How to get started trading cryptocurrency and other asset classes.
How to trade crypto or other assets for a living. (or at least to manage risk and find setups)
Originally posted 2017
I have created this links page to share the resources that I have found with experienced crypto friends and to help out people that I meet in my crypto voyage, its the easiest way for me to update and share. I am not doing nodes, mining, scams, multilevel marketing or icos (rarely). So most of my resources are about technical analysis, market news, fundamentals, a bit of tech but mostly about trading.
My personal goal is to improve my trading, get my portfolio up and MAYBE accept other peoples money into my fund. But only when I am ready and only a few people. I will possibly consider 1 and 1 training for the right price.
If you are approached by people to invest in confusing schemes, mining, MLM, pyramid schemes, then just do your research on bitcointalk or reddit, see what the haters are saying and if they have any substance, some things have serious flaws and some things like paying for mining aren’t scams but your hedging on the fact btc will go up, so you might as well just buy the dam BTC’s.
My advice to anyone that is doing day trading, swing trading or margin trading is to get 500 hours worth of learning, you can do this by following youtubers that i have listed below, a few links below to some free materials and I recommend a few paid courses, but you do not need to pay. The paid courses with no groups, feedback or community is probably a waste of money because you can get lessons for free everywhere, paying money to have it all in one place is good, but the real value is learning in groups and then forming trading groups with people, because the more eyes working together across the charts for trade ideas, the better.
Most inexperienced people FOMO (see below for terminology) into the market when they first start crypto, they buy when the rsi is overbrought at the top of a huge green candle and often at all time highs, with no structure to their trades, no plan and little or no diversification. Then they sell out when the coin has dropped, they do not take profit due to greed, then have no plan, no structure… that is a mess. You need to plan, diversity, learn, put some money in to practice trades for sure, but keep your spread wide and buy on the lows after a coin has dipped and consolidated, there are lots of indicators that you can use, (volume profile to get a good value indicator) but if you want to start out fast, you can watch The rational investors or snipertube (changed to Traders Club) like I do for some trade ideas. You can start of with buy low, (at previous lows) sell half on double and buy back in when it retraces, or sell out your “free coins” as it rises. If you use stop losses, you need to keep track in a journal and see how the trades close. The general idea of TA, is that it should get us a win with 50–66% + of trades, (with Risk and Reward enough to make it profit) therefore making us good money in the long term.
To get started with crypto, I will try and include as many links to resources as possible. Such as the free introduction to crypto course here https://bab.teachable.com/courses/
(90% of the ability to make money with trading is psychological, so I have read many books, 10% is technical skill) — I suggest you read at least these 20 books
Step 1. Is to understand bitcoin, blockchain technology, read bitcoins whitepaper and follow the links I have posted further down, explaining crypto technology and its purpose. Likewise with stocks and shares, you can go on to investopedia to learn all the terms. https://investopedia.com
Step 2. Buy some btc. you can use websites like coinbase to buy bitcoin and a few other cryptos from your local currency.
Step 3. Sign up to 2–3 exchanges, like bitfinex, binance (largest one with volume, most of the time) and bittrex to start with.
Step 4. Order a wallet for your crypto, order direct from the manufacturer, not from 3rd parties, follow my “how to learn security” links.
Step 5. Ask yourself what your risk appetite is like, you can make money from crypto on the outside with less risk, with mining, buying icos, creating your own ico, running a node, day trading, building the tech or do some long-term holds such as creating an index. (i recommend long-term holds for the newbies, but you need to buy in properly, especially if its a larger amount) Learn about Risk Management. (use cryptocreds videos on youtube and his new study guide https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJBLRa9Sh0PZ0vL_wI9uDVbIRxVUdazE/view )
Step 6. Find a mentor that you can trust, find a meeting on meetup.com for your local bitcoin/crypto meeting, if there isn’t one, then you should create one, you need good traders around you, you need an edge to be at an advantage. If your mentor does not recommend diversifying, or recommends shitcoins, or is pretty much a gambler, then you need to try and find one that is rational, balanced and has your back. It’s not about predicting the market, but about probability. Yes, there are plenty of 10x or even 100x opportunities, but you need to learn when and how to take profits. You need to derisk early in the game, this is why I tell people to sell half their coins once its doubled value, you have got your money back and you have “free coins” to sell out as you please.
