giving me all the requirements, I really found it fascinating. I... it's something saying I I would have maybe pursued but I had just graduated and this was my first job so yeah I actually focused on doing my my you know I I had just moved to China i had I had a lot of things going on so I couldn't actually um you know learn more about trading and investing but it always stayed in the corner of my mind and
00:05:21
Speaker
And basically seven years later, ah one of my best friends was visiting me in Switzerland and he said, bro, bro, I just made a fortune on crypto.
00:05:34
Speaker
It's um it's just it's something called NIO. I bought it when it was called N shares. I'm up like X 50 on it. Bro, bro, you're going to get into crypto. going to get into crypto. And I was like, oh.
00:05:46
Speaker
that sounds cool that sounds cool let's let's do it yeah and so I just I deposited 5k send it to uh to Kraken and I basically immediately started to buy some some shit coins and well that's how it started and that that was in 2017. yeah 2017 August
00:06:09
Speaker
So how how did that go go for you? How did the shit go? Absolutely absolutely terrible. You know, ah you get it's the classic, you know, the Dunning-Kruger paradox. You're like, OK, I'm I'm at least a little bit above average intelligence.
00:06:24
Speaker
A lot of stupid people are making a fortune. i should be OK. Right. And then What do you do? You start looking at charts and all you can see is all coins basically going up only. So you're like, okay, i got 5k.
00:06:42
Speaker
If I a lot of coins, a lot of these stupid coins are doing between X10 and X100. If just put $500 each. if i just put five hundred dollars in each and I just need one to go X 10, I'm break even. So I'm going to start looking at fundamentals. What is what has a small market cap and has potential?
00:07:03
Speaker
And I'm going to put 500 in each and then I'll see how it goes. But guess what? The more you do research, the more you're like, oh, this looks good. Oh, this looks good. And then you get, youy you get, i don't know, you start getting to the gambling feeling. So I haven't lost anything yet, but then I start depositing maybe another 5k.
00:07:23
Speaker
I start buying more stuff. Then I realized there are some ICOs, stuff where you can get really early and and basically get get a big multiplier as soon as it gets listed. So I start putting money into ICOs. Some of them are scams. And yeah, you know, and and then the the more time you spend on it, the more you realize, oh, this is actually not that simple. Oh, I should have considered that, but I didn't.
00:07:50
Speaker
yeah And you're like, okay, being am I might be smart, but I know nothing about this, so I might make a few mistakes. and And so that i was like in August 2017. And the market actually was pretty terrible.
00:08:08
Speaker
i bought when i When I joined, it was actually a local high. bitcoin I remember Bitcoin was at around $5K or $6K. And by November, Bitcoin was at three k And I had lost 70% of my portfolio.
Emotional Aspects and Lessons Learned
00:08:24
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. So like, and this is not going too well. But guess what? The mighty old season came and I think I think i i deposited another 5k. Mm hmm.
00:08:39
Speaker
And then whatever I had left of the original deposits, the 30% left plus the 5K deposited. So that was like a little bit less than 10K with the old season. I turned that into almost 200K. It's like, oh, my God, I'm a genius. Oh, my God.
00:08:53
Speaker
Just just another six months like this with this gross and I'm going to retire. Yeah. I mean, not exactly. But, you know, when you turn when you turn 10K into almost 200 and in 1.5 months without much effort, well, it's easy to you know get carried away and be like, I'm i'm going to make a million by next month.
00:09:21
Speaker
And obviously, this is what you learn later. later and something i I very often tweet, euphoria ororia is the best signal to take profits. Something that I did not know back then. So this this is where trading gets interesting because it's not just about you know, but about being smart or not, it's about controlling your emotion, about understanding how to act upon which emotion that you're feeling.
00:09:50
Speaker
And yeah. And then basically 2018 bear market, i lost. I like everyone I lost. I lost pretty much 90% of it. Yeah.
00:10:02
Speaker
But the big mistake that a lot of people might make is I was so confident during the old season. And to be frank, It's easy to say in in hindsight, but when you looked at the chart in 2017, it had been going up only for basically a year straight.
00:10:23
Speaker
So when you don't have that much knowledge, it doesn't look like a big mistake to think it might have lasted maybe three months more, you know? Yeah. Why would it start? Three months more with this ah growth rate.
00:10:40
Speaker
And I would have been really great, you know, some some people actually get lucky and and retire on their first cycle. Lucky people. But but the mistake I made is I was so confident that I asked my family to invest some money, you know, and and obviously that went down just like just like my portfolio. And the fact I lost so much money, you know,
00:11:07
Speaker
ah I took it i i took its really very personally. Like my ego took a huge hit.
00:11:18
Speaker
i was I don't consider myself as someone with a big ego, but when you believe you're smarter than the average and you perform that 40,
Trading Strategies and Mindset
00:11:30
Speaker
you're like, man,
00:11:33
Speaker
I'm feeling stupid right now. Yeah, some some top signals were so obvious. Oh, and I bought this this token because some some fucking scammer shielded it on Twitter and I became a bag holder.
00:11:50
Speaker
i became exit liquidity for that guy. It feels bad. It feels really bad. And I was so, so infuriated that i was like, I need to figure out how to trade.
00:12:02
Speaker
I need. There's no reason i can't figure it out. Okay. And so I started to work really hard and some something else as well. I remember. I remember when it was November in November, I had lost 70% of my portfolio.
