the thing with crypto now it's so big we are seeing diminishing returns on things like Bitcoin like there's going to be some new altcoin that goes up 10,000% and you're not going to be in it and you're going to be pissed and some guy's going to put in a th000 bucks and he's going to make millions you're going to be pissed but for Bitcoin itself like let's say in a really ideal scenario goes to 150,000 like that'd be [Music] phenomenal welcome everyone to the words of wisdom podcast we're back once again now we're in Toronto and we are joined by none other than an incredible guest he has been Courtside for the Lakers he has got many Watchers he has absolutely crushed the crypto space and he was originally a Forex Trader too and I think he still dabbles in there and we're going to go straight into this we are joined by the one and only Trader main it's great to be here with you man great to be here man thanks for having me it's going to be fun no it's my pleasure and thank you for traveling over I know uh I tried to get as close to you as possible so Toronto was the the closest I could get you did a good job can is Big Country yeah yeah we're just talking before like the same is essentially the same flight back home for the UK to me as it is for you to get home it it's nuts the more I think about it I feel like the east coast is just so much more accessible you're closer to Florida you're closer to Europe and stuff but you know if you ever come out west I'll show you good time we got mountains nice nature it's just a bit of a different vibe a little bit slower mhm that's all we like that's what we need especially as Traders no doubt gosh yeah but um I just listed off those things as an introduction and absolutely incredible you know crazy accolades and the first question really I want to ask you is how did you get to that stage because everyone always focuses on that stage right all those accolades they focus there but how did you get there yeah I always um I always tell people what you see on social media is it's like the tip of the iceberg right you've seen that Meme on the internet where it shows you just the tip of the icebergs above the water and you don't see all the stuff going on under the surface and that's that's trading that's business that's life um social media is the Highlight re you know I'm not courtside at the Lakers every day uh I'm not wearing a Rolex every day a lot of days I'm in my office the blinds are closed and you know I'm there 14 hours I'm on calls I'm in the charts um so it's it's a process um and uh I've been doing it a long time I mean I got on Twitter in 2014 so that's coming up on a decade wow uh which is crazy um to think about um but uh I think it's a combination of you know hard work and there's a there's a bit of luck involved for sure I think with crypto specifically um the way the market moves just timing things and and getting involved at the right time and early I tell people this all the time like what did you make the most money on I was like just buying early in holding it you know uh it's really hard to out trade something that can go up 20x in 12 months um but uh it's been a it's been a labor it's a lot of uh tuition paid in the form of you know lost sleep lost money um you got to sacrifice relationships and time with friends and doing fun stuff but you know now that we're kind of on the other side of it you know the progress continues uh you know it feels good it's a very rewarding career and it's not one I ever thought growing up that you know this is what I was going to do or be able to achieve but it's been awesome it's quite the journey quite the journey and I believe you started in FX though right yeah so I started in crypto actually originally okay but I lost all my money so 201314 Bitcoin went from like $100 to ,400 and I was lucky enough to buy you know at a couple hundred bucks a lot of Bitcoin and it went to 1,400 and I'm 23 24 and I made enough money that for a 23 24 year old you think you have like infinite money like when going out with your friends is buying six beers and going to the bar and getting you know cheap drinks uh having $150,000 is I quit my job I moved out of my house I told my parents I'm like I'm a day trader now I don't know about you guys I'm not going to school anymore forget my accounting degree um and then the market basically crashed completely I I learned very quickly I had no idea what I was doing I just got lucky right I wasn't uh I I wasn't a good Trader I was just a bull in a bull market basically um so when the market crashed I that's kind of what spurred me to be like how does this work like there's got to be a rhyme to the reason cuz people made money and kept it how come I couldn't do that how come I didn't know you could sell or short or take profit I didn't know any of that um so that kind of started me on my FX Journey so 20145 started you know getting in back then it was more forums and stuff than it was Twitter and um you know YouTube and that kind of space was still very new M um and uh found I found guys like Tom Dante and these price action guys and I started to you know put the pieces together and trade Forex I got into you know ftmo early days and was trading prop back then and uh when crypto kind of got exciting again in 201617 I saw things that I was doing in FX I'm like oh this works here too and that was kind of the beginning of it really it's incredible and when you look at sort of the cryptocurrency space and sort of the ICT you don't really I well I don't see it as much personally I don't see as much like cryptocurrency Traders using ICT but then when you look at the FX space it's completely like Rife and there's so much like cult-like mentality do you see the same or is there a lot of ICT Concepts being used in crypto as well so you know what it's so funny because I you can go find me putting order blocks on bitcoin charts in 2015 um and I used to get a lot of hate for it because similar to how there are ICT cultists now there's also a faction of people in FX Twitter who thinks ICT is a a lar or a scammer a furu whatever you want to call it um and my argument always was very simple because at least in crypto people thought initially that technical analysis didn't work at all not just ICT but they're like this is you know the Wild West it's fundamentally driven it's you know all these things I said look I I I do this and it works whether or not you think the guy who taught it to me is legit or not I use it I make money that's all the proof I need um so I got I actually got a lot of hate funnily enough early on for it I interviewed ICT back in like 2016 or 17 wow yeah on my YouTube it's like my most view video still to this day um because he saw me doing it in crypto and he's like this stuff will work he's got a chart this stuff will work um and it's funny now you can go on crypto Twitter and whether or not they want to admit it they're marking order blocks they're marking fair value gaps they're using liquidity sweeps and whether or not you think ICT invented it he can actually trade I always said I don't care try it yourself it's the best proof right like try yourself if it works for you maybe it's not as bad as you think maybe he repackaged stuff that already exists but um they're definitely using it there's not the level of um God complex that some people like you know they're naming their Twitter account after him and their firstborn son is named Michael um but there's definitely there's definitely concepts are being used and I think as crypto's matured it's starting to trade more like FX anyways and I tell you know I tell our friends right our FX guys I'm like you got to try crypto cuz when it's moving like it is now it's the best Market in the world definitely and what was that transition like though obviously you know going from making that big money and then did you lose the money or did you lost it losed everything I put in and more cuz I kept buying on the way down thinking it was going to go back up and turns out that's not how it works so went back to work and yeah it was how did you overcome that though cuz that's that's a journey that many people go through the scale of it is obviously different to the person of how much they lose Etc but so so many people go through that where they make a big win they have that beginner's look for example uh they see the reality of what trading can do and then they're faced with losses and most people don't overcome that but you did so how did you go that about that well it's like running right you know you hit that runner's wall where you start your run and you're getting into it a little bit and you're like oh my legs hurt now my feet hurt and once you kind of get past that wall then all of a sudden you're going for another five miles um it's very similar and when people say trading's hard I I don't think learning how to draw lines and boxes on a chart is hard I think it's overcoming these mental and psychological barriers is the hard part um and pushing through them and that's why I think 90 95% of people fail is they don't get past that they don't have the ability to push past that rejection I think part of what was lucky for me um I worked in sales so rejection is part of life um I had a great sales Mentor at a company I worked at who's like if you're taking 10 calls and three people you know do well that's 30% it's like well guess what a baseball player who hits 300 three out of 10 is an All-Star like that's a good thing right so it was kind of like framing it as like okay like the fact that I was able to make this money it showed me what was possible so I framed it as not like oh man I had all this money and I lost it it's like wow this is what's possible with just this much effort what if I you know refine my craft what if I get better and um I think that's huge you have to be your own biggest cheerleader um because it's you against your p&l it's you against you as much as social media thinks it makes it seem like it's like well how much did this guy make and payouts what kind of car does he have this guy's got a nicer watch than me none of that really matters at the end of the day so it's about framing uh I think the mindset and I was lucky enough whether it be something that I was consciously doing or unconsciously doing to kind of frame name it I saw it as an opportunity as opposed to like a roadblock no I love that and I think that that selft talk is so important and as you said like maybe you weren't consciously doing it but even if you weren't I think it's a powerful thing that people need to take on board do you feel like I know the journey was it two to three years to getting profitable after that point about that I mean I I would say two years till I knew what I was looking for when I opened up a chart uh and then closer to 3 years before I was like consistently making more than I was losing okay and what did those two to three years look like though so I think initially right you have over analysis I was low time frame I'm trying to scalp you know because you see guys like ICT they're on the one minute chart and you're like okay lower time frame more trades more money usually that's not the case what I've actually found is the complete opposite the better I got at trading the less trades I took um so once I kind of got away from the low time frame I saw a leap in my Improvement I was like okay I'm more focused on like where's the next daily candle going or where's the weekly Trend and then trying to get involved with that kind of early in the week and ride it throughout the week um and then getting close to profitability I think was you know Break Even trading for a while often times it was being like perfectly wrong like entering a trade think I'm in the right position then closing it because it goes in you know a couple pip draw down and then it does exactly what I want it to do um and then the profitability stage is I think one of the most fulfilling Parts because early on it's I was voracious about the learning and getting into the content and then you kind of have a period where you feel like you're spinning your tires a little bit you're not really seeing that Improvement you're losing money or maybe you're just kind of keeping a flat but then when you start to actually get in charts and you're like okay I know exactly what I'm looking for today and if it's not there I'm done I'm you know I'm looking at something else or I'm moving on uh that got exciting again I think that kind of REM motivated me um and then it's just about consistency like one of the biggest things ICT taught me it's not the TA as much as it's it's a numbers game like you can break everything in trading down to numbers and stats um and uh that was very eye openening for me like realizing it's like okay I only need to be right 33% of the time if I'm aiming for two R I can do that um and you know how many trades is that a week and and and and building out that system that is repeatable mhm so when I'm doing that back testing that forward testing the data I have is actually worthwhile and I'm a numbers guy Finance