Just want to bump this topic to say that I've finished my Prop Trader Series, which is a written story (with pictures) about my four years in prop trading called Prop Trader Series.

https://churningandburning.com/category/prop-trader-series

The short summary: I moved to NYC in 2011 to start trading at a well-known prop firm. I struggled to make anything beyond subsistence money for 2 years until a breakthrough in 2013 and I was on track to be one of the best traders there, until a horrible blow-up trade that left me in a big drawdown. Whoops. Then I left because fuck'em, that's why. (not the real reason, you'll have to read it). Bitcoin was kind of a sidequest in all of that, but one with a lot of interesting lessons.

I mean no offense here but is English your first language? I cannot tell what you're trying to say.

I have a daytrader's DNA so it was very hard early in my career to be a buy and hold guy. I wanted to get in and out of things quickly. Even holding bitcoin for 2 months from the run from $200 to $1000+ was an extremely stressful journey for me. I can't stand 35-50% drawdown on my positions, it's anathema to me. Only later in my life with more financial security was I able to just put a little bit into bitcoin long-term and let it sit there. Seeing bitcoin stay relevant for as long as it has also changed my early point of view--it's the gold standard or blue chip tech stock (think AAPL) of crypto.

We're about a month away from the 10 year mark from when bitcoin crossed $1000 for the first time.

Back then I was a 24 year old professional trader in NYC and I was the only person on my prop desk who was actively trading bitcoin. Here are some of the lessons/observations I learned:

1. Bitcoin/crypto (to me it was just bitcoin) was the wild west of trading and that comes with a ton of risk and opportunity. The risk is you have your money in the wrong spot, it can disappear without any wrongdoing on your part--counterparty risk. I had my money on MtGox briefly but thankfully I moved it to Bitfinex b/c BFX had leverage. Back then BFX was a nascent exchange ran by one French guy in his basement and it had a lot of glitches--for example btc would trade at $80 and I could get executed at $20 with some crafty order placement. Didn't happen often but I made a few thousand risk-free just with these print through executions. Nowadays bitcoin isn't nearly as thin or volatile and exchanges aren't glitchy -- I don't/can't trade it the same way because I don't have the same edges.

2. I thought most "btc investors" were just dreamers/cultists back then. This gave me the mental flexibility to trade bitcoin without getting too attached. Little did I know, the "dream" would become very, very real with bitcoin going over $10,000 in 2017 and over 50,000 in 2020. While my returns as a trader are pretty solid, they don't come close to the returns of someone who simply held bitcoin at the time I first started trading it with serious risk at $250. That's ok though, I have no regrets. And I've actually become a believer myself, holding a few coins as a buy/hold investor.

3. I come from a very active trading background. I day trade stocks on a short timeframe, back then even a micro timeframe where I'd hold for 10-20 minutes max on my scalps. I tried to apply this strategy to bitcoin by scalping very harsh dips and selling into the rallies and it worked but it was extremely stressful. The scalping setup equivalent of bitcoin might take an entire day to play out and that's an entire day of monitoring the market depth and price. I'd often take my laptop everywhere and set alarms at night, which at the time there was only one--a site called bitcoinity where it played the Darth Vader NOOOOOOOOOOOO soundbite from Revenge of the Sith. That shit was a nightmare.

Anyway, I've been writing about my adventures in trading and just wrote about my 2013 experience trading bitcoin in this post: https://churningandburning.com/2023/10/bitcoin-ii-the-no-awakens.html -- I met an executive at BitInstant (almost got to invest with Charlie Shrem before he got arrested!) via another friend on my desk and we both traded 400 bitcoins in October 2013. We ended up outperforming buy/hold on bitcoin (for that given timeframe) by 4x magnitude through a combination of active trading (scalping 20-25% dips using leverage) and lending out USD on bitfinex. Needless to say I lost a lot of sleep.

Hoping for another bull market soon!