 Hello everyone and welcome back to Market Talks. I'm Ray, head of Markets at Cointelegraph. Here we discuss the latest in what's shaping the markets with valuable insights from industry leaders, traders, and influencers. Today's guest is Mohit Saru. Mohit is a co-founder of BitAzoo Capital, which is a proprietary algorithmic trading and investment management platform. He also writes for Hackernoon and Medium. His interests include technology, Bitcoin investing, and market analysis. I was drawn to him because he's always posting on his Twitter different charts and on-chain data and his insights on market momentum, market structure analysis, Bitcoin halving cycles, and all that. So I think today's convo is going to be great. Mohit, welcome. Hi Ray, thank you. Thank you for having me on the show. Thanks for coming. We finally got you on. It's been a while. It's been a bunch of bumps in the road. There was the flu. I got COVID. We had tech gremlins. FTX rugged us all. Then the winter holidays happened, but it's a new year now and we made it. Yes, yes. It's been a, it's been some ride, right? 2022. Yeah. Yeah, it started off bright on a good foot. So happy new year. I hope this year brings nothing but blessings to you, your family, everyone around you. Happy new year to you as well. Is there an expiration date on that? I kind of wonder, like, when do you stop saying happy new year to someone? Is it on the 5th of January? Is it by the end of the first week of January? What's the rule on that? That's an interesting point. I never really thought about it like that. I hadn't either, but I was dropping my kid off at daycare this morning and it's the first time this year that I'm seeing some of those people and it's like, okay, today's January the 5th. I think I'm okay to say happy new year to them, but if I see someone next Monday, maybe it's too late. So it's kind of like Christmas lights. They're still on my house. Yeah, there's a deadline. So my Christmas lights are still up and I was looking at them last night because they're on a timer. They go off at 12. So I was looking at them and I was like, I wonder, you know, is it time for me to turn these off and take them down? I went and looked out of the window at the front of my house to see if my neighbors had their lights on and a few of them did. So I was like, okay, I'll leave them on until they turn theirs off and then we'll take it down. Like we're real reluctant here in Texas to let go of the holidays. So anyway, all small talk aside, what have you been up to lately? Mostly been traveling, but then FDX happened. So we had to shuffle some of our accounts. So like a lot of funds were there on FDX. So the remaining funds we had to shuffle and then, you know, had to do some restructuring. Apart from that, just spending some time with family, the new year just went by. So spend some time with family barbecuing at home. So it's been nice. It's cold here in New Delhi. But yeah, it's good. It's nice. Good, good, good. I guess before we jump into talking about trading and markets, what's your background in finance and with trading? So I am technically an engineer. I did my graduation from an engineering college called Delhi College of Engineering. I have never really studied finance, you know, never traded any markets except for the crypto markets, which I've been doing so for the past five years now. Yeah, started in 2017. And here we are. Yeah, yeah, it's funny how people fall into crypto. I think in the last few years, two or three years, we saw all the traditional finance guys get interested in crypto and jump into it and bring that skill set that they have. But those of us that have been around since like 2017 and before don't necessarily have that background and training and finance. And I kind of think it's interesting that playing around with crypto helps you to build a deeper interest and kind of learn basic economic theory and trading skills over time, trial by fire, right? Oh, yeah, definitely. There's this whole new crop of young people who never really knew anything about finance, who got into crypto, and then they learned how actually money works. At least for me, that was my journey. I never really knew how money works or what is the underlying value of gold, for example. And once you get into it, you start thinking, you start learning stuff that they never teach you in school. Exactly. Yeah, I'd say my kind of journey is similar to yours. So what would you say is your skill set or your trading style or your approach to crypto markets? So basically, being a techie, I have some edge when it comes to automating trading strategy. So I do enjoy making discretionary trades as well. But I stick to longer term trades where a profitable trade is held for months, whereas the losers, they get cut early fast. I also have edge in position sizing and aggressively compounding when there is a confirmed trend according to my model. So it's a very ground up approach when it comes to trading crypto for me. I learned everything in the markets and none of it is theory. Everything is just practice. So are you a pure charts trader or are there other fundamentals that you look at? I would say purely charts and volatility or lack thereof, coupled with the strong fundamental catalysts. Very