accounting background um so that was really I think what took me to the next level was making my strategy mechanical repeatable um and so numbers and statistics driven that I removed as much human element as possible there's always discretion there's always trading psychology and things but the less of that you can have the better off you're going to be would you say that there's no such thing as like a perfect Trader like someone who only follows the system because it's always going to be that discretion and we're human at the end of the day so emotions will get involved at times but your job is really to focus on the system if you follow the system for the majority of the time you're going to have that profitability yeah I mean I think if your goal was to follow your rules as opposed to make money you would probably be better off you're like okay did I follow my system to te the money is a byproduct of the work right that's the whole point of doing all that testing and collecting all that data is you know over the large enough sample size you're going to have that profitability because you have the data but if you go into it saying you know I want to make a million dollars this year um that's a really big number how do you get there right and so I like to start you can start with that Big Goal but now work it back you know okay how much is that a month okay how much is that a week how many trades is that a week you know what trades you know what win rate and all that stuff so I think following the process absolutely is should be the focus but listen I mean I've been doing this for literally 10 years uh I still have fomo I still rage Revenge trades sometimes I take dumb positions I open up my phone and so you know I miss the entry and I'm chasing I mean it it is what it is and that's what's so fun about trading is you're never going to be perfect you can always refine improve tweak um and you're yeah we're human at the end of day I make mistakes I take dumb trades like I don't think people should be discouraged like going back to the social media thing that's the Highlight Reel when they're showing you the payouts they're not showing you how many challenges they bought to get that payout or they're showing you the six figureure p&l they're not showing you the five trades before that that were all losers um so you can't let that uh kind of seep into your Consciousness and be like Oh I'm I'm not winning every trade it's like no one is best Traders I know are you know they're hitting 40 to 50% of their trades if that some less so yeah no such thing as a perfect Trader I mean we're imperfect uh beings right definitely definitely and I love what he said there in terms of the social media being like the highlight reel for sure but how do you handle that because a lot of people I think a lot of people have a misconception of trading and that probably is one of those mental hurdles that they really have to get over is I need to be a perfect Trader you know I'm going to become at a certain time if I learn for long enough or I learn this certain strategy I'll be a perfect Trader I won't experience fomo or greed or or you know uh trying to jump into a trade but as you've highlighted and I think it's the reality for all traders that those moments will and can and will always happen but how do you handle them now so it doesn't so a small mistake doesn't become like a big mistake which is probably what a lot of people are in right now take your trading to the next level with funded Peaks we offer the biggest draw down in the entire industry at 12% with the max account size of $600,000 and 24-hour payouts funded Peaks is the prop you should have started with learn from the best build a track record and become a real fund manager with Optimum trading conditions and 24/7 support funded Peaks has the best pricing offers in the industry with challenges from his low is just $50 join funded Peaks and get started today um repetition right um when you feel things like fomo or emotional swings those are the hardest to deal with when you haven't experienced them before for when you've been in a trade that is in the red for 3 days and then goes to your takeprofit and you know what that feels like you can identify that emotion doesn't mean it doesn't exist like it's there right you're like oh man like I maybe I should close like you know I'm checking my maybe I should close but the amount of times I've been in the red closed and then seen it go into the you know the green the next day or you know that same day um I've been through that swing so many times I can identify that emotion I can try my best to not act on it um trading is so much like sports right like you are in the gym you're taking your free throws you do 10,000 free throws you know you're going to hit 80% of them so when it's game time like it's just automatic right you know exactly what you're doing of course yeah the crowd is there it's louder maybe you missed the first one maybe the game is close but you've put yourself in the position so many times that you can manage it better but you're never going to be able to we're not robots it's like you're never going to be able to eliminate that completely but the more you experience it the better you're going to be able to identify and hopefully manage those things so it's like getting comfortable with being uncomfortable absolutely like I there's so many analogies for like trading and sports or other forms of gambling or um anything that requires Mastery right like there's that Malcolm Gladwell book where it's like 10,000 hours it's like I think most of us Traders can say it's like one way or another I've put in 10,000 hours whether it's in trades in front of the charts managing positions um you know back testing forward testing uh and it's just it's just so accurate you just you need the repetitions and that's why when you're new if you're winning you don't necessarily know how to handle it and if you're losing you don't necessarily know how to handle it like you know my systems some of the systems I trade I can take four five six losses in a row and you got to trust that you know it's going to balance out you know over the next 50 TR whereas if you take four five six losses in a row and then you change what you're doing all of a sudden all that data you've collected goes out the window right it's not a system anymore no definitely and that's probably where most people find themselves especially in that learning phase one thing you mentioned earlier which I think relates to exactly what you saying is you went through a period of time where you know you'd be in good trades but you get out of them when they'll go into draw down um was it the same principle there though just repetition yeah I think one of the best pieces of of advice I give to like a new Trader is when you enter a trade put on your stop loss and you take profit and do not touch that trade until it hits one of those two orders because the amount of money that I've missed out on or lost by closing early before it hits my stop or not taking profit saying well it's going to go a little higher like ah I think this might go for 4 R right I'm gonna I'm going to let it ride uh and then it fully reverts right or it comes close to my stop loss doesn't stop me out then it goes into a take profit that outweighs the money I would have saved by closing that trade early or letting it run that extra few points I think trade Management in terms of you know uh Dynamic risk rewards so adjusting your stop to break even or taking half the position off at 2R or all that kind of stuff I think should be done later uh focus on Simplicity first say okay if my system is built for 2 R I'm either getting stopped out or I'm getting 2 R uh and that's going to It's like a mechan mechanical way to kind of try and remove those you know emotional components cuz everyone's been there where it hits your takeprofit but you're not looking at the chart anymore you're looking at the p&l number and you go well this if this gets a little bigger that'd be pretty sweet or you're looking at the red number and you go I don't want it it it's so it's like the casino there's a reason the slots are bright and they make noises when you're winning and it's it it plays with you so Tom Dante actually taught me something in one of his webinars where he's like once I enter the trade I take the p&l screen away like I'm not looking at you know metat trade or whatever you're using I'm just looking at the chart because it helps him at least mentally not look at that number crypto is so bad for that because like they you know are flashing this big green number this big red number in front of you and that's all you can focus on we got you know we're sophisticated monkeys monkey brain sees green number I'm like oh that's good I want a bigger green number right so I think that's a a good way to help it put those orders on and then let it hit one or the other definitely and you think then obviously through experience and collecting data over time through that process that's when you learn how to start doing Dynamic risk later sure because there's that level of subjectivity that comes in where you say I've seen this before right you've done it so many times like I've seen this before they're they're faking me out like my stop cuz my stops where the idea is wrong so if we're not at my stop why am I closing right that's what you got kind of got to ask yourself and if you're closing because most the most common one is well I don't want to lose this much money it's like well are you risking too much then right off the get-go so there there's so many little things and that was something that was huge for me is was like okay I'm either making money or I'm losing money and that money I'm putting up to lose I'm prepared to lose it so maybe it's a $1,000 maybe it's a $100 who knows but you're ready to lose it and again it's trying to remove that emotion as much as possible definitely definitely and going back to what you said earlier in terms of you know making those losses and then going back to work and going back to the drawing board to learn how did you go through that in terms of mentally because being at that age as well well it's quite easy to have that ego or to have that sort of thought process of like no I'm I'm never going to work a job again and as you said like you told your parents a certain thing as well and a lot of people in those scenarios either they'll have too much ego and and say like I'm not made to work a job and there's a lot of people who haven't even made money who have that mentality nowadays which is shocking to me but um but then also they might have this sort of pressure in their mind of like I've told everyone this and that and now it's not happening how did you overcome all of that uh there's a level of bravado being 25 for sure right like I'm 25 like I can I can make it happen again um you know I think the common misconception with trading is like I'm going to be trading with my cell phone or laptop at the beach and I don't have a boss I do the market is the boss you got a boss it's you it's the market it's your system it's the hours that the market operates um you know you are your own risk manager Your Own Boss um and it's not the sexy laid-back chill thing that you necessarily see online and then something you can attest to as well is usually when you get into trading and you start having success you really become an entrepreneur um because you want to have other streams of income you don't want to only rely on trading so you start taking that money you put it other places so you're creating work for yourself so I I think that there's such a big misconception again it's sold by social media that you're going to be driving a Ferrari and you're going to be trading from your cell phone and it's like the amount of times I've taken a trade my cell phone at the beach and it worked out not very many usually I'm locked in I'm you know I have a process I'm I've gone to the gym I've had my meal I've you know sat and marked up all my charts and then I'm executing um but at 25 um listen I moved back home I moved you know I went from living on my own to living in my dad's basement um it was definitely uh a bit of a eye openening experience and you know kind of like okay like I gotta you know maybe I'm not all that I thought I was I've never read really any trading books and I don't really like reading you know a lot of people always reading these like self-help books and things like that and I've never really resonated with those never found them interesting except there's a few around the law of attraction that I really enjoyed by like eart toi and stuff and it's about it sounds so corny but manifestation and all this stuff and I find most of these business books it's the same thing they're just repackaging it and telling you it's setting goals right if you set goals you make them attainable you lay out how you're going to get there you focus on them you're journaling like you'll get there and whether you think that's through pure manifestation or maybe it's because