I suppose this applies when you trade bitcoin for fiat, right? What if you traded only crypto? Would KYC be also waiting around the corner if you traded just crypto/crypto pairs?

I really like the Kraken exchange, but all exchanges seem to go in the direction of of asking KYC for everything. This is a disaster, and we really need some decentralized trading platform with good liquidity to replace them all.

I absolutely support your application. Best of luck.

I'm not a full time trader, but I can try to answer some of your questions.

bitmex.com and kraken.com


I'm currently trading the 4h time frame. So I have to look at the charts every four hours for 5 minutes to see if I should enter a trade or exit a trade.

That's the benefit of higher time frames. If you trade the higher time frames, you have a lot more freedom and you don't have to be obsessed with the price all the time.


This guy:

http://nononsenseforex.com/

has changed the way I trade. I recommend taking the time to test his system.


Nothing much at the moment.


The huge bitmex wicks. Just kidding.

How is it safe? First it doesn't exist yet. Second, for a blockchain to be safe it has to be decentralized (at least to a certain degree) and have a huge hash power plugged into it preferably from different entities that don't collude together. If Facebook is going to provide the hashpower for that blockchain, what happens if/when one day they decide to pull the plug? We have seen companies as big as Facebook rise and fall, so it may happen.

Just a reminder, Bitcoin (and its blockchain) is not dependent on any single company and that's what makes it safe and valuable. Moreover, it has been around for 10 years and has already proven its reliability.

It is really silly comparing a future centralized questionable coin with bitcoin.

Yes, binance has a "stop loss", but it is a "market stop loss". The OP is asking about a "limit stop loss", which binance has not, but bitmex has, as explained by @exstasie in the post above.

To be clear, "market stop loss" is executed similar to a "market order", while "limit stop loss" is executed like a "limit order", if you are getting what I want to say.

This is a very good advice and is essential to implement for everyone trading on Bitmex. I myself always use "market stop losses". Luckily it is the default value. The difference between paying maker fees vs collecting taker fees is negligible in situations where your exit has to happen to prevent unnecessary losses and save your skin.

I agree with ever word you said. I think it was ICT trader who once said something like this: "Having mental stop losses is a sure way to go mental". And yes, cutting emotions entirely is essential. People who can't do that, have no business being in trading at all.

I don't quite get it. What is there to panic? Even before you have entered your trade you should have put your stop loss. You know up front how much you are willing to lose. And you are totally fine with the possible loss.

If there is slippage, yes, you may lose a little bit more than planned. But what's the alternative?

How can "sneaking out slowly" be a better option? Say there is a violent move that continues in the opposite direction with respect to your trade for days seemingly without end.

Setting a stop lose immediately is the only option.

Some people say, having a stop loss in your mind (an idea where you are going to exit), enough. No it isn't if you ask me. Precisely because shit scenarios happen.

Granted, it's hard to predict the future. But we can speculate. If the forecasts of numerous bitcoiners come true, that is, if indeed bitcoin is worth several hundreds of thousands of dollars, then, the fees will have to rise proportionally. On chain transactions will become very costly, for example, tens of thousands of dollars. By then, of course, the LN (lightning network for off chain payments) will be fully operational, so nobody will have to transact on chain. Probably on chain transactions will be reserved to the really wealthy people. That is one possible scenario that may come to mind.

You are quite right. On Bitmex, people are told to trade without a stop loss precisely because of the killer wicks this exchange has. To my mind, these wicks are clear sign of manipulation, but that's another story. So you have to have a stop if you want to avoid liquidation. You can be lucky and avoid liquidation 10 times in a row, but the 11th time may clear your account. Or, at least, you have to be very disciplined not to put at risk your whole account in a single trade.

To be fair, I have to mention that the stop loss on Bitmex is far from being perfect. Sometimes my stop loss gets triggered 50 or 100 USD after the actual value I had put in, but I guess one has to live with that.

Bitmex can be used in various ways. You can use it like a casino if you like, but that usually leads to disaster. If by any chance a person is lucky and manages to earn a lot of money, they should take that money and never come back again. Or I think disaster is imminent.

Yes, I agree. It's a dream of getting rich quickly. I have heard many sad stories, people loosing fortunes, and such, stories that you usually associate with gambling and casinos.

But, you don't have to go down that road. For example, leverage plays no role for me personally. I use Bitmex like it offered no leverage at all.