selective about that. For example, if you remember last year, there was the ETH Ethereum merge that happened. So there was a trade there. So in anticipation of the fork, you could buy spot and short the futures early on. So doing that, you could later cover the futures because the futures would tip because everyone would start shorting it because later on you're going to get the ETH POW chain coin for your spot holdings. So if you caught that trade early on, it had a good return without really any major risk. Yeah. So these are the fundamental trades that I prefer taking where there's really high conviction behind the trade. Yeah, I concur with you on that. I know a lot of institutions and market makers were interested in that trade also being spot long and staking and then hedging with a short position. So what was funny was I had set up a similar structure and the whole narrative came around about the proof of work airdrop that we were going to get. So it was interesting to watch that trade unwind as people started to close those hedges. But then when we got the proof of work token, it was terrible. The proof of stake token was horrible. It didn't do anything. So the money I thought I would get out of holding on to ETH and not thinking it was going to be a buy the rumor, sell the news type thing. It didn't work out so well. I didn't even cash out those silly little tokens or any of that. You're right. You need to be early on. Yeah. So what's your current view of Bitcoin's market structure and price action from the daily or weekly timeframe? What's standing out to you most at this moment? So from a weekly timeframe perspective, let me show you a couple of charts. So there is this really interesting chart posted by someone on Twitter. So this has been my day on weekly timeframe. So what standouts here is the cleanliness of the signals that you can see back on the chart right from 2012 when there was a bullish crossover then in 2015. So all these crossovers happened when the Magdi was in negative region and right now one of them happened before the FTX collapse. So in my view, the FTX collapse actually led to a price dump which is definitely going to mean revert to its original state and then probably go much higher. But yeah, this particular indicator stands out to me a lot. What would that mean? Reversion be price wise? So before the crash, we were actually trading around 19K and excuse me. The dump to current levels was probably not supposed to happen, wouldn't have happened if not for the collapse. Now that it has happened, I think there's a strong case to be built here for the price to go back up to the 20K levels. And once it goes there, I don't think it's going to stop right there. It's going much higher from there. So in your view, what would it take for that 19 to 20K level to become support? And on the flip side, we know that a lot of people thought that it was like, oh, YOLO, let's buy the dip at 30K, let's buy the dip at 20K, let's buy the dip at 15K. So you've probably got people that approaching break even when they get to 19, 20K. You've got people that were at a loss and ready to just cut and run. And 19, 20K is an acceptable level for them to cut that loss. So wouldn't you expect to see a bit of sell pressure at that 19, 20K level? It's also a psychologically important level for some reason. So what do you think? What will it take to flip that to support so that we can retest it and then have price continue on the upside? So yeah, I kind of agree with you that 19 to 20K level is going to pose some selling pressure. But there's also a theory that I have that a lot of participants in the market now are conditioned to or sell. Expects price to go down or everyone is conditioned to short bounces. Okay, now 20K is coming, cool. I'm going to sell that level because Bitcoin is going lower. The first real resistance that is going to come is around 30K in my opinion. 20K might see some selling pressure. But the fact that price has spent so much time here, volatility has contracted so much. So the further price stays here, the stronger the end swing move will be in my opinion. I heard this narrative when volatility was at a record low about maybe five or six weeks ago. And all the firms, Delphi Digital, Arcane Research, Coin Metrics, every single crypto influencer that you can find on Twitter is saying, oh, volatility is at a record low. The Bollinger bands are tighter than ever and prices suppressed and Bitcoin open interest keeps rising. The super guppy is constricted. These are all signs that a strong directional move is imminent, most likely to the upside. And then when we did get that volatility spike, it was to the downside. And I think it was FTX or SBF that triggered that. So I'm curious about record volatility not always culminating with a bullish move. But of course, I know it's hard to determine direction. So on this chart that you posted, the one week chart with the logarithmic Bitcoin price action and the MACD, where the MACD is like, when it's converging that signal line in the MACD line, and you have these kind of like vertical lines that are going across each convergence or each crossover, is that aligned with when the Bitcoin halving takes place? Or are you just notating when a crossover