Social trading is a service that allows investors to replicate the operations of expert traders. Social trading requires little or no knowledge about financial markets, and only requires that the user make a correct selection of traders to follow, especially considering the percentage of successful operations and the diversification of the financial instruments traded by the expert, that is to say that the expert does not concentrate on a single financial instrument or, failing that, not to replicate several traders that operate only the same financial instrument. Social trading allows traders to trade online with the help of others and some have claimed shortens the learning curve from novice to experienced Forex trader. Traders can interact with others, watch others take trades, then duplicate their trades and learn what prompted the top performer to take a trade in the first place. By copying trades, traders can learn which strategies work and which do not work.

allows investors to execute trades (automatically) made by other expert traders (copying trades)

requires little to no knowledge about the market e.g technical analysis

learn new techniques and strategies from other traders

learn actively and quicker by interacting and communicating with other traders alike

Take a look at eToro, a popular social trading and multi asset brokerage. It’s very popular with over 250,404,895 trades opened (as of writing), made up of both amateurs and professional traders.

Problem

With the advent and increasing interests in cryptocurrency, more and more people, especially youths, are finding themselves involved in the crypto field.

However, many of them don’t know much about cryptocurrencies. This is made worse by the overwhelming number of exchanges. People don’t really know which one to sign up for, or worse, every exchange that have coins/tokens they want. This process is overly repetitive and time consuming as not only do they have to sign up on individual exchanges, they also have to verify their identities.

Where/How do I buy bitcoin?

What exchange do I use?

Where/How do I trade bitcoin for X coin?

Assuming they make it past these obstacles, they’ll have to worry about researching and trading.

“What is Bitconnect? 1% return per day!? Too good to be true!”

“What is Fibonacci Retracement?”

These problems don’t exactly serve as a friendly welcome to newcomers.

Solution ?

(Notice: there are other trading platforms out there but the focus of this article is Blockport Platform)

Blockport’s social cryptocurrency exchange platform.

Blockport offers 3 main core functionalities:

Fiat Gateway (Buying and selling cryptocurrencies with fiat)

Exchange (Exchange or trade one coin for another)

Social Trading (Learn and copy from other expert traders) [Focus of this article]

Blockport aims to be a one-stop shop cryptocurrency platform, or all-in-one. This solves the aforementioned problem that newcomers or even existing users face. Rather than signing up for multiple exchanges and platform, which makes thing extra confusing and repetitive, they can just utilize the Blockport platform.

Blockport’s Social Trading Aspect

Social Trading means that one can share, learn and copy another’s strategies and trades.

Blockport’s social trading feature allows one to do so. User can follow other traders by paying them a certain fee via Blockport Token (BPT). Blockport imposes a maximum amount of followers that a member can have to effectively counter market manipulation

The fees are decided by the traders and the fee structure(% Blockport collects to maintain the platform) is not finalized yet. Using BPT to copy traders is one of the several utilities of BPT. Learn more about the token utilities at https://blockport.io/tokens

How it works

Functional Process

T he Blockport social trading platform allows members to connect with other traders, discuss investment strategies and automatically copy each other’s portfolio. This means that a beginner investor ‘Alice’ can copy the portfolio of an experienced trader ‘Bob’. The following figure shows the functional process within the Blockport environment when members use social trading features.

Understanding how social trading works and funds allocation

When Alice decides to follow Bob, she has to set an amount of her portfolio that is going to follow Bob’s trading activities. In this example, Alice’s portfolio consists only out of Bitcoin (BTC) and she decides to allocate 50% of her portfolio to following Bob. Alice accepts the terms and conditions for following Bob and automatically pays a small amount of BPT to Bob. Bob’s portfolio also consists out of 100% BTC before he makes a trade.

Bob decides to trade 40% of his BTC for Ethereum (ETH) and makes a trade through the Trade Portal. Alice has allocated 50% of her total portfolio to follow Bob and thus her account will automatically make trades relative to Bob’s trades so that Alice trades 20% of her total BTC for ETH

After the trade, Bob’s portfolio has changed from 100% BTC to 60% BTC and 40% ETH. Due to the 50% of Alice’s portfolio that wasn’t following Bob, her portfolio respectively changed to 30% BTC and 20% ETH. This example describes the basic fundamentals of following an other member’s portfolio

Knowledge Sharing

is another aspect of social trading.

Blockport will offer

knowledge base where members can find information about frequently asked questions regarding cryptocurrencies and trading

community page where users can ask and answer questions, similar to Quora (global leading Q&A site)

members that follow each other to chat with each other and share insights about their trading strategies

The knowledge sharing system will greatly stimulate the social interaction and engagement on the platform. Many leading exchanges do not offer highly useful and demanded system.

Releases and Plans

Social Trading is part of the 2.0 release, along with its own exchange (estimated Q3 2018).

The 1.0 Beta has just been released to the public, allowing users to purchase 5 coins (BTC, BCH, ETH, LTC, XRP) with Euro.

All trading data & statistics will be stored from the moment you make use of our platform e.g purchasing of coins. In the upcoming releases we aim to make that data available and useful.

Blockport is working on Social Traders program that incentivize users to become active on the platform. By performing a certain amount of activities , they will be given a ‘Blockport Social Traders’ status, that will allow them to access exclusive features and rewards on the platform and be part of an exclusive Social Traders community.

A part of the Social Traders program will be a referral program, that incentivizes users to onboard their friends onto the platform.

My experience with beta testing of the social trading prototype

I was given the chance to beta test Blockport’s Social Trading prototype (thanks Jasper[Lead UX/UI]!) and I’m going to share with you my experience and thoughts.

(Note that it’s a prototype and it does not necessarily represent the final product)

Screenshots

List of traders

This page shows a list of traders on the platform. It includes information such as names, copiers, fees and return. This gives you an overview of the traders and help you narrow down which traders suit your interest.

Trader’s Profile

This page shows a trader’s profile. It provides insights of the trader’s strategies and their trade history and performance. This gives you the ability to further decide whether this is the right trader for you to copy and learn from.

My thoughts

During the testing, I was given a series of well-thought questions and I am glad to say that I was (still am) able to answer and perform every task.

I am pleased with the UX and UI of the social trading feature. In my opinion, it’s very easy to navigate and interact with, making it extremely user-friendly. This is one of important factor to attract both new and experienced users. I have tried other social trading platforms and I was immediately turned off by the overwhelming and messy elements.

Social Trading can help overcome the obstacles faced by newcomers and help them gain new insights and knowledge about the market. This is a win-win for everyone:

Traders can gain followers/fans and earn money (BPT)

Followers can earn money and learn strategies and techniques

Blockport Platform makes profit to sustain the ecosystem and improve and introduce new features

Final Words

Social trading should not be mistaken for “money-making service”. It’s not a get rich quick scheme, there are risks that come with it. For example, if a trader makes a poor decision/move, it could result in a loss for anyone you and others. This is why you should diversify and allocate logically.

Trading can make or break you. You should treat it as a learning and educational tool that help you improve your trading skills and understand the market better.