Cryptocurrency trading is a very lucrative business and a perfect alternative to the holding mentality that continues to cripple the cryptocurrency community. Given the high volatility nature of the cryptocurrency market, it’s extremely easy to make a living trading cryptocurrency. Currently, there are several types of trading, but day trading remains the most popular. Properly conducted, day trading is hugely profitable. It takes a lot of discipline and experience to master. Even professional financial advisors and managers tend to shy from it. However, with a well-planned strategy, even a novice can make it a lucrative career.

What is Day Trading?

Day trading is a kind of trading that involves the practice of purchasing and selling security within a single trading day. It’s a short-term strategy that traders utilize to earn small profits from minute, intraday fluctuations in prices of securities or digital currencies. It occurs in any market place but is most common in the stock, forex, and cryptocurrency markets. Day traders never hold any positions overnight; they enter and exit trading positions within the same day. Instead, they buy digital assets and hold them for a short period, anywhere between a few minutes to a few hours, before they sell them off.

Types of Traders

Traders can be classified into two broad categories. Speculators and technical analysts. The speculators keep a watchful eye over the cryptocurrency market for news and activities that may indicate that particular crypto will lose or gain value. Their main concern is outside market influences such as coin hacks, developments, and significant partnerships, among others. Analysts, on the other hand, are concerned about the internal workings of the cryptocurrency market and tend to rely on financial patterns and charts for their insight. However, as a day trader, it’s vital that you do not confine yourself into any of these two broad categories. You may find that being unique and true to yourself extremely beneficial.

Other types of traders include:

• Scalpers
• Noise Traders
• Swing Traders
• Position Traders
• Fundamental Traders

How to Day Trade Cryptocurrency

Choose Your Marketplace

The first step towards your day trading journey is to pick a marketplace. Different marketplaces offer different fee structures, coin pairings, trade amounts, etc. This is extremely important because little profits on large trade volumes can quickly disappear into fees. Therefore, it’s imperative that you pay attention to fee structures. Once you find a viable marketplace, go ahead and find two to three other marketplaces and register accounts on each. Doing so gives you flexibility in terms of cryptocurrency fees, liquidity, and availability.

Develop a Strategy

Next, you need to develop a solid trading strategy. This step involves a lot of research and self-discipline. For starters, you need to ensure that you do not risk more than you are willing to lose. This can be a tough act to practice, but having a conservative strategy ensures that you don’t lose your entire cash on risky bets. Day trading is a numbers game, and you are bound to make some losses here and there. Therefore, it’s way better to collect small gains and remain safe rather than to risk big to score big.

Stop Loss Limits

Another vital factor in cryptocurrency trading is the stop-loss limit or as commonly known, your exit strategy. Most exchanges allow traders to set a stop loss that automatically exits a trade at a certain price level. For instance, if you purchase a particular cryptocurrency at $200, you may set a stop loss at $180 to ensure that you at least preserve a large chunk of that investment in case prices take a nose-dive.

Limit Sell Orders

Limit sell order is another important concept in cryptocurrency trading. Unlike the stop-loss order, the limit sell order automatically closes a trade one once your digital asset hits a specific high price. For instance, if the said digital asset is on an upward trend, and you perceive the top market price to be $300, you can set a limit sell order of that amount. Once the asset hits that price point, the limit sell order will automatically sell your asset.

Crypto Trading Bot

The cryptocurrency trading market is currently filled with a large number of trading bots and trading algorithms. Some are freely available on open-source platforms while others are given at a fee. As tempting as it is to utilize the services of these trading bots, extreme caution is recommended. Crypto trading bots are only as good as their programming. Therefore, any corruption in their code, and you can expect them to make mistakes. However, we recommend using the 3Commas crypto trading bot as it’s easy to set up and performs reliably compared to most of its competitors. Features such as bot performance analytics, social trading, portfolio creation and tracking make it a robust option for any trader interested in automated cryptocurrency day trading.