00:12:19
Speaker
I remember some people on Twitter. I remember the coin. it was ZRX. I just panic sold that bag at like for a minus 60% loss.
00:12:31
Speaker
And I saw someone just tweeting a chart with a beautiful falling wedge. And then that stuff bounced and it was just before the the the end of 2017 all season. I'm like, oh,
00:12:45
Speaker
maybe TA works and I'm going to start learning TA. Obviously now after all this time, like you should know better than just buying meme falling wedges and and all this this crap.
00:12:57
Speaker
But it just sticked in my mind and and yeah, it motivated me to learn charts. and And actually after working really hard and testing a lot of stuffs, I finally got a few things working and And by 2019, even though we we were still not in the bull market, I managed to already turn things around.
00:13:23
Speaker
what What sort of stuff did you look at back then? Like, were you still looking at TA or? I did a lot of stuff. I did a lot of stuff. Very, it you know, when, you when, think a lot of mistakes people make is they see someone doing quite well on twitter and they try to replicate things exactly the same yeah and and you're never going to be able to replicate perfectly what someone does online so all you can do is use it use it as a source of inspiration and then you have to try your your own things something that i was doing for example at the end of 2018 beginning of 2019
00:14:00
Speaker
uh i was actually kind of like manually market making and exploiting the spread on idex you know idex the og decks yeah and the the spread was always huge on on these coins sometimes you had five ten percent of spreads and so i would just manually move my bids and asks as, you know, ah put my bids at the top and put my asks at the bottom.
00:14:32
Speaker
And i I would sometimes get filled and I would be able to, you know, put the same amount on the other side of the book. Basically just manual market making the and taking advantage of the big spread.
00:14:46
Speaker
And beginning of 2019, was doing like 1.52% IDEX volume like this.
00:14:52
Speaker
hmm. I did stuff like that. And then I was still doing a lot of final fundamental analysis. That's how, for example, I got I got super early on on Q&T.
00:15:04
Speaker
Quants. Yeah. And I pulled like a next 25 on this one. A lot of these things, a really, really helped me to to turn things around after after really a horrible year 2018.
00:15:17
Speaker
year twenty eighteen um Did you learn like anything about the the theory of market making before you did that or did you just do all of it by practice?
00:15:27
Speaker
It made sense. as and And as soon as start people started to also realize that there was a big spread, people started to add bots and everything. And I didn't have time to make my own bots because I was still I still had a full time job back then.
00:15:45
Speaker
Mm hmm. I was really like doing this on on on the side. Like, you know, I'm i'm at work and I'm i'm i'm bored in a a meeting for my job. Let's check let's check my yeah my limit orders on IDEX.
00:16:00
Speaker
what Was the market like that slow that you could manually market make while having a full-time job? bad it was It was a DEX with very little bots. yeah And i I don't think people realize how volatile altcoins were back then.
00:16:14
Speaker
There were some coins. In this area, it was pretty standard for a coin to move between 10 and 50% day. okay So when you have spread,
00:16:29
Speaker
It's it's not actually that bad compared to, you know, if your coins move up and down up to 50, 60% a day, it's okay.
00:16:40
Speaker
And this was all spots. So what I'm saying is it wasn'tqui he wasn't bothering people to be market buying on IDEX. Like if you think your coin is going to X3 this month, you'd rather a market buy and eat a 5% spread against you than leave a limit order that doesn't get filled and miss the 300% move. You see what I do?
00:17:01
Speaker
So because people were fine market buying with a 5% spread, no one even really bothered to be doing some proper market making. Yeah, I see.
00:17:13
Speaker
But then then after the spread went lower, people started to add bots. I did that for like three, four months, not more. No, it's just fun. What I'm saying is yeah you need you you need to try a lot of things, figure out figure out what works for you, figure out hey you need to you need to have fun. Never forget that.
00:17:30
Speaker
you can't You can't grind your way without if you're not having fun or passion. You need either fun, either passion. You can't grind forever without these two.
00:17:44
Speaker
how How long did it take you to figure out something that really made you like profitable or that you made you quit your job? Well, I started i started in in August
00:17:55
Speaker
I lost a fuck ton in 2018. I remember in December 2018, it looked like it looked like a bottom was forming, you know, Bitcoin, $3,000. And I put I put all my annual bonus that I got at the end of December back into Bitcoin. Yeah, I had conviction this one. I had my my own my own first signals telling me the button might be in so i put all my annual bonus in ptc at uh 3k in december 2018. and so 2019 went actually quite well i could i could add x20 on on quant i was doing this manual market making on idex i was uh
00:18:42
Speaker
i was doing I was doing my first altcoin swing trades. Oh, by the way, thats that's also when I started to play with BitMEX. okay We all, we all, um you know, went to, I mean, you're in crypto, you become, a especially back then, you you had to be a degenerate. ah we We all tried BitMEX.
Adapting to Market Conditions
00:19:05
Speaker
I had my fair amount of liquidations, but that's okay because I think back then and we were not, It was a very different mindset.
00:19:16
Speaker
the The mindset that came during the 2021 cycle where everyone was like, I gotta make it. i gotta make it. We are all gonna make it, you know? And this urge of making it as fast as possible, that's been very toxic and harmful to a lot of people.
