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Cyber Alpha Call #36 Trader Mercury
Recorded: May 1, 2025 Duration: 1:00:19Space Recording
Short Summary
In a recent podcast, Trader Mercury shared his transformative journey in crypto trading, emphasizing the importance of experience, mental resilience, and the evolving landscape of trader psychology. As the crypto community continues to grow, insights into sustainable trading practices and personal development are becoming increasingly vital.
Full Transcription
Thank you. Thank you. Hello everyone! We are starting this space in two minutes.
Let's give some time for Fox to join in.
Welcome, welcome! Hvað er það?
Hello Paco, hello MT and Warrior, hello hello, welcome welcome. Thank you. We got some very interesting charts that we're going to talk about today.
And the guest is a huge Chad.
I'm very excited about this call today. Thank you. Hvað er það? Héló, mæri kjöri, héló, héló.
Hvað er það?
Héló, mæri kjöri, kemur hér mér? Jáp, já, I invite you to go host in case it goes down. Það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að það er að þa Let's give folks another two more minutes for more people to join in. Thank you. Welcome, welcome guys! Looks like Trader Mercury brought some luck in the markets we're pumping.
Love to see it man.
Always a cheerleader for green candlesticks.
Yes.
Haha. you
Hopefully the dollar pumps as well because as a as a euro poor holding dollars it was brutal for me for the last two months yeah man you guys got hit with that major outage just like a couple weeks back right
does that affect you uh the the dollar on the euro pair literally halved.
It lost like 10 to 15% value in two months.
So I was holding dollars and I got harassed.
Yeah, that's tough, man. Okay, I think we can start.
Mercury, thank you very much for coming back to the podcast.
For the folks who joined for the first time, can you tell us about your background as a trader
and how you got started in cryptocurrency trading?
Yeah, I got started in like 2017, around November. And I was just a dumb,
naive little kid who thought that crypto would be a get rich quick scheme. I saw an ad for XRP,
and that attracted my interest. And then I made a bunch of money very quickly. And then I lost it all in 2018 and kind of just put my head down and started
grinding to learn to trade. And I really, I went very hard. I started trading for probably 12 to
14 hours a day on average for like a year and a half, two years straight. So, and then I got my ass humbled, right? Uh, the market just kind of humbled the shit out of me, uh, in March, 2020.
And then ever since then, I've totally reshaped how I trade.
Um, I am very hard on being a trend maximalist.
I respect trends.
That's my forte.
That's my strength.
And that's my mantra.
So ever since then, it's just been a journey of navigating the ups and downs in the market
and trying to catch the moves that actually matter and then preserving capital so that
I can catch the next move that matters.
Wait, hello.
Cyborg. Oh, I was muted.
Oh my God.
I was replying.
I was like, I can keep ranting, man.
You want me to keep going?
No, no, no.
You're spot on on how people get on boarded.
We all came here for the quick profits and the easy circles but actually trading I think
is one of the hardest ways to make money so what were the the biggest
challenges that you faced in the beginning as a crypto trader? By far, the biggest challenge that I faced was the crippling anxiety.
So like, regardless of whether I was in a trade or sidelined and just waiting on, you know,
sitting in cash, waiting for a trade.
Typically, if I'm sidelined in cash, I'm waiting for lower prices, right?
And then you would think that, you know, being flat
on the market should provide peace and comfort, but actually it would just create an anxiety
because I had an attachment to the market. So it was like, if I was in a position, I would always
be incredibly anxious to the point where I would lose my appetite, I would lose like, any kind of
like, ability to want to go out and, you know, do a workout routine or go out to a party or hang out
with friends or whatever, whether I was in a position or not in a position, that's just always
how I felt. So I had to find a way to mitigate that. And then in terms of like actual trading,
the biggest thing that I've had to overcome was because I'm typically risk averse in my innate nature.
That's just kind of who I am as a person.
I don't like roller coasters.
I'm not really much of an adrenaline junkie.
And that really shows in the way that I trade markets.
But I had to figure that out about myself.
Even though I already knew that, I had to figure that out.
So the biggest issue that I came across was I would always sell my positions too early.
issue that I came across was I would always sell my positions too early. I would be targeting like
a 100% move and then price would be up 5% in two hours. And I would look at the chart and I would
go, oh my God, I'm up 5% and I just entered this trade two hours ago. We're pumping and I might as
well take profit and try and buy a pullback. And I would just constantly do that. So every time that I found myself in a winning position, I would just cut preemptively. And what that did long term is
my wins were not big enough to overcompensate for all the losses, right? Because when I was losing,
all of a sudden, I'm a diamond tander. Now I have the ability to adhere to risk and accept losses.