Step 7. Learn in the area as much as you can and try to focus on that area, for me I am not into mining anymore, my house gets too hot, I am not into running nodes, I am learning the tech but its not my thing. I love TA. so I have added lots of TA resources on here, I don’t know what other resources there are for mining, nodes, tech (apart from Ivan on tech)
Step 8. Make your first trades, using a bit of TA, your mentor and structure your trade. You need to plan your exit before you take a position, you need to journal everything you do. Set your sell orders correctly. I am trading against bitcoin and Etherium in order to increase my holdings of both coins. You can trade against other stable coins or against USD.
Step 9. Find some groups/communities and find one that suits you, with enough value and good people, I am in many facebook groups but I only scroll past and I pick up things, there is only going to be 2 groups that I add value to and get to know people. My main group uses rocketchat, most use discord and some others I follow are on telegram. All the best traders work in groups and all pros have mentors or team members.
Two trading forums http://www.trade2win.com/boards/ and https://www.elitetrader.com/et/forums/
Step 10. Keep learning, keep tightening your security. Avoid giving your money to mining companies, multi level marketing schemes, avoid anything that promises a good return and avoid anything that is overly complex. Create a daily journal, log your trades and be as professional as you can.
Step 11. You should derisk and get your initial investment back out, so you are under less stress if any or store it in a coin that you believe in. You need to learn your local tax laws and look into setting up accounts offshore if you want to avoid capital gains tax. You can google crypto tax havens and your local tax laws because its different everywhere.
Please watch this before you consider trading.
Costly Newbie Mistakes to avoid
- Jumping in too fast and buying on large green candles
- Not doing research or learning enough
- Paying for pump and dump groups
- Paying large amounts of money for courses
- Buying mining (just my opinion but Im not right or wrong)
- Expecting fast gains
- Selling at losses and giving up
- Selling a coin at a loss to chase another opportunity, then doing it again and losing even more. (being a good trader is learning to be patient, learning not to trade and having self-control, as well as keeping strict and not letting greed take over, or feeling down) Tips for new traders
- Not using stop-losses (this is a big subject and needs to be looked into elsewhere, I don’t use stop losses for my long term holds because I have so many, but I will use them more soon on just the larger holds, but I need to keep track of them and check often)
- Most hard forks are cash grabs, please be careful
- Plan the trade, don’t trade the plan
- Watch out for mainnets coming online, people often take profits the same day or the day before
- Be careful of group mentality, just because a whole telegram group is bullish on a project or your mates have the same train of thought, people blindly trust each other, then others believe because they see so many friends bullish.
- Be aware of market manipulation, algos, pump and dumps and market makers.
- Please study the image I created below to see the maths on drawdowns and losses. https://www.bryanflowers.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/Final-1.pdf
Here are a few crypto terms that you need to learn.
Altcoin: Any cryptocurrency other than bitcoin
Bagholder: A person who holds particular crypto which decreases in value until it is worthless
Bear/Bearish: Negative sentiment or downward price movement
Bear Trap: A literal trap where a general upward price trend reverses downwards momentarily and will continue its upwards motion
BTD: Buy The Dip. An indication to buy a coin when it has substantially decreased in price
Bull/Bullish: Positive sentiment or upward price movement
Bull Trap: A literal trap where a general decreasing price movement reverses upwards momentarily and will continue its downwards motion
Dead Cat Bounce: A temporary recovery in prices after a huge decrease
Dump/Dumping: Selling away your coins/Downward price movements due to increase selling pressure by many
DYOR: Do your own research
ELI5: Explain to me Like I’m 5. An explanation (usually in Reddit) that is simplified that even a 5-year-old can understand
Faucet: Website that rewards you with small amounts of cryptos for the completion of a specific task
FA: Fundamental Analysis
FOMO: Fear Of Missing Out. This is a rookie mistake where a coin is skyrocketing and you get the feeling it’s gonna pump more, so you buy at the peak
Fork: Splitting of the Blockchain due to competing philosophies or protocol upgrade
FUD: Fear, Uncertainty & Doubt. Describes time of panic where negative sentiments are overexaggerated
HODL: Act of holding on to your coins even in dire market circumstances, resisting the urge to sell
JOMO: Joy Of Missing Out. Opposite of FOMO
Long: A positive or favourable view on the coin or the market in general, usually with an underlying investment on the coin in mind
MCAP: Market capitalization of the coin, which is an indicator of its market size. It’s derived from multiplying its market price to the total available supply of coins currently in the market
Moon: Expected upward movement (burst) of price, towards the moon
Pump: Upward price movement
Pump & Dump: Price manipulation by whales or collectives
Shitcoin: A coin with no potential value or use.