00:19:33
Speaker
ah It wasn't like this back then. We were, while we were degenerates, I think we had a pretty good understanding that If we were gambling on BitMEX, we had a high chance to get liquidated. So we were I was at least I was I was aware that I was not I was not good enough. So I would practice day trading. i would practice various strategies, but I would use tiny accounts, something like a few hundred bucks.
00:20:03
Speaker
And, you know, if you have a good streak, you test stuff. Sometimes you X 20 your account, then you you you blow it up and it's okay. It's okay. I had a good paying job in Switzerland. I it was okay for me to lose a few hundred bucks.
00:20:18
Speaker
But that I learned I learned a lot. I learned a lot. Of course, you you can't just be gambling. You need to be taking notes. You need to have a journal. You need to to do all these things. People think they can just
00:20:32
Speaker
I don't know, it's like doing good at trading. Trading is is like is like any job. If you want to get good at it, you need to put some efforts in. Yeah. So would say the mindset back then is more like you were like risking a lot, but you were also having the mindset that you're going to put in effort and work to like get something out of it long term and not just like... Oh, I said, in 2018, lost a ton of family money.
00:20:57
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So I had to, I had to succeed. i didn I just like, it was a matter of like, I made it personal. It's like my, my personal honor, even though I had, I had told the family only invest what you can afford to lose and blah, blah, blah, the usual.
00:21:14
Speaker
I felt really bad about it. I, there was no way I was going to tell, I was going to tell parents, brother and say, Hey, I lost all your money and I'm not going to make any effort to make it back. Yeah. Right. So There was this thing. And then 2018, 2019, I was starting to like my full time job less and less.
00:21:35
Speaker
And obviously, since in 2019, I was starting to make back a lot of the money of my losses and I was starting to do pretty well. there were There were a few things that were still not good, like especially on the risk management side. um you know, whenever you get a good streak, you start becoming more confident, you start sizing more. And actually, what you don't realize is that your good streak.
00:22:03
Speaker
It's very much related to the market conditions being favorable. Yeah. And if eventually the wind turns and As you are the peak of your streak peak peak portfolio value and you think, oh, something clicked. Oh, I'm i'm on such a good streak. I must have figured something out.
00:22:23
Speaker
I can increase size. Well, that's when the market conditions worsen and you end up giving back a lot. Yeah. And so this is why nowadays, i don't know, most of my focus is about when do I want to be to to be defensive, when I want to be more exposed.
00:22:44
Speaker
And that's basically what I do. I trade. I've been trading a lot less in the past year. um Maybe it has to, you know, as you grow your account as well, you're I don't know. i'm not I'm not the kind of guy wants to have a helicopter and a yacht or whatever. um
00:23:05
Speaker
So i I trade because I like it. I trade because it gives me some freedom. um So what about what I'm trying to say is when your portfolio is big enough, then okay, you take a good trade this month. Well, that pays that pays for my needs for this month. I don't need to trade that much, you know?
00:23:28
Speaker
which is very different from, yeah, different periods. Would you say that's only really possible once you've gotten to a certain like level in your portfolio or your net worth where you have that security? In fact, you this is how you should always be looking to trade. You should never be forcing trades. You should never be...
00:23:48
Speaker
If the market conditions are bad, you must you must accept it. You should not. i mean, of course, there are some systems and some strategies that work in every market conditions. It's not the case. it's not It's not what I do with my discretionary trades. It doesn't.
00:24:01
Speaker
i do a lot of trend following, trend continuation. um
00:24:09
Speaker
I like to increase size when the momentum is in my favor. So when market conditions are bad and it's chop, I'm I can accept it.
00:24:20
Speaker
A lot of people fail to to accept that. They took some losses when ah even right now, the current price action of Bitcoin is a good example. You got you got a big down people saw some opportunities they had just lost a lot of money and they're like oh okay the bottom must be in i'm gonna buy some yeah and then it started to bounce higher and they added size that range high and then we went back down to like I don't know, sub 70K, we went down to even what, 75K.
00:24:51
Speaker
And some of the, a lot of them, they puked there, you know, and they they took more losses and they just got chopped. I don't, I don't do that. So of course I still get chopped sometimes, but like everyone, I can't, I'm wrong all the time, very often, but at least I would say the best The best change I've made to my trading is really about figuring out when to be defensive, when to be offensive, when to trade less, when to trade more.
00:25:23
Speaker
um Everyone wants to be overexposed when the market is trending and everyone wants to be sure to have as little exposure as possible ah when the market is doing poorly. Obviously.
00:25:38
Speaker
This is not as easy. That's not the reality. So you got to you got to scale in, scale out, increase exposure in some situation, decrease exposure in some others.
00:25:50
Speaker
Yeah, but I guess that's That's how you're maturing as a trader, because now it's been, I've been doing this for almost nine years.
00:26:01
Speaker
If you're like trend following, would you say then that most of the time you just like sit out the market? Because say I guess most of the time the market isn't really trending. It depends. The system I work with is really the system that works on multiple timeframes.
00:26:18
Speaker
So if you want to, you can always find trend somewhere. If your current, the timeframe you're currently looking at is chop,
00:26:30
Speaker
You can zoom in and find some trend within the range by looking at lower timeframes, or you can zoom out and realize that what you're currently consider as chop on, let's say, the four hour chart, the daily chart is actually a consolidation on the weekly chart.
