With almost 100K subscribers and well over 100 episodes, ReadySetCrypto is one of the most informative cryptocurrency channels on YouTube. The team has been educating crypto enthusiasts and traders since 2017 with the goal of empowering subscribers to become confident cryptoanalysts and traders. In their own words, there’s a “minefield of bad advice and danger” out there and RSC helps you cut through the noise.

Digitex’s Christina Comben caught up with ReadySetCrypto top presenter and full-time trader Doc, whose Futures Trading Masterclass program is coming out soon. Check out what he has to say about cryptocurrency, Digitex, trading, and life-changing career decisions.

CC: So, Doc, what made you decide to work on ReadySetCrypto? Come to think of it, how did you get involved in the crypto space from the start?

DOC: I visited my son Mav at his apartment about two years ago to do some auto maintenance projects together; before we got into that he showed me an intraday chart of ETH up on Poloniex in his office and was actively trading it. I was a little shocked as I did not know that he was involved in any type of investment or trading activity, and here he was knee-deep in it!

I said, “OK, tell me what you know about this stuff right now!” A couple of weeks later, we took a two-week vacation to the UK and we spent all of our time on the trains talking Crypto and the light bulb went on for me.

It’s always been my dream to work with my son on a project like this, and I thought we made a pretty good pair with his deep knowledge of the crypto industry, and my trading background.

ReadySetCrypto was formed at the end of 2017 and our passion is to help people overcome the usual obstacles to trading risk and to help drive innovation in the Crypto space by being at the forefront of tomorrow’s solutions.

CC: Can you tell us a little about your background?

DOC: My formal educational background is in Electrical Engineering with two degrees, and I added an MBA after that. I was a Product Manager for a very large telecommunications company in the US for the first 20 years of my career, and let’s just say that it had gotten boring.

I attended a corporate motivational seminar one day and a guy gave a presentation about stock and options trading and how you could learn to do this on your own. I was completely blown away and dove into that pursuit with a single-minded purpose.

18 months later, I turned in my notice, and I’ve been trading markets for a living ever since then!

CC: What do you think is missing from the crypto space right now? How will we onboard more users?

DOC: We need crypto to be thought of less as a get-rich-quick, fly-by-night investment vehicle, and more as a platform for disruptive innovation.

One of the many problems with this space right now is that the very firms that we’re potentially disrupting also hold the keys to the castle when it comes to something that drives ALL financial markets–volume and investment.

Crypto is very much a threat to the mainstream financial institutions that are gatekeepers to trillions of dollars of liquid investment dollars.

But all it takes is ONE of those firms to wake up and realize that the paradigm has already shifted and those that adopt too late will be steamrolled.

I hate to bring up the Tech Bubble because it’s an imperfect analogy, but we saw the same Gold Rush in the late ’90s that turned into The Purge, and eventually, people got left behind that could not adapt, like we’re seeing with Sears today.

What I would say crypto lacked in 2017 was maturity, and a ton of progress was made to this end in 2018. What we need in 2019 are viable, actual business use cases that are disrupting the old guard and offering new forms of value and access to capital for the customer.

This is why we’ve been big believers in the Digitex story from day one. Digitex is in a position to disrupt billions of dollars of fees in this industry, and once Crypto starts to see actual profits from projects, the trillions will follow in short order.

CC: Sounds amazing, so, let’s talk trading. You’ve got a new trading course coming out. Who is it aimed at?

DOC: Over the past 20+ years, I’ve traded on just about every stock, options, and futures platform that’s available to retail traders, including professional prop trader interfaces.

I was absolutely shocked at how awful most spot crypto broker interfaces are. They are awkward to use and slow to enter trades on, with little hope of gaining an edge.

Anyone that has been around real trading in any form knows that the ultimate directional trading instrument is a futures contract in a super-liquid environment.

I believe that 2019 will be the year of the Crypto Derivative, so I’m expecting to see a lot of new crypto futures offerings, and with this new visibility into futures, I think that there’s an opportunity for retail traders to learn how to trade Crypto Futures the right way from the beginning.

CC: What motivated you to start this course and what can people expect from taking it?

DOC: Actually one of my motivations for starting this course is because Digitex is getting into this space.

Few retail crypto traders have ever seen a proper ladder trading interface, let alone know how to trade one. Once you understand, it’s the simplest way to trade and you’ll never go back to anything more primitive.

I’m also seeing far too many retail traders show up on “rekt” lists as well because they’re taking on far too much risk by treating their trading like gambling. I’d like to show retail traders how to create their own profitable trading business, and in my mind, there’s only one way to do this, one narrow path to follow that few know about.

CC: What level of previous knowledge do participants need? Do you think you can help retail investors learn to trade futures?

DOC: This is where my engineering and product management backgrounds come to be an asset for me; I like to break things down to a very linear process like an assembly line.

We all have the same trading faults and I’ve had to cure them in myself first before I knew how to help others.

I like to keep things very simple at the beginning in a “building-block” approach that allows customers to gain confidence as they learn new skills.

CC: Let’s talk crypto regulation. The US recently negotiated with China about protecting their intellectual property, yet when it comes to crypto, some might say they are handing their innovation on a plate, sending money off-shore. How do you feel about it? What (if any) regulation do you think is needed?

DOC: I’m sure some will disagree with me here, but I think that regulation will never outpace disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is like the rolling boulder in the Indiana Jones movie, and “Regulation” is the equivalent of standing in front of it, ordering it to stop.

Regulation is always based on something that you know from the past, and it’s never going to be fast enough.

I think that successful companies and sovereign economies will figure out that the only way to avoid losing their IP is to stay several moves ahead of the porch pirates.

CC: What do you see as being some of the highlights of 2019?

DOC: Volume and volatility will return to the crypto markets in 2019, and we will see several profitable business cases brought about through using crypto and STOs and traded through an ever-deeper array of derivative products.

CC: When will the bear market end?

DOC: The trillion-dollar question! Normally bear markets do not end until the very last Retail Trader shutters their account through capitulation. If your focus is narrow enough, however, you can capture lots of “value” in the space of a few minutes if you’re trading the right instruments. This will be a great time to be a “trader” but a rough time to be a “HODLer.”

But I do believe that the back half of this year will start to see serious accumulation in the Crypto Markets and specific asset classes of crypto will lead us out of the Bear.

Doc will be doing a followup video with Adam very soon so you can see a sneak peek of the Digitex Futures trading platform! We’re super excited to work with Doc in the weeks ahead, so be sure to keep an eye out for his new Master Class on ReadySetCrypto if you want to learn from one of the best. Many thanks, Doc!