There are a couple of things that will undoubtedly change. The first one is that more institutional money will come in, which means very different styles of participants. Right now, many participants are people on their iPhones with $1000 in their account going with leverage, creating a specific market price behaviour. But if you bring in institutional fund managers, hedge funds with tens of millions or billions under management, they’re not trading like that; their ways are quite different. Thus, what I think will happen, is over time, as institutions come in and it becomes part of everyday life, the volatility and the frequency of price swings in the market will get muted. It’ll become more like stocks. Therefore, I expect to see these moves’ magnitude drop eventually. But for that to happen, it’s got to be professionalized a little bit more. There’s probably going to be more oversight in some form. I don’t know what that looks like, but if you think about the stock market, there was crazier behaviour. There were fraudulent listings and dodgy things going on in the brokers, and then it got regulated away, and it became a more stable market and more trustworthy. Crypto will go the same way since it already is. I’m much more confident having money in the market on an exchange now than I would five years ago. What’s important to realize then is if someone’s sitting on the sidelines thinking that crypto is interesting. I’m just waiting until you miss a massive opportunity because right now, it is still a bit Wild West-ish, and you can profit very handsomely with these price moves if you’ve got a good set of rules.

However, if you wait five years, the market will have matured. You’ll still be on a profit, but you won’t have these massive outsized profits that you can get today by standing out from the crowd with a systematic approach. Thus, I’m kicking myself that I didn’t get into crypto years earlier since I’m a bit of a slow adapter generally in life. I would tell someone on the sidelines now to don’t keep on waiting. There’s a great opportunity, and it will gradually disappear as more institutional money comes in and gets more regulated and professionalized. Therefore, get in, get systematic, and make good money. Then, over time, that’ll revert to just another market and asset class.

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Adrian Reid Founder and CEO
Adrian is a full-time private trader based in Australia and also the Founder and Trading Coach at Enlightened Stock Trading, which focuses on educating and supporting traders on their journey to profitable systems trading. Following his successful adoption of systematic trading which generated him hundreds of thousands of dollars a year using just 30 minutes a day to manage his system trading workflow, Adrian made the easy decision to leave his professional work in the corporate world in 2012. Adrian trades long/short across US, Australian and international stock markets and the cryptocurrency markets. His trading systems are now fully automated and have consistently outperformed international share markets with dramatically reduced risk over the past 20+ years. Adrian focuses on building portfolios of profitable, stable and robust long term trading systems to beat market returns with high risk adjusted returns. Adrian teaches traders from all over the world how to get profitable, confident and consistent by trading systematically and backtesting their own trading systems. He helps profitable traders grow and smooth returns by implementing a portfolio of trading systems to make money from different markets and market conditions.