00:26:49
Speaker
And maybe the weekly chart is still trending. You know, kind of like what you could say on Bitcoin right now, you could say the weekly structure is still kind of bearish.
00:27:00
Speaker
So maybe what we have now, it could just be a consolidation bit before a new leg down on the weekly chart. So If you trade the weekly chart, you can look for trend continuation to the downside.
00:27:15
Speaker
If you trade the daily chart, four hour chart, this is chop and you might not want to look at it. If you trade the one hour, 15 minute chart, you've had plenty of trending move. For example, like we just had in the past 10 days on Bitcoin, you had a lot of, ah you had a nice uptrend on the one hour chart.
00:27:34
Speaker
You can find your trend all the time. But you need to change the time frame. It's a the system I use is a system where I. If I want if I want to be trading, I have to edge adjust the time frame I'm looking at a lot.
00:27:51
Speaker
Now, the truth is, I used to be looking a lot at lower time frames to look for trend and look for. And even when I say trend, actually, a lot of people would say, I'm a range trader on the four hour chart.
00:28:07
Speaker
I like buying the range low, selling the w range high, and I'm a range trader. Actually, I would be taking similar trades, but I would be taking it from the range low as well to the range high.
00:28:20
Speaker
But I would be using trend continuation strategies on, let's say, 15 minute chart. You see what I mean?
00:28:29
Speaker
how many like ah How much time do you spend per day looking at charts and like how many tickers, how many time frames do you scan? It really depends. there's no There's no fixed rule.
00:28:40
Speaker
Like some some days like lately, I've been doing a lot of stock picking. I've been looking at your European european ah small caps on the stock market.
00:28:51
Speaker
And there are some days I'm going to be in the flow and I'm going to be I'm going to be using the AI to to help me do the research, especially, you know, ah I don't know, you want you want to look for something I've been doing like like a few weeks ago and I've been doing that in January to was look for European semiconductors, small market cap.
00:29:13
Speaker
And you you want to have a list of all tickers across all European stock markets under this specific and market cap in this sector.
00:29:24
Speaker
If you have to do this manually without AI, it's it's days and days of work. Now you have the AI, it gives you a list of tickers in 15 minutes. That's fantastic. And so and then so I get my list of tickers. I'm going to start looking at the company's financials. I'm going to start looking at a lot of stuff and I could spend 10 hours straight working on these stuff. And then the next day I'm going to be like,
00:29:47
Speaker
oh you know what I feel tired I'm gonna hit the gym I'm gonna post a few updates in the Haven I'm gonna do I'm gonna do this stuff I'm gonna I'm gonna play a bit uh this game that I've been that I've been wanting to try for a while and I'm and I'm gonna work one hour and then the next day I'm gonna be back working 10 hours it it it doesn't matter I guess I don't know you know I'm I got some ADHD and it's it's really important to, you know, ah find these periods where you get in the flow and when you don't.
00:30:25
Speaker
How do you go about sizing these positions? Like, I assume like if you look at many different tickers at once that you're also like in a lot of positions at once. How do you decide to like? No, du I mean.
00:30:37
Speaker
I have separate portfolios. Like I have I have a long term, mid long term portfolio stocks portfolio. So in this one, I have I have quite a lot of those positions, but I don't need to manage all of them. um When I'm day trading, it's i nowadays I mostly I used to day trade a lot of crypto and nowadays it's mostly it's mostly s SPX, sometimes gold.
00:31:04
Speaker
ah Forex, it depends. i'm not I'm not a very good Forex trader. ah The problem with Forex is my analysis is good.
00:31:16
Speaker
But I think Forex, you should, you know, everyone who's trading Forex, you know, you see like those, you know, the Instagram, Forex traders, scammers, blah, blah, blah. You see all these stuff. They all trade Forex on very small time frames, like scalping and stuff. And I think, I think Forex, you should be doing the opposite.
00:31:37
Speaker
I do very well with Forex when I take high time frame swings with very wide stops. okay And whenever I try trading Forex on low time frames, I can't replicate the strategies that have been working on the s SPX or crypto. It just doesn't work. So, ah you know, it's that's also something you need to understand as a trader is what are what are your strengths? What are your weaknesses?
00:32:00
Speaker
And yeah, I'm not a very good Forex trader, so. It depends. For example, the past 10 days I've been trading oil, which is something I, a few days ago, I swore I would never trade oil again.
00:32:14
Speaker
Well, what happened? What made you change your mind?
00:32:18
Speaker
Well, the fact that i could I could have better signals based on macro, based on the world news, ah you know, like when you reach this kind of level, ah you're more likely to see Trump taco or things like that.
00:32:37
Speaker
ah No, the reason I was not trading oil is I i gave it a try when I first started to trade TradFi. When was that? End of 2022, I think.
Transition to Traditional Financial Markets
00:32:50
Speaker
Man, it's been that long. Yeah, i guess so. And I started to to to ah to try every TradFi product. You know, same as I was saying earlier with crypto, you need to try everything, figure out what works for you, what doesn't, what what is fun for you, what is not fun.
00:33:09
Speaker
And, you know, with all you had, you had, you have a big spike of volumes on the open, you have, uh, You have too many too many weird things. And yeah if you want to trade this asset well, you you really need to focus and become a specialist on this asset.