occurred? It's not the halving, it's just the crossover that happened. It's showing on the price chart, so the vertical line is showing the date when the crossover happened and where the price was. So mostly you will see the price was contracting and then a big move came. With the exception of 2015, of course, the price eventually moved up, but it took a lot of time to move up. And again, 2008-2003, there was some contraction and then the MACD crossover happened and then the price moved up. Again, this year the crossover happened, the price actually fell off a bit from 19K to current levels, but the crossover is still valid. And apart from this, there is one more indicator that I will show you. It's a pretty simple Hull Suite, which has, again, really strong signal. If you can see the chart here, there was this one false signal here in 2013. Then the point here, there was this long bear market and here you can see green here and then one more false signal in 2015, September. But it has been green throughout this rally. Again, looking back at the 2018 bear market, once the prices fell, the Hull turned green after the scandal and then again there was a rally. So now after a prolonged down period where the Hull has been mostly red, you will see on the weekly chart now it's about to turn green. So this current week will confirm a green Hull, which is a good signal on a higher time frame. Yeah, that is just a really hypothetical question. How long do you think price would consolidate? Because with the Hull, with the GMMA, with the Bollinger bands, with any indicator that gives you that signal and it flips green, it doesn't mean like, okay, time to go perm along 100X, right? They're still typically, historically, a long period of price consolidation. So what's your kind of estimate? Okay, that's a really great question, which one I have? Yeah, this one. So this is a volatility indicator that we have built for trading. And I will show you some of the levels. So right now on the daily chart, we are here, right? So let me quickly draw online. Yeah. So now you'll see this level. The last time volatility was here was 2018, right? And if we zoom in there, the wall spent around 2nd November till 13. So that's about 10 days, right? So here, we spent around 10 days and then a big move came. Similarly, you will see one more level, a really interesting level here. Okay. Now, this went a little longer. So 22nd September and the move, the move actually started coming earlier, but for the sake of simplicity, let's take this level, 27 October, right? So that's about a month or slightly more than a month. So and there's one more level even further, if you want to see, yeah, here it is in 2016, 3rd April, and then it crossed up 15 April. So about 12 days, and then a little move came and then the bigger move came here. So if I have to quantify using the data I have, I would say a worst case scenario, price console keeps consolidating here for another maybe 30 days. And then there's a strong case for a big move. It may be to the downside, it may be to the upside. The probability for a down move for me is lower. I'm betting on a move that takes us higher. But there's definitely a big move coming and within the next 30 days, according to the models that we have. Right. Thanks for explaining that in such detail. That's helpful. Do you have any concerns or have you considered that maybe this time it's different when you're looking at this fractals and backtested data and like a lot of confluence between these momentum indicators? Of course, we have to like go back and remember that Bitcoin was born during a period of monetary expansion. Bitcoin was born during the 12-year cycle of quantitative easing. Easy money, money was printing, interest rates were at zero, and risk on assets thrived off that. So when we look at like all these precedents and historicals, which give us guidance on how we make our analysis for the here and now, do you worry that things are different? Now interest rates are high, inflation's high. The Fed's targeting like 4.5 to 5%, right? They're not going to hit that 2% like inflation rate that they want. It looks like we are on the verge of a recession. Do those things factor into your thesis on Bitcoin and make you call into question kind of the validity of all that backtested data that you just shared with us? That's a great point because and it's one of the most valid points as well because at the end of the day, you have to look at what's happening around the world, right? And there is no doubt that Bitcoin has been highly correlated with the macro markets for a while and especially when volatility drops that happened earlier as well. So especially when volatility drops, it becomes tightly correlated with these markets. So that's one thing. The other thing that you mentioned about inflation rates and the upcoming recession, it's really subjective to me when it comes to the theoretical part but whereas when you look at some data as to what is happening in the books. So for example, I'll pull up data for you at this one. So this has been quite interesting for me. So this is the COT report, commitment of traders report that is published for S&P 500, right? So the interest again, you might say that I'm looking at