I wrote it down and then I worked every day towards it and now I'm there um that's what kind of happened for me I got really good at journaling I've journaled basically daily since I was in my mid 20s writing down everything from fitness goals relationship goals trading life in general um and I think it's just helped me stay grounded and it's it's also just helped me have Direction um I've always been a hard worker and again I think I I think having that clear path of where I wanted to go and then framing it as a step back as opposed to a knocking me to a completely different path was huge it's how you frame everything I mean I've got tattoos about it like your perception is your reality I believe that like you get to choose how you perceive a situation how people perceive you um and once you kind of realize that that's within your control it's very powerful um so I think for a lot of people it's very easy to get discouraged and stuff but it it it comes down to like you know what are you made of you know are you the type of person who you know something doesn't work and you're like well good luck or you're like well it didn't work this time but you know I'm going to take another swing in it MH definitely I love that and how how important do you think that same principle is in trading we talked about it earlier about how you control the narrative in your mind of uh the selft talk right and it really goes back to that same point and how important do you think that is within a Trader to have that mentality I mean if you go into a trade saying this is not going to work out I think this is a bad trade I'm going to lose money you probably will um you know because whether you subconsciously exit it early or do something you shouldn't do um mindset is so huge um I think all and that's why you see so many common traits I think between successful Traders they're disciplined they work out you know what I mean they um work on self-improvement they're reading they're listening to podcast they're journaling I think the reason these traits are so common is because these are things that just they mesh very well with good trading habits right going to the gym diligently and having a workout plan and tracking your calories and knowing what you're doing when you're in there and Progressive overload lifting more a little more every week that's trading right like it's the same thing right how many R am I going for this week what do I need to do to get there okay New York access's coming up I got to do my prep well going to the gym you're taking your creatine and your pre-workout and you're having your you know pre-workout meal so I think there's a reason you see so many of these similarities not just with Traders but with successful people in general um I had a guy who was a early trading Mentor for me I found him on Twitter um but it was a lot more around psych psychology and that type of um stuff as opposed to actually just charting MH um and he taught me something called the rule of the atom and he's like the adom is 99% empty space and then in that 1% that's where all the action is right that's everything that's the entire universe and he says this is applicable to life like you look in so many different Ventures whether it's wealth distribution whether it's 90 95% of Traders don't succeed and the one% you know have these Elite jobs or these Elite athletes he's like that's just life um and I think I don't NE I think part of it maybe it's just how you're you're built you're born that way but I do think it can be learned um that you got to have that mentality like I can do anything that I set my mind to it sounds so corny but if if you don't believe in yourself like why should anyone else believe in you you know what I mean and so I think those self-belief positive selft talk whether you want to call it goal setting manifestation law TR whatever you want to call it I think it's massively crucial to success in whatever Avenue you take I mean I I've followed you for a long time you've got posts from years ago being like this is what I'm going to do and now you're here now and sometimes it's very eye openening to go like I have all my old journals and sometimes I go so on New Year's I go and read not just last year I'll read three years ago and I'll be oh I smashed this SM oh this one got to make more of a priority but like I don't know I don't know if you were consciously doing that or that's just but it worked for me no I was the same I was the exact same uh when I was growing up rather than when I was a teenager it was really weird I went through I went through like that sort of more if you will Reckless stage and sort of less conscious stage if you will like later in life uh in my like early 20s while a lot of people do it in their teenage years while in my teenage years I was spending time like every morning and every night i' be listening to like motivational talk like Eric Thomas Les Brown all these guys and um so it was really strange but I had that mentality growing probably thanks to my mom as well like she would really growing up it wasn't a case of like you can't do that you can't do that so I didn't have really much of a limiting mindset and I always believed in just if you put you can push yourself to anything and I think it's so true like there is an element where it's in your DNA in terms of like if you're going to have that grit to be able to go through the suffering but again it's it's chosen as well like if someone decides like okay I want to change and I want to be able to handle more loss and more pain I want to be able to push myself to new limits it's down to a choice right it's that perception it's it's the the person deciding they want more out of life absolutely and that was my mentality you and that's why I used to write those posts cuz it was more I basically that was my journal you know those posts my Facebook if you will at the time cuz I didn't have anyone I was a no one at the time I didn't have any like following or anything I was just writing these posts as a journal and in the hope that it might help other people at the time but um you know as I've grown now now those same posts are helping people now because I share them now and people like who you know they see like oh wait he was talking about it seven years ago 10 years ago and now he's doing what he said then and I think that it speaks to the long-term Vision so like when you came into tra what was your vision of like how long it would take you to sort of play out to the profitability you know it's funny I mean crypto is a little bit different because it's it's kind of like the wild west right and you know I know people who are multi multi-millionaires even some billionaires who got in early they're they're not even really Traders they just they just got in um so when I first got in like I won't lie I wanted to make money um you know I'm not trying to pretend like oh I was going to you know be two hour a week and this is what I was going to do it's like I I wanted to make money I saw this as a way to make money and provide myself a life that you know I think most you know I grew up in the 90s right I wanted the sweet car like you know what I mean you want like the beautiful girl you want to be out on a boat you want to be doing all this cool stuff I want the Rolex like that was all stuff I when I was a teenager I'm like this stuff is cool right you're watching movies you're watching TV shows and so when I first got that taste of like oh like this is you know I so I got an accounting Finance degree I got my CPA which is like professional accounting designation and when I got out of University my first salary was $33,000 a year okay and I had a senior manager at the firm I was working at who was like you know 45 maybe and he sat me down he said listen like you do this this and this they play your cards right like this could be your job someday and I'm just like your job sucks like I don't want your job like you're 45 you make 70k a year like this can't be my my future um but I grew up in a family um where you know my brother's a dentist my other brother's a doctor my other brother's an engineer like you get a career you go to going to UNI wasn't an option it's like you go to UNI you get a profession and that is what you do my dad's a dentist my grandfather's a dentist so um I I just remember like being like okay I'm going to finish this and then I'm going to tell my parents basically like I'm either like off in myself or I'm like quitting this job as soon as I like finish it CU for them I think knowing that I saw it through and I have that to fall back on was enough for them to kind of be like okay if you want to go try this thing you can always go back to being an accountant if it doesn't work right um but yeah I wanted to make money like I just I feel like from a young age I always had aspirations of being my own boss and making a bunch of money um in terms of like how that played out in my trading journey I don't think I planned it early on that didn't come until I started actually learning that trading is a business mhm it's not gambling right crypto especially can make you feel like you're just you're just gambling you're just flipping coins and there is an element of crypto that is that if you're on crypto Twitter they are guys who are they're gambling on new projects altcoins they're straight up gambling they're trying to get a lottery ticket they got 10 grand they put a$ thousand dollars into 10 coins yeah right the risk reward is zero or maybe a lot right um but I've always and I think how I grew my following was I approached crypto like a Forex Trader I'm systematic this is a job right like I'm here to extract money from the market I don't care what the coin does I don't care if there's a partnership they just announced if they're the next ethereum I don't give a pardon my French uh I'm more just interested in like does the chart look good and do I think that you know I can risk this much money and potentially make this much and once I started framing trading as a business um then it just all became about scale um you have to focus on it in terms of risk reward not in terms of dollars because as your account scales and grows um it can really mess up your mentality when you go from risking a 100 bucks to a th000 bucks to $10,000 on a single position can't think like that right because if I think oh I just lost a Honda Civic on that trade you know what does $10,000 get you it can get you you know two couple months rent it can feed you for month like you can do a lot of stuff with 10 grand but it's just one R right so once I started treating it as about a business you know I focused on okay I want my R basically to become a bigger number um but just remembering that's still that one or two% of the account to kind of keep myself in check and not you know let the big number get scary because I think that's something people who are trying to start trading larger accounts it'll mess them up they start thinking about the risk in terms of how much money am I losing versus well it's just 2% it's 2% before what has changed right definitely and you know it's so interesting you say that obviously that scalability and and the scaling of those numbers is something that a lot of people struggle with even within the FX side obviously we have all the prop firms and a lot of people struggle that way where a lot of people will go for the highest account size when they haven't maybe gotten accustomed to that sort of risk and that sort of R what advice could you give them in terms of being able to play that longer term Vision or getting more comfortable with those higher figures I want to tell you about the best provider of tools for Traders and that is Lux algo Lux algo is the largest provider of free tools on trading view youve probably seen them all over trading view as well for their smart money concept indicator as well as so many other free resource now if you don't know they have also created exclusive toolkits to take your trading to the next level directly on trading whether you trade price action ICT or you want Advanced signals and Powerful overlays they have all the tools necessary for you to grow all their tools work on every market so whether you trade Forex crypto or stocks it does not matter now through the podcast you can get 20% off using the link in the description so make sure you click that let's get back to the episode um I mean if you're trading your own capital and if let's say you're paper trading or something paper trade with a realistic amount like the amount of people I see who are paper trading with a million dollar account and then they're going to fund their account with $1,000 I'm like it's going to be eye opening when one pip goes from being you know 500 bucks to $5 you're going to be like what's going on um so keep things realistic if you're trading your own account um but you have to take um the numbers out of it you got to or not the numbers out of it but the money side out of it and realize it's just numbers and it's just math um if you're risking 1 to two% of your account