00:33:26
Speaker
and I feel like oil is quite different from... from ah I mean, like, crypto is kind of... I've i've mostly traded crypto for my life. So, like, crypto is kind of similar to, like, gold and and metals and all of that stuff. And then socks are also, like, their their own thing, but they're still, like, kind of similar. But I feel like oil is very...
00:33:45
Speaker
very weird because it's like so, so in real life, like geopolitical reliant and anything can like i don't change the world so much. ah You know, i I sold the top on the 2021 old season because ah because of the Fed hiking rates.
00:34:06
Speaker
And after that, i was like, okay, TA is cool. Crypto is cool. But there are some things, some macro things you can't escape. And ever since ever since I managed to sell pretty much the top in the 2021 old season,
00:34:25
Speaker
I was convinced that I had to spend more time. And if you if you look at my feed, I I talk about i talk about ah about DXY. talk about correlation. Sometimes I talk about bonds. I talk about i'm I'm far from being a proper macro expert, but there are some basic things that you can look at and will give you a massive advantage like The 20, 21 top was, was a good example.
00:34:52
Speaker
Yeah. We had the thesis that we were going to get a crypto super cycle thanks to the massive injection of liquidity following the COVID-19.
00:35:03
Speaker
Well, if your thesis for a crypto bull market is the massive injection of liquidity when the liquidity stops flowing because the Fed just said they were going to hike rates.
00:35:14
Speaker
Mm-hmm. you need to edge You need to, you know, wake up, smell the roses and be like, okay, this is the end of my bold thesis. Yeah. And the problem is a lot of people can't do that.
00:35:29
Speaker
So why do you think that is? ah it's It's just greed. It's just emotion. it's it's It's the same reason why I didn't sell my shit coins in 2017 and lost it all. ah yeah Except except after after making that mistake in I'm not going to make it twice, you know It's just greed. It's pure greed.
00:35:51
Speaker
Greed, a little bit of ignorance. But if you've been in multiple cycles and you still make the mistake, you you don't have the excuse of ignorance. Yeah. You're just a greedy cunt. That's all.
00:36:03
Speaker
and what made you what What made you move away from day trading in crypto or trading crypto in general?
00:36:11
Speaker
Well, there are a few things. ah First of all, i had had a KYC issue on my on my company account on binance futures so i was i was kicked out of binance futures pretty much at the same time as i was starting to to trade trade fight okay and i started to day trade s spx and and i had quite some success with it and what i found difficult with oil you know about
00:36:42
Speaker
you know, adjusting, you know, you have that spike of volatility around the open. You have typically there's the the American lunchtime and then the end there's the end of the season, the session. Sorry.
00:36:56
Speaker
What I found was complicated for me with oil, it actually felt natural with, um, with the s SPX. When, if, if you observe s SPX on lower timeframes, you observe, you know, the the famous Bart, Bart pattern.
00:37:12
Speaker
s SPX loves to fully reverse moves. So when, when, for example, I said, I like trend, I love trend on old coins. Mm-hmm. When I'm trading, the s SPX is the opposite. I almost only trade reversals.
00:37:29
Speaker
I work with with inefficiencies. i assume the market is going to be an efficient one. I assume that most levels are going to get retested. I know that whenever we have an overreaction based of some on some news,
00:37:46
Speaker
Most of the time you're going to see a reversal that retests the price where it was at the time the bearish news came, this kind of thing. And I use these SPX specificities to to my advantage and and put it as and build an edge around it. Something I was completely unable to do with oil.
00:38:09
Speaker
And so because I was, I was basically locked out of Binance Futures temporarily because of that weird KYC issue, it's because I have a French passport and it was a time where, you know, there was this stupid Mike Allo stuff like that. And, yeah and even though It was KYC for my company as it it was corporate KYC. Just the fact that had a French passport, was an issue with Binance. had to go through VIP support, complaints so much, blah, blah, blah, blah. blah Eventually they they let it they let me back in.
00:38:40
Speaker
But I got locked out of Binance Futures for like five months, I think. And and i had been trading s SPX ah in the meantime and doing quite well despite having not that much experience. So so i I just sticked with that.
00:38:56
Speaker
i just ticked with up And on top of that, you know, the fact that you can, you get the habit of closing your, um i I was feeling less less greedy with ESPX, you know?
00:39:12
Speaker
It's like, you know, with crypto, I always have, you tend to be more greedy because you're like, oh, what if it just goes higher and I could i could keep half of my my day trade position and it goes higher and then you wake up the next day morning and you you actually round tripped all.
00:39:30
Speaker
and But with s SPX because I don't know. It's like i have no I have no emotion for the stock market or for Forex or Trashify. I don't know if because crypto is my my first love, would make what got me into trading,
00:39:46
Speaker
i I sometimes struggle more to be short in crypto, which is which is stupid. but I tend to kind of like always be have be slightly bullish on crypto. It changed. It changed. not Not really anymore. ah yeah Basically, ever ever ever since Bitcoin became Trump branded, ever since Saylor started to turn Bitcoin into a Ponzi, i've I'm no longer feeling this way.
00:40:11
Speaker
But back then, when I transitioned to TradFi, I used to be emotional and be slightly kind of like a bull taut on crypto. while I had zero emotion on the s SPX because i I don't get attached. it's It's an index of stock. I couldn't care less, you know? Yeah. And and maybe this dis lack of emotion is what actually made me day trade s SPX better than crypto. I don't know. It's just it's just how it happened.