Short: Selling coins on margin (borrowing from the exchange), expecting the price to plunge
TA: Technical Analysis, or the analysis of prices based on historical price movements and fancy indicators
Rekt: A slang that refers to “wrecked”
Reverse Indicator: Someone who is always wrong predicting price movements
RSI: Relative Strength Index, a popular trading indicator used in technical analysis
Vapourware: A project that is never actually manufactured or implemented, synonymous with shitcoin
Whale: Someone who owns a huge number of coins that can influence prices of coins
How to become a trader/investor — free course by trading view
Here is a good pdf to get you started on Understanding Cryptocurrency… https://thecryptocurrencyinvestor.files.wordpress.com/2018/05/bt-educationpdf.pdf
Learn about the security of your crypto and how to keep it safe.
A good write up on security https://hackernoon.com/ten-hacker-proof-steps-to-secure-your-crypto-assets-b564fe938e8 and https://hackernoon.com/a-guide-to-cryptocurrency-security-8681552820c1
Signal Groups / Pump and Dump Groups
IMO newbies run straight to pump and dump groups because they believe the hype, but they are often last to the gang bang and the party is over and they are footing the bill. These pump and dump groups in my mind is like gambling, you have no future with crypto if you rely on these groups, you can get lucky if your in the VIP group, but people are still loading up before you. I thought Alan masters was a pump and dump group, but its not so much, just has that effect on low market coins, because of the number of followers he has. Signal groups (are not pump and dump groups) will alert you when there are possible breakouts and confirmed breakouts, good groups will teach you at the same time, if you are serious and want to do this long-term, you need to rely on yourself only and get learning to make your own trades, look at the coin before you buy, don’t just blindly buy, try and understand the indicators that are showing a potential breakout, then you don’t need to rely on following people and you have your own ideas. Unless its a long-term trade or a big holding, I do not check the fundamentals, but I do often trade on very solid projects because i know the overall trend is bullish.
Research/News
I use a few websites sometimes, but mostly watching 5–7 hours of youtube videos daily. I have a facebook page here, every video and article that I have consumed and found useful, https://www.facebook.com/bryanflowerscrypto I will create video content later, (or maybe a group) but for now, I am focusing on my own education and trades.
coinigy — I haven’t used this website enough but it uses trading views charts but also has a few coins that trading view does not. I use it to sms/email be alerts also, and you can use the website to trade through its api with more features than using the websites itself.
Trading View — this is the best site for TA across all asset classes, the good thing about learning TA is that we can do TA on any stocks/shares and commodities. Its well worth paying for the pro to get extra tools.
https://coincheckup.com This website is a one-stop shop for all research on coins, and you can customise the columns with useful info like what percent the coin is away from its ATH (all-time high) You can quickly check coins github, social media, and other stats.
https://coinmarketcap.com This website is the most well known and used amongst most crypto traders, its good to have a broader look at the market, bitcoin dominance and the 1606 coins listed on there.
Hacked.com I previously paid for their trade alerts and news, but I haven’t read/followed them enough, but I will make more effort, They also have some good learning stuff here https://hacked.com/trading-101/
Bitcoin Ticker — I don’t trade bitcoin but its movement has an effect on alts, so I have it open on one of my screens.
Learning Technical Analysis and Trading
“Why would you learn TA?” “TA doesn’t work!” “TA can’t work because of market manipulation”
TA is all about getting 70–80% of your trades right, which over time means you make money if you do the right trades with more upside to the next resistance than downside to the next support. We are almost gambling without doing TA and structuring your trading strategy. The markets get manipulated and there are a lot of things that people say, but if you do your TA right, you will get more right than wrong and you will make money, everyone has their style, their setup and the whole subject is a big thing to study, Elliot waves, macd, bollinger, rsi, moving averages, Fibonacci, candle stick patterns and many other good indicators, take a look at this candle pattern guide to start with https://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/062315/using-bullish-candlestick-patterns-buy-stocks.asp
https://www.chartguys.com These guys do signal alerts, training and they have a community. I follow them on youtube and I have paid for their course, I have not paid to access their community simply because I have others I am in and not enough time.
https://www.therationalinvestor.com/ I highly recommend their daily brief videos which are around 1 hour per day, 5 days a week for around 20 usd a month. Their library has tons of links in there too and many great learning resources like their screeners and library. They have written many articles for their courses, here is one example of 75-page article explaining how capital markets work and building a trading plan https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0tsvqiJUFB1T2RuZzVuMDdIbTg/
I have paid for level one and level 2 which will take 12 weeks each to complete level. There are 3 levels in total. The trading course gets us doing real trades and gets us in real groups, I know most of it already, but I need to professionalize my trading journal and structures.
