Bitcoin Forum

What would happen if we took a new trader, somebody with zero knowledge at all, and I give them I dunno, .01 Bitcoins for free, for them to get started trading with. What is that, about $200 worth?

But here is the experiment. The experiment is to have them ONLY read this Speculator forum and nothing else is allowed. They are not allowed to use any charts, not allowed to learn TA or FA.  They would just rely upon being just another bozo on the bus here at this Speculators forum.  So: all of their trades would have to be based upon what they read at this subforum alone.

What would the outcome be?  Big lose?  or Big win?

How are they going to click buy and sell if they are not going to look at the pair in the exchange?

The price action on the exchange is an indicator itself.  But if they are just going to call someone to execute the trade just like the stock market way before there were platforms to operate on the computers, the wall observer will do.  It would be fun like the wolves of the wallstreet movie but its going to be worse if the fudsters come to post.

they would probably lose it all in short order. if they use high leverage, they could lose it all in a day. :P

the prevailing wisdom is that 90-95%+ of all traders lose money. most people make a few losing trades and then quit forever. this would be no different---except this trader would have zero knowledge of TA or FA, thus they would be even worse off than average.

Who knows what will be the result. They will get a free trading fund after all so they will not feel pressured.

I've seen lots of new traders who don't have a knowledge of doing TAs (obviously, they are newbie) so instead of focusing too much to study how to do it which will take time, they based their strategy from what they read (other's view, prediction, speculations). All they need is basic knowledge about how to place a trade and understanding the risks then that's it, they can start doing trades now.

We can't really say if they will able to lose or win big out of just reading speculations. There are traders who don't rely on TA's but yielding good results. Proper timing and execution really play a big part here.

There was a great thread started back then by one pretty famous trader with a trading game. Many high caliber people started to play around and most of them lost more than the guys just hodling bitcoin. Only one trader came out a bit on top of the hodler.

Will try to find the thread !

Well,
We can hunt down a total newbie trader in the Trading Discussion forum
Newbies often post topics there saying "Im totallly new where do I start?"
Then if they agree to be part of the experiment, bring them over to Speculating
Then they can place orders from posting in this topic with a Volunteer Operator
Just use someones account at some exchange, they act as the operator
Let's say it is only $50 USD worth of a trading account
See what happens.
See how many orders they place and if they buy sell or hold, etc

The operator eliminates them from seeing live charts and prices bouncing
So they will be away from the heat of seeing real live charts in action

They only have all us bozos at Speculating to listen to :)

I can probably pony up a few bits

They lost a lot because of aggressiveness and always took advantage of the current wave without analysing. Basically that's their mindset, only to earn quick profit and not long term plans. Holders allocated more days, months or even years to grow and increase the value of an asset before deciding to sell it. Speculations can influence a lot of people, that's why we need to avoid taking it seriously, in order to sustain until market fully recovers.

No I think they could be successful with a blindfold strategy so long as they did the opposite of what consensus thread titles or even content appeared with.    So without TA they cant really be buying on less then daily bars or 1 buy or sell per day and basically be swing traders.    When threads are mostly gloomy, look to take a long bias trade and when everyone is mentioning half a million dollars per Bitcoin its time to take profits.
   If somehow they could be reading the crowd sentiment quite well via thread sentiment it could probably become profitable, when gloom is apparent and also price is negative for some time then you have a double negative.   Multiple two negative numbers and you will find a positive, theres some logic to be found amongst the chaos of the crowd.

Come to think the scenario when you starting up did you struggle to make your first trade right? since for sure they will to and they will surely lose on their trading attempts since they don't know what they are doing and also if  they win maybe they  are lucky but I think they will be eaten by their greed to trade more since I will assume they will  aim for more bigger gains on the next trade. And it's really better if they have an information on the forum since event though sometimes it's misleading but for sure they will learn from it.

experimenting with $ 50 / $ 200 and only depends on speculation in this forum? for the spot market they will not lose too much, but if they are disciplined and only hold on one thread of speculation, the possibility of profit can occur because they do not emotionally conduct personal experiments with short target time intervals. The experimental results will be different if they use leverage, minimal capital is only enough to shorten the liquidation distance, the movement of the graph will be faster than the comments here, it is likely to fail.

