Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

boardsie12

I don't really know a lot about Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, but I have a few friends that trade as a full time job.

They claimed that they used to make a lot, I'm talking 2019 and those times, but I always doubted their stories.

One guy, in particular, was trying to get me to buy and invest before Christmas, but I told him that I didn't trust all of that trading because it wasn't really real money and he would just continue to persuade me to invest and that I was crazy not to.

Lately, I noticed that the whole market has crumbled and I think Bitcoin has lost a majority of its value.

Is this true and what happened?

Also, was it a good job to have before the crash and did many people really make like a grand a week buying and trading?

Wanderer78

lads who got in very early on, have cleaned up, but they were Ponzi's after that, most lost their balls, the end!

boardsie12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119230752#Comment_119230752

God!

I fell sorry for anyone that invested and now lost everything in such a short period of time

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119230994#Comment_119230994

yup, i have met one or two of these lads, and i suspect this is their now situation, they had completely convinced themselves of this easy wealth creator, but were unable to see the woods!

boardsie12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119231035#Comment_119231035

What a shame that they didn't invest in other things, now they will end up bankrupt and perhaps back working in minimum wage jobs

Wanderer78

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119231047#Comment_119231047

yea its unfortunate alright, hopefully some did get out in time, and were investing in other asset classes all along, but i have met some fully invested, so theyve probably lost most if not all, it cant be a good feeling, people are truly desperate out there, trying to get ahead, but theres very few easy wealth creators out there, unless you re born into it!

erlichbachman

So you have friends who trade as their job? Not how true this is but anyways...

Just because Bitcoin goes down it (1) doesn't necessarily mean they lost money and (2) are in the front row when the price started dropping so could have offloaded at appropriate time.

Are you picturing traders sitting in front of a screen with their hands in their pockets as the price drops?

boardsie12

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119232137#Comment_119232137

Yeah, they were trading as a full-time job, 3 people that I know

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119232137#Comment_119232137

Traders always loose in the end. Financial institutions don’t trade on their own account and neither do the service firms that provide the training classes, the data and the software that allows you trade. Just like the California gold rush, the best way to make money out of trading is to sell the picks and shovels.

Over the past 30 years I have known a lot of traders, I have seen a lot of money made in the short term and lost in the long term. And at 60, I don’t know a single trader who made it to retirement. Most ended up back where they started at a desk working for one of the financial institutions.

Everyone dreams of the home job that makes them heaps of money, so it’s easier find 500 people in the first world willing to pay you $100 a month for trading services than make money out of trading. Hell if you are a one man band you don’t even need half that many to make a nice living!

We should frame Jim2007's comment.

It's the service providers to the hungry who make money. I know a few who were in crypto quite early. Most would have sold at various points along the way, made a few bob, but ultimately lost money this year. Make make a few bob again, but nothing life changing.

The only person I know who became a millionaire did so by working at a crypto exchange and getting good shape options pre-IPO. They then sold the shares shortly after the IPO. Like all the senior management of the firm did...

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119250967#Comment_119250967

Sorry, but this is complete nonsense. Traders don't always lose in the end and plenty of firms trade their own capital (proprietary trading firms).

Amadan Dubh

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058251161/bitcoin-and-other-cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin has further to fall and will at some stage probably be overtaken by a new wave of digital currencies. Many regulator statements indicate it is essentially a combination of money laundering and "get rich quick" schemes that have lead to it gaining notoriety, mainly because it is entirely unbacked by anything. Once the regulatory net inevitably gets thrown over it, the volatility and growth experienced in the past will no longer be possible. However, I'm sure the benefits of and lessons learned from bitcoin will ultimately still exist in the new wave of digital currencies.

Back in 2017, before it started to take off, it was worth around $20k at one stage but the vast majority of that year it actually traded below $10k. As someone posted above, I think it is not unreasonable to think something between $10-15k this year is somewhere it might find a bit more of an equilibrium in its price.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119265670#Comment_119265670

Thirty years selling them software and data tells me they do. But if you believe that that is just fine since you'll be another paying customer.

HerrKuehn

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119267878#Comment_119267878

Right, so you have really no understanding of what trading is other than a very superficial tenuous connection to the industry, selling services.

I have no interest in Crypto other than a curiosity around the psychology of it all. I have been developing HFT trading algos in traditional financial markets for the last 15 years, so I actually understand how trading strategies make money, rather than say chatting to a guy in the canteen or something like that.

What I think you are referring to above in terms of guys coming back is that they may have gone off to trade their own account and then come back to the firm. A trader might have a strategy that works for a period of time, but every strategy has a decay built into it. This can be due to increased competition, changes in matching algorithms, reduced tick values, changes in market conditions (stability/volatility) etc etc. If you are trading on your own, it is difficult to continuously keep ahead. You need to trade the current market to make money and also spend time on strategy development so you have a continuous pipeline of new stuff. This is really challenging on your own, there really is a huge benefit to scale. So, you will often have a trader with a single strategy type that works for a while and then stops working and they don't have new ideas. Generally speaking, in most cases, strategies will be flat EOD, so they would be continuously making money on it for the time they are trading.

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silliussoddius

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120440292#Comment_120440292

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