historical data, right? But as a trader, that's my bread and butter. So I have to kind of do that when taking bets in the market. Yeah, so if you look at this chart back in 2015, then so okay. So this chart basically shows the speculative net positions in the market in the books. So not people, not what people are saying, but what people are actually doing in the books, right? So in 2015, everyone was net shot around October and November for S&P 500. And then the same happened in 2020. And that has been happening right now. In 2020, you're right, the monetary regime was different then. But the people betting their money in the markets, the nature of humans is still the same. People were net shot then. And I'll show you how the price structure looked then back in 2015, September, October. I have something wrong from earlier. Yeah, your XPS chart looks like mine. While you're bringing that up, I made the mistake during the bull market of not keeping an eye on SPX and Dow and DXY and only focusing on crypto. So by doing that, I didn't see the top and the reversion and trend and was trapped in many crypto positions. So seeing that chart's given me kind of like, it's reminding me to always keep that up on my trading view, which has broken into eight different charts all at once. But anyway, continue, sorry. So it's great that it works for you because honestly, I don't have a massive edge studying the macro conditions. So it has never really worked for me. So I try to stick to the crypto charts when trading my capital. So yeah, here is the here is September for the short spiling and September, October is basically this region. So the market dumped and then there was a little bounce and then it dumped more. And within a few months, the market rallied higher. And I think there was something similar in 2020 as well. Yeah, March, April. Yeah, this is where the shots started piling in this region. And then the market rallied. And now the shots have been piling since seven, which is August, July, July. Yeah. So this region has completely been overpowered with net short positioning. I failed to see how prices can go lower from here, honestly, with the traders positioned the way they are. I don't really see further loads from here. I may be wrong, but that is what my analysis says. Right, right, right. And I guess if you were to connect that to like Fed policy in terms of it's possible that they're running out of time rates or I forget what they're there might be like 3.75% right now or four. So if the terminal rates like 4.5 or five, then and in terms of like the size of every percentage rate hike, and then we have a presidential election year coming up and you know, the public is only going to accept high inflation and rising interest rates for so long. The feds in a way kind of running out of time, right, which would call into question, are interest rate hikes going to get smaller? Will they eventually cease? Will the narrative on why interest rates are rising or why inflation has sticky and high change? And how will that impact public sentiment? Those could all impact in like market sentiment. So I understand your thesis on why you think we shouldn't see a much sharper sell off in the markets, at least in the short term. That makes sense to me. Yeah, it's a really interesting situation. Yeah, it is. I like your process too. Finding what works to you honing that strategy and sticking to it. So doing what works, whether it's conventional or unconventional, as long as you're making money, that's all that matters or as long as you're not blowing up your portfolio, that's all that matters. So you mentioned record low volatility for Ethereum also. And a recent report from Arcane Research also showed the same like record multi-year low volatility for Bitcoin. So is your thesis on Ethereum and your view on Ethereum, I think it's probably the same as Bitcoin, just based off of some tweets and charts that you've posted. But how do you feel about Ethereum? I feel like Ethereum is more of a fundamentals-based trade than a technical analysis-based trade. So what makes you feel good about Ethereum or what concerns you about Ethereum? So the really good thing about Ethereum is that just like any other technology, so there has to be really solid code behind Ethereum, but then it has finance built into it as well. So there is literally zero margin for error and Vitalik and the team have done a really good job behind Ethereum. The one thing that really stands out is that they deliver, they might take time, but they deliver and that's important. Plus, the community of developers that is there on Ethereum is unparalleled. I think only Solana comes close to it when comparing the developer community behind the chain. And especially now that staking has come for Ethereum, that's another driver of buyers coming in when the sentiment turns positive. So let's say the prices start rallying in the future. And as opposed to sellers of Ethereum coming in the market from their unstaked ETH, I believe that more and more people would not want to sell their ETH. Instead, they would want to stake it. So everyone would just pile on their ETH and stake their ETH, which would again just create a loop of positive price action and take the prices higher. So Ethereum is