Let’s never stop talking about the price – The case against clickbait

Are you not fed up with seeing nothing but price related articles on cryptocurrency websites?

There are some very experienced and talented traders working within the cryptocurrency ecosystem these days. These traders however are the exception rather than the norm and certainly not the types to knock out half a dozen random price related clickbait articles per day, they are far too busy watching the charts for that.

This blog is not about crypto trading

No matter how good a trader is however they do not get every trade correct – that would be impossible, especially in such a volatile and manipulated marketplace like cryptocurrencies. So aside from being extremely good at technical analysis, the secret to their success lies also in the protective steps they take when trading:

• Hundreds of hours of paper trading to refine their skills before even starting out and even then continually paper trading in order to hone their system (A paper trade is a simulated trade that allows them to practice buying and selling without risking real money)
• Knowing when to trade and when not to trade – if there are no clear buy signals never jump into a trade just for the sake of trading, take the day off
• Strict entry and exit levels – if the price of the target crypto doesn’t reach the targeted buy zone then they do not buy, if a purchased crypto reaches the exit price they sell rather than holding for greedy gains
• Tried and tested stop loss system to protect from any major unforseen downturns
• A well balanced and well managed portfolio, good traders never go “all in” on any one particular coin or token
• Self discipline – they never worry about a “missed trade” and never wildly chase any losses, and if their system is starting to fail they go back to paper trading till they understand why they are failing
• Technical analysis of course they excel at, but it is perhaps surprisingly the least important aspect of trading because without (among others) the above protective measures in place, one bad trade can wipe out a months gains in mere minutes

Technical anaylsis is flawed

There are plenty of reasons why technical analysis can fall apart in either the long or short term and we have seen them throughout the entire history of the crypto markets but for the purposes of this article we will only take a look at the last 12 months.

• The rise and fall of Bitcoin then Alts – In 2017 Bitcoin had experienced exceptional gains, peaking at around 20,000 on the 17th of December 2017. The Bitcoin network failed to cope with the volume flowing through it and the price of Bitcoin dropped sharply which then coincided with a steeper continuation of the so called Alt Season which gained massive traction to parabolically reach new all time highs across the board.
• The Coin Market Cap and Coindesk manipulation against XRP – In the first week of 2018 XRP had overtaken Ethereum as the largest cryptocurrency by market cap. With South Korea being the highest volume market for this currency and with the price of XRP trading at a premium over there, CMC took the decision to simply remove South Korean exchanges from their calculations instantly dropping the price sharply and back below Ethereum. Coindesk then proceeded to run a FUD article claiming the price of XRP had dropped 30% when in actual fact nothing had changed. Mainstream Media latched on to this false story and without fact checking spread it far and wide. Ethereum price rocketed to its ATH a week later while the rest of the crypto market was experiencing the start of the great 2018 bear market.
• China “bans” crypto.
• Facebook bans crypto, Google bans crypto, Twitter bans crypto, India bans crypto, Yo Mama bans crypto. Etc.
• Bitcoin ETFs set to be launched, cue the music
• Bitcoin ETFs delayed, pass the tissues
• SBIVC & Bakkt etc are about to open, get the streemers and party hats
• SBIVC & Bakkt etc are delayed, time to dig out the Prozac
• The MtGox controversial sales
• A fork goes and forks itself into two far more centralised and manipulatable forks, helping the bears drag the entire market down even further
• And of course there is the continual cycle of the giant mining companies having no option but to sell chunks of minable coins in order to pay their electricity bills

These are just a handful of the past years main stories which have contributed to large price rises and falls which no amount of technical analysis could have foreseen. It is just impossible unless you are the market manipulator yourself. So why are we still talking about tomorrows price so damned often?

If the price goes up it will go up but if it goes down it will go down

One of the most common trends in crypto price blogs is the stating of the down right obvious. Only a rudimentary knowledge of the markets is necessary to be able to pin-point key support and resistance levels but many bloggers don’t even bother with that. Of what benefit is it to us for you to tell us the current price and that it may go up or it may go down? At least give us the key levels and show us the research that has gone into finding these levels and how strong they are.

“Yeah, the price of XLM might go up. But it might go down. You’re welcome!”

The price of “insert randomly chosen coin here” has gone up 2% today

We all have a live coin price app on our phones or we have bookmarked a live cryptocurrency prices page in our browser. So why on Earth would we need to read a 300 word SEO friendly article telling us that for example Monero has risen 2% in price over the last 24 hours? Occasionally something exceptional will happen to a particular coin and it will either spike upwards or downwards and out of whack with the global crypto market as a whole. Most spikes, particularly with small cap coins are simply pump and dumps so do not warrant a mention at all. However on occasion there are interesting developments which caused the traders and investors to flood in or out and these developments do make for valid blogs. But what we see so often is this type of blog relating to one particular coin when all it is doing is matching the entire crypto market. What is the point of that I ask you?

I know exactly what is happening and the reason for every price change so let me preach to you

Crypto bloggers you don’t know everything. In fact most of the time you are talking out of your blowhole. How many times this year have we seen massive price fluctuations? Thousands probably. And there is always some smart ass blogger ready to tell us this reason or that reason is what has caused the change in price. Yes, sometimes there is a legitimate reason for a coins price movement and as we’ve said, this is worth writing about. But most of the time there really is nothing tangible to cling onto, it might be any number of recent news stories or press releases or a combination thereof which causes the volatility. But more often that not a sudden unexpected price movement is caused by nothing other than either the traders or the manipulators. End of story!

I want to pump (and dump) my bags

Obviously nearly every single crypto blogger is holding some crypto or other and it must be very tempting to try and “shill” their portfolios. And this is basically what many are doing. Single out a coin they hold and write an article hoping for a temporary price boost so they can sell their bags and move on to the next one to shill. Simple, tempting and very very stupid.

The SEC in the United States has been targeting pump and dump schemes, other regulators are also keeping one eye on things. But most of all readers are not stupid, journalistic integrity is not to be underestimated and churning out crap like this all the time is only going to lose you loyal readers.

Full disclosure

The owners, technical developers and writers here at slots rtp have ever changing portfolios. We are not full time traders (we are just not that good at it), instead we are both long term and short term holders. Over the course of time we have at some point or other held many cryptocurrencies for example: BTC, XRP, ETH, XLM, BSV, ADA, TRX, BNB, USDT, ARN, AMB, IGG, DBC, THETA, VIBE, POE, DGB, DIG and many more.

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