Bitcoin Forum

Thanks.

Trading is a zero-sum activity. For every person who had earned $1000, other people will have lost that same amount; more even, due to commissions/spreads.

I don't think you'll get too many straight answers. Folks will be too ashamed or smug to admit much. There aren't too many with the discipline to run away once they've made bank. They'll come back and get ravaged.

Yup, it all equals out. And since there are whale groups who deal in the thousands of BTC and talk in private, the typical regular on this site might have lost money.

Yep, the proper question ought to be:

How much money have people here LOST trading?

very low amount with trading bitcoin, more with altcoin, but even more with mining

Since I've started margin trading on Bitfinex I've been doing quite well trading. I used to be very hesitant about trading on margin but if you know how to control your risk and where to put your stop losses and take profits it can actually be quite rewarding. I've been making money on both longs and shorts, and I've had to cut my losses as well a few times but I'm still way up into positive territory. Not a bad experience so far. :)

For working class traders, there is almost zero reason to trade Bitcorn instead of altcorn.  There's a large amount of altcorn that saw 100x gains in short periods of time.  The markets are not very liquid, which is why they can have those gains, so the only reason to change to Bitcorn seems to be for people trying to gamble larger amounts of money.

Having said that, there's always doomsday prophecies of the altcorn market collapsing and providing no returns for anything.  Whether we will ever reach that point or not is up for debate.

Bitcoin price is easier to predict then altcoins. Plus most altcoins go to 0 and what good is that when you can't short them.

I have the opposite experience.  Altcorn tends to actually make moves in logical directions based on market sentiment and news, while Bitcorn trading during a deflating, Mark Madoff Gox bubble doesn't.

That's Bitcorn's current biggest hindrance.  Nobody wants to enter the scene until they know the Mark Madoff bubble and correction is over.

You're not going to get a straight answer here for multiple reasons, anonymity being the first and most obvious.

But look at the tape at an exchange like BFX and it becomes obvious there are players likely making (and losing) plenty of money.

Say Bob wants to do some trading and he has some bitcoins he doesn't mind putting at risk. He deposits BTC33 as margin at Bitfinex. Now he can trade with 3x that amount and keep the profits or eat the losses, minus the cost of the loan. He knows these markets pretty well and bought at $180 thinking a reversal was at hand. Not wanting to risk his whole margin, Bob makes a BTC25 margin buy. Now he is long and his unused margin protects him against an improbable crash to sub $150. (Should that happen, however, his account would be wiped out if he did not close in time.)

Bob has held onto that position until today. Now he can close his BTC25 long position at $295 per coin. The original position, worth $4500, is now worth $7375, a profit of $2875. Not a bad income for a few weeks' work, and he gets to keep his original BTC33 margin too. Had he risked more, say BTC50, he could have pocketed $5750, or nearly BTC20.

Now take a bigger trader, Alice, who is trading with a stash bought in 2013 for double digits. She has no worries putting BTC100 on margin. She makes a bold bet from $240 and buys BTC200, entering a long position worth $48,000. Today that position is worth $59,000 and Alice can realize a $11,000 profit. Now Alice has BTC137 in her account, and can take a portion as profit and slowly scale her trading positions up, increasing her income if she's successful and practices good risk management.

Take an even bigger trader who went long with BTC300 at $240. Today he's sitting on a $16,500 profit. Should he sell at $330, that's a sweet $27,000 profit in less than a month--more than a year's salary for the vast majority of people on earth.

Scale these types of profits up for people who trade with BTC500 and BTC1000 at a time during volatile periods, and you can see how trading becomes very interesting very quickly and get an idea of what kind of profits they are making.

Edit: I should probably add that if you are a new/unskilled trader or a gambler looking for somewhere to feed your addiction, negative signs can just as easily be put in front of the aforementioned profits as the market looks to shake these types of traders out.

I am sure some have made a bloody fortune threw trading and others have lost a fortune but the losers are likely to lie to you and their self lol I started trading altcoins when i first started and i lost a fair bit around 4-5 btc if i remember but then i stopped just jumping in and actually spending time researching the coins and their future, long story a little shorter ended up in profit not a fortune but got my money back so it's all good. Recently started trading usd/btc and i love it by far the best way to trade and the most btc to be made. I cannot give an amount because i really don't know except it is more than i started with and i have some in storage, spent some and cashed out some so probably 5+ btc since nov which is not great but not bad :) Happy trading   

please tell you're boss in the IRS i've lost everything.

couldn't agree.

bitcoin profits > altcoin

The only reason I trade is to gain back everything I lost trading.  :D

I know this very well and i am almost pro at it, losing i mean lol i have many bags but only need one or two of them to treat me right and i will be happy to claw back some losses  ;D

i done well from the scam coin pump and dumps, all up i made around 18BTC from those days, now i just hold BTC for the long term whether it lives or dies i am well ahead of where i started.