Of course the losing part have the larger possibility than having a win.
If he did win, then let us say it is some beginners luck.
Or he could be reading a so much here in this forum for him to see when to sell or buy in the right moment.

It could also be the lab rat is too patient to wait for a good pump for him to win.
But to summarize it, everything cannot be learned here. You must first experience it and also some losses which is not bad if it is for knowledge.

If they're smart, they will break the rules and learn how to trade. That's what I'd do if someone gave me a couple hundred bucks to build from. I built my entire trading career from a $160 buy-in many years ago.

This is actually a pretty good experiment. Give someone some capital and just counter-trade them. Most likely if you give them $1000 they will lose it and you can make that $1000 or multiples more if you just use more leverage.

Most new traders basically make good trades but they take profit way too early. So most likely they will have many $50 or $100 profit trades and they will have either 2 trades that are $500 losses or one trade which is a $1000 loss and run out of money.

Basically what the pros are doing, they let their winners run while keeping their losses small and that's how they survive for years while others quit.

OP, why don't you experiment with this winning strategy, zoom out, then Buy the dip, and HODL. 8)

I studied TA myself and never learned from people, because I learned from experience that is the most important thing in my opinion, if they are new traders given capital and start trading just reading this speculation thread I think it's still lacking and of course there will be more losing money, because actually what they read on the speculation thread here should be an additional insight not the main lesson, the real lesson is when they try to trade and from that experience will teach them many things

To be honest, I sometimes don't believe in people drawing analysis charts that are really smart, logically in the world of crypto trading charts are usually formed because of traders, so which stupid traders want to spend their time following the prices on charts, I don't think there's time for that. , not the same as we analyze like in forex, crypto is unpredictable and still needs time to make many traders more mature in using analysis, everything is still out of control

If that newbie trader will always see the comments of others saying simply holding the bitcoin he has then he'll get to win. But the bitcoin he has is free so basically he wouldn't care if it will be at lose.

So, this kind of situational problems doesn't make sense for me. As expected, a newbie would find it difficult to follow strategy being taught to him because he lacks of experience.

hmm ...
tend to lose i guess , because like u say before , all of what he need for trading just from this forum , knowledge , speculation, prediction is from people on this forum .
and i am sure mostly price prediction just a wishfull think.
but that will be different if he have a attitude to watch and see for a while.

I doubt its possible. Most discussions here in the Speculations are about the recent dumps and pumps, and there isn't much news regarding sideways movement like what we are currently experiencing right now. Plus, there's also the decision of whether the trader is investing in a long or short term one. Honestly, I doubt anyone has no idea what traders do. They should know by the term itself what they generally do, and should be able to come up with at the very least the most basic plan a trader could come up with and follow that. So, It isn't really a big win nor a big lose, speculation is also filled with luck after all, so no result in the end.
It would be a lot better if a simulation was done where the results are predetermined already, makes the test or experiment a lot more viable.

0.01 BTC is worth about $75 now but yeah I think the experiment would show that most of them would lose that amount -- but no different from most other supposedly trained traders these days. I mean, I've entered so-called expert/whale signal channels myself in the past (sue me, I was a n00b too) and with supposedly years of experience and skill behind them. You know what? They all did super well in 2017. And then did spectacularly shitty in 2018. I even PAID in Q1 2018 to see the premium channels myself and the founder actually told me it was literally the worst month for me to join. I just laughed and said fool me once shame on you.

Anyway, the experiment would depend on which threads get bumped up though, no? How would they pick which to follow?

I guess the chances are mostly on the trader losing the BTC. Trading ain't really that easy and well, most of the posts here in speculation are actually analysis of movements already done. People with no knowledge of trading learn not from the result, but rather the process. Besides, even if he questioned people here, each and every one of us actually has a different trading plan being followed so I doubt any answer could possibly be helpful to him/her.
This is in the case of short term experiment though. In the long term, ngl, no need to view this forum. Just leave it there and wait a year, that should work out quite fine.