you're aiming for two R 33% win rate breaks even your money compounds that one to 2% grows um and you just got to trust the the data that you've either put together yourself or it's just out there I mean you can find these incredible journals now that will help you basically find every single piece of Statistics that you need to get confidence in your system um and then go slow I think a huge mistake is people try and jump into this really fast I did right I quit my job immediately you do not need to trade full-time I think trading full-time is actually not realistic for most people CU you have to be really good um really consistent and you have to have enough money for it to be worthwhile because you can know what you're doing but if you're trading a $110,000 account guess what that's not enough to live here or in London or Vancouver New York um so uh I think take your time and realize that it's a process and a skill if you're willing to spend four years at Uni and spend you know $100,000 on a degree don't expect to become profitable and make enough money to trade full-time in six months I think another thing with social media that's so disingenuous is you see people you know they're like I I was profitable in 6 months it's like okay but like on a thousand account or a $10,000 account being profitable with a 10K account and a million doll account where you're literally paying for your lifestyle with your trading are very different things uh and I think prop is great that's why I started breakout for the crypto side because I'm like I don't think people in crypto realize the advantage these FX guys have like there's a whole industry here of prop Traders it's not just like the FX guys anymore who are you know trading in the robins cup and you know posting on their fake Brokers that they own and like this prop industry brought a level of first of all it's leverage but it brought a level of credibility to FX Twitter because like well I mean you can fake payouts but people are usually going to find out but it's it's it's a form to create that process that I went through kind of slowly MH quicker right because now with 500 bucks you can have a you know $50,000 or $100,000 account yeah I I think that's something that people absolutely should be jumping all over uh because the barrier entry is a lot lower and the risk reward calculation becomes how many of these evaluations challenges do I have to buy to get funded and then potentially start making some money I think yeah the props bace has proliferated like crazy over the last few years like some people think it's a bubble maybe it's a burst maybe it is um but I think it's a good thing for the Trader I think it's a massive massively good thing for the Trader and it's something that should be taken advantage of because it can help you scale up much faster what's it been like then obviously putting that together what was that process like in terms of how long did it take you to put that together and and what was your mindset I know obviously as you just mentioned giving that opportunity to the crypto side because it didn't really have it and uh what sort of hurdles or challenges have you faced like bringing that to Market so the first first thing that was the mo I mean we we've been working on this for about a year the the first thing I wanted to tackle was because you can trade crypto with certain prop firms already but it wasn't crypto that a crypto native person would understand because they're going to look they're going to say okay I have Bitcoin I have ethereum I have like Litecoin which no one cares about I have these coins from you know years ago and the spreads were crazy you know Bitcoin the spread might be 20 bucks you're like well it's only $20 I'm like okay try trading in and out of that a bunch of times and day you're not making any money um and um I knew that if I tried to get someone who came from a crypto background to like use mt4 or something they're going to be like what is this this is from like 1995 and I'd be like you're right it is and they've never updated it uh for an fx person mt4 mt5 like that's just just what you use I mean I personally when I use mt4 mt5 I execute on my phone like I'll do my charting on trading view but I I can't I hate the desktop app yeah and the these crypto websites and exchanges are very modern right they've built in calculators they're you know polished and I'm like I'm not going to be able to get someone to translate that to that so one thing was the UI I wanted it to feel familiar because I think that is a huge part of trading it's kind of like I don't trade as well from my laptop you know in a hotel room as I do from my computer with my three monitors because more monitors more money everybody knows that um and then the other thing was I wanted the experience to replicate a cryp trading environment so we able to do that by partnering with a tier one exchange um so the spreads that you see um the depth of market so the actual order books you get to see that in crypto was visible to you so if you're trying to enter one Bitcoin or five Bitcoin you might not get the exact price you see because that might not be available at the highest bid or at the you know highest lowest offer um if you're entering 10 Bitcoin yeah you will get slipped but it's real right because I wanted to be realistic so what you see on our platform is the same that you see with our partner bybit one for one we don't change the thing um and two I want people to be able to if they can make money with me I want them to be able to make money in the real Market too uh I think one of the issues with some prop firms is the simulated demo experience whatever you want to call it isn't maybe a strategy that works there isn't going to work in a live environment with live fills and that's going to be disappointing for you if you're like oh I know what I'm doing but no you only work there because you know you're playing you're bowling with the bumpers up basically because they're saying there's no slippage no fees no commission it's like well but there is in real life so that needs to be accounted for so I want to make it realistic and we able to solve those two problems with the UI and then the liquidity for back lack of a better term um and then we put it together and we launched there was definitely an educating of the customer that had to happen you launch a prop firm now on FX Twitter everyone's like great I know what this is I know what Max draw down is I know what the daily draw down is I know the rules I know the one step versus twep and they get that M crypto Twitter um is full of Skeptics just FX Twitter is too but crypto Twitter especially is full of Skeptics partly because we get scammed a lot uh you know I've been a victim to the biggest scam of basically the last hundred years like with FTX um so skepticism is is fine so there was a level of like having to educate people because they're like I only get a risk 5% what is that I'm like well if you're actually trading you shouldn't lose 5% a day like that's a bad day like you should probably stop and wait for tomorrow and then try again but they just didn't get it so there's a level of having to educate them and be like here this is a tool here's why it's good um and then the hurdles have all been internal because now that we've kind of educated people we've got people trading people are making money they're making payouts we're saying okay the stuff that worked in FX prop might not work here from a risk management perspective for the firm coins go up a lot mhm coins go up for a long period of time um you know prop is meant for Traders you know we want to incentivize people to trade not to invest this is not a platform where you just come in and you buy something and you log out um you know I want you to invest I want you to trade and that's what we're looking for I'm looking for Traders because ideally in the most um you know Ideal World you're looking to replicate someone's trade you're looking to aook them and someone who's just you know going into a trade and entering and not putting a stop and then just hoping it goes up in two weeks that's not really replicable or um hedgeable for the firm whereas in FX um because the market closes on the weekends yeah right because it R it's range bound Euro's not just going to go up forever and even if it does it's going to retrace first and the markets aren't all supremely correlated like when bitcoin's going up basically everything's going up and if Bitcoin nukes basically everything's going to Nuke so that's been probably the biggest hurdle is trying to say okay how can we um you know manage this in a way that makes sense um and then educate people on why this is something that you can use because to me prop is a amazing tool and it's a means to an end I mean there's guys like you know you know Kyle and and those guys who have a million dollars of prop Capital um I think that's awesome but I know those guys as well they're using that money to fund personal accounts and the end goal is always to get to that personal account stage where are no Risk rules and it's your own money you keep all of it there's the profit split so it's been a fun Journey um you know and uh it's going to be fun to see this thing grow um but yeah like I was talking to you before we kind of went live like I've given myself a a job you know what I mean and we talked about that earlier too where it's like oh you're Your Own Boss like I found as soon as I started getting successful I said how can I diversify yeah my money I don't want to just be reliant on this so you get into real estate you start businesses and all of a sudden going from no boss to several bosses it's it's an interesting experience have you ever seen that clip By Dana White where he says um oh You Want To Be Your Own Boss and he say yeah right and he starts just like saying you're giving up Christmas you know giving up New Year giving up all the holidays you know for at least a few years you know at least um so good luck with that you know and I I really liked it because he's quite a realist in terms of you know what it takes to to build an Empire like he has for example UFC but just generally that that same principle of like where they took the UFC or where you're going to take a breakout prop for example or whatever it may be it's the same principle no matter how good you are in business in one side or how successful you may be as a Trader any business you start is always going to have that same Grassroots mentality and and time that's necessary and and the energy that's necessary as well to to put it in how have you found that in terms of uh accepting that though at this stage like creating this job for yourself has it been a bit of a hard a struggle to do that I mean absolutely um you know I was telling you earlier I live on the west coast um so I always trade it at nighttime time um cuz crypto it's not as it doesn't follow you know kind of the session as much but it really what is the Kill Zone when are people awake right like when is their volatility so I know when UK and you know Europe and Asia wake up there's going to be volatility in crypto just like when it's you know kind of New York morning um so for me being on the west coast I prefer to trade at nighttime I was a night owl I'd sleep in I'd stay up late so kind of having to change my mindset a little bit of you you know I'm still trading I'm still investing um but now I've I I've got to be way more laser focused with my time um because I I allowed myself a lot of time to chill out uh you know during the day I got very accustomed to that where you know I had my whole process going to the gym and doing all these things to now it's like okay well I'm working more kind of traditional business hours um it's been fun uh but yeah it's It's a Grind man like I sometimes you envy the person who's got the 95 right like 5:00 Friday like the laptop is closed and you're like see you Monday right don't don't call me don't message me and it's like when you run a business I mean our prop firms open seven days a week 247 yours there is there is no close right so when the FX guys are like okay yeah you're G to get some customer service stuff on the weekend but like I got guys who are like we had a guy on Christmas who's like he's like in our support and like you know I I put a message Discord I said listen like it's literally Christmas we might be a little delayed yeah like I'm in there right like answering questions and and you know I got a guy trying to open a position and he's complaining cuz it won't open it I'm like dude you're trying to open a Max like full portfolio position on a random obscure coin on Christmas like go go aside you know what I mean like go go do something like give me a break but that's uh that's the battle I've i' I've chosen to fight um but I it's going to be a lot of fun uh we had an amazing first month uh and I think it's going to be up only as they say in crypto from here um and I I think we're going to we're going to see some some waves in the prop space you know in this next you know now