And I might even find myself, especially know accept losses and i might even find myself especially in
the beginning i would even find myself like um you know removing a stop loss or dollar cost
averaging into an underwater position so when i was losing i was losing substantial amounts
and i was losing the full amount of whatever i was risking or maybe even because i was a beginner and
you know had some poor practices and made
some terrible decisions, I would lose more than what I anticipated. But then when I would win,
I wouldn't win enough. So that was very crippling and handicapping long term. And that was something
that I still remember having to pour a lot of conscious effort into trying to overcome.
a lot of conscious effort into trying to overcome.
That's fact.
Not realizing small losses is how you blow accounts.
And I also faced that in the beginning of my trading journey.
My emotions wouldn't allow me to realize a small loss.
And that small loss would end up in a huge loss
so how did you overcome this problem as a new trader how did you develop this
well really the the only edge is experience so my system is not an edge my system is not alpha
it's just you know i've seen my system work out an edge, my system is not alpha. It's just, you know, I've seen my
system work out enough times, I've seen the system, you know, play out to beautiful, you know,
accuracy, and I'll call for a 70% move. And over the next two or three months, we actually go 70%
higher. I've also seen the times where, you know, we deviate and where we give like a bull trap,
a bear trap, whatever.
Right. So I've seen every single possible outcome that the market could ever give me. And it's just
because of that experience. But it's because in order to overcome that obstacle, I would have to
consciously tell myself like, all right, I need to take this position. This is my thoughts from an
analysis perspective. Anyone who trades knows analysis and actual execution are not the same thing.
Analysis is easy.
Execution is hard.
Anyone can analyze a chart and tell you which way it's headed, right?
So I would tell myself, this is what my analysis is.
I'm going to put my trade on.
I'm going to set my stop loss.
I'm going to set my limit take profits.
And I'm not going to log
into my account until one of those things hits. So either we get to a take profit or either we
get to my stop loss. And in reality, that's not actually a proper way to trade, at least not for
me now. Now I have enough emotional control and discipline to be able to manage my trades the way
that they should be managed in a more
efficient manner, stepping in to micromanage that position, not just being so strict about
if it gets this key level or it doesn't. I either get to my TP or it gets my stop loss. But
in order to initially overcome that obstacle, I had to have that kind of an approach to the market.
initially overcome that obstacle, I had to have that kind of an approach to the market.
And what I would realize over time is that my analysis works, right? The way that I trade my
system works, my discretion works long term, but I had to force myself to see those results, right?
I had to see, hey, you know, I might call for something and be wrong, but the next time that
I call for it,
it's going to overcompensate because I'm just letting that trade play out in my analysis.
Even if I have a coin flip in terms of probabilities, the times where I'm right is
drastically overcompensating for the times where I'm wrong. And that allows comfort when you really
deeply understand that. And also you've experienced it time and time again, it's not just variance at that point, right?
It's not a three-month-long bull market rally and you've convinced yourself that this is the new paradigm or whatever and the market's only ever going to do the of a sudden it becomes like a dogma. It's like, I really feel this deep in my core and this is winning philosophy and these
are all winning principles.
And if I continue to put these in place, then the short-term outcomes are not really going
to matter all too much, right?
As long as I'm consistent, as long as my risk is managed, I don't have to have this crippling
fear and anxiety over what is my
trade going to do this time. Just so that, right? But it's experience. And I had to literally
forcefully create that experience because me being a risk averse pansy that I am,
I wasn't able to even see those results because I was constantly stepping in front of my
own success and kind of handicapping my experience and kind of just lengthening out the learning curve
phase. You said that you are risk averse. Does that mean that you are a scalper or you are taking also swings? Oh, no, I primarily swing.
Risk averse just kind of in the way that I think about markets.
I tend to not be so aggressive in, you know, hey, we pulled back.
I need to 3x leverage long my entire portfolio, right, on this pullback.
Like, I've never been that person. I think that a lot of trading journeys come down to
a very unique iteration of who you are as a person. I'm not going to run into the same
issues necessarily as someone who is constantly blowing up their account because they're betting
or trading with more money than what they're worth. I've never really had that issue,
even though I have blown up before,
actually twice, drawn down my account negative 80%, right?
It's happened before, but it's not really a recurring issue.
I've never really had that as a main obstacle that I had to overcome.
Which cryptocurrencies do you trade the most?
Is that Bitcoin?
Bitcoin for sure. I definitely started as a primarily Bitcoin trader, but I think that's just the era that I grew up in.
Back in 2018, 2019, the only options available were inverse perpetuals on pretty much just Bitcoin.
inverse perpetuals on pretty much just Bitcoin. I remember when Bybit in 2019,
there was three coins or there was three pairs that you could trade. And it was Bitcoin USD,
ETH USD and XRP USD. And they were all inverse perpetual. So you had to own Bitcoin in order
to trade Bitcoin. So Bitcoin is definitely the main one. But actually, as of the past two years or so, I've had a great time trading Solana.
