Many people have made fortunes from cryptocurrencies.
Many more have lost fortunes.
The truth is that the crypto ecosystem is an investment frontier. Make one wrong move, and it’s easy to fall victim to unforeseen risks.
Take Duncan, a schoolteacher from Scotland. He told the Guardian newspaper he had $365,000 worth of crypto in December 2021. By August of the following year, it was worth less than $5,000.
Then there’s James Howells, a software engineer from Wales. In 2009, he started mining for Bitcoin using his home computer. By 2010, he stopped. Who could blame him? The Bitcoin price averaged less than $10 that year.
He had 8,000 Bitcoin on a hard drive. That would be worth $224 million today… if he still had the hard drive. But he threw it away by mistake in 2010. It’s now buried somewhere at a dump on the outskirts of his hometown.
While these are outlier examples, they aren’t that extreme. People have lost fortunes trading Bitcoin and other cryptos because they failed to manage their risk.
The Crypto Problem
The value of the next popular altcoin can skyrocket thousands of percent only to plummet in days or weeks. And the reasons behind this volatility aren’t always what people expect. Just look at the impact of tweets from Elon Musk.
One person’s comments can make or break millions of people – just like that. The crowd rushes in or out, all at once. When a stampede ensues, it rarely ends well.
Then, of course, crypto has seen lawlessness, Ponzi schemes, and hacks.
In February 2014, the Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange (once the largest Bitcoin exchange in the world) declared bankruptcy after discovering the loss of 850,000 Bitcoins due to hacking and security breaches. Bitcoin fell over 35% on the news.
That was just the beginning. The list goes on with examples like the Coincheck Hack in 2018 and the failure of the FTX exchange in late 2022 due to Sam Bankman-Fried’s fraud.
These are some of the reasons I’ve avoided crypto since its inception. When it comes to investing or trading, safety and security come first. I spend more time focusing on risk management than I do looking for the next 10-bagger.
All the same, the potential gains kept me looking. And in 2021, I found just what I was looking for. This system could even exceed the monster gains of Bitcoin while sidestepping many of the risks.
Free Trading Resources
Have you checked out Jeff’s free trading resources on his website? It contains a selection of special reports, training videos, and a full trading glossary to help kickstart your trading career – at zero cost to you. Just click here to check it out.
My Discovery: Bitcoin Skimming
I call it “Bitcoin Skimming” – because we pull profits from the Bitcoin arena without having to buy Bitcoin or any other coin.
There are no digital wallets, no hacks, and no cult of personalities to worry about.
And we do it one skim at a time. We put a string of profits on the page until it adds up to something much bigger.
Whether Bitcoin rises or falls, we systematically “skim” from the crypto market through the use of exchange-traded call and put options.
Just consider one of our recent skim trades…
On October 26, we saw momentum rising in Bitcoin, and we entered a trade using call options on the ProShares Bitcoin Strategy ETF (BITO). This is an ETF that tracks Bitcoin futures, and it’s one of the ways we can “skim” profits from Bitcoin.
At the time of the trade, Bitcoin had already risen more than 25% in a little over a week, but we thought it had further to run.
Two weeks later, we closed half of our position for a 37.4% gain. Bitcoin had hit our $37,250 price target, so we decided it was time to take some profits off the table. But we still thought the crypto had some room to run.
That played out, and we closed the remainder of our position the next day for a 46% gain.
Take a look:
Over a period when Bitcoin only rose 9%, we were able to churn out a blended 42% profit.
And it’s this chance to amplify our profits from Bitcoin’s moves that makes me most excited about Bitcoin skimming.
I’d love to show you how it all works. That’s why I recently shared a presentation where I walk you through the strategy.
To see how we make trades just like the example above, I’d encourage you to check it out right here.
Regards,
Larry Benedict
Editor, Trading With Larry Benedict