it's 2024 um because when I came into it one thing I noticed and one thing I wanted to avoid was kind of the race to the bottom that I felt like was going on um because when I paid attention to prop years ago and even as recently as like a year ago there was time limits a lot of firms are using Equity based draw down MH and I think it was Angelo TF who basically said no time limit and you know we're doing static whatever and then everyone kind of had to match that or else why would you trade anywhere else these guys got the best rules and then it kind of just became a okay well how do you iterate more discounts slightly more draw Downs slightly lower profit targets they kind of you own a profit fir what is that that's just margin going down down down down just shrinking so at least on the crypto side the way we're iterating is we're you know I don't consider myself a competitor to you know to TFT um we're crypto prop firm uh but it's just a whole different it's a whole different battle it's uh it's uh it's going to be very interesting I'm interested to see what happens kind of in the main prop space but I've basically gone from one of the most toxic and crazy places on the internet which is crypto Twitter and I've joined the what I've learned is the equally is crazy and toxic play on the internet because prop Twitter man these guys are crazy yeah oh I'm getting like threats over DMS cuz I didn't give the like I did a giveaway yeah and it's been an hour since I announced the winner and they haven't received their I'm like my friend you haven't sent me your email like I don't know I don't know where and they're like uh like it's it's something it's something I thought crypto Twitter is bad I'm like prop Twitter is right up there but it's money right whenever you're dealing with money like people just get a little nuts yeah no it's true and I love what you said there like you joined the two that that you married the two toxic areas of of the community we see if it kills me no no it should be good it should be good I think you'll enjoy it in terms of uh you know where it's going to go and and I think you're someone by the sounds of it who enjoys the challenge of of building something great um and I'm excited to see where that goes for sure and there's one thing you touched on actually during that conversation was in terms of the the reality of trading live personal funds versus the fantasy that people build in their minds of trading props now I think like the the simulator the the the prop sort of conditions they're trying their best to emulate live some do it better than others some do it really poorly some try not to do it at all as a selling point um but what can you talk on as someone who's trade proped as trade your personal and large capital in terms of personal as well like why is it important to understand that because I think a lot of people don't understand you know the reality of trading live Capital with the slippage and the order book Etc and I think it's important and that's why I love the podcast it gives an opportunity to educate people I think it's important for people to just understand it regardless of whether they they end up trading live or not or whether they experience it or not I think it's important for them to understand what is it that people are referring to and what are the differences let's take a break for a minute there guys cuz I want to tell you about the best trading tool on the market trade Zella the reason why trade Zella is the number one trading tool that every Trader needs is because you can do back testing automated journaling trade replay in-depth analytics and so much more and the greatest part about trade Zella is that it's all automated all you have to do is connect your mt4 and mt5 it will pull all your data onto the dashboard you can add playbooks you can just add notes you can add images from your trades and you can get the insights that is necessary for you to progress as a Trader now trade Zella is for absolutely everyone whether you're a crypto Trader whether you're a Forex Trader whether you trade prop firms it is for absolutely everyone and that is why thousands of Traders have signed end up using my link here through the podcast make sure you use the code Riz 10 the 10% off your monthly subscription or W for 20% off your yearly subscription the link is in the description below now let's get back to the episode yeah I mean there's a cost of trading right so um I know people whose entire strategy especially in crypto there's um there's something called funded funding excuse me that you can get paid for being long or short um and there's certain things that you can almost gamify so you can hold a position and you're collecting funding so maybe you're like delta neutral on Direction but you're collecting funding and they can make an entire strategy around gaming these types of systems and they have a really in-depth knowledge of you know what it cost to enter and exit a position with crypto exchanges if you trade a certain amount of volume your fees get cheaper that comes into play if you're trading a large size if you're using Market orders limit orders some people don't pay attention to it as much they just say this is the cost of doing business right like I know I'm going to have to pay $3.50 for every 100,000 units to open and the same thing to close um at least in crypto you have tier two and tier three data available to you so when I'm entering a large position on bitcoin or an altcoin especially altcoins right because these are not as liquid as Bitcoin or ethereum um which are of course not nearly as liquid as Euro USD or gold or something but I can see the depth of Market I can see okay to fill 100 Bitcoin what's the actual price I'm going to get so at least there's that visibility whereas in FX I can understand especially if you're new you say hey I entered this trade the price was this and my fill is here because you don't get to see that depth but you know these people who are trading 50 lot positions on the one minute chart with a five pip stop at a prop firm and maybe it works or they're doing it on demo and then they try it live or they try it at a prop firm that has more realistic conditions they go I got slipped this is a scam I encourage you go and try and do that in the live market like yeah you will get slipped um so the cost of trading um is a huge thing that you have to factor in and it will absolutely change the way you trade like a strategy where you are in and out of a ton of Trades because you're super low time frame and you're scalping um that might work in a firm where there are no fees and there's no commissions and you know the environment is a poor replication of a live environment I think it's so important to what you do in practice be as close to what you do in the Real Environment as possible because um the cost of trading is unavoidable um it it it it is something that I think you need to educate yourself on you need to know what the commissions are um you need to understand that if you are entering at the market versus a limit order if you're entering with big size um these things will affect your fills if you're trying to trade around a news event or something like that where where liquidity can be quite thin and you'll see those crazy spikes to one side or the other um I think this is something that people are again social media is really bad for this um they see someone they're like they're filled at the top of the wick I'm like there's a reason they Whited out their lot size at the top of the wick there because you're not getting 50 Lots on the top of the wick on CPI morning you know what I mean um and so I think that's something you learn from experience um but you have to educate yourself about it um and I think if you're going to be trading prop absolutely look for a prop firm that creates a realistic simulated environment um because if they are marketing no fees no slippage we got the like that's a tool to get you in that strategy you're using is probably not going to be replicable in the live environment so yeah the cost of trading is a real thing it's the cost of doing business like people who complain about slippage and fees and stuff I'm like you know the broker's got to make some money too right like there's multiple moving pieces here here everyone's got to get paid definitely no I think it's so important for people to understand that and thank you for highlighting those things something else you mentioned which I think is so important as well is is your routine because you trade as you said you trade London session which for you is late at night and one thing that I find interesting of that which I think myself I would probably find hard to do myself is to be alert and be in the zone at the end of the day um which is the sort of opposite of what most people go through where they're doing it the start of the day so so is there any sort of procedures or processes that you do or any sort of uh techniques to try and just be zoned in at the right time my best piece of advice trade the high time frames then the kill zones the sessions matter so much less um and that's something that I definitely gravitated to later in my career crypto is kind of an outlier it can move at 300 pm. on a Sunday it can move at 2 in the morning on a Wednesday so it's kind of hard to time it there are periods where it's more volatile MH um I find West Coast versus East Coast West Coast is horrible but when I was primarily trading so right now we're kind of in I don't know if we're in a bull run but we're up 100 you know 150% from last year there's altcoins that are making new all-time highs so the Market's been bullish so when crypto is volatile like it is now I trade 95% crypto um but when things are a little slower that's when I'll get more into you know back into FX I love trading gold it's probably my favorite asset to trade um and and for me personally the strategy that I trade now my setup basically forms at the same time every single day during the week whether it's Tuesday or Wednesday I'm basically trying to capture the higher low of the week um it's not going to be Tuesday or Wednesday every time of course but you know the data suggests and what my you know uh experience has been is very often the higher low week will form early in the week Monday Tuesday Wednesday um so for me I kind of know when it's game time and during the week it does require a level of discipline like do I want to go have wings and beer with my boys uh you know of course and then like I come home and now it's 9:00 and you got a little bit of a buzz on like am I expected to go sit down at the computer but it just comes down to discipline so if I'm actively trading um I'm just not like I'm just not doing anything like it's it's tough but you've got to occupy yourself other ways so I'm going to the gym four or five times a week um I am sitting at my computer prepping the charts so when it is game time right when I am looking to execute a trade I know exactly what I'm looking for I know where I want to do business I know what time I want to do business at and if it comes it comes if it doesn't it doesn't but it is absolutely harder um to trade at nighttime because you have that entire day basically to mess yourself up um so I mean I used to um I used to smoke a lot of weed back in the day like you know I thought I was a high functioning Stoner basically because I'm like I get good grades I do all my stuff and I'm able to smoke pot um for all you pothe heads out there you're lying to yourself you will be so much more productive and such a better person not being stoned all the time that was a huge thing for me uh because whether you're actively smoking or not if you smoke at any point in the day I don't care what you think like you are altered for the rest of the entire day you're burnt out you're tired you're not quite with it so I think having that discipline to be like Hey listen it's it's Monday Tuesday Wednesday those were kind of my three work days and like I said before it's a business right like if you don't have the discipline to not be able to say okay from 9:00 to 11 o'clock tonight I got to be at my computer and locked in if you can't do that this is probably not for you is it easier to do in the morning for some people sure I hate waking up early right I got friends who wake up go to the gym hit a sauna cold plunge and then they're on screen for New York session at like 8 A.M I'm like that's that to me is more insane than what I do so I mean I think you got to find out ICT has a really good analogy where he says you need to find out what trading style works for you not everyone can be a scalper maybe you're a sprinter maybe you're a medium distance Runner maybe you're a marathon runner and then you got to kind of line up your strategy to fit your personality your lifestyle your schedule like I said before you don't need to trade full-time like I tell people I'm like you want to trade and you got a full-time job you got kids you got stuff on the go instead of looking at the hourly and the M5 look at the