an asset that I'm quite bullish on apart from Bitcoin because of these reasons, apart from the technicals as well. You talked about one of my artists there, which talks about the low volatility regime that we are seeing. Yeah, here it is. So I posted it a few days back. It's the same model that I showed on Bitcoin, whereas for Ethereum, it is the lowest ever that we have seen. And that means something for us. So technically, prices have contracted here for too long. The lower probability scenario is that it goes down. But again, I'm a crypto bull. So I think that Ethereum is going to rally and the move will be really strong just based on this volatility regime that we are seeing right now. Right. I feel like personally, I feel like Ethereum is a good trade, a better trade than Bitcoin right now if your purpose is to just make some money, not necessarily increase your position size in Ethereum or in Bitcoin. So because from my view, I see like the sharpest downside being 1,000, which has been tested multiple times, like 1100 to 1,000. The worst case scenario being a drop to like 750, right? In which case like I'm already hedged. So it doesn't matter. I'm spot long and short at the same time. So I don't care. I'm going to stack more spot Ethereum and then be happy with my short, right? And then on the upside, I could see price running to like 1,700 to 2,000 and then rejecting there and either going down to retest underlying support or finding support at 2K and then consolidating there for a long time again. So for me, it's like I like that trade setup from pure just trading technical analysis, not thinking about the long term of the actual asset and the network. But one thing I do wonder about is with Shanghai opening unlocks for people to unsteak, do you see like a swell of sell pressure coming from that event? If prices turn south, then there's definitely going to be some snowball effect, in my opinion. But even so, in that scenario, I don't see prices going down and staying there for a long time. The worst case scenario that I have in mind is probably a V reversal. So price go down and then they don't really spend a lot of time there and then they come back up. And of course, the best case is that prices just start rallying from here. Either ways, I don't see people selling their eats that they get from unsteaking their Ethereum. In fact, I see more people staking their Ethereum in the future because staking is going to be a big rage in the coming future. And this is the biggest change, like there were smaller chains in the past that were doing it and people were crazy for that. Now this is Ethereum, like the most, you know, after Bitcoin, this is the chain. So yeah, I think people are going to stake a lot, further stake more of their eats in the future. Right, we got a question from someone in the audience, Enigma Vision. When can ETH 2.0 stakers unsteak from Merge? I think that's with Shanghai and March of this year, right? Yes, yeah, that's the tentative date, but it's most probably going to get pushed a little later. Yeah, and if they push it, like FUD, you know, like all the Bitcoin Maxis and Ethereum haters will be like, oh, this is just a ploy from the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik to Delay the Inevitable, which is the demise of Ethereum, blah, blah, blah, scam, scam, scam, you know, rug, rug, rug, right? Yeah, I'm sure that would happen. Yeah, it will happen sooner, soon, like if not March, then probably this year it will happen. April, May, June, July or September. Okay, one other question about ETH before we move on. So Ethereum staking, you can get like 3% at Coinbase, you can get 4% elsewhere, 4.5%, it fluctuates sometimes at 6%. We know the model is meant to turn emissions deflationary when the network's seeing like more use and daily active users and a lot of transactions and with that, perhaps staking rewards increase. It's possible with unstaking that we'll see more DeFi protocols develop staking offerings that are more lucrative than Rocketpool or Stakewise or Frax or Lido, which I think is a bullish thing for Ethereum long-term. But on the flip side, we're in a risk-off climate. Cryptocurrencies are super volatile, clearly correlated with what equities markets do. So interest rates are up. And I was just looking at some personal investment things this week. And I found that CDs, short-term dated CDs and short-term treasuries, three months to six months are paying like 3.7 to 4.8%, which in some cases is higher than what Ethereum offers, minus the volatility, minus the rug risk, minus the tax implications, minus all the risk that comes with crypto, all of that anything could happen, Black Swan event type stuff. So why should people, and we know inflows are muted, like actual money inflows into crypto are still pretty depressed right now. So why should people be paying attention to cryptocurrency right now when they can get a safer, guaranteed return from certificates of deposit and from treasuries, whether it be like US treasuries or even like foreign currency-denominated treasuries? So essentially, the way I look at it, there are two kinds of people who would stake in a chain like Ethereum. So the first category would be people who want to stay invested for a really