I've had some good success trading Ethereum.
Dogecoin has been a big one for me.
There's some other altcoins too, like INJ.
I've had great success on R&DR, but like I would say probably right now, the big two
like I would say probably right now, the big two are like Bitcoin Solana. And then, you know,
are like Bitcoin Solana.
really the reality is I try my best to apply winning philosophy, what I deem winning philosophy.
And that means that I'm always kind of gravitating towards the relatively stronger assets in this
market. So wherever the hype is, wherever the higher prices are, right, the higher highs are being
made, price discoveries being found, that's typically where I'm going to go. So for a good
portion of the past two years, that has been like Solana. And I would say, yeah, probably Solana
has been my favorite coin to trade the past two years. And I don't even own an investment bag of
Solana. I could care less about about the solana fundamentals but it's
just been an amazing coin for me to trade i see so i guess you are a momentum type trader on altcoins
that's correct yeah absolutely yeah do you take uh the altcoin btc chart into consideration when
you're trading altcoins what's your approach uh when entering a trade on an altcoin? I'm sorry, could you say that again? The altcoin BTC?
Let's say you're trading Solana. Are you going to look on Solana BTC chart or just Solana USD chart?
Oh, no. I look at the individual altcoin itself. This is a great question. I get this a lot, actually.
But we have to understand, like, in order to really get where my answer is coming from, you have to kind of get into my mind a little bit.
And so it's this constant, like, paradox where people are just always, you know, contradicting themselves.
And they go, oh, you know, if I trade Bitcoin, it's not going to give me enough gains. So, okay. So you're going to go trade altcoins, right? You're here for the 50X and chances are Bitcoin's not going to $5 million anytime in the next two years. So if you want a
50X, you have to go trade an altcoin. But then every single time, right? So that's the main
appeal to go trade in altcoins because we're going to get greater gains than whatever we can get on Bitcoin because that altcoin is higher beta. But when a higher beta asset is moving to the same degree
as the alpha, then technically that is now relative strength. That's not just simply higher
beta. So it's a very clear discrepancy between the two. Every altcoin is higher beta by default,
every single one. But not every altcoin
is relatively stronger, right? If you were to look at me at any point in the past two and a half
years and go, oh, look at this, Ethereum's up 10% and Bitcoin is only up 5%, that's relative
strength. Every single person listening to this right now knows that that's not true, right?
Ethereum has clearly been an underperformer, a much weaker asset, but it's always been higher beta.
Right. I think this is even true today. Right. Like Ethereum's up five percent and Bitcoin's only up three.
And yet we obviously all know which one of those two has been stronger and which one of the two continues to be stronger.
Right. So that's the key part. So every time that, you know, this hypocrisy cycle starts to kick in, we go, oh, well, I'm going to go trade altcoins because I can actually outperform.
And then what ends up happening is I'll see that same trader. And I used to think like this, too. This is not me trying to belittle anybody.
I'll see that same trader go, oh, well, Bitcoin's starting to break down, but Solana is still making higher highs,
so I should cut my Solana position. Why? Because Bitcoin broke down. What's the purpose of you
trading Solana as opposed to trading Bitcoin? Because it's outperforming, because it's going
to give you that greater gain. And yet every single time that Solana or any other altcoin
starts to outperform, because relative strength therefore implies relative weakness.
So Bitcoin, you know, if Bitcoin and Solana are both ripping into price discovery, then
theoretically Solana should be the stronger asset, right?
It's relatively stronger, which means Bitcoin is relatively weaker.
So then what happens is every single time that Solana starts to show strength and Bitcoin
is chopping sideways or, you know, whatever, people go, oh, well, I need to cut my position because of what Solana is doing.
The only reason as to why you were trading Solana in the first place is because it was
relatively stronger than Bitcoin. So it's this constant hypocrisy. So the way that I mitigate
this and refute overthinking about the market is I always just trade the individual chart in front of me.
Whatever that chart is doing, that's going to dictate my execution.
I'm not going to try and dig down this rabbit hole and go down this thread and think so hard to the point where I hurt myself.
I'm just going to trade Solana because of whatever Solana is doing.
And that goes for Ethereum, that goes for INJ, Dogecoin, any other altcoin they want to input.
Right. And again, it's like a great example of this is Fartcoin. So the argument, you know,
in the past month and a half, two months has been, why would Fartcoin go up if Bitcoin is bearish?
Right. We're on the verge of a recession. So why would Fartcoin go up? Why would Fart coin go up if Bitcoin is bearish, right? We're on the verge of a recession.
So why would fart coin go up?
Why would fart coin go up?