00:40:39
Speaker
I mean, is it as long as it works better for you, I guess it just makes more sense to yeah focus on that. And depending where you trade Ratify, you can get some better fees and spread than actually trading crypto.
00:40:53
Speaker
Do you just like, I think you you mentioned before that you pretty much don't really trade crypto that much anymore at all, even on like a lifetime. I hope I will be again in the future.
00:41:05
Speaker
Is it just because there's like nothing going on with the mortgage? It's not just that. It's not just that. It's
00:41:15
Speaker
the dream we had with crypto. it's I kind of want to say it's it's gone. Yeah. Like when I when I joined crypto in 2017, everyone was like, oh, crypto blockchain is going to be the future. We're going to have so many good use cases for blockchain. It's going to change the world. There's going to be decentralization. You're going to have you're going to have blockchain based voting machines to um to get rid of election fraud. You're going to have, i don't know, millions of use cases like that.
00:41:47
Speaker
hmm. And none of them come true. None of them came true. It it was all just some money grab.
00:41:58
Speaker
And on one hand, you're like the BTC Maxis were right. And now you look at who is the who is the the chief of the BTC Maxis is that sailor cookhead who who undid what what good BTC Max is like, if you remember Andreas Antonopoulos, he used to be the educator. He spent a decade convincing Bitcoin, convincing no coiners that Bitcoin wasn't a Ponzi.
00:42:30
Speaker
And then Bitcoin, a sailor came and he actually literally turned Bitcoin into a Ponzi. ah A lot of, so basically blockchain and altcoin projects going to change the world.
00:42:44
Speaker
This is long gone. Even Bitcoin maximalism, you could say, OK, Crillin, you're giving up on all coins. Fine. You can still believe in in Bitcoin. I still personally believe in in censorship resistant resistant money. You know, like you've seen my you've seen my my Twitter feed. ah I talk a lot about how we're entering a very dystopian society and all that shit.
00:43:11
Speaker
ah you do need censorship-resistant money. ah There's going to be mass surveillance. There's going to be a lot of stuff. Now, the big question is, is bit is Bitcoin actually the one? Is Bitcoin actually going to be the censorship-resistant money when, you know, you're not, it's not a privacy coin. It has many disadvantages. there's
00:43:37
Speaker
So I don't know. I i believe in the original... cypherpunk ethos about about censorship resistant money. But i'm not I'm not seeing anything that makes me want to invest right now with conviction.
00:43:55
Speaker
Do you think there will still be like money to be made there in the future despite like the disillusionment? There's always money to be made. The question is whether liquidity will dry up or not.
00:44:07
Speaker
ah Maybe something I could talk about, something that was important in my trading journey is um I started from the beginning being very focused on altcoins.
00:44:21
Speaker
And one of my philosophies back then was like, we're very lucky. We have hundreds and hundreds of altcoins available. So regardless of the market conditions,
00:44:34
Speaker
If I spend my entire day scanning for old coins, I am going to find coins that are not correlated with the rest of the market. I am going to find good setups. So I just need to pick trades on the two, three old coins that are doing well.
00:44:52
Speaker
And for a while it worked. In 2019, I was making back my 2018 losses. I was buying complete garbage on that Huobi exchange and it was fine. You remember, i don't know, Pierre, you know Pierre, Pierre and I, guess we we used to trade a lot of those those scams on Huobi. The problem is ah we were actually trading five k bags Mm-hmm.
00:45:23
Speaker
You catch an egg soup on 5K bags, you're happy, but it's no it's no longer what what I can do. there's no There's no liquidity. I can no longer trade coins that are doing half a million, three hundred k daily volume like it was on Roby. Mm-hmm.
00:45:39
Speaker
So outside of old season, I find that liquidity really dries up. Mm-hmm. And even if you're not trading big size, I'm still not, I mean, I i bought a house. i i i've cuts I've cut a bit the the sizing after after doing well in 2021.
00:45:58
Speaker
um
00:46:01
Speaker
Even if you trade, you trade all coins back 50K, 100K, a lot of old coins, you're going to eat massive slippage. You can't be day trading these. Yeah. So now if I want to take even like a mid five fixed bag on a shit coin, there's no, i don't, I don't have 300 coins to choose from like it used to.
Advanced Trading Topics
00:46:25
Speaker
Mm-hmm. So this is why now I enjoy i enjoy a lot more stock picking. I enjoy. Yeah, stock picking has been doing good. I've been enjoying a i a massive run on metals ah last year and until until end of January.
00:46:45
Speaker
um So now I went from always being offensive and always looking for what altcoin looks good out of the 300 altcoins that I have on Binance to, okay, overall, the market looks like shit.
00:47:02
Speaker
I'm going to be more defensive. And if I see some sign of a reversal, I'm going to slowly to slowly scale back in. and see how it goes. And so now, i as I said, my focus is really about when do I want to be exposed? When do I don't when I don't want to be exposed? hmm.
00:47:20
Speaker
When I want to be short, although I'm rarely I'm rarely net short.
00:47:28
Speaker
Um, Why is that? Do you always have like some? i don't know. I guess I guess it's it's it's purely psychological because I i have zero issues. Stocks shorting the stock market. I still
00:47:42
Speaker
I don't know, it's just the way crypto works is is when it starts reversing, it also reverses very hard. We've seen that. We've seen that at the end of the trade war last year.