In order to become a trader, people need to continuously learn to improve their knowledge, besides a trader also needs many qualities such as confidence, emotional mastery and many other things. This forum is a great place to learn about bitcoin as well as the cryptocurrency market, but that is not enough to turn a new person into a trader.
If you give the money to a new trader and ask him to start trading, I think 90% he will lose all that money.

If you give capital to a noob to do routine trading and read the market relying only on the Speculation thread. I'm sure it only burns money. Because Rarely pro traders who give there speculation here. I am not saying that all the speculations written here are useless, only it would be better if it did not rely on treads here and used many sources to predict future market prices to be more accurate.

I would speculate that our new trader will be losing the money big time. What I know is that successful traders are using all the available tools and strategies at his/her disposal, and they are not limited to only one tool that they can use anytime. There has never been any history or any claim that anyone here in this forum made a lot of money in trading just reading here and nothing else. That can be a very risky proposition but it would be exciting to see it happen, that is if there will be someone willing to shoulder the required amount of Bitcoin as capital. I doubt anybody would agree here to carry the cost. But thanks for suggesting you are adding more colors to the forum.

You did not mention if he’s going to day trade or hodl long term. If he day trade his chances to win would be very slim however if he hold it for long term, he has higher chance of making gains even if he bought Bitcoin at higher price.

That will be a great experiment but unfortunately I think that such person is going to lose everything in a matter of months but that is way better than the results that he will get if he based his decisions on the altcoins speculation forum in which case I think he will lose all his money in a week, trading requires a very precise set of skills, knowledge and experience in order to have any chance of being profitable and if you do not have that eventually you are going to lose.

Its not impossible, a person can just get lucky like any gamble out there.    People do stumble across low prices, go long and keep that position and do well.   Most would sell too early or some other mistake but no doubt some have done well over the years and managed to keep it.   But on average the deciding factor for successful trading would come down to available capital, reasonable management of that and time taken to properly observe and time participation.
   Others will argue in favour of leverage but the problem is that counts both for and against you, so you increase the knife edge of that time or price range you must be correct and its extremely hard to win on leverage unless already a champion trader.   I would say its basically about risked capital and people who trade are willing to pay the price so are committed to the pursuit not just hoping to pay very little and get a big pay off because thats so unlikely for most of us still which much to learn.
  I hate to say it but the easiest thing to do is identify when the market could be depressed and now is one of those times, dont use leverage and just go long.  Thats it, your trade is simple and open.   If you dont dive into the white waters of hyper markets then its possible to gain a better value from the depressed price.    I'm personally thinking the base price for BTC is over these few months but it might take the entire duration of 2020 to work out, a few too many are OTT on halvening so a lull after that event would relate for me to my prior experience and so expectations.

Most people will tell you that he'd lose money because that's the statistic. If you are able to make money on any market you're in the 20% of winners. If you're able to come out unscathed without losing money just going out with no profit or a very small loss you're in another 30%. The other 50% loses a lot and exits bitter.

If you had only the forum to read you'd probably make money, provided that you wouldn't panic. Most people here are bulls so you'd probably take a long from here.

I'd say that neither. We can't really predict since the his win or loss totally relies on pure chance or luck. And also depends on the timeframe. If he would go long-term, then chances are higher that he would gain due to the halving, but it's always not guaranteed. If he did go short-term, then there's higher chance he would lose more than he could earn.

Even if they're allowed to learn charts and basic TAs, a new trader won't really put that to good use since it'll take time and experience to be able to put that to practice efficiently. He'll likely learn basics and terminologies here but in order to be familiar with that he's reading and learning, he needs to put that to practice by making actual trades.

Where did you get these statistics? I don't know what the statistics are for Crypto but I am assuming its like most other financial markets out there like Forex or Stock trading.

