On Going Full Degen: Trading Bitcoin
On Going Full Degen: Trading Bitcoin
Why I started trading bitcoin perpetual future contracts.
Greetings my fellow degens! We have so many things to discuss…
… but first I think it’s worth sharing a bit more about how I came to this fascinating point in my life and ultimately how (and why!) I fell in love with trading bitcoin.
Subscribe, follow, and learn from this public record of one simple trader’s (mis)adventures of full-time trading degeneracy.
Welcome to the show.
Like most traders I started my journey in the well-worn, archetypal fashion: I got recked. Badly. I lost a small fortune of bitcoin on a leveraged trade in that went sideways and I didn’t have the “appropriate” amount of risk management. That’s a nice way of saying that I didn’t have any idea what I was really doing and I had no good reason of putting that much value on the line.
I learned my lesson the hard way.
After licking my wounds and giving the experience serious and sober consideration I determined that, at the very least, I should try to make back what I had principally lost — this time with real and proper technical training. So I got to it and in just a matter of weeks I had taught myself to trade bitcoin (perpetual futures) in a way where I was winning more trades than losing.
I could effectively earn (back) bitcoin by betting on its price action through a combination of technical and fundamental analysis using my skills as a software engineer and bitcoin enthusiast.
I honestly couldn’t believe it; beginner’s luck? Maybe. Not wanting to succumb to naive exuberance I set aside a budget, determined a few preliminary financial goals with what I believed were reasonable expectations and gave myself a few months to see if I could hack it as a full-time day trader.
Those first 3 months were a whirlwind of lessons including an assortment of big wins and, of course, disappointing drawdowns but overall my equity curve remained net-positive, up and to the right! I was on my way to recovering the bitcoin that I had lost; a legitimate way of stacking sats. Who would have thought?
In addition, two other things happened that caught me by surprise:
I was discovered that I really enjoyed — perhaps even loved — the creative challenge of technical analysis and the thrill of seeing an intense amount of work immediately rewarded (or invalidated).
I began to share my progress with others — and the positive results of my efforts — and a few of them asked for guidance on how they could begin to take the same steps as I had. It started with a few charts over text message but that quickly evolved into dedicated discord chat rooms.
Yikes — that escalated quickly! It was a loop of positive reinforcement as I spent more time trading I naturally became more experienced as I grew my craft and the outcomes not only became more consistent and predictable but the wins also grew and became larger in size.
Ultimately my goal was to build a sustainable, scalable, and relaxed trading system that would give me the results that I wanted with as little stress and anxiety as possible.
And I wanted to give this type of solution to others and as I shared my trading workflows I realized that I was spending more time than necessary repeating myself and it became obvious that I needed a more scalable and accessible system for collecting / sharing resources, tools, and insights.
The result of which is this newsletter, a library and journal of how I became (and still becoming) a full-time trader. I hope you find it useful too! Your subscription will tap you in to my growing, personal list of curated resources, tools, and trading systems that I’ve found to be quite profitable.
And for those that want a bit more alpha a paid subscription will give you even more of my misadventures into bitcoin trading as I share detailed specifics of my trade setups and the outcomes that those decisions produce.
🛑 — All posts will be 100% free and available for everyone until we’re ready to go live and more public with this new project. Thanks for helping me test-drive the new publication and preview it! I really appreciate your help and support!
Good luck my fellow degens! Let’s make some money!
To infinity and bitcoin.
— 8ɃIT