daily and the hourly now you only got to check the chart a couple times a day as opposed to you know all day long um so there's so much variability in what you can do and the strategy you set up to fit your your lifestyle and again it's a business so if you can't kind of make those sacrifices and do that type of planning M you're not really setting yourself up for Success definitely no definitely I love that and I think it's so important cuz a lot of people they probably Force things and I think it's a good observation that you made in terms of like I don't I'm not a morning person so I'm not going to force myself to do that and uh so therefore I'm going to transition to this other um routine that fits me better obviously I think everything comes with its negatives as well so like during the night time as you said like you would rather obviously be able to go out probably at the end of your day and sort of relax but you know as a business I need to be focused at these times on these days in particular and as you say comes down to the discipline you know if you're if you understand that and then you're willing to do it that's where the results will then come off the back of it absolutely in terms of uh you know you've been trading crypto for a while now you've been you know through many Market Cycles is there any indications um that you could tell us in terms of like when to look out for certain Market move like a bull market versus bare Market as you said like right now we've had a a lot of bullish movement but are we in a bull market so it's one of those things it's like when you look at the stock market and I think they say if it's gone down for you know x% for this long it's offic it's technically a recession but you look at the stock market now we're almost back at alltime high but we're also in the biggest recession of our lifetimes it's like kind of confusing um crypto generally runs in kind of three to four year Cycles I found right um was created in 2008 2009 there's a bull run then then there was another one in 2012 13 then there was another one in kind of 201617 then 2020 2021 uh one of the easiest things to look at is the having event so when the mining rewards get half so that's coming up this may every time that that has happened crypto usually going into it has been in an uptrend and then proceeds to make an all-time high after um the easiest thing uh for me at least because I got in relatively earli is I'd look at Bitcoin and I would look at it on the daily and the weekly and if that market structure is bullish I'm bullish across the board if you go look at the last all-time high when price went all the way up to like 70k we never made a lower low on The Daily until the top was in MH it's hard to believe and when you're looking at it on a day-to-day basis you're not looking at the daily chart you're looking at the five minute chart and you're seeing these huge green candles but when you zoomed out the market structure is much even if we had these crazy big Corrections it never broke that kind of previous structure low as soon as it did I was out um and then when it started making bullish market so for me it was easy as that like I'm very much a technical Trader I'm like if this is in an uptrend I'm buying and that's how I bought near the lows you know of previous cycles and even this cycle when we broke you know we kind of went to 15K we made a higher high on the weekly at like 20 I said okay I'm I'm bullish until we lose that low then we make another higher high I'm bullish until we lose that low and if you try and be like oh this is a bull market I have to think of it this way I think you might miss out on certain opportunities trying to you know force yourself this a bull rather than just trade the chart that you see M but that what that's what works for me right um I think for a lot of people they want to buy early in the cycle and just hold until it gets crazy um but I think you have to have some type of technical parameters to when are you taking profit because there's so many people who yeah they bought Bitcoin at 3,000 it went to 60k very few people held it from 3 to 60 but at what point are you selling do you have a monetary goal in mind do you have a technical level in mind are you waiting for Market structure to change um so I I try and use the chart for almost everything and then I do have certain monetary objectives the thing with crypto now it's so big we are seeing diminishing returns on things like Bitcoin like there's going to be some new altcoin that goes up 10,000% and you're not going to be in it and you're going to be pissed and some guy's going to put in a th000 bucks and he's going to make millions you're gon be pissed um but for Bitcoin itself like let's say in a really ideal scenario it goes to 150,000 like that'd be phenomenal that's a 3X from here not saying that's not a crazy return but unless you're dealing with large Capital 3x is not retiring you and that's what most people want they say how much do I got to put in to never work again basically um so if that's the mindset you're in in crypto you got to be in the trenches and you got to be looking for those uh new sectors like I think AI is going to do very well in this next Market cycle and there's going to be tons of coins around Ai and things like that machine learning that will do well in game and things like that you got to be in the trenches you got to be finding those asymmetric opportunities that's a whole different ball game than what I'm doing these people are you know in discords and telegrams they're trying to get in stuff early they're making you know they're spreading their bets out across different sectors um I I consider myself like a boomer 80% of the crypto I hold is Bitcoin and ethereum the other 20% of it is you know I will spray into some kind of higher risk stuff it's not exciting but I've luckily enough my portfolio is big enough enough where if Bitcoin went to 150k and ethereum went to 10K it's a ton of money for someone with 20K you know that's not going to move the needle you got to be looking for something else so uh it's fun right now and I highly suggest if you're like a Forex Trader you're a Futures Trader you trade price action you trade indicators I don't care when crypto's moving how it's moving now you're doing yourself a disservice by not at least looking at it and I think you'd be pleasantly surprised to see how well the things that you've taught yourself in those other markets are transferable to crypto and to other markets in general when crypto is dying I said hey guys if you know how to trade crypto go draw those same lines on gold or EUR USD or the S&P it it works might not move as fast but in you know FX you're getting 100 to one leverage you're getting 500 to one leverage you're getting a thousand to one leverage so a half a percent move on Euro USD is a lot more than you think yeah when you're dealing with those types of Leverage numbers so that information is portable definitely no I love that and you know one thing that you I don't know if you touched on it before but in terms of uh Bitcoin for example there's a lot of people who uh you know in the space I know there's a lot of debating that goes on pretty much in the whole of the trading industry but especially on the crypto side and I know there's some people out there who go like you know Bitcoin eventually will just drop you know go back to zero um what are your thoughts on that um usually when people are saying that it's time to buy uh and then usually when those same people are telling you it's going to go to 500k per it's time to sell I do think that type of analysis does work really well with crypto like when my mom is texting me about her Bitcoin investment I'm like okay like we're getting a little frothy um maybe it will right uh you could put your Tim foil hat on and you could say okay the powers that be that control the money and the central banks and blah blah blah they don't want Schmucks like me and my friends who bought crypto just early to buy you know fireworks on the Silk Road to have a a bunch of money so maybe they're going to Nuke it all to zero I would rather be optimistic um and see that you know blockchain technology has a lot of uses outside of just being a form of transferring money around um you know nft technology has a lot more uses than being pictures of monkeys um you know it can be used for things like um Deeds of ownership with art and Providence and you know real estate and Investments and things like that concert tickets and memorabilia like there's so many applications I think we'll see blockchain technology used for in the next decade um I think Bitcoin my personal opinion will become something like a gold where it's just an asset that is traded it has value I think the volatility will decrease it's already decreasing in Bitcoin you know and some of the larger ones specifically especially as more regulation comes in as much as crypto guys are like you know Screw the banks Screw The Regulators and the SEC you know regulation is coming whether you want it to or not it's going to come it has to come and there's it's not always a bad thing there are you know it's it's annoying when you know you live in Canada us and you're banned from using all these exchanges but it's also annoying when you know FTX steals all your money so there is a middle ground um but I don't think crypto is going anywhere will Bitcoin go to zero one day I think highly unlikely and the the upside is potentially infinite the downside is only to zero so that's to me asymmetric bet on the upside um but I highly highly not Financial advice but advise uh people if you're trading crypto realize your gains it's just like in prop right where you can like make that money real whether it's buying yourself a watch taking some out buying a house taking some out just having cash so important um I think that's one of the things that a lot of people wish they could go back to say well on paper I was worth $5 million it's like what are you worth now and was that money real how about taxes right are you are you setting enough side because guess what if you made all that money this year you didn't cash any out and then price drops 50% that tax bill is based on the old price not the price now um so you do have to realize that money as much as I'm you know a crypto guy and I want crypto to do well I'm not paying my rent in Bitcoin I'm paying my rent in dollars right so I'm consistently extracting money from the market and then putting it into other things whether it's new businesses whether it's savings accounts more traditional Investments I do think realizing money yeah uh is something a lot of crypto only guys um are missing out on and I I highly not financially advise you to put some money in the bank and secure yourself you make life-changing money yeah change your life yeah you know what I mean because I've been there already I've seen the number go way up and all the way back down it's not fun definitely and one thing you have said to us in in the group before actually is something to do with the altcoins there some of these altcoins that you've seen crazy Returns on and crazy all-time high prices but then then also you know since the bare Market came in completely dropped off the face of the Earth too you've said that you know the likelihood of them going back to alltime highs is quite slim can you just speak on that so like people a lot of people are obsessed with xrp I remember xrp is the thing that got me into crypto in the first place um and we've not seen in the last bull market we didn't see it beat the all-time high so um all coins as a whole but then if you can touch on xrp there as well I'm sure people like to know abely shout out to the xrp Army I know you're out there still struggling so um the thing is with most of these altcoins is they don't do anything right um a lot of these altcoins benefit from a rising tide raises All Ships so when the market as a whole is going up there's optimism people are risk on they're willing to put their money into other stuff things are pumping and when the market is frothy like it is right now you can launch a coin and you can say I'm going to do this this this and this I'm going to be the next Bitcoin the next ethereum like the first one was like LTC it was like where the new better Bitcoin we're faster yeah right but it kind of you know had its Market cycle and then it's kind of Fallen Into Obscurity if you go look at the most popular altcoins in 2013 the Bull Run 2017 then 2021 you'll see a lot of the names in those top 10 altcoins change MH Bitcoin and ethereum seem to be the Main Stays xrp is up there just because there's so much money in it at this point but a lot of them fall to obscurity they're never heard from again and a the majority of them never make new all-time highs outside of Bitcoin and ethereum a lot of these coins rarely some of them do right someone's going to say what about this one some of them will most of them don't for a few reasons primarily um when everything is going crazy it it was it's almost like Silicon