Basically when it comes to retail traders, something like 95% lose money and something like less than 1% are able to day trade and call it a living. The other smaller 5% or so most likely are either retired or they got a day job and just do it on the side. But the sad fact is that 95% of them lose money and not just break-even.

Its zero-sum and you need someone to lose money for you to make money. Look at the Bitmex or Bitfinex leadership boards there, you will basically see 1 or 2 whales and 100-200 smaller retail people who are at a loss while the whales are at a huge gain. This is no different than banks or institutions making money while the average investor struggles.

If we take into account the fact that the number of forum users has grown very much since 2015, then there is a really real explanation for this, that the cryptocurrency advertisement really worked and people came to the forum without any knowledge at all, but had confidence  that cryptocurrency will make it possible to earn a lot of money.  Thus, thanks to the information on the bitcointalk forum, many users became investors and traders, while acting only in a narrow direction and not developing comprehensively.  Anyone who wants to improve their results will develop comprehensively and study various information from other sources, and not just focus on the forum.  Although I agree with other users who claim that the bitcointalk forum has a fairly rich database of information not only for novice cryptocurrency users, but also for those who are trying to replenish their knowledge.

People don't know what kind of trap day trading really is. If you stick to buy low sell high, where you don't mind waiting a few weeks or even a few months to sell higher, the percentage of people losing isn't +90% but much and much lower.

I have been into day trading myself and it's horrible not only from an ROI perspective, but also from a time perspective because staring at charts all day is such a waste of time. I barely came out of the house, only to do some grocery shopping. I wasted so much time on something so unproductive that I decided to call it a day and never day traded again.

I only take on positions when I see an opportunity (mostly based on pattern formations) and if there is nothing that interests me, I just don't do anything. I thus far made profit on most of the positions I took on. You enjoy life better if you don't day trade and thus not lose money.

They'll never last with that 0.01 as their capital in trading if they only based on speculation in this thread or this forum only.
Every trader needs to have their own analysis as well as that would gear them to survive in this long term journey if they are looking for real success.

Relying on speculation alone is like gambling based on luck, it's not trading anymore.

Well it would all depend on a stuff they are reading about. If they got to be able find a decent speculation which may be close to reality, it may result to may be big win or fair win. Otherwise would be a big lose, well, it is somehow obvious at some point because it is quite tough to go trading without any background, and you'll be doing right away in the hands of what have you read in speculation section.

the outcome will of course busted it all in the end .

in the short term they could gained some profits , it won't last for long. you know why? even those people with a lot of experiences and high skills trader have a very low percentage to ended up with profit, the research say it all , mostly they claimed that less than 10% a trader can success making profit in the long run.

that is the fact , if you insist to do so , please do it and tell us the result, we won't be surprised with the outcome  :D

No one knows but most of the time if he do follow those calls most of the time then for most chances he would really have those losing trades
yet anytime we do see these calls are usually shilling out stuffs which indicates on sell or accumulation.As mentioned that he doesnt have any knowledge
about TA and FA then it would be hard on just following any speculations yet you cant even justify if those are deserving to be followed.

Millions and millions if the person in question would just HODL  ::)

I think the problem with those people is that they try to make profit quick. No matter how long you have been trying to get trading to work for you, there simply isn't a way for you to make more profit than you have lost.

Most people make things worse for themselves by raising the stakes in an attempt to gain back what they have lost, but gamblers have been the prefect example in terms of exposing how dangerous revenge gambling really is.

People can't even get things working for themselves in the stock market they claim is very predictable. How on earth will they be able to have any success within crypto, a market that's truly unpredictable.

Kiss that .01 BTC good bye since trading cryptocurrencies isn't really about following what others have been saying since you are just basically following them blindly without knowing if their analysis is accurate. Other than that traders need to be emotionally tough, supposed that what they have read is very accurate yet the trader isn't emotionally prepared for that trade he would be losing money because he/she can't stick to the trading plan. And have you seen the analysis here lately? Only a few members post proper analysis and others are only pure speculation or just FUD or FOMO without any kind of analysis whatsoever.