If you don't use leverage in a crazy way, it can offer some great advantages. For example, it has huge liquidity and nearly perfect user interface (for me at least). So I use it like any other exchange with advanced capabilities.

For example, on Bitmex you can go long or short, as you please. On the glorified Binance, for example, you can go long, but you cannot short! On Bitmex, you can have a "stop loss" and as many "take profit" levels as you like at the same time. On Binance you have to choose, you can either have a "stop loss" or "take profit" level. You cannot have them both at the same time.

I remember when I start trading and I didn't know what I was doing. I was following the advice of some random dude who actually didn't know what he was doing too. And I didn't use a stop loss because the dude told me so. You can imagine the result was disastrous.

After some time I decided never to trade without a stop loss. And I still follow this rule. Even if the stop loss level gets hit, it is OK because I trade no more than 2% of the funds I have allocated for trading. One wrong decision no longer means a disaster for me.

Now to the question. What time frame did you trade? On the lower time frames the thing you describe (bull traps or bear traps, essentially) can happen more often than on the higher time frames.

Yes you are right. But I just gave some examples, to get a feeling what people should be looking for. There should be much much better (non-standard) indicators than those I gave. So people should be encouraged to search for them.

This post is for those people who would like to trade using a well defined system, without relying on guessing, intuition, or gambling.

While it probably won't appeal to the "price action experts" that make huge returns of more than 1000% for a month or so, I hope if could be useful for beginners who struggle with trading and often lose their entire accounts.

This is a slow system that doesn't promise huge returns, but a consistent realistic profit without taking huge risks.

What I mean by "system" in the above sentence is having a structure, that is, how you trade, how much you trade, when you trade, and when you exit your trades.

It is the closest you can get to an objective system that doesn't rely on arbitrary trendlines, or arbitrary resistance and support levels.

All credits for the trading system I'm going to present below go to VP, a professional forex prop trader. I highly recommend going to his youtube channel and checking out all of his videos. They are for Forex traders, but you can translate a lot of things to crypto as well.

The "No Nonsense" way is solely based on indicators (but it is omitting the common indicators almost everyone is using).

Please note that the NO NONSENSE FOREX system is going to give you only the structure, not the actual indicators. You should be able to find your own "non-standar" indicators and test them thoroughly before engage in trading!

Here is how this system looks like.

You trade the Daily Time Frame. Why? Because this enables you to avoid most of the market manipulations, and at the same time, you can trade for only half an hour each day. You are not glued to the computer screen if you trade this way.

Algorithm

1. ATR

2. Baseline.

3. Confirmation Indicator

4. Volume Indicator

5. Second Confirmation Indicator

6. Exit Indicator

Here are some more details about the algorithm:

1. ATR

The Average True Range (ATR- 14 period) is the heart of the system. It defines your stop loss and take profit levels.

ATR, in fact, defines your entire money management strategy.

When you enter a trade set your stop 1.5 ATR below (for longs) or above (for shorts) the entry point.

Your first take profit level is at 1.0 ATR.

Once the price reaches 1.0 ATR,

a) you sell 50% of your trade there and
b) move your stop loss to break even position. At this point, you know for sure you haven't lost in this trade.

You leave the remaining 50% of funds active on the exchange until your exit indicator tells you to exit. This leaves your trade ample opportunity to bring you a lot of money, but you are sure now you cannot possibly lose.

Imortant: You have to calculate how much you are risking with every trade. The amount should be 1 to 2% of your entire account. No more than that. So, should 1.5 ATR (your stop loss level) be triggered, you should lose no more than 2 percent of your entire funds.

Example: The following chart shows the BTC/USD chart:



As you can see, the current ATR is around 160. If you were to ENTER LONG at this particular point at 1BTC = 8850 USD, your stop loss would be at 8850-240=8610 and your first take profit level would be at 8850+160=9010.

2. Baseline

Your baseline should define the overall sentiment of the market: bullish or bearish.

When the price is over your baseline, you should take ONLY LONGS, when the other indicators tell you to do so.

When the price is under your baseline, you should take ONLY SHORTS.

Example: Just as an example, the baseline should be, say, EMA, TRIMA, SMA or a similar indicator that can show you whether to take long or short positions.

3. Confirmation Indicator

A confirmation indicator should be your main entry indicator. When it gives you a signal, you enter a trade.

Example: Just as an example, Aroon Up/Dn, or SSL channel, or something similar.

