How I Lost 2 Bitcoin in Less Than 6 Hours.
Yesterday was a great day in the Hilarski home. Our Bitcoin was trading at all time highs. So I went to bed with some trailing stops at around midnight. Here are the stops I had in place at 10X leverage. I took the screenshot below to show my trading buddies my safe positions. The current price was at the $1160 range so I was pretty confident.
The Trade of a Lifetime Dream Woke Me Up.
Around 1:30 am est I woke up my heart racing. I had a dream about shorting a trade on Bitmex and my buddy telling me that the leverage on Bitfinex was all but used up. He mentioned earlier that we could have a huge pullback very soon. That is one of the reasons I had such low buy ins set for the overnight.
In my dream I saw the spread between the market price and the real price on Bitmex was way out of whack. I figured I would get up and try to take advantage of the grossly exaggerated spred of almost $40. I closed all long positions to free up some BTC. Sure enough I put my first short in at $1171 at 100X and I was 240% in the safe zone. Holy crap, it worked! So for the next hour I bought up every order that came in over $1070. In total I had 60,000 (58 BTC) contracts at an average of $1171.30. The real price of Bitcoin was still around $1145. I was pumped.
The Long Wait, Eyes Getting Heavy.
I knew a correction was inevitable but by 3:45am est I could barely keep my eyes open and the market was trading sideways. So I slowly started selling my position at around $1164 taking a nice little profit before heading to bed. There was no way I was keeping that large of a short position open in this crazy market.
Eyes Wide Open and Jaw on the Floor.
At around 7am EST I woke up hoping to repeat what I was doing a few hours earlier. I open Bitmex and the price was now $1106!! Holy crap, I knew it. If I would have stayed up and hit that position I would have made $3640 worth of Bitcoin. It would have been my biggest trade ever but the crazy thing is that the price dropped much lower than that, the possibilities were much higher.
The Nail in the Coffin.
Around 7:30 am EST the market seemed pretty quiet. So I bought 1.5 BTC worth of long contracts at $1097. I swear within seconds of my order filling the market tanks another $80. I fought back and forth before losing almost 2 Bitcoin. When you are pissed it is no time to trade!
Lesson Learned, If You Have an Amazing Dream with all the Signs Aligned You See Your Work Through.
Mistake number one was not staying up and monitoring a legendary trade I had on the books. The only problem is that we tend to go to bed at 11 pm and I was spent after multiple nights of little sleep due to an awesome bull market in Bitcoin.
Mistake number two was not taking the time to look over the market this am before opening my positions. I should have waited to see what the fallout would be before jumping in trying to make a a few Bitcoin on a retrace.
Mistake number three was tangling with the small trader assassins lurking in the dark places of the Bitcoin world. These Whales wanted a $200 drop and they got it!
I Hope You Enjoyed this Post.
As sad as it is losing that much Bitcoin I still learned many lessons which could be worth 100's of Bitcoin in the future. Happy Trading everyone, let's get back to this insanity. After a week of positive trades it just takes one bonehead move to take your gains.
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