Bitcoin Trading 2024 | Learn How To Trade Crypto | Learnbonds

You probably are aware that Bitcoin (BTC) was created and released in 2009, but it was not until late 2016 when the cryptocurrency market took off and became somehow mainstream. Its biggest rally yet came about in 2017. It was preceded by a craze for the new and highly lucrative crypto industry that saw every retail investors rush to acquire a piece of this revolutionary digital currency.

The legacy cryptocurrency hit an all-time-high (ATH) of $19,891 in December 2017 before rescinding to a considerably long bear market that has lasted more than 18 months. As of today, BTC has shed around 82.3% of its peak value.

But this certainly is not the first time that Bitcoin traders and investors have had to deal with this type of volatility. Between 2014 and 2015, a bearish bitcoin run saw the digital coin lose more than 82.19% of its value.

After bottoming at a low of $3,200 in late December 2019, the cryptocurrency market started a new rally that is now delivering almost 168% return year-to-date (YTD), making it the best performing asset class in the market.

How to Trade Bitcoin in 3 Easy Steps:

Step 1: Opening a Trading Account

Before even thinking about trading any type of asset/security, you will need a trading account with a brokerage house.

The account opening process is straightforward, and in most cases, it should only take a couple of days after submitting the request to gain access.

The crypto space is filled with brokers offering different types of trading accounts. And while they have differently designed platforms and pricing methods their approach to trade, the analysis techniques, educational and research content as well as the indicators hosted on these platforms are pretty much the same.

If you are planning on trading Bitcoin and any other cryptocurrency, we recommend opening your account with a highly regulated and reliable broker. With all the volatility witnessed in this market, it is imperative that you have a reliable broker that will not disappoint when it comes to order execution speeds.

Slippage and entering into or closing a trade position late can cost you profit in case of a winning trade or see you suffer more losses in the case of a losing trade. Here are some of the brokers we recommend to our readers:

1. Cryptorocket - Highly advanced trading platform

Cryptorocket is highly advanced and crypto-based CFD trading platform. It supports a wide range of cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin. It is relatively new and features a host of highly advanced trading tools and indicators that relate to trade analysis and risk management. Though simplistic, its trading platform has a friendly user interface that makes it easy to use for both veteran and beginner crypto traders.

Live trading on Cryptorocket is free, there are no hidden transaction charges, and there are no withdrawal or deposit fees. Rollover fees for overnight and weekend trading are also highly competitive.

Additional information:

• Minimum initial deposit: $10
• Best feature: Doesn’t require KYC verification
• Recommended for: Both beginner and veteran crypto traders looking for an inexpensive bitcoin exchange

Our Rating

• MT4 and Webtrader: Cryptorocket supports bitcoin trading on their proprietary web trader as well as the MT4 platform
• Competitive fees: Live trading on cryptorocket is free and the broker maintains competitive trading costs
• Customer support: Cryptorocket has a helpful and readily available customer support team

• Unregulated: Cryptorocket, unlike Forex.com is not a regulated trading platform
• No live support: There is no phone or on-site live support and you only have to contact them via email or on social media

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2. Robinhood - Commission Free Cryptocurrency Trading

Robinhood was the first online trading platform to announce a new approach to trading where trading would be free of any fees and commissions. While in the past other names have offered a similar approach with other assets like forex or CFDs, this was completely unheard in the stock and later the crypto market.

It is worth noticing that the firm was founded in the middle of the financial crisis as a response to the financial crisis in the country and also of the market. Since 2018 the company started offering access to the major cryptocurrencies in the world, allowing its users to buy and sell these virtual currencies. Robinhood maintains an easy to use trading platform with several sophisticated analysis tools.

Additional Information:

• Minimum Deposit: $200
• Best Feature: Trading is free of commission and fees.
• Recommended for: Swing Traders and Long Term Investors.

Our Rating

• Simplicity: Robinhood has always maintained an easy to use trading platform suitable for both beginners and pro traders.
• Security: Robinhood platform is highly secured with military-grade encryption technology that makes it safe buy and store your virtual coins.
• Free Trading: Since inception the firm has maintained a commission-free trading model for both its stock and crypto products.