4. Volume Indicator

A volume indicator should be able to tell you whether or not there is enough volume in the market. If there is no volume, you shouldn't enter the trade, even though the other indicators say so.

Example: Just as an example, this indicator could be something like "Waddah attar explosion", "Better volume", KVO, or something similar.

5. Second Confirmation Indicator

In parallel to your main indicator, you should have additional entry confirmation. This feature is sometimes called confluence. Here is where the second confirmation indicator enters the picture.

The second confirmation indicator should confirm the signal from the first confirmation indicator. As simple as that.

5. Exit indicator

An ideal exit indicator should give you the greatest possible profit before the market turns the other way.

It should also prevent from triggering your stop loss in most cases, so you exit before that happens and you save money.

Example: Just as an example, you can try using something like "Haiken Ashi" or "Relative Vigor Index".

Conclusion

There are many nuances in this trading system, especially how to go and what to do when the price crosses the baseline. There are many additional rules that tell you when to trade and when not to trade in such situations. For simplicity, I have omitted those rules. If you are serious about trading this way, you should go to the no-nonsense website here: https://nononsenseforex.com/ and to the corresponding youtube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCc8IRYpgBr4NGbaQFnd2b-A and study this system in details.

If you decide to use this system after studying the original materials, don't forget to do a back-testing first. Use the tradingview charts and trade a couple of years back, as if it was a live trade.

I have been using it mostly on the BTC/USD pair. It is the only pair that resembles the forex market to an extent. All the other altcoin pairs are much too riskier and proner to manipulation.

People who use this system in trading have an active discord channel. You can search for indicators that fit in this system and ask for help there:

https://discordapp.com/invite/G437UUT

---

Disclaimer 1: This was my interpretation of the "No Nonsense Forex" Trading system by VP. I could be wrong in some aspects of the system, or I could have misunderstood the original ideas. You should study this system from the original source materials before using it in live trades.
Disclaimer 2: Everything given above is just for informational purposes. This material should not be thought of as an advice on financial, legal, or even trade-related nature.

Look at this website

https://bitcoinfees.earn.com/

with estimates of time versus tx fees in satoshis. Then you can decide what is the minimum you want to pay.

Clue number 4 is the best, at least to my mind. All (private key:public key) pairs are derived from one master key pair. That is what an HD wallet is by definition. By contrast, the nondeterministic wallet contains random pairs of private and public keys, and hence it cannot have a master key.

Welcome to the forum. I wish you a great time here.

Just in case you haven't found it yet, we have a super useful thread dedicated to Bitcoin-related tutorials which you might find useful:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4928968.0;topicseen

Enjoy!

Me too. I still sometimes have a problem restraining myself not to risk too much but to go slow and try to have consistent profit, instead of taking huge risks. I have to remind myself that I'm playing the long game. And the long game means winning by not losing.

This is a great guide for someone who has never tried margin trading. You have emphasized the risks, which are huge comparing to normal trading, with the dreaded margin call being on the top of them. The main benefit is primarily the increased buying potential, as you pointed out.

I would just add one point: you are already taking huge risks by even engaging in margin trading. Minimize the risk by always trading a portion of your entire portfolio. I know some people are striving to get huge gains and get them fast. As a result, they trade their entire account with huge leverages. Better to be safe than sorry. Therefore, decide to trade a portion of your account with smaller leverages, so if you get liquidated, at least the majority of your funds are still there, and your get to have many additional tries/trades.

Too bad they opted for Ethereum. But I guess, it is better "something" than "nothing". Any idea what kind of wallet it will be? From the announcement it seems like they are going to make a multi-coin wallet of their own. Just a thought: an integrated wallet for the Lightning Network would have been a much better choice. And it would have been an ideal entry for the masses to the crypto world.

I was tempted to say "No way!" but then I remembered the saying "Never say never." While it is impossible to imagine anything treating today's Amazon dominance, we should also know that many empires in history have fallen at the height of their power.

I would be very happy if OpenBazaar grabbed at least a tiny portion of Amazon's share, for starters. Because a decentralized marketplace like this would be a blessing for both sellers and buyers. Amazon's current monopoly is hurting both of them.

Maybe Amazon will switch to using crypto one day, or maybe they are not really interested. It doesn't matter much. Nothing last forever, and in the new crypto economy of the future there is certainly a lot of room for projects such as OpenBazaar.