Best Crypto Day Trading Strategies

Scalping

Scalping is a standout strategy in day trading that’s well-recognized in the forex market but also commonly used in the cryptocurrency trading market. It’s conducted by executing hundreds of trades per day in an attempt to make a small profit from each trade. The trader undertaking scalping hopes to profit by exploiting the bid-ask spread. Scalping is a quick, paced strategy that tends to be dangerous at times. Therefore, you need to be hot on timing and vigilant for unpredictable assets.

Force

This is a popular strategy that depends on following up on news sources and recognizing price moves. The values of digital assets are guaranteed to move around every day; therefore, there’s always a chance to take advantage of this strategy. You need to make sure that you remain mindful of up and coming news and declarations since you’ll have moments before they affect the values of the digital assets.

Inversion

Inversion is a commonly discussed strategy utilized all over the world. It’s fondly referred to as pattern trading, switch trading, or pull back inclining. This strategy follows a fundamental rationale as it fixates on buying and moving day by day low and high pull-backs. Therefore, it requires the capacity to anticipating pull-backs quality and precisely distinguishing them.

How to Day Trade Bitcoin

Bitcoin is more volatile than any other type of asset in the cryptocurrency market. Therefore, day trading bitcoin comes with a considerable amount of risk. Bitcoin prices are highly sensitive to public sentiments and regulatory changes. They fluctuate quickly depending on the types of news circulating in the industry, whether positive or negative. Therefore, before trading bitcoin, you want to wait until there is a high reading of volatility to make correct entries. It’s also essential to check how liquid the crypto is by verifying the 24-hour volume of the crypto trade.

Not having enough liquidity could trigger a substantial slippage that could lead to even more significant losses. Bitcoin is a safe commitment for a new trader as it can be used as a long-term store of value. It also comes with relatively fewer risks compared to altcoins. Furthermore, trading bitcoin doesn’t need to occur every single day. You only need to day trade bitcoin when all conditions align in your favor. Therefore, avoid trading on weekends and limit trading only to days with the highest volume.

Day Trading Ethereum and Altcoins

The safest altcoins to trade are those that are the top by market cap. These are the ones that are less volatile and are most likely to serve as long-term stores of value. A great example is Ethereum, Ripple, Bitcoin Cash, among others. These coins are less apt to disappear. Smaller altcoins are profitable in the short-term, but the risks associated with them are much higher. Their prices can be artificially boosted through pump and dump. Therefore, the risk of your funds going up in smoke is much higher compared to bitcoin. A little dash of due diligence is needed in determining which altcoins to day trade.

How to Make Money Trading Cryptocurrency

Day Trading Taxes

Different countries hold different tax views concerning cryptocurrencies. Therefore, it’s crucial to conduct due diligence as to what tax laws govern your state. Alternatively, you may want to utilize the services of an accountant to make your work easier. The following tax overview is U.S.-centric and does not apply to non-U.S. citizens. It’s divided into two; crypto held for less than a year and crypto held for more than a year. How much tax you pay is conditional to how long you have owned your digital assets.

Tax for crypto held for less than a year is divided into three transaction types. If you purchase digital assets with fiat currency, you are not liable to pay any tax on that transaction. The taxable event comes in when you sell your digital assets for fiat currency. For instance, if you sell Bitcoin for U.S. dollars, you will be pay ordinary income tax. You will be taxed using the FIFO (First In First Out) mode of accounting. The same applies to crypto to crypto sale. All profit made from transactions will be taxed.

Any crypto held for more than a year under U.S. tax laws is classified as a long-term capital gain. Any moment that you decide to sell your digital assets, you will be taxed at a rate of 15%. Compared to ordinary income tax, the capital gains tax is far more appealing to most people as only the 15% tax applies to digital assets of any worth. Moreover, capital gains tax is much lower compared to income tax.