• Unregulated: Even though Robinhood is a regulated entity in the US, their Cryptocurrency focused subsidiary is not.
• Not available in all States: The broker hasn't rolled out operations in all states

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Step 2: Choose your Trading Analysis Method

Step 3: Decide on an appropriate Trading Strategy

The choice of a trade analysis methods and trading strategy are in tandem. Either influences the other. If for instance, you are more comfortable with technical analysis, you will be better off using short-term trading strategies like Day trading and Scalping. Fundamental analysis, on the other hand, is more applicable for longer-term trading strategies like swing trading.

We explain the three bitcoin trading strategies here:

i) Day Trading

Day trading is arguably the most popular online trading strategy.

This model consists of opening and closing positions within one calendar day. And it allows individuals to benefit from small movements in price. In order to make this approach worth the risk, given that you are operating within very small pip movements, it is common to see individuals utilizing high levels of leverage in order to capitalize on the smallest price movements.

Day traders are often also referred to as technical traders as they pay little to no attention to the underlying factors influencing the price of the tradable security.

Even though day trading has become a very popular crypt trading strategy, traders should be aware of its complexities and how it is impacted by the often huge volatilities. To succeed as a Bitcoin day trader, you will need strong risk management tools that will allow you to balance between winning and losing traders.

ii) Scalping

Scalping involves profiting from minor price changes in the price of the cryptocurrency.

And in most cases, the strategy requires a trader to execute dozens if not hundreds of trades on a single day.

The idea behind scalping is to compound small gains into a large profit within the day. And like day trading, scaling relies heavily on technical analysis while paying little emphasis to fundamental analysis.

Given the huge volatilities that characterize the crypto space, the scalper must also arm themselves with solid risk management tools like guaranteed stop and trailing stop losses.

iii) Swing Trading

Swing trading follows a more macro approach to the markets on which a trader maintains an open position for short to medium-term periods of time.

In some case, the crypto trading positions can remain open for days, weeks or months at a time. The benefit from a swing trading model is that you won’t be executing trades every day making it possible for part-time traders who only have limited time to fully analyse the markets.

In most cases, you only need to enter into a position and set your preferred stop loss and take profit levels. The stop-loss will prevent losses to exceed an x amount in case the trade goes south, and the take profit order will close the trade as soon as the target profit level is triggered.

Swing trading relies majorly on a fundamental analysis of the preferred cryptocurrency by looking at how the past price may affect your preferred coin’s price direction.

Step 4: Open a Bitcoin trade

The final step is to execute a trade with your broker of choice.

Order execution should be simple after your account has been created.

Investing vs Trading in Bitcoin

In reality, both options offer their own perks and benefits and the success in one over the other will depend on the individual executing the investments or the trading.

It is common to see individuals that are less attached to their portfolio and to their positions, this allows them to be better at trading than investing. On the other side, we will find people that can not deal with the pressure of actively trading in the markets, and that is not as used as losing money within trades (this can easily overwhelm anyone).

Trading is a more active approach to bitcoin trading that allows individuals to take advantage of the short term price movements. Investing, on the other hand, will allow individuals to profit from capital gains by buying and holding onto the digital currency for a long period of time.

If you had for instance invested in Bitcoin in 2017, you would have seen your money go from $2,000 a coin to over $19,000 in one single year.

If you would have been actively trading during this same period of time, it is very unlikely that you would have been able to catch the entire rally, mostly because you would have taken profits way to early in the process.

Another example would have been active trading during the bear market of 2018, where you would have been able to benefit from both long and short positions, while the investor would have had to deal with a change in price of more than 80%.

The best advice I can give is to analyze what works best for you and to go that way.

Pros and Cons of Bitcoin Trading

Just like with any other type of trading there are going to exists certain problematics with the asset class, for example