But what people don't realize is that fart coin was breaking out of high time frame trends
and breaking out of a multi-month range and making higher highs and blah, blah, blah.
And meanwhile, Bitcoin was still below those high time frame trends.
It was still making lower highs.
It was still heading to that bottom right corner for another three weeks or so.
So then what happens is when Bitcoin finally breaks out, Fartcoin just moves even higher.
Right?
And then as Bitcoin makes a lower low, Fartcoin is finding support at a high timeframe trend,
a major inflection point and retesting the previous range high as support.
Those are, that's a major difference, right?
One is just now starting to even peek its head out
to bearish retest a high timeframe trend.
The other one is pulling back to retest the range
that it just broke out of two weeks ago.
That's a major difference.
That's not just anymore that Fartcoin is higher beta.
It's now that Fartcoin is incredibly stronger relative to the
alpha asset in this market so now all of a sudden from that inflection point fartcoin is up like
what 150 cents bitcoin's up 20 there we go like like it's not just higher beta at that point it's
it's relative strength that's actually amazing, because some folks would assume, oh, Bitcoin is breaking down, time to sort Farcoin to get even more
returns. But that's how you blow accounts. You have to trade the chart that you have in front
of you. So you mentioned that... Sorry, this is such a key point. I just want to make sure that
every single person really understands this. Let me phrase it this way.
Silver maximalists to this day, right, their ancestors are looking down at them frowning like, dude, what the hell?
Like, this is a joke, obviously, but for centuries, people have argued, oh, silver is the underdog.
It's going to overthrow gold. It's going
to be scarcer than gold. It's the laggard. It's the laggard for centuries, for hundreds and hundreds
of years. And it's never been true. It's been true for spurts, right? You can find three,
six-month spurts, a year spurt, whatever, right? Where silver outperforms gold. But the
main correlation is gold always outperforms regardless.
That is the basis.
We always go back to that dynamic, right?
And it's just simply because the market is all about betting on the previous winner.
It's all about betting on the stronger asset.
And so when we first enter markets, you're right.
Initially, your mindset goes to, okay,
Fartcoin is up a gazillion percent and everything else
looks like shit. Surely this is not real, right? Surely, you know, Fartcoin is going to do what
the rest of the market is doing. That makes sense, right? I don't know why this is. It's kind of a
phenomenon, but literally every single person when they start trading thinks this way, myself included,
right? But what ends up happening is whenever the consensus market starts to show strength,
Bartcoin just even picks up steam.
It picks up momentum.
And the way to think about it appropriately is we want to gravitate towards winning assets,
right?
So it's like, instead of saying, hey, this diamond in the rough that is managing to
create a spotlight for itself and is gaining mindshare, right?
Nobody's talking about Popcat.
Nobody's talking about Mog.
Nobody's talking about all these other coins that do the exact same thing that Fartcoin does.
They're talking about Fartcoin.
They're talking about that thing for a reason, right?
They're talking about gold.
This is not me comparing gold to Fartcoin.
Don't get me wrong, right? They're talking about gold. This is not me comparing gold to fart coin. Don't get me wrong. Right. But they're talking about the thing that is continuing
to head to the top right corner. Nobody's talking about all the delusional fucks, right?
That are just constantly bidding and dollar cost averaging every single penny that they
own into an alt coin. There's vaporware that's constantly heading to new all-time lows. But they are talking about Michael Saylor. Why? Think about why. Because strength attracts more
strength. Your high school buddies did not text you at $15,000 Bitcoin to make sure that you are
okay. They text you to $80,000 after it made a new all-time high. We're going to gravitate.
So whatever is the winner is gaining attention, is gaining attention for a reason.
You should gravitate towards those winners, not away from them.
It makes more sense for other people to sell their depreciating assets to come by your appreciating asset.
Strength adds more strength. Right. It reinforces.
Yeah. There is an amazing quote that says, winners average winners, losers average losers.
So I guess if you want to be a winner, you average a winner.
You mentioned that altcoins are basically high BTC beta. Do you believe that BTC is a high S&P 500
beta? What's your take on the correlation theory?
More or less, yeah, absolutely. And the dynamic is actually pretty unfortunate because, again,
just because we're higher beta does not mean necessarily that we're always relatively stronger.
So again, the same way that we use that example for Bitcoin to Ethereum,
hey, Ethereum's up 10%, Bitcoin's only up five. So therefore,
Ethereum's outperforming. No, it's not. That's never been true in the past two and a half years.
It's been true for spurts, but it always went back to that dynamic of Bitcoin is leading and
it's going to continue leading. So two and a half years in a row, that has been the case.