Valley in the early 2000s where you could go in with a idea on a napkin and raise millions of dollars without actually doing anything yet because there was just so much froth and money it didn't matter that's what these altcoins are often like they say here's they make all these promises they release a white paper and a road map they say here's all the stuff we're going to do that's so awesome and we're going to partner with this company and the price goes up right and the people who created the token they're making money when that price goes up and often times they very rarely deliver on any of the stuff they said they were going to do so when the market crashes I don't care if you accomplished everything you said you were GNA do when Bitcoin crashes and the market goes down everything's going down with it and a lot of these altcoins can drop 80 90 95% off of their all-time highs to get back to that all-time high you got to do like a 100% or a th% return like the math becomes quite crazy so when a new cycle happens you had a coin in 2017 and now it's 2021 okay well not only did you not deliver on all the stuff you told us you were going to there's now a community of bag holders who own from way higher than prices now yeah who are waiting to sell closer to break even mhm and that's why you see these new coins where there's no overhead Supply right go up like crazy and you see these other coins they will go up but you know there's someone who owns xrp from a dollar who is every time it gets near there they're trying to get out closer to break even so it's failed promises it's the fact that there is this these bag holders there's people who held this coin down 90% And they're like it's got to come back right it's that bag called a fallacy it's sunk cost at that point like is your money better off maybe just cutting what you have left and putting it in something else probably but I'm never going to convince an xrp person of that um as much as I can try so xrp is an interesting one specifically that's all coins kind of in general some of them will'll see salana for example MH it actually is a chain that people use it does a lot of what ethereum does better it's more accessible it's cheaper it's faster uh I wouldn't be surprised if it sees an all-time high again but those coins that come out in a previous cycle go crazy and then do even better in the next cycle those are a lot rarer yeah it's much more common that if a coin goes to alltime high it's never going to see that price again there is a ton of coins that will never see the prices they saw in 2021 ever again doesn't mean you can't make money I know people who trade xrp very well right they buy it at 30 cents they sell it at 60 cents cuz it's just in a massive range sure but from an investing perspective you got to realize like this coin I think it topped out over three bucks m is it going to go there is it going to do a 10x maybe there's so much of this token and so many people in it the amount of money that would have to be pumped into it to get that 10x is insane versus some new coin um there's also a lot of um I guess so like xrp was sued they were you know fighting a case against the SEC so there's some sort of regulatory implications they won the case or they're winning the case I don't really keep up with the xrp Army these days um so maybe that all that kind of systematic overhead risk gets lifted and maybe it does do very well but you have to like your your job as an investor because crypto yeah there's trading but a lot of is investing mhm is where is you know the the alpha you know where am I going to get the best return on my money and I think if you just look at the chart of xrp there's a lot of coins that just look better that haven't been around for so long they don't have all of these negative aspects to it that in my opinion you're probably better off putting your money into um don't marry your bags right like anyone who has xrp in their Twitter name or link is another big one in their Twitter name um they're so tied to it and it's an emotional thing you made money on a lot of these guys they made a ton of money on that coin and it's impossible to let go yeah so instead of trying to make a ton of money on another coin they're just like well this is the one that made me a million bucks so like it's got to come back right and it's that bag holders fallacy and they just can't quite get away from it I mean more power to you guys xrp Army I hope it goes to uh $10 a coin and I hope you all make it super big I'm praying for you but uh sometimes you got to know when to cut your losers it's just like regular trading right like okay cut this loser it there's also a a mental tax to holding something you know that far down and the relief you will feel I'm telling you by cutting that bag and then maybe reallocating and guess what you can always buy it back too yeah it's not like if you sell it now you can't buy it back if things change but it's very hard to convince people who are that emotionally attached that's something that I think is more unique to crypto than it is to FX is people like you don't love Euro USD where you're like I'm never selling my Euros right like in crypto like people will make their whole personality a coin yeah which is just hilarious how how important do you think it is to try and avoid the mindset of trying to catch the bottom you know because I feel like especially if you're you're rather than uh crypto trading you know if you're investing trying to catch the bottom is a probably a very dangerous mindset to have because I'm sure there will people let's say with Bitcoin um who were like it's going to go to sub 10K and they didn't get there and then they completely not only did they not buy then but as it started to make bullish structure they just avoid buying because they keep having the mentality of it's going lower even now even as high as we are now they still got that same mentality of no worries you know we're not going to see alltime highs we're going sub 20K I love this question so um you don't know it's the bottom until it's the bottom right just like you don't know it's the top until it's the top and so I talked about it earlier like when are you taking profit on something that's in price Discovery you don't know where the Mania ends so you have to have some rules to be like okay well I'm up 10x on my investment that's enough or at least that's enough to take some out of the game the same goes for the bottom right so last cycle um I started buying Bitcoin at 6,000 it went down to three right so yeah those 6,000 buys for a little while started looking real shitty when we were at three but I kind of told myself I said listen I sold near 20K um it's down 80 to 85% from alltime high it's been you know two years of down and relative to previous Market Cycles this is usually where things bottom out um I just started buying I said every dollar I'm putting in here I'm prepared to lose and I'm more interested in catching the meat of the move than I am interested in trying to catch the absolute bottom sell the absolute top people who bought it at the absolute bottom they didn't hold it to 60k right they bought it at three and then they sold it at six so I kind of bought in a range and I did the same thing this time I told people I said below 20K I think bitcoin's a good buy could it go to 10 maybe um and I'll buy more right and I'll leave some ammo some dry powder but I'm buying under 20 and then when it gets back above and starts creting that structure I'm putting the rest in and I'm I'm kind of letting it go um there's a guy I think I've sent it to our group like uh he goes by cappo and he basically was convinced that you know we're going to 10K and we're at like 15K and he's like we're almost there and now we're at almost 50 you know what I mean and you don't want to it's like uh you can't see the the forest through the trees right like you can't have this bias that you're married to it's no different than FX like if you think we're going up and all the evidence suggests that we're going down like you have to be able to lose the ego and be like oh I was wrong okay let me pivot and if you can't do that you're not going to survive whether that's crypto trading life in general you got to it's strong opinions but they got to be loosely held definitely no love that and we're just going to go into some like quick fire questions if you will and sure you know as a as a crypto Trader no doubt you probably have some interesting stories in terms of like big losses is there any sort of notable losses I know you mentioned about FTX um but is there any notable losses that stand out to you that were really like you know I always remember that maybe some major lessons off the back of them as well oh gosh I have a couple so real quick I'll so FTX was insane but that wasn't I mean it's my fault for having that much money on an exchange where technically it's not my money it's counterparty risk there it's like putting your money with a sketchy broker you don't really know if they're going to honor your withdrawal right um that was awful so I was long so many altcoins basically right into the top so I'd had my best stretch of trading ever in um March and April going into May of 2021 which effectively was the high on bitcoin yeah usually what happens is Bitcoin tops and starts to distribute altcoins have this one last crazy Harrah and then the whole Market corrects and I knew but was heater and made M over the last couple of months that you know I'm just like like little bit more juice to squeeze out of this thing um and I remember because it was Jake Paul fighting I I want to say it was either Nate Robinson or like the first Tyron Woodley fight but it was a Jake Paul fight I'm in all these Longs and it was the market environment where no matter what you bought if you waited a day or two you were in profit like it was easy mode I wasn't using stops like I'm just like everything's going up press the green button make money and I remember having my girlfriend at the time over and I'm like okay like I'm well positioned everything's Mega green and um we're GNA watch this Jake Paul fight we're gonna have you know some drinks it's gonna be a good time and basically that was like the top of the market you can put the Jake Paul date on the chart that's like the top and I lost a crazy amount of money like obviously I was still up over the last three months but basically three months of like consistent growth and that gave back like 40% of what I had made over those 3 months like I was I'm I'm yelling at my girlfriend she's like what's wrong like you don't understand like you know and I'm watching it and what happens in crypto is when you have these massive Cascades down yeah your account can get liquidated right and so I'm watching and my liquidation price and the price of all these coins are just approaching approaching approaching and I know because I've been doing this so line I say as soon as I close we're going to bounce have like you know a dead cat bounce yeah and I could have saved 20% of my money but it's not going to happen till I close like that's just how it's Murphy's Law yeah so that one was was brutal I closed like the Pico bottom next day everything was up 50% you know it's sickening but it happens yeah uh that one was gross another funny one is so Mount goau was like one of the first exchanges back in 2013 that got hacked and people are just now like in the next year or two going to get their money back so I had five Bitcoin back then but at the time that was $500 to $5,000 like it wasn't a lot M and the bankruptcy claim and it was all in Chinese and so I brought it to a lawyer and he's like it's going to cost me more to translate this and fill it out for you than you're going to get back so I never did it five Bitcoin now would be you know 200 250,000 no more than that like like 200 Grand 250 Grand so uh that's another upsetting loss that I wish I wish I would have went through but is what about notable wins oh gosh I mean the 3 months leading up to that massive loss was the most money I've ever made um so the bottom of the market in 2018 so we had the 201617 bull run it went to like 20K then went down to like 3K I started buying so I wrote an email to about 50 people my parents some my best friends you know some family members like you know close people my brothers yeah and I it's like this is like a 5,000-word email basically saying here's my thesis on like why I'm buying crypto now so Bitcoin was like $4,000 ethereum was like 80 bucks I said here's what I'm doing here's why I had the charts I said you know I think we're here in the market cycle I think the Market's bottoming I think the stock market is looking up I and I wrote like this massive thing down to like here's exactly how you can buy here's how you can get a wallet to store your coins here's the coins that I'm buying everything I sent that email the first few responses were like not interested right and then I would update it right bitcoin's now at 10K ethereum's now at you know a couple hundred bucks I'm like update more