Pros of Bitcoin Trading

Cons of Bitcoin Trading

• Trending Blindly: If you know the concept of being a "spring chicken", then you can imagine what many Bitcoin traders went through during the 18 months of a bear market. Many individuals that enjoyed the beautiful upside from $2,000 to almost $20,000 in 2017, ended up losing their profit and even their capital as a result of not having a solid understanding of trading. Following a trend blindly without technical analysis or fundamentals backing your hypothesis is a perfect formula to lose money in the markets.
• Price Volatility: Cryptocurrencies are by far the most volatile assets in the market right now. If you analyze how they have performed since their inception, most of them have been close to the verge of disappearing before making comebacks straight out of Hollywood. While volatility can be of great advantage if you are position on the right side of the market, it can also have disastrous results if, on the other hand, the trade was wrong. It is key to drop any money-making mindset and to focus on capital preservation, this will ensure that your career will last and that you will have money available to trade when opportunities arrive.
• Speculation: Even though other markets like commodities are full of active speculators, their bets are usually based either on a technical or a fundamental thesis. When it comes to Bitcoin the overall market is driven by support and demand, but it has proven to be incredibly erratic due to it's sensitiveness to news and because of the commitment of traders being incredibly low at some points.  Even though the basics of technical analysis has proven to work in order to successfully trade Bitcoin, it is key to keep in mind that BTC is an asset that does not follow conventional rules of market trading and that traditional principles can be wrong more than they are right.
• Bubble Danger: Seeing an asset doubling in price in a matter of weeks is enough for any financial analyst to start talking about a bubble. This type of price action is typically associated with unsustainable results that commonly end up with a burst. The most common narrative around cryptocurrencies is a fight between their early adopters and supporters against everyone calling them a faux or a bubble in the market. Keep in mind that even after 10 years of its existence, it is still a pretty new technology and that at this point any objection or support is purely speculative.
• The commitment of traders and market sentiment is not fixed: Most individuals and especially those new to trading fail to understand that while it may seem like the sky is the limit of an asset to rise, sentiment can tank incredibly fast. It is said that on bull markets assets take the stairs to go up in value, but when it comes to downturns they simply take out the nearest window and free fall.

Technology Behind Bitcoin (Blockchain)

The rush of new investors and traders in 2017 was so strong that many individuals who invested didn't even know what they were buying into, and it was not until later that they understood the basic concepts of Blockchain and Cryptocurrency as a whole.

Blockchain is the key technology behind all cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin. Even though understanding it deeply can be complicated due to all the technicality behind it, the principal concepts can be simplified:

The Blockchain acts as a chain of records that are linked and secured using cryptography tools, the information of these records (blocks) is resistant to changes and it can not be modified. The whole chain of blocks turns into a ledger where new records are created and linked which each transaction, providing track of any movement inside the ledger.

The best analogy to explain how blockchain work is by comparing Microsoft Word and Google Drive:

This is a simple example, but it proves how blockchain can be adopted for other purposes besides cryptocurrencies.

What are the risks of Bitcoin Trading?

Following the price action witnessed in the markets throughout 2019 and early this year, it is almost certain that the number of interested traders and investors continues to rise. But even before looking at Bitcoin trading, we must first ask ourselves if these traders/investors are aware of the risks that such a volatile asset brings to their portfolio.

Even though Bitcoin has proven to be a real, money-making machine, it has also destroyed many portfolios and billions of market capitalization with its unpredictable downturns.

Keep in mind that cryptocurrency is a rather new technology that is yet to receive global adoption, which makes it incredibly speculative. Like with the case of any other tradable instrument, you are advised to only invest money that you can afford to lose.

Further, you need to learn how to constantly monitor your positions. It. for instance, is better to bail out on a position if the technical conditions are not on your side as you can always get back when the market conditions change.

Conclusion

As the adoption of cryptocurrencies continues to grow, the demand for trading and investing will follow closely. Keep in mind that even after the difficult period of time seen by this sector over the last 18 months, it would not be the first time that we see this market roaring after been heavily punished.

If you are a new trader the best advice I can give you is to be patient, becoming a trader is not an easy task and it is definitely not fast. It will take you months before you successfully cover the basic principles of trading, and especially the foundation for technical and fundamental analysis. Take your time to build solid bases, this will ensure a brighter future as a trader and a smoother learning curve.

Try to focus on learning all the details about one specific asset class and one strategy, avoid moving from market to market and also from strategy to strategy. Consistency is one of the keys that will make you a better trader, and it is also one of the requirements to become profitable.

***Note: Don't forget that even with the recent price action seen in the past few weeks, bitcoin will not be out of the bear market until it surpasses $11,000 per coin. There is still a lot of ground to cover before we can talk about a new bull market in place.

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