Baby steps

I’ve been talking about cryptocurrency for a bit now and most of the feedback that I’ve gotten has to do with different strategies. Most people are interested in using it as passive income and have been very interested in automated bitcoin trading programs since mining isn’t the most lucrative venture without lots of upfront investment. Before using a robot(program) I believe people should learn to work the market themselves. By doing this you’ll fully understand what your robot is doing and how best to instruct it. So before you get a robot be the robot. That’s what we’ll cover today.

"The best way to profit from the market is by taking what I like to call baby steps."

What I mean by this is capitalizing on the micro fluctuations cryptocurrencies go through hour after hour. Some of you more financially savvy readers might know this as day trading. Let me give you an example. Over the course of a day, LTC might have a change of 5%. Each hour however the coin goes up 1%; down 3%; up 4%; and so on and so forth(these percentages are hypothetically used for illustrative purposes.) Those hourly fluctuations are where you make your money. Let’s take a more specific example. At the time of writing this LTC is worth $325. Looking at the chart today for the last 6 hours it’s been fluctuating up and down by about 3%. My strategy trades a 1% margin. By this, I mean that If LTC is at $325 my first trade will be to buy at $321(1% below $325). As soon as that buys I sell it at 1% above what I bought it for which would be $325. $4 profit(well about $3.90 after transaction fees). Nothing to write home about right? Well, think about doing this 10 times a day or more. Also, that math is only if you’re trading 1. 10 Litecoin under the same conditions would be a $40 profit instead of 4. You can start with low amounts of investment and build your way up

After you make your first sell you’re basically repeating the same process. Just make sure you calculate 1% down from where the price is currently and not what you sold it for. The prices change so quickly that you could be selling yourself short or not trading at current price plateaus. Wash rinse and repeat. The worst part of this process is waiting for the coin to get to your buy/sell numbers. It’s a waiting game but if you trade at low percentages you shouldn’t be waiting that long. Fair warning though; it could be (and often is an hour or more). It really depends on the speed(volume) of the coin you choose to trade.

Speaking of volume let’s talk about choosing a coin to trade. I used Litecoin as my example but that may not be the best coin especially if you don’t have a lot to invest. I always look at the list at the beginning of my trade day. I choose from the top volume coins that day(Bitcoin is always number 1 so look at what’s 2,3,4 and even 5). A rule of thumb is that the more of a coin you have to trade the better. Like was said in the litecoin example 1 of them is a $4 profit. 10 of them is a $40 profit. But 10 litecoin at $325 a pop would cost $3,250. Most of us don’t have that to invest. There are many smaller coins that give a smaller investor entry into the market. This week along with LTC I’ve been trading XRP. Whereas I only have the cash to trade 2 LTC at a time I’ve been trading 800 XRP. The same 1-3% fluctuations make me $9-20 on LTC but $25-50 on XRP. I actually make more with the cheaper coin. I know; crazy right?

Another note; because I don’t like math and 7 decimal places after a zero confuses the hell outta me; I mostly trade on the USDT market. I suggest anyone just starting off do this exclusively. There aren’t anywhere near as many coins but you’ll be able to see your profit/loss plain as day and calculate buys and sells much easier. Once you get good you can diversify your trading strategy with different pairs(BTC/ETH BTC/LTC etc).

I use a few tools to make my life a little easier. First, off the exchange I use mostly is Poloniex. When I’m not sitting in front of my desktop I use zTrader to trade on the go(detailed review of the app and how it’s used coming this week). I also have an app called “Quick Percentage Calculator” to calculate the up/down the percentage of my buys and sells.

Reading this tutorial hopefully helps to form entry-level strategies for people. Reading is not doing though. What is really going to teach you about the market is getting active in the market. Don’t invest your life’s savings or anything. Don’t put more in than your willing to lose. Like all financial markets, there is a chance of losing so know that going in. But with a sound repeatable strategy and not being emotional(a 10 or 15% downturn in a coin is not a crash so don’t panic). The process described above is in the simplest terms what a crypto trading robot does. In the near future, we’ll talk about using those to automate trading.

If you have questions don’t hesitate to contact me. All of your feedback helps me determine what to talk about next.