Let’s say you have US dollars in your account and buy something against Bitcoin. You buy Bitcoin, and then you use the Bitcoin to buy Ethereum. Thus, you are trading the movement of Bitcoin versus Ethereum, And when that trade is finished, you close it, you’re left with Bitcoin. If you don’t convert the Bitcoin back to dollars, you have currency risk on the Bitcoin.

My approach is if I’m trading something against Bitcoin, I have a small amount of Bitcoin, and that’s usually enough to place whatever Bitcoin trades I have that day. When those trades are finished and I’m back to Bitcoin, then I convert the excess Bitcoin back to US dollars. Same whether it’s a mean reversion system or a trend following system. Now, if you don’t want to do that, you can keep holding Bitcoin, but you’ve got currency risk or volatility risk. Therefore, if you don’t want to do that, then just don’t trade Bitcoin pairs, just trade US dollar pairs.

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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.