During the height of the cryptocurrency bull run in 2017, you would struggle to avoid articles about Bitcoin millionaires who never need to work again. However, 18 months and one gruelling bear market later, many of these millionaires are back on the job market after being ‘REKT’, as they call it on crypto-related social media.

But that isn’t what happened to legendary BitMEX trader ‘TheBoot’, who has astonishingly turned 0.6 BTC into more than 300 BTC by trading cryptocurrency derivatives in spite of the bear market.

He regularly posts screenshots of his multi-million dollar trades on Twitter, where he has amassed a following of 7,000 people.

What’s his secret?

When asked what his secret is, TheBoot, who admitted to being “quite young, in my 20’s”, told Coin Rivet: “There is no ‘magic pill’. If I had to choose a few things, I would say it’s a combination of theoretical knowledge plus emotion control.”

Self-proclaimed Bitcoin millionaire and former software engineer TheBoot said that his luck began to change when he took the leap of faith and left his job in 2017.

During the bull market of 2017, $btc has done five 3d bearish MACD crosses while remaining above the zero line. Every time it caused a 30-40%, healthy correction, either after 3d RSI bear divs or blow off top / massively overbought RSI at 20k. pic.twitter.com/C26PAMHo6j — TheBoot (@TheBootMex) June 2, 2019

“Everything improved after I left my job,” he added. “Doing two things at once was very hard, and I believe that was the reason I lost almost everything at some point of my trading career.”

The Europe-based trader, who candidly admitted to making $1m in 2017 before losing it all, then explained that his most profitable trade actually came on Bitcoin Cash.

“It’s probably a BCH trade in 2017 when I longed it on relatively high leverage during one of the epic pumps. Longed at $2,000, sold at $2799, if I remember correctly – just $1 below the top, about 30 seconds before it dumped very hard. I made huge money off that trade,” he claimed.

Advice to newcomers

TheBoot’s success story is a relative rarity for crypto traders, and newcomers to the space should refrain from the belief that they can ‘get rich quick’.

He warns aspiring traders against “using too much money” when they start as “they’ll probably lose most of it”.

“Don’t go with big capital after just paper trading, you need to work with real funds,” he continued.

Finally, TheBoot instructed newcomers to avoid trading based on someone else’s calls: “Even if they are legit and great, you won’t know if they maybe enter much earlier, and when they are going to close the position and how they manage risk.”

What does the future hold for TheBoot?

While becoming a Bitcoin millionaire in your 20’s is a fairly spectacular achievement, TheBoot has outlined some significant goals over the coming years.

“I have a lot of real-life goals. I would love to do real-life investments, either VC or just classic businesses with new approaches. I’m already ‘retired’ from my full-time job, but that doesn’t mean I want to do nothing for the rest of my life,” he added.

A common path for successful crypto traders is a move into regulated legacy markets, and while TheBoot admits he trades them, he is planning to dive in with more capital in 2020.

Finally, the conversation turned onto the seemingly apparent cryptocurrency bull market that has appeared in 2019.

Is there any btc futures position that has better entry than this one in the whole crypto universe? Show me! pic.twitter.com/Eqml2t7Bx7 — TheBoot (@TheBootMex) April 11, 2019

Bitcoin has risen from December lows of $3,150 to above $8,100, while Litecoin has experienced a remarkable 400% gain since a low of $22.50 in December.

“By every classical technical definition, the bear market is over for Bitcoin,” TheBoot concluded.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean that we are going to new all-time highs though. We could go up some more and then roll over into another bear market.”

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