00:47:55
Speaker
We went from 70K back to a new all time high ah in the blink of an eye.
00:48:03
Speaker
So. And overall, you know, it's like. You know, shorting, you never make, you rarely make as much shorting, at least on when catching big big moves, you know, mathematically. Yeah. ah The returns on your shorts are naturally diminishing the lower you go.
00:48:26
Speaker
whether when you are longing, the upside is infinite. I mean, not infinite, but potentially, guess. Potentially many multiples. You'll never catch the lowest a short can go is 100%. And I mean, already, if an asset is down 50%, you're likely to catch, to see a big bounce soon, you know?
00:48:48
Speaker
So, yeah. Do you have any ah interests or or hopes for DEXs, Hyperliquid, stuff like that?
00:48:59
Speaker
I do think it's cool. i The main good thing I see about Hyperliquid is binance had no proper competition since the the collapse of ftx yeah and you've seen i don't need to tell you ah how's the sentiment on city about about binance and cz right you saw what happened on october 10th yeah i s think it's very very healthy to see binance i i i like binance i i still think to me whatever you say about
00:49:35
Speaker
about Binance, whatever are their practices, to me, it's still it's still the best exchange in terms of liquidity. Like you go on hyperliquid, you want to trade crypto outside of BTC, ETH, SOL and HYPE, that there's no liquidity.
00:49:48
Speaker
ah ah Like there's been many times and there was, I remember, when was that? Maybe it was before October 10th, maybe it was last summer. I remember there was, there was a 20% week down on Hyperliquid on Fortcoin, which happened on no other exchange, stuff like that. Really? yeah it was bad but what what wasn't it wasn't it like recently at least didn't someone like no no because he thing if i remember correctly it was around 80 cents maybe maybe a week from 80 cents to 60 cents but ah now anyway the point is yeah if you want to trade all coins i still think binance is is the best place but it's very good i'm very happy to see at least what hyperliquid are are building
00:50:32
Speaker
yeah Something I would like to, for example, it it would be options. If you could have some sort of decentralized options, that would be really cool. um I found it nice that we have Tradify Trading.
00:50:45
Speaker
ah for people to use crypto collateral. But man, have you seen how TratFi is already the majority of the volume now?
00:50:56
Speaker
Yeah. Hyperdicryd. Yeah. There's like there's like BTC, Ethereum, Solana, Hype, and everything else is TratFi. Mm hmm. ah But i I don't think trading Trotify on Hyperliquid is great. The same, they could the spread and liquidity compared to a proper Trotify broker is pretty bad.
00:51:17
Speaker
yeah So it feels like the problem I have with Hyperliquid is I like what they're building. I like to see healthy competition. I like, even though it's far from being properly decentralized, I appreciate the efforts and I have a lot of respect for the Hyperliquid team. there there There are a lot of things they have done right.
00:51:39
Speaker
But I feel like if I want to trade crypto, Binance is a better option. And if I want to trade TratFi, my TratFi broker is a better option. So now that I have missed a generational airdrop on Hyperliquid, I'm not seeing ah many reasons. But I sure like Hype and I follow it closely. And have a lot of respect to people who have built Hyperliquid.
00:52:06
Speaker
I think building bidding an exchange is not something easy, especially where I mean, not a centralized one.
00:52:16
Speaker
I guess it's just a like a convenience thing. um Like I kind of like trading trade assets on hyperliquid just because it's like very annoying. i depends It depends on what you're doing. Like, let's say over rockridge if you want to swing trade, it's OK.
00:52:31
Speaker
In my opinion, there are a lot of weeks. Some people say the advantage is you can trade ah on weekends, which is kind of different. But have you seen the funding rate on oil last weekend?
00:52:43
Speaker
It was insane. It was. And ah the same thing on Binance. Binance Future wasn't better. You had yeah the funding was like it was more than what it was more than 1% a day.
00:52:58
Speaker
But I think that's because like the the contract was like rolling over or something, right?
Professionalism in Trading
00:53:03
Speaker
I don't know what I know. What I know is I'm glad I longed oil on Friday. i mean, that was not just that weekend. I was the before. i'm I'm glad I longed oil on Friday on my TradFi broker and I didn't get on Hyperliquid because If I had spent the entire weekend paying maybe something over the weekend, it would have been like 2-3% funding.
00:53:26
Speaker
that would That would eat like like a third of my my entire trade P&L. So nah.
00:53:34
Speaker
If you want to trade a lot of options, trade some stocks, I think hyperliquid is nice. Like, let's say you're a crypto guy. You want to have, I don't know, you want it to long SanDisk or Google or stuff like that.
00:53:47
Speaker
Big, big caps that had massive upside. You don't want to open a TrotFi broker account just for that. I think it's cool. It's very it's just nice.
00:53:59
Speaker
i agree. It's nice. I think it's nice. But there do you do trade a lot of options because you're like looking for and actual option i've been i've been looking to get better with option i'm i'm i'm a complete retard when it comes to options i've been looking to do a deep dive into options and unfortunately i haven't found the motivation uh yet yeah uh i do use option quite a lot but The idea behind options is whenever I have a conviction a conviction play and I'm not really sure where I'm going to get invalidated, let's say.