Risks of Day Trading

Although day trading is a lucrative business or career, it’s essential that you come to terms with all risks associated with it. Some of these risks include:

Psychological Addiction

For some people, trading is like gambling. It’s exciting, fun, and makes you feel alive, especially if you are generating wins. Just the mere thought of making thousands of dollars at the comfort of your house is thrilling. Just like drugs, the drive to win becomes an addiction that’s difficult to avoid. This addiction can be especially dangerous to your bank balance. It can damage your life, put you in debt, and destroy relationships with family and friends.

Risk of False Information

The cryptocurrency market is extremely speculative. Therefore, almost everyone in the market has an opinion of how the value or price of a digital asset will move. All these conflicting information tends to saturate the market and mislead new traders into making trades based on false information. Therefore, it’s vital that you find a credible news source and connect with trustworthy people before trading.

Loss of Capital

Almost all day, traders fail in their first year starting. Day trading is extremely challenging for novices as it requires a lot of knowledge, experience, and discipline- qualities that most beginners lack. Therefore, you are bound to make significant losses before you move on to make profits.

Stress and Big Time Commitment

Day trading is a lucrative career. However, it’s also a full-time job that requires constant attention. That means hours will be spent on the computer monitoring price movements and making adjustments whenever necessary. Subsequently, stress and big time commitment become a reality for traders who don’t wish to lose any money.

You can minimize these risks through the following ways.

Manage your risks

No trader wins 100% of the time. You are bound to make losses. To minimize losses and hold on to your wins, you will need to put in place strategies that can guarantee you win at least 60% of trades.

Get experience

Put theory into practice by signing up to a demo brokerage account and make trades in real time with fake cryptocurrency. It’s a risk-free way of gaining valuable experience and developing trading strategies that will prepare you for day trading in the real market.

Educate yourself

Day trading is an acquired skill. Therefore, you need to train and hone your trading skills through education and training. It’s crucial that you use trustworthy sources of information and invest in a mentor with a proven track record of success.

Never trade with any cash that you can’t afford to lose.

The cryptocurrency space is full of scams, pyramid schemes, and fake digital assets. The risk of losing money in a day is real. Therefore, it’s important not to place all your cash in one basket. Ensure that you diversify your investments and only use a section of it to day trade. This minimizes the risk of losing all your hard-earned cash.

Cryptocurrency Day Trading Tips

Below are some useful cryptocurrency tips that can help increase your profit margin and minimize losses. They include:

Define your goals before trading

With day trading, you want to get in and out of a trade as quickly as possible. Therefore, you need to have a clear objective in place before entering a trade. You may want to avoid being greedy as a massive swing in the market can translate to substantial losses.

Avoid Succumbing to FOMO (Fear of Missing out)

A lot of new traders tend to succumb to the pressures of FOMO. As soon as they make a good trade and crypto rallies again for a sizable profit, they go all in. Yielding to the fear of missing out is one of the fastest ways to lose money. A slow winning approach is most helpful.

Be Careful with Exchange Fees

Exchanges have different fee structures. Therefore, you want to do your research and find ways that you can minimize your trade fees. For instance, it’s always advisable to be a trade maker rather than a trade taker to avoid paying high fees on some exchanges.

Consider Using a Trading Bot

This tip applies only to risk takers who wish to work smarter and not harder. At the most, day trading involves sitting at the computer monitoring charts and making trades all day. This can become monotonous in the long term. To avoid this, you may want to use the services of a trading bot to automate your trading positions. For instance, the 3Commas trading bot can buy and sell crypto automatically according to a pre-defined set of rules that you feed it.

FAQ

Conclusion

Day trading has the potential to be a profitable business that generates enormous profits. Nevertheless, it isn’t free money, and it’s not for everyone. The industry can be a handful. However, if the work outweighs the rewards, then the 3Commas cryptocurrency trading bot may be worth considering. It’s a great tool that allows you to trade on multiple exchanges and currencies at a time, saving you the hassle of staring at charts all day looking for opportunities. Moreover, its beginner friendly for those who are willing to start trading and useful for professional traders as well. That translates to higher profits without having to do all the heavy lifting.