longer term. Let's say I'm quite bullish on Ethereum and my spot holdings, I am comfortable holding them for probably five years or six years, something like that. Now that my thesis is that I'm bullish on Ethereum, the prices are going higher and then I think to myself, okay, why not own some money on this asset which is just lying there in my wallet? So that is the first category of stakers. The other really interesting category is that when prices start trending a little bit higher, then the positive sentiment starts building in. Everyone is hyped, prices are moving up. The eats that you had a few months ago is much higher in price, you have more money now. So people become generous with their, I wouldn't say trading habits, but with the way they allocate their crypto holdings. So people will start thinking, okay, the prices are going up, then they start staking. It's a sentiment thing really in my opinion. So there is the second category of people who would stake on the network. No, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for sharing. So altcoins, should traders be paying any sort of serious attention to altcoins right now? Buying a few exceptions, I would say mostly not. Right now, at least for the next three months, Bitcoin and Ethereum should be the key focus to anyone who's in crypto right now. Not bank token. Sorry. We shouldn't be trading bank token or CBTU. Yeah, but I don't know anyone who was in on it quite early. But a lot of people got airdrop for it, right? Yeah, I was just joking. A lot of people did. So you're saying that in your view, there's not many altcoins anyone should be paying serious attention to at this moment? Not a lot. Litecoin is a big exception in my case. I have been in what's called bullish. You're also in it. Yeah, yeah, I see a lot there. And you recall Litecoin was an asymmetrical mover and an outperformer early previous bull markets before the bull market started. And Ethereum was that coin last cycle, but the previous cycle it was Litecoin. So I see the exact same market structure. All the technical analysis indicators are confluent right now in green. The volumes are good. It's holding that $65 level. I could see price extending to $110. It's the whole pre-having narrative and fractals that are driving Litecoin. I 100% agree with you on that. Do you think DCG? Yeah, it is. Do you think DCG, if they blow up? Because I think they hold like 3% of Litecoin supply. So if they go bankrupt or there's some issue there, even rumors of SEC securities and exchange commission investigation, do you think that any sort of selling or FUD related to that huge stack that they hold could impact the halving narrative for Litecoin? So yeah, DCG is the elephant in the room right now. Apart from Litecoin, they have a decent amount of Bitcoin as well. The most holding that they have is ETC, which honestly not a lot of people care about. But yes, if they don't clean up their mess, I think there's a deadline that the Winklevoss twins gave them that was January 8th, if I'm not wrong. So it's going to be interesting to watch what transpires by them. But definitely if they are forced to liquidate their positions, then it's going to get messy because that's a lot of supply there. But I hate to be a doomer, so I am banking on the positive scenario that they have their stuff together, they know what they're doing, and I think they'll get through it. I think when you look at the longer-term multi-year market structure and price action of assets like Litecoin, Ethereum, and Bitcoin, and then you contrast that against black swan events, just the technicals like Fibonacci retracements to the golden pocket or 61.8 level, key multi-year support and resistance levels, and things like the halving narratives, they just mean reversions. When I look at every single black swan event and market structure for the older assets, they survive it and they always kind of do the same thing that they did previously in terms of price action and return on investment from certain levels. So personally, I think if any sort of huge blow happens to Ethereum or Litecoin, it doesn't break that Litecoin halving narrative and the price action that results from that. So I'm aware of it and just trying to remind myself that it's probably a kind of like just a restock. Let me lower my overall cost of the current position I have. So that's my view, but I'm not spot-long like holding Litecoin. I don't see any value in that. I'm just playing it from the perpetual's point of view. I don't have much utility in Litecoin itself and no need to like hold on to it forever. Maybe payment reels will come eventually and there will be some value in holding the actual token. So I'm not properly hedged of course, but still like how the market structure looks for that asset. It's the same for me. It's the same for me. I'm holding it for the halving narrative. I have some spot and then there is perpetual long on it as well. Probably it's more of a time-based trade than a price-based trade. So whatever happens, I'm selling it by June-July. Yeah, because I also heard of it and saw that that price rallies into halving. Halving occurs and in the past three halvings, price has just undergone a precipitous drop afterwards. So you can see that pretty