00:54:36
Speaker
If the IV is not too high and obviously there's I don't need to pay a big premium, I find options very convenient because I don't need to I get I get the leverage part of options, but without worrying about where my invalidation is going to be.
00:54:53
Speaker
ah It worked out beautifully on gold. So for example, my my my best options play was when I bought gold options this summer.
00:55:05
Speaker
i was very, very bullish on gold, but we were in a consolidation. Gold had already pumped quite a lot. and I wanted some leverage and we were around like 3K.
00:55:20
Speaker
And I wanted to have some leverage and I didn't know where to put my stop. And I was like, I could I could just slowly scale in if it goes lower, i average down. But then if it starts chopping longer or if it starts pumping hard and I don't get fully filled, I'm going to get frustrated.
00:55:38
Speaker
I was like, OK, I want to risk that much into this trade. I'm just going to dump that into ah into option. I was mostly buying May 2026 5100 calls when when gold was just only 3K.
00:55:57
Speaker
Yeah. It was matching my thesis of gold doing extremely well. And I had my leverage. I sold this option at at the next 20 in January. Mm hmm.
00:56:09
Speaker
And I never had to bother about a stop. So i I might be a noob with options and my knowledge with options is actually pretty terrible. I mean, I understand basics. I understand what's the Tita decay. I understand what' what's what's my Delta, what's my Delta. The Beta, the Delta, all all the basics.
00:56:26
Speaker
But I'm not like some option nerd who's looking at options, order flow, things like that. um i know I know how to pick a not too shitty strike and expiry combo.
00:56:42
Speaker
And that's basically all I need for ah for the kind of trade I'm trying to take. Yeah. But and now options, they're they're fascinating instruments. I would love to learn more about options, but... The problem is I got ADHD and if I want to do that well, either need to be taking STEAMs or need to get really, really motivated.
00:57:02
Speaker
And i have neither at the moment. And so, you know, um when I do things, I like to do them well. So I'd rather not do at all than, you know, be pretending and do that do that for two days and then start going back to my other You know, activities and businesses and all the things to do. And now, so I will do it one day.
00:57:31
Speaker
Maybe I will. I will do it one day for sure. um But not right now. Do you think they will become more prevalent in crypto? ah It's it's a difficult question. Are they not prevalent right now because there's no good market offering crypto options or are there no good crypto market options because it's not very popular? Yeah. I'm not sure. Chicken and the egg.
00:58:03
Speaker
I'm not sure. Yeah. Maybe if there was a super good place to trade crypto options, then more people would be using it. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe Hyperliquid, the HIP4 can fix it for us Oh, but I was saying i would love Hyperliquid to develop some options. Is is it actually in in on their roadmap?
00:58:25
Speaker
I think that's what HIP4 is, if I'm not mistaken. It's like prediction markets, I guess. It's like binary options, I think. I haven't really read into it, but I guess it's like... It's a start. It's supposed so to house all of finance. You and maybe you implement more complex options later.
00:58:44
Speaker
Yeah, exactly.
00:58:48
Speaker
I think we've ah we've covered a lot of topics not already. Do you have any um advice now at the end to give to people? Any any thing that they any wisdom that they should listen to?
00:59:00
Speaker
Yeah. Don't listen to people saying trading is easy. First. Second, take this take it easy. Take your time. Don't try to make it as fast as possible, that it doesn't work this day this way.
00:59:13
Speaker
ah Take your time to figure things out. and And then finally, take notes and journal everything. you can't You can't be slacking. You can't be sloppy. ah if trading if If anyone could make money easily with trading, nobody would be working a proper job. Everyone would be trading.
00:59:33
Speaker
OK. The reason it doesn't work this way is because it's trading is actually a job. You need to You need to see trading as, in my opinion, a professional activity. It's not totally fine to to invest on the side.
00:59:50
Speaker
It's totally fine. I mean, actually, you should always be investing whenever you have spare capital. You should be investing. But trading should be a professional activity.
01:00:02
Speaker
And yeah, that is it. And the problem is if you want to try trading,
01:00:11
Speaker
you must be accepting from the start that it's okay to, if it's not for you. i know I know what it seems. It's like trading looks cool.
01:00:21
Speaker
I mean, if you can make money clicking buttons, what's cooler than this?
Final Advice on Trading
01:00:26
Speaker
Nothing. So a lot of people want to be trading, but the truth is it's not it's just not for everyone. Just just like every other a job.
01:00:33
Speaker
See trading as just yet another job. and see if you are fit for this job. If you're not fit for this job, to forget about it. It's okay.
01:00:45
Speaker
It's okay. You can still invest. You can still make good money. In fact, I'd argue that a lot of people who have been AI NVIDIA investors a couple of years ago, they they outperformed the huge majority of traders. So there's nothing wrong with that.
01:01:01
Speaker
It's just, I don't know, I guess I'm saying this because I know this is going to be posted on crypto Twitter and a lot of our audience are people who are still dreaming to make it with crypto, who are still thinking trading is the best. And my answer is no.
01:01:18
Speaker
And I'm saying this being a trader, you know?
01:01:23
Speaker
so yeah If you trade, you should take it seriously. Yeah, there's no way wrong. From all the conversations I've had, that's probably a very common factor. It is a job. It is a job.
01:01:35
Speaker
Well, thank you very much for coming on. hi You're welcome. It was was was cool.