If you look at the stock market, it's the same thing. But instead of Ethereum, you put in Bitcoin and instead of Bitcoin, you put in S&P 500. So S&P 500 has actually been relatively stronger than Bitcoin. And when I say that
statement, people go, oh, well, that doesn't make any sense because Bitcoin outperformed the S&P 500
by 600% in the past two and a half years. That's because it's higher beta, right? Everyone forgets the time period where
stocks were continuously making new all-time highs, continuously, constantly heading to the
top right corner in price discovery. And Bitcoin was stuck in an eight-month range and actually
was making lower lows, right? That's not relative strength, right? Just because Bitcoin relief
bounces after that Japanese yen carry trade, right, or whatever,
Bitcoin relief bounces 30% and stocks are only relief bouncing 10%. That's not outperformance.
It was just simply higher beta. All of a sudden, when Bitcoin starts to break out of that eight
month range and stocks are also making new all-time highs, now it is in addition to higher
beta, this thing is relatively stronger
as well. It's not even necessarily relatively stronger. It's just the exact same, right? They're
both just as bullish as the other, because how do you get more bullish than price discovery?
So just with that being neutral, right? It's equal in that regard. And then Bitcoin being higher beta,
Bitcoin is the outperformer, right? Or if the
dynamic was Bitcoin's making new all-time highs, but stocks are stuck in an eight-month range,
now in addition to being higher beta, we're also relatively stronger. But I do think that the
correlation is mostly we're just still S&P 500 beta. If you throw the charts on top of each
other, you overlay, there are just
uncanny kind of correlations, especially on lower timeframes. It's very visible on lower timeframes.
But yeah, the dynamic, at least the past two and a half years, the dynamic has always been
just because stocks are making new all-time highs and ripping does not necessarily mean that Bitcoin
will, unfortunately, because it's just simply higher beta. And then whenever stocks sell off, typically that means that Bitcoin will as well, right?
Because it's just that beta.
Yeah. Some traders use the S&P 500 chart or the DXY chart when they trade on BTC, do you take these charts into consideration before entering a trade on Bitcoin or you're just trading the Bitcoin chart?
No, similar to what we said about Bitcoin versus altcoins.
When I'm trading Bitcoin, I'm just going to trade the Bitcoin chart individually.
That's going to keep me objective.
And if I remain objective in terms of like my assessment of the
chart, my analysis, then hopefully my execution is fluid as well, because I'm always just kind of
making factual statements, right? Instead of trying to predict what's going to happen,
or again, think too hard and too broadly and, you know, start drawing conclusions and create
all these correlations and this narrative and whatever to the point where I hurt myself, right? The reality is I'm not a smart guy. I'm not,
I'm not very intelligent, but I can tell you which way the chart is headed, right? So if I can do
that on Bitcoin and my execution is fluid, then I'm good. I don't need to think more broadly. I
don't need to venture off and use S&P 500. I don't need to understand rate hikes. I don't need to understand macro.
I don't need any of that stuff because I know which way the chart is headed. So when I'm trading
Bitcoin, I'm trading Bitcoin. I'm not trading Bitcoin pertaining to the S&P 500.
I have an interesting question. So we have the four-year cycle theory, but also we have the correlation
theory. If we follow the S&P 500, does that mean that Bitcoin cycles theory will break?
I really don't have much of an opinion on the four-year cycle. The only real opinion that I have
on the four-year cycle theory is up until this point, it has continued to be accurate, right?
And there are caveats, there are nuances. We made a new all-time high quicker than we did in previous
cycles. We didn't have quite the echo bubble that we did in previous cycles.
A lot of like small nuances and caveats.
But overall, the big scheme, the four-year cycle theory has continued to be true.
Now, it's just a theory.
I don't think that Bitcoin is going to operate in four-year cycle waves for the rest of its existence. I think it is going to come to an
end or at least maybe a pause eventually. But I don't know if that's this cycle, quote unquote,
or if it's the next time or the next time after that. I don't know. I don't really have too much
of a thought on that big of a timeframe. The only thought that I have on that big of a timeframe
for Bitcoin is I'm bullish, right? Like $1 million Bitcoin is fair value, right? Just in 2050,
right? Or whatever. But that's my long-term perspective and everything else is honestly
just noise. And the reason as to why I say that, that sounds like I'm trying to hedge and not give you a crazy crystal ball prediction, but it's not, it's my, it's the truth. Um, the reason why I say that
is because long-term predictions, even when, you know, I'll draw a squiggle on the chart
and price follows this squiggle as if like, it was like, Oh, what does Mercury think happens?
Okay. Do that. Like, like that's how accurate, you know, that drawing was, or that prediction. That hasn't ever meant that I've gotten value from that. It's never been
a one to one correlation, hey, I called this. So therefore, my reward, right, was, you know, hefty,
because I called it. It's been useless. It's been, you know, just kind of like redundant. And I just, you know,
poured all that effort into all these long-term thoughts for no good reason, because it didn't
do anything for me. So it's never actually been valuable to sit here and talk about,
oh, are we in a bull market? Oh, is this a bear market? Oh, is this the echo bubble?
