This post is part of my trading crypto futures series. You will receive my latest results and insights. At the end of this article, I will share some of the lessons I learned. I hope you can take something from this post and that it helps you on your journey to success. I can tell you that I made some good progress this time. If you missed my last post, here is my last update.

My last update on my trading journey was 1.5 years ago. I am sorry for this delay. It has been a busy time. I try to update you on what happened and what I am doing now. Here are one and a half years in bullet points:

• prolonged sickness
• liquidation of account 1#
• liquidation of account 2#
• birth of my second child
• liquidation of account 3#

What happened last year

At the end of 2023, I started to pick up speed. My account reached almost $2,000. I was able to increase the leverage as stated before and made good profits on a daily basis. But it started to intoxicate my mind. I was getting too confident. I quickly got used to the daily profits and even started to expect them. But when the market wasn’t giving me profits, I began to remove the Stop loss…. like why do I preach it when I am not following my own advice? 

I got more and more nervous because at that time. I was using 20x leverage – my positions were 1 BTC in size! I was lucky a few times, but then what was to be expected happened.
Bitcoin moved strongly against me. I was unable to accept it and watched in agony as my unrealized losses grew by the hour. After some time and a lot of talking with my wife, I decided to take the loss. Now my balance was only approximately $700 again. I was devastated….

I started building altcoin positions for the Bullmarket peak. I was thinking that the bear market was almost done and that all the coins would rise from now on. Boy, was I wrong! The altcoins were fluctuating, and I was thinking it was a good idea to “DCA” into them when they drop. At the same time, I observed a sharp decline in BTC, thinking it would be a liquidation event, I opened a long position. But the price kept dropping – later that day, I learned that the market was reacting to the Israel-Iran conflict. I still hoped for the best, but now all my capital was bound. The market was getting worse by the day, at least from my point of view. I was so badly positioned that it hurt me. Recognizing my unfavorable situation, I was taking partial losses in hopes of increasing my margins and holding onto some positions for the bull market rallies. Soon after, the Yen carry trade imploded, partially. I lost everything there! I was completely crushed. All hopes of making money are gone – a very dark time for me.

I was not able to give up on my mission and borrowed money from a friend of mine, $3000. I was so hyped, this time I would be careful….. I didn’t – I fell for the same traps. I was thinking the dips would be the last shakeout before the exponential increases. I was expecting to make daily gains, and losses would ruin this goal, so I was not taking them. Sadly, the market kept dipping, and I was seeing my balance shrink again. I was hearing my words in my head. “I will not lose all the money this time”, “Never again will I speculate on the market”. Soon after, I had to accept that I failed yet again. But the Bull was in motion, I was in pain because I was waiting for the bull market for so long. The thought of the bull market starting without me was hard to accept, but what should I do?

My wife noticed my struggle and we talked. I told her how I  was feeling. The pain of missing out on such a chance. How this only occurs every few years, how I could make up for all the losses and start my own thing if I get a good trading capital from this bull market. She didn’t give up on me. So we took a loan of $5,000. I paid my debts to my friend and invested $1,500 into my Phemex account.

This time around, it worked! I almost reached $10,000. I was so hyped – The calendar was November of 2024. I was sure this was my breakthrough. I had beautiful gains on a daily basis. I had a HBAR-Position running from $0.06 and other altcoin positions. I was planning my exit and compounded these positions. This was a fun time.

One month later, my world changed. I closed my HBAR-Position unintentionally. I tried to enter it again because I was believing in HBAR reaching at least $1 – at the time, HBAR was at $0.4. Entering HBAR again was my first mistake. The second was entering SOL at $238 because it was showing signs of breaking out big time….

I was yet again buying into these positions in hopes of holding them. But the market sentiment had changed. The euphoria of Trump being crypto-positive or the hope that the rates would be cut soon all vanished, and the market tanked. I had to endure a few liquidation hunts. But all I erased my $10,000 to nearly $400 with just a few mistakes over weeks. I had to accept my mistakes – I didn’t, and had to pay for it.

What is the current situation?

So here we are again! A rough lesson for me. Currently, Bitcoin is above 100k, but the market is not positive. We reached a new all-time high, but are we at the brink of the bear market? A lot of people think that the recession is coming. I don’t know, but it isn’t of interest! We only anticipate the near-term future.

My plan is to trade daily and put 20% of the gains into Bitcoin (Spot). At the beginning of each month, I send these BTC to my Tangem cold wallet. I haven’t lost faith in crypto, but I won’t force fast gains anymore! I will focus on the process and concentrate on the craft of trading. I will value the performance of my trades based on my decision-making, whether I stuck to my trading plan and how I executed, not the PNL as before.

Additionally, I joined a community of traders, not to connect with them, but to participate in leader boards and have a trading journal. Therefore, I am eventually switching to Bitunix. I will tell you about the transition and how I like the new exchange in the next update.