Life of a Bitcoin Trader: Whaleclub.co

Bitcoin’s volatility has attracted a lot of new users into the trading market. While it may look like a quick and easy buck, for dedicated traders, this 24-hour market requires patience, consistent monitoring, ups and downs, and loss of sleep. The Bitcoin trading market is still highly unregulated, and it has become a welcoming space for both new traders and experienced speculative traders to profit from the price swings.

To engage and unite the trading community, several traders founded the group Whaleclub, a site that makes trading and additional information available to all via live stream, a 24-hour team speak live chat, a stream of tradingview analysis charts, and Google hangouts with exchange owners and operators.

To get a better understanding of what life is like as a Bitcoin trader, we interviewed two of Whaleclub’s founders, flibbr and BTCVIX through the group’s teamspeak. They provided insight on the challenges of Bitcoin trading, their most successful tactics and strategies, and ideas on the next speculative bubble. For the sake of privacy, they have requested to be identified by their Whaleclub handles.

What was the motivation of starting Whaleclub?

BTCVIX: We were basically a group of people that spent time chatting on Tradingview. The easiest way for us to communicate was to hold Google hangouts, which happened for a number of months. Then we got a lot of request that people just wanted to listen in, but the live hangout would only run 8 hours, and Bitcoin being 24/7, we’d have to update the link every 8 hours. It was a complete nightmare, so that’s where we started the Whaleclub teamspeak.

It’s really about how many sets of eyes can you have looking at the same thing or different things and the markets that are moving, and the information that is passing through the medium and effecting what we see on the charts. You have two eyeballs that should be looking at the chart. If you’re trying to read chat too, it just isn’t fast enough, but the kind of noise that comes out of teamspeak–you’re able to derive a signal out of there. You can kind of feel and get a sense, and ultimately process the information. I don’t watch stamp, somebody else does. Hey stamp just sold off $20 because they have no order book, the other markets look at them and start moving. It’s not as much we’re some central orchestrators giving out information–it’s kind of the hive mind mentality, especially when we have big moves you can feel it.

How did you first get involved in Bitcoin trading?

Flibbr: I was trading a bit of gold on Buillion vault, but I got into Bitcoin mostly from an anarchist angle–political, end the state, remove the power of money from the control of the state.

BTCVIX: I came from an options and derivatives background, trading multi-leg complex options on the indexes. Coming over to Bitcoin is a totally different animal, but it’s one that I’ve come to like. It never closes, there’s never a real open or close, earning or central bank intervention; it just ebbs and flows, market dynamics and whales. It’s a pure market, completely different from what I’ve experienced in the listed space.

When did you shift from that mentality from being a holder to trading Bitcoin?

Flibbr: First thing I did after buying Bitcoin was about 3 days later go to BTC-E and buy some Litecoin. Around the time, we were bubbling up to $260, and I was making all this money, and I didn’t sell anything, and I thought we were going to the moon–vertical to $10,000 a coin. And obviously we didn’t. It went down to $50, I just went from filthy rich, to what I put in. So, really it just came about capital preservation. So, I knew when we were going to go vertical, there would be big dumps, so it was just about increasing coin count during those times, and when China bounced Bitcoin, it was all about capital conservation. I was trading a lot of Litecoin at the time, because LTC/USD was good to trade at the time.

Since Bitcoin is a 24 hour market, how does it affect your life?

Flibbr: It just messes up your whole life, you’re watching the 1 minute, the 5 minute, 15 minute, 24/7, first thing you do when you wake up is obviously check the phone if you haven’t already been woken up mid REM sleep from price alarms. I don’t personally sleep with my wife anymore because she doesn’t like price alarms going off in the middle of the night, because she wakes up and I don’t. So, I now sleep on the sofa isolated from my loved ones with a laptop in front of me with price alarms set, logged in, ready to make a move.

BTCVIX: It’s certainly a lifestyle choice to be a Bitcoin trader. Anybody that thinks, oh you just sit in front of your computer for a couple hours clicking and profits just drop from the sky, No. It consumes a lot of my life, and more recently since I’ve taken it more seriously and put more money on the line and gotten involved in the Whaleclub community, I really don’t do real life things as much.