Can read more here https://www.bryanflowers.net/the-rational-investor-trading-course-review/
SMB Capital — Day Trading Edu and Training
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLo5LM9g7UwiY_0EzCtkvoAOv5_JWu4glB
Crypto Creds — free TA lessons, he links to his youtube videos on here (hes doing some more tutorials now that he’s finished his exams) https://docs.google.com/document/d/15c3rN15rkXldY8Te3GDG4NG7noaaoikydOoZQlElwXw/preview and his new study guide https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UJBLRa9Sh0PZ0vL_wI9uDVbIRxVUdazE/view
http://www.libertylifetrail.com/education/learntrading/ A great list of stuff to learn TA for free.
Harmonic Trading Patterns https://www.youtube.com/user/HarmonicTrading/videos
Crypto 101 podcast (newbies can learn about crypto on some of his podcasts, he has alot of other stuff to learn on there. free https://soundcloud.com/matthew-aaron-690749808
Chat With Traders
I have listed to almost every interview they have done, either using youtube or SoundCloud. https://chatwithtraders.com/
Learning Fundamentals — Choosing a coin to invest in
1. Quantitative
- Market Cap
- Circulating Supply
- Total Supply
- Inflation over time
- distribution/rich list
- ICO details (if application)
- Price — ATH, ATL, Cycles, price movements against bitcoin
- Value analysis against competitors
- Markets/Exchanges (liquidity) — Volume
- Consensus Method
- Block Specifications (if applicable)
2. Qualitative
- Use case
- Target Market
- Technology
- Innovation
- Team — Variety of people (marketing, public relations etc) Developers — check history, github, and references. Developer compensation model/commitment. Advisors
- Roadmap (steps, deadlines, history)
- Documents/whitepaper
- Community
- Partnership / Alliances
- Compensation
- Planned events
- AMA Sessions, check bitcoin talk and Reddit for engagement
- Concerns/problems and how they will be overcome
News Websites I use
https://bitcointalk.org
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/ (largest group) there are other groups with 65k followers in each approx.
https://cointelegraph.com/
https://www.ccn.com/
https://www.coindesk.com
Live News Feed — https://coins.live/news/
Android Apps
bituniverse — better than blockfolio because you can add your api and get a live balance.
Authenticator — used for 2 factor security
CoinmarketApp — alternative to their coinmarketcap website (reviewed on this page)
Discord and telegram apps, this is to access most crypto groups and channels.
coincheckup — an application for their website (reviewed on this page)
coinigy — an application to access their site
Crypto Bot — this app gives you notice when a coin goes on an exchange, i think it picks a coin up when the exchange lists it and its being tested for 5 minutes. Its not much notice and bots beat humans with these alerts.
Telegram Accounts
Telegram accounts I use (the rest are personal) @daytadernik charts, Palm beach leaks, cryptocred’s channel, cryptocurrency news, data dash alerts, richards calls (richard heart) But I only check telegram once every day or two.
Facebook Groups
I don’t use facebook personally except to message people and post videos/links on my facebook page. So when I look at my facebook feed it is 90% crypto posts and I scan through them for a laugh mostly but sometimes I see things that are just happening or latest news.
I will add the facebook groups here but I cant recommend any because I am only a skimmer/lurker and I don’t get a feel for groups, but I wont post links to nasty ones.
Twitter Accounts
List twitter accounts
YouTube Accounts That I follow
Altcoins Buzz — Stopped watching now, but hes still good
A show that covers news, some good buys and a general look at the market, The channels main man is Jeff and he has other people contributing to the channel, which is a very good thing for the channel, they are launching quite a few services and they have a female channel also.
These canadian guys were recommended by the coin mastery guy, the TA is great stuff and i am very sure there community would be a great place to hang out, but I dont have the time currently to use another community, but its definately next choice. I did pay for their course and there alerts but not access to the community.