clearly on the chart. Post halving is not bullish for Litecoin. So moving on to FTX, a ton of big companies and even you and everyone we know was impacted by FTX Celsius Alameda, but primarily FTX. What's your take on the extent of the contagion and might it continue to impact the crypto markets in 2023? I think a lot of entities had their funds on FTX and we are slowly getting to hear of it. We have heard a lot about it as well in the past. But yes, the maximum impact that we could have had was the initial two-three weeks and now it's just a tapering down effect that we have been seeing in the past. And ever since then, I've been asking this to myself that how much worst can it really get from here? The biggest first, the biggest fund blows up. Multi-billion dollar hedge fund, 3AC. Now, one of the biggest exchanges doing billions of volume, it blows up. And even then, the price, of course, it crashed, but okay, from 20K to like 16K, 15K, that's it. I don't really see any forced sellers in the market in the near future. You know what I mean? There were forced sellers in the past, but there's nobody left to sell now if you really look at it from that angle. So yeah, I think most of the contagion effect that we have had to see of FTX, we have seen it already. DCG is something that even I am a bit very of. But apart from that, there is not really much that I'm worried about. Right. It could a messy situation or sometimes it's FUD and the whole DCG and understanding balance sheets and the fact that there's really no transparency on them. So when they leak, such as the FTX and Alameda balance sheet, when CoinDisk leaked that, cause a lot of FUD, a lot of speculation and that impacts retail investor sentiment. And it just puts people in the scramble, even funds such as yourself, cause then you got to get client funds off the exchange and make sure your hedge properly and there's concerns about our exchange is liquid enough for me to actually cash out. So let me cash out now, even if it's at a loss. So at least we're not like holding on to zero. Like I get all that. But if DCG is messy or a lot of FUD gets built up around it, do you think that that could be the catalyst that sends Bitcoin price like down to that, through that liquidity gap where we're at now, maybe to like 12K to 8K and perhaps that's the final bottom there. Yeah, I think so. Yes. That's a solid case for a price to go further down. I think so. But it's hard to place kind of a percentage likelihood on that. We'll find out by January 9th or before March, right? Yeah, the sooner the better, right? Let's get it over with. A question about crypto trading in general, then we'll start to wrap up. Do you think that crypto traders are not diversified and too laser focused on crypto trading only? So I think most of the crypto traders, they have found their edge trading these markets. So when I even take my example, a lot of people ask me that why do I not trade traditional markets or even just invest mostly? Trade, no, I don't do it because through constant repetition of the edge I found here in these markets, I want to capitalize on that. So I want to put my capital to work in these markets as opposed to a new playground where I have to learn, make mistakes, lose money first and then learn stuff. So that's a big factor. So it's mostly passive investing that a crypto trader would do in the traditional markets. Even there are, I remember one post from a big account on Twitter. He has quite a good track record of making calls as well. So he bought Coinbase shares recently. So the stocks he's buying is also of a crypto company, right? So it's just hardwired into crypto people that they, this is the market that they're in and they don't they don't really move away from it. To me, it sounds like your investing process is a little bit different than Bitazoo because Bitazoo is almost purely algorithmic. So talk to me a little bit about what your company does in terms of investing and managing client funds. So we are essentially a proprietary firm, right? So it's all proprietary capital, me and my co-founders. Our major chunk of portfolio runs on momentum trading strategies that we have built. And these strategies run, I mean, these strategies take care of most of the capital. Apart from that, we leave some portion for discretionary trades in derivatives, as well as options. We don't really invest. There are spot holdings, but against those spot holdings, the algo is running on the perpetual contracts and making trades all the time. So it's completely, it's a complete trading driven approach as opposed to a passive investment approach. Now, I know that in order to do that, funds have to leave money on exchange. And the bigger your positions are, the kind of like bigger your hedges are. So post FTX, and I know like Silvergate Bank was the only kind of crypto friendly bank where you could onboard money into crypto. FTX looked real legit. Binance, a lot of accredited licensed institutions aren't allowed to use them, use Binance perpetuals if they're US based. So I get that FTX was the best option through Silvergate. Now that's all kind of gone. So how have you had to adjust the way you position and manage client funds now that the biggest exchange or the second largest purpose