When you make the decision to trade with cryptocurrencies, you have two main options to do so using a couple of important strategies. Let’s take a look at the way these strategies work, their advantages and disadvantages, as well as the most relevant situations in which to make use of them.

Option 1: Buy and Hold

The first option is based on selecting one or more cryptos, buying them and holding them for a long-term period. This strategy is called Buy and Hold, and it’s very simple in terms of position management — you don’t need bots for entry and exit timing; instead, you just need to be just patient. The Buy and Hold strategy is very useful when you trade new ICOs that have huge gain potential, but it’s good to keep in mind that there will always be a risk that the ICOs can be scams or unsuccessful (their prices drop close to zero and will never increase).

You can buy established and verified cryptocurrencies (e.g. the most capitalized currencies), but there will usually be a low probability that their gain reaches over hundreds, or even thousands, of percents. In order to make more significant profits, you will need to use more sophisticated strategies.

Option 2: Entry and Exit Timing

The second option that you can use to trade with cryptocurrencies is based on entry and exit timing, as well as holding trading positions for an appropriate amount of time within a short-term period. This timing can either be managed manually by you or through bots (algorithmic trading strategies), which are statistically analyzed on the basis of historical data. Of course, this short-term attitude has pros and cons. The main advantages are that your capital isn’t allocated for an entire time period, you can avoid huge price drops and use non-allocated capital for trading with other strategies. On the other hand, the disadvantages related to this strategy are that you’ll pay more fees because you make more entries and exits and can occasionally miss big price move, but if you choose strategies with good performance parameters, the Entry and Exit Timing strategy can ultimately be a better choice than the Buy and Hold strategy.

Real-world examples using both options

Let’s say that you’d like to trade BTC/USD using the Buy and Hold strategy. You buy 1 bitcoin for 6,550 dollars on November 1, 2017, and sell it on February 1, 2018, for 9,300 dollars (a 41.92% gain). When you use a trading strategy with Moving Averages indicators for trading with BTC/USD (the same as you can use in the Alpha version of the Signals Strategies Marketplace), you’ll gain 78.31%. This is preferred, since you will have higher performance even if you pay fees and your capital isn’t allocated for the entire time period.

Now, try to think few a steps forward and combine the Buy and Hold strategy with a short-term trading strategy. You can buy 1 bitcoin for 6,550 dollars and use this bitcoin for trading with Ethereum (ETH/BTC). The Alpha version of the Signals Strategies Marketplace allows you to use the Bollinger Bands strategy for trading with ETH/BTC and earn extra bitcoins. If you start trading with this strategy on November 1, 2017, and finish on February 1, 2018, your account gains 275.53%. In the picture below, you can see how the Bollinger Bands strategy trades with ETH/BTC.

This combination is very useful in situations when the price of BTC/USD is lower than when you started trading because the impact of the price drop will be reduced. You can call this combination the “smart” Buy and Hold strategy. Check out the screenshot below — you can compare performances from using just the Buy and Hold strategy with BTC (+95.00%) and ETH (+114.115%) if you use the Bollinger Bands strategy (+369.37%) for the last 6 months.

Do you have questions about these strategies?

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