Decentralized TV and BitesizeBitcoin
This guy does 5–10 minute videos all day as things happen, hes actually quite funny after you get to know him. Hes mostly a tech guy, he doesnt talk about TA but he talks about good and bad projects and silly things that “smart” people say in the crypto space.
Philakone is a great TA guy, (scalper) he does tend to bite a little when the trolls arrive, so he has a lot of trolls trolling him for attention, he’s a little nuts but in a good way. He’s a very good teacher and I recommend his course on udemy which is only 200 USD, I watch every video he does.
Ivan is at the front of the technology with his tech company, he’s also doing courses, I have paid for his coding course in June, just because i want to get a bigger perspective of the industry, I have little interest in coding, but I’m always learning how everything works, I think its important to know everything top to bottom, then you can master your space and understand when/why something might be a bad investment.
This guy does a good all round news, investment stuff, pops to a few interviews and is doing a good job, I may drop this channel soon because i am spending 5–7 hours per day watching youtube videos at 1.25x — 1.5x
I enjoyed these videos, but I am focusing on trading videos
Alot of people recommended this guy but I haven’t had enough time yet to fully evaluate, but i will watch his videos more.
Tradedevil is good to watch if you like Elliot waves, I am not sure if i like his style of TA, but I need to practice/learn elliot waves more.
Crypto Coins News — Dont watch him anymore
News twice a day, short and sweet, doesn’t get involved in the followers, which is a plus for me. He does alot of paid ico reviews and I feel like hes a bit new still.
One of my favorites, hes building a good TA community on discord, i am in many discords, but i am making this one my priority, i think i will settle with this guy mostly, i am in his patreon which is 99 usd a month. He gives out trading, signals and other useful stuff.
This guy is a real pro, short, sweet and positive general news of the market health and which coins are performing.
Crypto bobby is a good all rounder crypto guy, but I have stopped watching him for now.
I watch everyone of his videos religiously, its great for an overview of the crypto space.
Datadash is very well known, hes good at his TA, spotting some good buys and offers some valuable info. I would suggest this as a must for most people. I watch all of these videos.
This guy does a fair few things about icos, I rarely watch his videos but its there when I want ideas.
I met this guy Chris and he’s come a long long way in creating a good community and he’s good at reviewing icos in spreadsheets, I do not watch it anymore because I am not doing icos, but I’m still in his telegram group, should i feel like doing some icos.
One of the first crypto youtubers that I followed, he’s good at looking at bitcoin chart and he’s always got some interesting thoughts on what is going on in the markets and big macro things coming up. I recommend this channel as a must.
I was recommended this channel, the videos look rare but i need to start going through the videos for my TA.
Alan Masters — i found Alan masters on Trading view, he publishes his ideas here https://www.tradingview.com/u/alanmasters/ I then found his website which has a free group, he publishes them in the free group before on trading view and alot of very wealthy people follow him, as it always caused spikes, then i paid for his VIP service lifetime, but it changed to yearly. He publishes cracking signals, has a huge following and i have spoken to him many times. If you pay for his VIP service, you get the trades before the free group, and before the public. So it tends to spike a bit. https://alanmasters.com Alan masters is worth following but you need to be careful that the coin isnt too pumped before you buy in.
Exchanges
Binance, (recommended as the largest with most liquidity — can do stop loss) Bittrex, (old school exchange but has a new system of deleted 28 day old trades which sucks balls — can do a stop loss if no sell out)
Poloniex, I’m on this exchange to get some coins that weren’t on the main ones.
Kucoin, (many coins come on here first after ICO), bitfinex, (i will use this for margin trading, has all the tools needed, I am still getting used to the layout, but this is my main account for trading.)
Cryptopia, (shit coin heaven, i am expecting some crazy gains from my shit coin portfolio, lots of 10x coins but the volume is crap) Bitthumb, I am on this one just to pick up some coins that i couldn't get on other ones. I am on more exchange including IDEX which is decentralised.
I am also on huobi, yobit, bitthumb, bx.in.th, coinbase and gemini.
Diversity — I spread my trades/coins across 7 exchanges and I use a trezor, this is to reduce my risk. No more than 5% on one coin, (so I can sleep at night) 20% shit coin portfolio, 20% Bitcoin, 15% Eth, 10% Neo, 10% protocol coins, the rest in low cap low term holds and a short swing trading account.
If you don’t understand what is happening in the crypto world, here is a video that best explains it — Thomas Lee Presents The Economics of Cryptocurrencies | Upfront Summit 2018