Oh, four-year cycles. It's never been that. But again, if I am being objective on what the chart is doing, it's impossible for me to get caught off guard.
So if we do go into a bull market, guess who's on top of it? If we do go into a bear market, guess who's on top of it?
If we start trading in an eight-month range, guess who is on top of it, right? But yeah, anything further than that has just been kind of useless.
But yeah, anything further than that has just been kind of useless.
Indeed, indeed.
We saw recently that Saylor has accumulated over 2.5% of the Bitcoin supply.
Do you think that in the future, Saylor could be a potential threat to BTC's price?
I think he could be if he starts selling um you know or we have some kind of crazy
liquidation I don't really know what would cause him to be liquidated I don't understand like like
people have a very very negative kind of tone when it comes to sailor about how he owns too much
Bitcoin and I get it it kind of know, it contradicts the entire premise
of like what Satoshi was trying to accomplish
for one entity to own that much Bitcoin.
It's a bit contradictory,
but I don't think there's as much of an issue
as people just kind of automatically assume.
So, you know, he becomes a villain the second that he sells.
And the reality is he could own, you know, a million Bitcoin,
but the second that he sells one, he's now the villain.
So there's that.
And then there's, you know, whenever we get to a point where price is down so much
that, you know, micro strategy can no longer function
to the point where they have to offload Bitcoin
in order to just continue to function. But I don't think that would happen. I really think it's just,
it comes down more to how often and how much is he going to continue being able to fund,
right, and raise capital to buy more Bitcoin. I don't know. And I don't really see that stopping
because he's just, you know, he's just constantly able to gain more capital as if, you know, he's
just printing money. I don't see that stopping anytime soon. So at least in the next couple
years, I don't think that he'll be a villain. But that's how he becomes a villain when he either
sells a little bit, doesn't even matter how much or if you know
he gets forced to liquidate or we get close to you know putting pressure on micro strategy or
whatever yeah you mentioned that bitcoin is a store of value here is an interesting question
shouldn't a store of value asset uh not be correlated Nasdaq? Because we don't see gold be correlated
with Nasdaq, with tech stocks. If that's the case, so I do think that Bitcoin is a store of value.
I'm assuming that I am prescient. I'm assuming that I am seeing things that the broader universe is not seeing
yet. So that's my assumption. But as it stands today, Bitcoin is still incredibly infant.
And therefore, it's just a lot easier for it to just be correlated with risk assets. So I think
that, and again, people are trying to kind of speed run a narrative and say like, oh, Bitcoin is a store of value. It needs to be a lot bigger market cap, it needs to be a lot less volatile in order for it to actually accomplish being a store of value, right, the way that gold is.
is starting. I think that, and really just throughout history, the past two and a half
years, you can actually see this. We went from, oh, well, negative 40% drops are normal. We did
that seven times on the way up in 2017 to all of a sudden, oh, we're down negative 20%. Oh,
this is an obvious dip buy because Bitcoin is averaging negative 20% drops, right? And we only
do this blah, blah, blah amount of times the past two and a half years, just by the lows, and eventually you'll be rewarded. So volatility,
just in the span of a few short years, granted, that's an eight year difference there. But,
you know, in the greater scheme, eight years ain't shit. So just in the span of eight years,
volatility has been muted significantly. We spent more time ranging
in this bull market than we have uptrending. And that's kind of always the case in bull markets,
but especially apparent in this one. So yeah, I mean, I think that we're on the journey for that
to eventually be the case. I think that people have gotten a little bit overzealous and assuming that that's
going to be the case this year, even last year, the year before, or even next year. But in 10 years,
20 years, however long it takes, I do see that being the eventual path for Bitcoin,
just because from a fundamental standpoint, it makes a lot of sense to me facts
can you share with us
the most memorable trade
or prediction of yours
the most memorable
yeah the most
recent one is September
2024 I saw
a higher low on the weekly chart on bitcoin
and the sentiment
in the market kind of just reminded me of the bear market lows.
So I went very heavy into Bitcoin, very high conviction.
I was even on my honeymoon and I would log in every day just to be stupidly bullposting for every single day for months on end.
And eventually we broke out of that eight month range and went on a nice
run. And I think I managed to capture like almost a 70% move on Bitcoin alone. And that alone has
been my greatest trade of all time. And the reason as to why, even though 70% really is a lot,
but for crypto natives, they're like, that's nothing, that's peanuts. The reason why that
has been my greatest trade of all time is because of the conviction factor.
So the intangibles.
So at this point, seven, almost eight years of trading experience, I am using conviction
to dictate my position size.