unsubscribed not interested the only two people that bought were my mom and my dad wow that's it and I ended up just buying for them because they're like listen we believe in you but I don't want to do it just buy for us basically um and they outperformed everyone like they did like a 15x on what they put in um but I had friends right like I'm like dude like just trust me like you know I'm not saying go all in but like I'm I'm really confident this and they're like unsubscribe and so I stopped updating it and then Bitcoin made I think it went finally got to like 40K yeah and I sent one final update I'm like this is now 10x on when I told you like six months ago and ethereum's like 25x this is the last of those emails and sure enough who are those same people texting me hit me up on Instagram Facebook Hey man like it's now a good time to invest I'm like yeah I'll sell you mine cuz like I'm out now I already I already caught the meat of the move man you want to come in and try and cash this top like by all means so that's a story that's always funny and I mean I'm sure you can test as being a successful guy it's funny how it changes how people view you and how they interact with you um and and like I get people giving me advice where I'm like but you didn't believe in me in the first place like who are you to tell me yeah well be careful about that crypto thing man I'm like okay well uh you know enjoy going to work tomorrow I guess like what do you what do you mean like be care it's just it's just funny it changes their perception of you and I think there's a lot of entitlement in this world when people see you succeed yeah and it tells you a lot about who your friends are like you know there's people who you thought were your friends who are jealous or they're just like hey can you teach me how to invest and trade I'm like I tried you know what I mean like why am I going to do that now so you know that that's that's one that I always remember being funny what's it like though like you said in terms of friends I know the crypto Community is very active you know I feel like the FX Community has started to grow on Twitter a lot more over the recent say like 12 to 18 months especially as someone who started off as you said with like forums and a lack of Education or being available like it is now like so much now that's just available for free like in all the different platforms um and even then back then the platforms weren't even used as they are now um so what's it like now obviously having such a big community in the crypto side and I'm sure you've probably connected and made friends even like me and you like we only got to know each other through like getting into a telegram group and so on and so forth so what's it been like to obvious to make all these connections now and these friendships um just by using the social media space it's so funny it's something like my fiance will never understand or my family I'm like I have like so many of my friends are like online like I have people who like I will invite to my wedding and I've met them in person once but like we talk every day yeah you know what I mean um so it's awesome you know I I used to go to conferences and I'll go to events and stuff I have friends who put on crypto Centric events and like I'm all about that I think um having Community is so important trading is isolating right like it's not like you have you know your guy sitting at the desk next to you that you're getting L like it's you're alone a lot um so I think having those communities and even though they're online it's it's so important that human I think covid was very eye openening for people it's like human interaction is so key um and more than anything obviously I've made some great friends it's been awesome I've made amazing connections whether it's you know meeting people who are in cities that I'm traveling to and they're giving me restaurant recommendations they're you know hooking me up with this thing I'm went to a Visa I had a guy with like five followers or 50 followers DM me he's like dude I'm the man in AA you've helped me so much like I'm going take care of you and he's taken me to restaurants that I would never find on my own he's getting me into the club backstage behind the like crazy stuff all because I post on Twitter so that part of it is amazing I think the other side of it for your development is you're finding people who understand what you're going through I cannot commit miserate with my buddy who's a firefighter or you know a mortgage broker who like they have a not that there's anything wrong with regular jobs but it's really hard to tell someone who works N9 to-5 be like man I lost 15K today yeah they're going to be like like that's what I make in you know three months what do you mean and it's so having people that you can talk to about the Journey about the process who don't think you're crazy because it it is kind of crazy what we do MH um is is so important um to be able to commiserate with them to be able to grind with them share information like uh I've learned so much from other Traders other people that have expedited my learning early on especially uh and people online are so giving MH like it used to be like a thing you had to pay for yeah right back in the day where it's like you want to talk to like Tony Robbins and get some life advice from this business Mogul you got to pay for it dinner you got to pay to go to a course or to like a a retreat where now there are multi-millionaires on Twitter just giving out game for free and if you are not absolutely trying to absorb that knowledge and take advantage of all that you're doing yourself a disservice uh whether it's trading or otherwise like you can go online you can find someone who will give you a complete You Know lesson on uh guitar on YouTube for free whereas you used to have to go like the internet is so so amazing for that and it's changed my life I I can't even explain definitely no I love that and I think like you said like when you go just the traveling aspect like you've connected with people online and you might not even know you've had an impact on them but then they reach out to you and they offer you know even if it's recommendations or even like taking you around and stuff it's incredible that alone is incredible but the connections the networking even outside of just the crypto space for example or trading space the the networking in other avenues whether it could be an accountant for example it could be an advisor in something it could be just someone who runs a particular type of business or chain of businesses I think it's absolutely incredible and I'm going to leave you two final questions one uh well one's less so a question but one is uh in the crypto space you have crypto fight night you know and I've been pushing for and been mentioning a lot like we should have an fx fight night but like what is it about the crypto fight night like I know you've actually commentated no yeah so um shout out to my boy rookie um and Mo and ra who had putting that on um this was our third year doing it I unfortunately wasn't able to make it out this year just with travel stuff Dubai's far MH uh I would love for them to do it in Vegas one year that would be awesome um I think we took a little bit of inspiration from you know the YouTuber kind of creators fighting each other um I think it's great for two things um one you know let's Twitter fingers become you know real life punching I think that's like such an awesome fun way because it's a safe controlled enir and like especially in year one like we had people who like there was some legitimate beef between some of these guys online and then the mutual respect afterwards because you went in there and like you either gave out some hits you took some hits like I have insane respect for anyone who's willing to step in the ring I don't care if you're not pro you can get hurt in there yeah right you can get hurt in there um so massive amounts of respect for that um I think it was a fun way to again bring the community together make it real right because it's so easy when you're on Twitter and these things like it's faceless right like yeah I show my face you show my face but it's still very easy to say something rude to someone you know when you're not like this yeah right um and that's Mike Tyson has a quote right like everyone you know is real tough until there's like there's I can't remember the exact quote but there's a RIS punch in the mouth yeah you get punched in the mouth you have a plan and the internet has taught people to you know be tough online you might not be in person so I think there's that element of it as well um and then I just think it's kind of great kind of you know promotion and and marketing for space it's just fun like they did such a good job it was such a great how they get people to agree to do it because I feel like that's the hard bit in the FX side yeah um that was uh that was interesting I mean we did uh a lot of like reaching out to people um and some people came in you know came up to us I think you know there's weight classes you have to be aware of and skill level obviously you don't want someone who's never boxed before boxing someone who uh but you need a few people the first year it really was a few guys you just stepped up and we like I'm willing to go in there I've never boxed before I'm going to take 6 months and you know not drink eat clean work out every single day and do this and I I would love to see it with FX I'd be happy to come there and commentate it with you I think it's so fun um I thought about doing it myself I'm a bit of a bigger dude in the first year there was not really anyone kind of in my weight class um cuz you know like some of the guys is like you know this guy's 56 140 or the other guy was so big and I would have to gain weight um but I'm also a little older than some of these crypto guys like I'm 33 now um I've been punched in the head in real life enough times to know that it's not very fun um and at least right now on the crypto side like these guys are paying for all their own training and stuff right yeah so yeah they've got some sponsorships that mitigate some of the cost but really you're like okay I'm six months no drinking I'm going to train I'm getting a membership like that's also a you know not everyone has the ability to take that level of commitment cuz it's crazy these guys took it really seriously I thought it was so fun I'd love to see it happen in FX and if you guys need help with the planning of it venues and stuff we're we're super plugged in in Dubai for that definitely hey I'm going to hit you up for sure and the final one I'm going to say is literally you know 30 30 to 60 seconds down this camera here you know your best advice to Traders out there whether crypto Forex whever it may be you know most Traders find themselves in that boom and bus cycle you up and down not quite losing not quite winning what would be your best advice to them to change that and get to profitability uh be process oriented do not focus on the end goal um I think if you are going to write yourself some sort of end monetary goal you need to break it down into steps that are manageable that are bite-sized because otherwise you will feel like you're not progressing um I think one of the biggest mistakes Traders make is they don't know how to recognize their own progression and their own success and for a lot of reasons maybe the goal setting is too big or maybe they're not process oriented so they can actually see that they are making improvements and they actually know where the deficient as well if you can't tell what you're improving on what you're lacking on it's going to be very hard to track your process and get to be where you know you want so as corny as it is it's about the journey right it's not so much the destination you're going to get there right but you don't get there without all the steps in between uh and I think you're going to massively massively uh expedite your uh journey to profitability if you break things down into a process that you can follow literally daily that becomes weekly that becomes monthly that becomes yearly I think you'll be very surprised when you go and look back at what you started the year at and where you're at the end of the year and you can say oh wow I actually am you know improving I'm I'm making those improvements and get off of social media uh at least initially or if you're on it take it with a grain of salt because what you see on there is mostly uh not real life not realistic love that thank you well it's been absolutely incredible conversation I really really enjoyed it and I think there's so much to take away from it and hopefully we'll do this again soon and if not we'll see each other at FX fight nighttime bro I would love to it' be so fun definitely well everyone thank you for tuning in drop a comment below of your biggest takeaway you know biggest lesson you know the links to Trad domain AKA Dylan will be below so make sure you check those out as well and until next time everyone take care