They would lose sooooo much money, you think that giving them 200 dollars to start they would be able to only lose 200 dollars and not more. I tell you if somehow they could find or learn a way to wager more than 200 dollars with their 200 dollars they will make a debt on money they don't have. Hell those dudes would spend from their credit cards and take out loans and find a way. They will keep losing and losing until they literally have absolutely no possession in their name.

This place is horrible for trading, speculation is literally a place where speculations are made by people with absolutely no filter at all, there is no requirements for you to be able to write here or even start a topic here. Most of the time you can see contradict topics back to back like "is btc going to 3k" and "is btc going to 50k" type of deals. This is the absolute last place to take a look at for this.

then we are agreed that people are impatient most of the times.

and that is one of the major factor makes them failed reaching the target to have a steady profit in trading. honestly i can not compare trading to how raising the stakes as a gambling, that is pretty much different. it is part of the strategy in money management though.

but here considering we are talking about speculation where i believe this kind behavior in trading is tend to a gambling.
indeed, things will never work out with that kind behavior.
nobody succeed through gambling, nobody succeed through trading with 100% pure speculation .

They would surely lose something if they wouldn't be able to wait for the best time to sell. Short term investment wouldn't work well for now. There are coins that include Bitcoin which are good for a long term investment. Speculations might ruin our decisions so we might as well learn how to deal with the market.

Of course, short-term investments are very profitable for generating income in an active cryptocurrency market, when the entire cryptocurrency has good volatility and constantly fluctuates in price.  Under such conditions, even daily trading can show very good trading.  But People already took advantage of short-term investments in 2016 and 2017, when they bought tokens of new projects during preliminary sales, with 50 percent bonuses, and immediately after listing they sold these tokens three or four times more expensive.  Of course, this very negatively affected the entire cryptocurrency market, and not just the projects themselves.  Those who have made investments for the long term are still waiting for their profits.

This is the reality folks and if you choose to ignore it then you are doing it at your own risk, most investors and traders are long term losers, we get blinded by the results of the few winners because they are very vocal about it while the people that lose everything do not want to share their experience because they are ashamed of the mistakes they made, and even if they shared their experiences many people are going to choose to ignore them because they do not think that will happen to them.

Better luck finding investors for your experiment because from my experience I can tell you the whole account will be burnt in half the time that's on your mind. Moreover to make it interesting let's even give him liberty to see charts use TA FA(being a new trader he will learn it side by side) and still the result won't really vary the whole account will still be burnt in similar number of days. Thing is that every person who has become a successful trader has made atleast one account complete zero. This is like paying a fees to learn trading. Wise are those who lose lesser amount. Some are still burning their accounts on daily basis 😂

---

Where are you living in? Kingdom of fantasy trading? There is no HODL in trading and trust me HODL blindly has never been profitable using this as your strategy. You need to find the absolute right share or coin which could potentially grow big and yes you are not provided with fundamental or technical analysis so how do you expect to find coin to HODL?

I'm actually more of believe that the insiders and people behind the projects were dumping.

I'm sure there have also been short term flippers having made a sweet initial profit, but most of the noobs who bought into projects really believed they were going to change the world. Tokens that are going to change the world are kept for the very long term, which a lot people did and lost a lot of money with. Retailers have been rekt hard and won't touch this crap again any time soon.

The IEO hype was kinda similar, it just turned out to be a flop much sooner, where ICO's had around 1.5 years to thrive. The only good thing about that is the fact that fewer people fell victim to their own greed and shitty nature of the projects.

that's easy enough to explain: the IEO phenomenon emerged during a bear market and hasn't coincided with a bubble.

bitcoin investors have always been obsessed with securities investment. in 2012 and 2013, we had things like bitcoin savings & trust, havelock investments, asicminer stocks. NXT then brought forth the ICO model and ethereum popularized it. then came the 2017 ICO bubble and IEOs after that.

so IEOs might have their day yet. otherwise i wonder what the next fundraising model will be. something is gonna get hyped the same way during the next bubble. crypto investors are simply too greedy for me to assume otherwise.