So as a beginner, it makes a lot more sense to kind of just get your toes wet and risk
a static amount on every
single trade. But if because markets are dynamic, that means that no opportunity is equal. So not
every reclaim of a higher low or reclaim of a trend or not every higher low or not every higher
high is going to equate to the same outcome. So it's my job to kind of read between the lines
and scale assumptions and make not necessarily predictions, but kind of speculate, venture off a bit and allow myself to think bigger at times, right?
At certain times, whenever the market seems like it's really threatening a more fruitful opportunity than usual.
So that happened for me at around just under 60k. And yeah, I just
entered a position, I kid you not. I was so confident in my positioning that after I bought
somewhere around 58k or something, two days later, I went out and bought a Pokemon game.
And it was nostalgic for me. And I just needed something to distract myself because I was pretty confident that I'm seeing and witnessing something that is going to turn into something big.
And my biggest issue was I need to make sure that I'm not at the screen so that I'm not shooting myself in the foot.
Kind of like the old days, right?
When I would force myself to not even log into my account.
So I kind of did
something like that. And, you know, that also felt pretty nostalgic. So, you know, I bought a big
bag of Bitcoin and I fucked off and I went and played Pokemon for like two or three months. It
was a good time. It was a fun game. And then the market called back to me eventually because the
trend broke. But that is my most memorable trade. Chad moves. Nice. So have you ever experienced a significant loss percentage-wise? And what
lessons did you learn from that experience? Oh, absolutely. March 2020 was the catalyst
that really reshaped the way that I view markets. So prior to March 2020, I like to
tell myself that I'm a pretty humble, easygoing guy now. I don't know that anybody humble actually
says that about themselves, but I can for damn sure tell you that prior to 2020, I was just an
egotistical piece of shit. I really was. And that's just me being honest. I was arrogant.
I was overly confident. My ego is through the roof. I thought I was the best trader ever,
even though I had good performance. I think I managed to run up an account 500, 600% or so
in those two years of grinding. But I thought I was the best trader ever. I thought I should be
number one on the private leaderboard. Everyone else sucks.
Nobody knows how to draw trend lines correctly except for me.
And so that March 2020 moment was very humbling.
And it totally reshaped the way that I view markets.
The big takeaway there for me was I incurred such a large drawdown that I went from being
on top of the world and being this egotistical person that
was incredibly confident and whatever to I lost my appetite and I wasn't getting out of bed.
Right. I didn't shower for three days. I would, you know, just lay in bed and soak all day. I
wouldn't I wouldn't even eat a meal some days. Like it was bad.
It was just a shell-like version of myself.
Eventually, I know people that are close with me know this story.
Eventually, my dad came to check on me.
And my dad, his story is, I won't go through the whole thing, but his story is essentially
he was an immigrant and started from nothing and then made some very successful
businesses and turned into a multimillionaire and then went bankrupt, right? And just made some
very terrible financial decisions. And we ended up homeless. I was 14, we ended up homeless.
So my dad has experienced more loss than anyone that I know personally, especially in that kind
of manner, Being on top
of the world, multimillionaire, you came from nothing. Your kids used to eat off of paper
plates and have cheese and crackers for dinner. And now they have everything to now you're
homeless. So my dad came to check on me and told me something along the lines of, you're crying over money. And he said, either stop trading or stop crying over
money. And to hear him say that, out of all people, knowing what he's been through, it,
it clicked like nothing ever before. And, you know, when I tell the story, I still get chills
down my spine. I'll probably tell my grandkids this story. But yeah, he gave me an ultimatum.
I'll probably tell my grandkids this story. But yeah, he gave me an ultimatum. He told me
either stop trading or find a way to stop crying about money. And so it was on me to
stop crying about money. So I started finally dissecting the way that I trade and really
understanding my own emotions and variance, right? I had been on a hot streak. But really,
the reality was, I was just getting lucky consecutively, time and time and time again,
right? I would call a top, call a bottom, call a top, call a bottom. I was just getting lucky.
And the variance was playing into my favor. And actually, looking back, that's the worst thing
that could have happened to me is I didn't get humbled sooner, right? I'd be up that much more
if my humbling came in March of Thank you. you Sorry, Elon's app is bugging.
Let me invite Mercury again.
Yeah, I can hear you now.
I think Elon
should stop seed posting and start
investing in more servers or something.
Yeah, seriously.
Where did I get cut off?
Can you remind me?
Or is it good enough?
You said that what your father told you or is it good enough you said
that what your father told you
sucked you
oh man that far back
yeah
yeah my dad
came in and he told me
either stop crying about
money or stop trading so
I had to find a way to stop crying about money.
And I kind of just, you know,
reevaluated the way that I trade
and tried to cure the cause instead of treating symptoms.
And yeah, I'm sorry.