exchange is gone? So most of the clients that we have got even now, they are crypto native. So they already have crypto with them. So the biggest hurdle has been crossed. And with the lack, with the absence of FTX now, our main exchanges which are, which have quite friendly APIs are Binance, BitMEX, and Bybit. So this is where we are mostly trading now, algorithmically. All right, back to the start, back to the essence like the original spots of degeneracy basically. All right, going into 2023, if you could say anything to all of coin telegraphs listeners, all of your followers, anyone out there that's actively trading cryptocurrency or interested in cryptocurrency. If you could say like three valuable insights or we won't call it advice, right? But just things people should know about cryptocurrency. What would you say to the world right now? What would you say to these people? Okay. So the number one thing would be expect the unexpected when you're in crypto. The second learning that I have, which has been said, passed around a lot of times is that only risk what you can be comfortable losing. I see a lot of people saying this, but when you put it into practice, it makes all the difference. Right. And third, with whatever amount, with whatever capital you are deploying into the markets, bet big, bet big. You're not going to make, you're not going to make bank with taking small bets. Right. Once you have that, once you've decided, okay, this is the amount of capital I want in the markets, just bet big. Yeah. So don't be afraid and have some balls, you know, have conviction. Of course you've done your own diligence and done the research and are not willing to lose more than you can afford to lose, but then at the same time, bet big. I get what you're saying because towards the end of last year, I returned to my roots. When DeFi summer started, I got all into that staking and this most recent bull market had me slightly convinced that the utility that was needed to catalyze mass adoption was here and therefore you could remain long in certain positions and look at fundamental analysis and like more of the qualitative factors rather than just being a pure charts trader taking the profits into USDC and not holding any longs because I watched Bancorp, Sushi, I watched all those tokens that were DeFi just pump beyond my exit, right? My profit taking level by a hundred X and I was like, damn it. Why did I do that? You know, this time to belong and really belong and strong. So that ended with, you know, an uncomfortable degree of wreckage, but fortunately I have sufficient portfolio left to continue moving on, right? So I've returned to my roots, which is just identifying the strongest trend. Let's look at 50 altcoins that all have the exact same market structure. Bitcoin price is consolidating. I feel confident making some short-term bets on altcoins, but I'm not going to spread my capital between all 50 altcoins because they have the exact same market structure. And then I'm going to get this massive outsize return. I've returned to my roots of just looking at the strongest players that are respecting those resistances and those support levels and maintaining whatever that trend is and have like multi-layered levels of confluence with data and on-chain data. And I'm going big in those trades, but also making sure that I'm hedged or that I'm managing my risk properly this time. And I think the outcome should be better, like in terms of profits taken than just believing that the whole market itself is bullish and that you can go long on assets because they're down 100% from their all-time high. So I agree with you. Like I understand what you mean by have conviction, make a plan, and go big. Like he's not saying go to the local gas station or petrol shop and buy a lottery ticket and bet it all on that because maybe you win, right? Like betting big by playing the strongest trends. Play your winners. When the trend is up and you're profitable on like this Litecoin trade, then buy into that strength and enjoy that bullish momentum and be prepared to exit when that momentum begins to turn. I get exactly what you're saying. It makes perfect sense. I must say that nothing we've said today is financial advice. That's like putting a band-aid on a bullet wound, isn't it? Because we really got deep into talking about trading and stuff. But to cover our butts, nothing that Mohit said or that I said or that Cointelegraph is projecting through your phone or laptop or however you're listening, it's not financial advice. Do your own research and don't make the same trades we're trading because you might get wrecked. I think Gary Gensler got it. Okay. Well, man, that's it. That's all I got. I really appreciate you coming on. It was a really good talk. I hope the listeners didn't find it too dry, but it was really intriguing and invigorating for me to have trader talk with you. Come back anytime. Thank you so much, Ray. It was such a pleasure to come on your show. It was mostly hardcore technical stuff from me, but that's what you expect from a trader. It was such a pleasure. Yeah, it was a pleasure. It was great. I'm going to have a good day now. I hope you have a good evening. You as well. Take care. Okay. Talk to you next time. Bye-bye.