I am sure that the op knows that. But I think that he asked directly of your trading experience and money you earned/lost while trading.
I think that your profit from trading is dependent on your initial money invested. So in my case I earned really not that much I mainly trade just by buying bitcoin low and wait for price rise. With bitcoin alone is great strategy. I do not care about altcoins at all.

btc-e days:
My results from bitcoin and litecoin trading have been really consistent. Quite phenomenal and something I'm proud of. To give you an idea between November 2013 and March 2014 I turned $3,000 into a little over $20,000. Short version: Bought litecoin at $8 and sold at $41. Lost big chunk on bitcoin China ban news. Got really good at day trading bitcoin and grinded my way to 20k in a falling market.

mintpal era:
Then I got some crazy results from trading alt coins too. Made most on Dark, Asiacoin-scam and Liberty. These were all x1.5 - x2 trades. Only lost a little on Ultra.

bittrex saga:
Small gains in random coins followed, and my record trade of x2.5 from Vootcoin. I took a break and visited Central and South America (I'm from Europe).

bittrex post-sabbatical:
During my later alt coin trades however I got overconfident and foolish. I was overall distracted and not dedicated. Therefore I lost about $50,000 within two months!! Yea seriously... I learned a valuable lesson right there.

bitfinex present:
Since then I only trade bitcoin again, learned about margin trading and got my discipline back. :)

I have made maybe 100+ small trades and net net made a profit of 2BTC tops

I have no idea if Bitfenix is highly legit or fly by night, but it's kind of funny seeing everyone say, "just send your whole bank account to Bitfenix and trade on margin!".  That strategy worked great on Mintpal for a while till it disappeared overnight.

I have far less trust in altcoin exchanges than I have in the main bitcoin exchanges. That said I would never send my entire bank account to Bitfinex to trade on margin, that's just stupid. My account is worth about $4200 on Bitfinex now, and I started with $2500 there about a month ago. Not the kind of money that would ruin my life if I lost it. It's just fun. :)

I made only 0.01 till now by trading and I cannot reveal how much I lost as my profit will become negative then :(

Even if I delay by a day, I end up losing but this week has been profitable for me as the price is stable at $290. My BTC which was worth $7.79 2 days back was worth $7.75 today when I traded it  ;D

I invested and got my investment back plus a reasonable amount, and still have some BTC as well for a free lottery ticket.  Nothing to write home about, but net positive on BTC and USD.  Since the Gox fiasco I haven't traded at all (took a minor loss there) and just holding now.

All i've made trading has been due holding altcoins that exploded in price, in fact that's how i've made most of my btc (not counting sig campaings which is a tiny bonus).

That is what it is all about just that you are in profit it does not really matter how much although having made 100btc would be nice lol I am in your boat i have made enough to freeroll so that is god enough for me would like to get into it more i just don't have the time  :)

-1million to +1million in bitcoin

Is there any hope you can get your money back from Gox? You could have a healthy profit if they ever pay you back.

This was insane 750,000 bitcoins owed to customers i bet it was crazy in this forum for months after that crap, so so sad the mark probably sitting in paradise on innocent investors money. He had it sorted after that i wonder if anything will ever happen to the horrible little man!?

I have not really made much threw trading maybe a btc or 2 but at least i have not lost stupid amounts trading or getting stolen from trying to trade

The clients will get something back but likely not more than 35%. Anyone has a link to where I can get more informations about that ?

That MtGox was not to be trusted was apparent to any sensible person who paid attention to what was going on. Ever since the problems started in June 2013 I made sure to stay far far away from MtGox. I've traded on Bitstamp for a long time until I switched to Bitfinex recently.

=D

I've made plenty, but I rarely day trade, I'm mostly just a HODLer who sells a bit when the price goes a long way above the exponential moving average.

Pre-bitcoin boom very low, kind of like now, mostly ~100-150$ a month on average, im not a big player,and sometimes trades turn bad so its even lower.

When bitcoin price sparked it was insanely easy to earn money trading, especialy on altcoins and arbing, those were the days of ~200$ a day ! What ever i picked turned out to be a gold mine,
but with the loss of hype there was a large gap between trades, i couldnt even turn much profit even when there was a pump on cryptsy, like friday 13th for a whole year day after day.

I  am sure alot of people will claim they can earn thousands in a heartbeat, but those who truly can do that are extremely rare, rest are mostly just trolls.

cheers

https://i.imgur.com/v7bLWBS.jpg

>selling your bitcoins, ever

top kek

Stay poor, goyim.

It all depends. Sometimes you could just trade altcoin buying when it is low and then sell when it goes up and earn back everything in btc. You don't really have to cash out. There are some who took more risk by doing margin trading and speculating on bitcoin future. There's more risk over there but higher gain.

Not much, I used to do some day trading with altcoins, but it becomes hard to study them as they are very prone to manipulation.
As for bitcoin trading, it is decent, and I have made a good profit on it.