I went on a whole rant like five minutes straight after that.
It's kind of, I just got, you know you know thrown a curveball i don't know can you hear me did i get disconnected again
hello Hello?
Okay, you can hear me.
I can't hear you.
I'm going to leave and rejoin.
Okay, so I'm going to leave and rejoin.
I think Cyborg got disconnected now.
Man, Twitter servers.
Dad said no crying in the casino at rock bottom.
That's hilarious.
It really did.
Hello?
Hello?
Yeah, I hear you now.
Oh my God, this app.
Guys, this is what we're going through to give you the most the best alpha in crypto okay so massive respect to you and massive respect
to your dad that that was a very uh emotional story and thank you for sharing.
I also had an insane drawdown in May 2021
when my net worth literally halved.
I was balls deep in ALS, in Ethereum.
I was deep in ALS, in Ethereum.
I was leverage long on ETH.
I was levers long on ETH.
And that was when my crystal ball broke.
And that was when I said, wow, it can happen.
I remember I was watching the prize just continuously
nook and nook and I said
I cannot go lower. How is this
possible? It's not bouncing.
And I didn't want
to realize a loss
and ended up
realizing a huge
one.
last question. What's your advice realizing a huge one. So,
last question.
What's your advice for someone who is just
starting out in crypto
trading?
My biggest advice,
nothing is going to help you more than experience.
And when it comes to experience, because that's true,
nobody can really hold your hand.
So I know that this is especially true for me.
When I came into crypto, I was looking for a hero.
I was looking for a role model.
I was looking for somebody to show me the way and to hold my hand and even to,
you know, create the setups for me and find the trades for me. And the reality is that's never
going to be good enough. It's never going to be sufficient. You can't, you know, trail somebody
else's success and what works for somebody else is not going to work for you. It's incredibly easy to draw the P&L charts or what are they called?
The long positions tool on TradingView.
It's so easy to draw those.
It's so easy to make an analysis and say, hey, I think we go higher.
It's so easy for me to come on to crypto Twitter and make a bull post and say, good morning,
bulls, right?
Or say, hey, we're going higher today or whatever, right? It's so easy to do those things, but trading is so fucking hard.
It's so hard. It's the most difficult thing that I've ever had the pleasure of doing.
And I say that it's a pleasure because markets are a luxury, but we have to allow ourselves to
see markets that way. And someone else and someone else's perspective and someone else's
trading style and someone else's setups and someone else's thoughts are not going to do that
for you. You have to do that for yourself, right? Markets can't save you. I can't save you.
Cyborg can't save you. Your favorite crypto Twitter influencer can't save you. Crypto can't
save you. You have to save yourself. So the best way to do
that is be objective, gain the experience. We call it tuition fees, right? So you pay tuition fees
to market to learn about trading, learn about your mistakes. And the reality is that when you start
to trade, it's a never ending battle and trading doesn't get any easier. You just get better.
it's a never ending battle and trading doesn't get any easier. You just get better. So, you know,
when you surpass one issue and you finally nail a trade or get something down, you, all you did
was you opened up that Russian doll and now you're met with another Russian doll. So even if you
manage to find yourself in a winning setup, now you have to worry about where are you going to
take profit? How are you going to trail your stop loss? How much profit are you going to take? Are you going to rotate that profit or are you going to
keep it in stables? And it's just, man, you're met with another issue, another issue, another issue.
And so the basis of your success, it's based on your ability to overcome a scenario of options, your ability to adapt, your ability to remain fluid.
And this is why relying on either the market,
unless you're an investor, right?
If you're here to invest,
that's a totally different discussion.
But relying on the market or relying on someone else
will never be sufficient.
You have to be able to rely on yourself
and not a moving average, not a trading style, not a system, not a variance, not nothing.
You rely on yourself, your own abilities.
The only way you're going to be able to do that is through experience.
One of my favorite quotes is a thousand hours watching charts can beat a thousand courses or a thousand books.
It's true.
My personal advice is price action is king, but also monitoring charts is way bigger king.
This is how most people develop their skills watching
charts. This is how you get this confidence to click the buttons. No amount
of tweets or courses or threads is going to give you that confidence when you slide the bar to 5x 10x whatever you deposit your USDT or BTC and you click
long or short so monitor charts the first 100 hours are difficult the first 1000 hours are difficult but after 10 000 hours you're going to master it so
mercury thank you so much for this podcast this is by far my my favorite podcast that we have done
here wow that means a lot thank you thank you so much. And guys, follow Trader Mercury, by far one of the best traders in this app.
And his tweets are full of alpha.
So this page is going to be recorded.
You can watch it again.
Mercury, again, thank you so much.
And yeah, see you soon, bro.
Yeah, thank you so much, man.
Thank you for having me.
