Advanced trading at HITBTC

Welcome back to yet another installment in our series on trading at various (in our opinion, best) exchanges, the list of which you will find here. By now, we hope, you have learned how to buy, sell, keep track of the graphs, predict price movements, research coins and companies, transfer money between different sites, and so on. All because you have been going through our Beginner articles like a knife through butter.

We’re so proud of you. We think you’re ready. Now the time has come for you to stand up tall, look directly into the sun, close your eyes, and take the leap.

You’re in Advanced training now, reader. Brace yourself. Get ready. Put on your protection. Advanced trading at exchanges may not require a bulletproof west, but we do recommend getting a hardware wallet of the like the Trezor or Ledger offer. They are around $150, and the investment is well worth it.

Remember never to sleep with your mouth open in the metro, to not keep too many coins in exchanges (they’re vulnerable to hacking), use cold wallets as much as you can - and you must (must) use 2FA at all times.

Make sure you read everything on the website, too, which includes the whitepaper, and the Terms of Service. Fail to plan equals plan to fail.

We think that’s everything. Oh, and if you’re trading a lot and think cold wallets are cumbersome, divide your funds evenly between a few exchanges, and God forbid you to keep all your assets in one place.

More than anything, having a perspective is what really counts in this business. One good read could change the way you approach the business altogether. It is important whom you read (after you’re done going through the white paper and coin research).

There are a few authorities on the subject, all of them notable, but probably one of the more interesting reads is Invictus Capital, which we recommend keeping track of. You’ll find lots of good stuff on their website, including the photos of the team, some expensive CG, and an opinion column. There is also some fascinating analysis in Invictus’ quarterly reports:

“The first quarter of 2018 has seen the cryptocurrency markets weather a period of extreme volatility with an all-time market capitalization high of $814bn being reached on the 7th of January. The growth over the past year has been extreme - for perspective, the 7th of January 2017 yielded a total cryptocurrency market cap of only $17bn. A correction or reversion towards the mean is to be expected in such a scenario and would not reflect any loss of faith in the technology - none of the underlying fundamentals have changed.”

You’ll find the report here. Also, of course, Forbes is a good idea. We frequently find refreshing insights there. For example, we bet you didn’t think about crypto this way:

“What is even cooler to me, as a female founder and woman in tech, is that the industry offers women a new way to engage, play and win like never before. At the baseline, participation can be anonymous. One can contribute to the technology, mine bitcoin, and ether, create a digital wallet and invest without anyone knowing who you are. But more than this, women have a chance to play at the forefront of shaping this industry, and to lead in unprecedented ways.”

Ultimately, however, Forbes is not only about meta-thinking. In an article called “Tricks Of A Crypto Trader: Meet Asia's Hottest Crypto Hedge Fund” you will find amazing success stories and colossal amounts of concrete details, proving they can be as inspirational as down-to-earth:

“To the crowd assembled, FBG’s fame stems from turning $20 million into $200 million in a year. In fact, ten months before this soiree, the group of traders behind the firm didn’t yet have a name for their company. Today it counts Silicon Valley venture capital firm Sequoia Capital among its blue-chip investors and is one of the biggest crypto-asset managers in Asia.”

Business Insider is less specific, but it can push you toward discovering interesting trends and patterns. For example, you may have read our article on the connection between taxation and crypto prices. You can find traces of this cause-and-effect connection here:

“Bitcoin rallied close to $10,000 soon after the close of Tax Season in the US but is down by more than $2,000 since the beginning of May.

Market observers noted that Tuesday's rally was occurring at the same time as political uncertainty in Italy gripped financial markets.

Bitcoin finally catches a bid after Italian 2-year yield spikes 155bps – Italy’s new 5 Star party threatens exit from Eurozone which has once again put the Idea of a Euro breakup in the forefront of investors’ minds.“

In short, the more reading you do, the better. However, choosing a reputable source is extremely important. We also strongly recommend you take a look at the data we gathered for you at the homepage, so you can make an informed and intelligent choice.

There are many, many trends and ways of predicting price movements. Some of these are fixed, in a sense that you can pretty much bet this way will work every time. Others not so, meaning that some ways of predicting price movements will fail you or lead to a different result.

HitBTC provides great liquidity and strong security, which means it attracts professional traders and people who deal with large funds. HitBTC’s OTC (over-the-counter) trading, which involves dealing directly with the other person without market price getting influenced, is an option for those who have large volumes.

It is thought best to use OTC if you have a lot of funds so that the market price doesn’t get affected in a negative way. Usually, when people sell, the price tends to drop. So, use OTC to avoid losing funds, or…

Use various types of orders like Limit Orders to set a limit on when the order should be filled. A standard situation is when you create a Market order to sell something and get much less than you expected because you sold not at the high price you wanted, but at an average of a high price you set, and a few orders that cost less.

Let’s illustrate this.

Suppose you’re only into basics, so you only know what a Market Order is. That basically means that you want to sell 10 assets for $20 each because that is the current price. You create the order, and instead, you sell 5 at $20, 3 at $15, and 2 at $10. Disappointed? The price just went down. That was the best market price. Now, using Limit orders will allow you to set the order price at $20 and nothing less, so the order only gets fulfilled at that condition.

Now, we have taken some time to go into the importance of 2FA and so on, which you will know if you read our previous articles. As far as basic trading is concerned, that will just about do it. Still, if you’re into Advanced stuff, you will want to ask yourself a couple of questions. Do you bookmark your site? Redirect viruses are more and more common these days. What about using an antivirus? Good, but you’ll be displeased to know that many viruses out there will not be caught by your software, no matter how sophisticated it is. For example, they can infect your PC and replace destination addresses with ones that will benefit the author of the virus. They can secretly use your PC to mine. Has your PC been running slowly lately? Like, REALLY slowly? A 100% of users at this point start feverishly Googling “top best free antivirus downloaded complete protection all viruses FREE”.

But wait! It’s all very well using the latest software, but you can get even more secure by using hardware instead! Long story short, all software can get infected. Period. But remember how you got an uninterruptible power supply once you learned that a power spike can cause to lose all your data at best? We hope you did, anyway. Well, hardware wallets work along the same lines.

You’ll probably know how it works already if you have followed our advice and researched everything you possibly could about exchanges, crypto, and blockchain in addition to reading this. In whichever case, they are relatively inexpensive and come in a variety of forms with quite some sophisticated protection.

Hardware wallets will store your sensitive data (transaction keys) offline where viruses cannot get to them, and require a PIN every time you do something. They can even provide bogus codes so that, if someone threatens you, you can give them a fake code which will lead the culprit to believe that there are trivial funds in your accounts.

Hardware wallets can be extremely useful if you’re into dealing with substantial funds. We strongly recommend giving them a go - and maybe even consider a subdermal wallet (even though that seems very Deadpool 2).

You guessed it, these are papers on which private transaction keys are written.

They are easily reduced to ashes or a soggy mess in case you’re unfortunate enough to have left them in a fire or dropped them in a pool of water, but, given that they are properly cared for, paper wallets can provide a good degree of protection.

For example, you can add or subtract letters from the keys or divide the numbers into several parts. There is a plethora of things to do, in short, and you are only limited by your imagination.

That concludes our business for today. Stay safe and keep in touch.

The Revain team.