What have been the most useful tools for trading Bitcoin for you?

Flibbr: Technically wise, horizontal resistance support. I’m really an anti-trade analysis trader. I find problems with it all the time, and I can rip it to shreds, but horizontal resistance is impartial of anything. It basically is, is someone willing to buy at this price or not.

How do you think margin trading and new trading options that have come out have affected the price?

Flibbr: I think there are loads of factors keeping the price down. The good thing about the old times was there was one exchange, Mt. Gox, that was the exchange to go to, so everybody shoveled their money into Mt. Gox, just full of fiat, and just market bought. Now, you go ahead and put your money on stamp, and then maybe one of the Chinese exchanges will be selling, so it’s so hard with exchanges being distributed to get the price to go up. Margin trading is unavoidable, but it’s going to happen anyways. People will borrow coins of miners and other sources. Futures like on OKCoin, purely BTC against BTC, I think helps reduce the volatility of the regular market by putting the volatility into other derivatives like Futures.

What do you think would be the biggest new story to sustain a price movement?

BTCVIX: I think the ETF is the biggest one. I think it’s the most probable. Certainly, if you had a currency collapse, but I think the U.S. dollar actually would have to collapse for something to happen there or governments being far more controlling about funds moving across borders. But I think the next speculative bubble will be on the back of the ETF.

Flibbr: If Paypal would integrate Bitcoin directly into their wallet, the hardest thing at the moment for most people is to actually get a Bitcoin. The whole process is current really laborious, whereas Paypal already has everything set up and has direct access to bank accounts. So, I would like to see something like Paypal adding Bitcoin.

How has Bitcoin shaped your trading philosophies?

Flibbr: Patience, not necessarily when you’re waiting in a position and you’re waiting for the price to do what you want it to do, but waiting for the conditions to be right. So when you do make the moves, your odds of getting it right are high. When you do anything, buy low, sell high at the most basic level.

BTCVIX: I think it has chilled me out a lot. If you think about normal people, they tend not to experience significant emotional trauma. I do believe you learn a lot going through the tough periods. People ask me, “what do you do to become a good trader?” You could go to trading view, you could read a bunch of books, but I think you need to lose a bunch of money first because you need to experience the pain associated with that and go through the process of recognizing those emotions and see if you can handle it. I’m not as much of a subscriber of the idea that you need to separate emotions from trading–you’re going to be emotional, that’s human nature. But you have to recognize how it’s affecting you. Going about dealing with that, I use a lot of self talk. I talk to myself, and I try to be really psychopathic, and I just look at my screen; that’s my balance, this is the balance I have to trade with. I don’t remember the balance I had five seconds ago, and I tell myself over and over until it’s true.

Do you think Bitcoin is a consumer currency or a speculative asset?

Flibbr: Right now, there is no way any normal human being can use Bitcoin…if they do, they’re gonna get hacked, their gonna type in the wrong number. But it’s still new, it’s still fresh, so there’s plenty of possibilities.

BTCVIX: I just see it as a speculative instrument, a new asset class being born.

How do you think people that want to get into trading should gauge how to trust an exchange?

Flibbr: I look for accountability [and] transparency. I look for decent funding, people putting their reputation on the line. I look for acquisition of good staff, I look for engagement with customers. I’m looking for good support, all of which OKCoin has, although the Chinese site has some issues, and is not great, but the .com site has been good so far. We’ve talked to Phil Potter, [of Bitfinex] who is on teamspeak often, has great passion behind Bitcoin and his exchange.

Although BTCVIX and Flibbr didn’t want to quote their profits and losses, they have extensive knowledge from years of experience in trading, and unlike many, are willing to open up about their experiences and open their community to all. It’s important to remember how risky just buying Bitcoin can be with the price volatility, so if you decide to take the path of a trader, take time to learn from the community and educate yourself before diving in headfirst. Happy trading to all of you who decide this lifestyle is something you want to embrace.

In the Bitcoin media sphere, we’re exposed to countless articles about new companies, technologies, and the good and bad of the industry. However, you can’t ignore the value and effects on price that traders have, and the strain it requires to maintain a 24 hour market. Whaleclub gives a small glance into the world of trading and the exchanges that support the Bitcoin economy.