Crypto trading bank account woes

sue_marie

Thanks for your comments and advice.
My post said that he ‘sometimes’ makes £100 a day. Other days it’s much less but I believe still profitable. He spends hours each day watching the prices, buying when it drops and selling when it rises.
He does this from his home without having to suffer the anxieties caused by public transport or having to have face-to-face conversations with colleagues or customers.
Although I’m unhappy about his trading and am afraid he’ll be left without a bank account, I hadn’t really considered it to be gambling but will certainly rethink this in the light of your comments.
The problem will be trying to suggest a replacement that he will find as appealing and fulfilling.

Lomcevak

I appreciate the difficulties in finding a replacement, but I would check to see if there's more than meets the eye here, as it's extremely difficult to consistently make money in a falling market, especially if you can only trade long - and cryptocurrencies have seen a collapse this year far beyond anything even the stock market would expect to see.

To tell a bit of a story, about 15 years ago I was quite active on a forum called the Motley Fool, which now seems defunct. It was mostly quite MSE-like, but had a sub-community who keenly advocated buying and selling individual shares, including small alternative markets like AIM. I had next to no money then so was mostly a bystander, but in 2004 - 5 most people made money. Then, once the financial crisis bit, everyone lost money, in the worst cases, hundreds of thousands, as their portfolios followed the stock market downwards.

Turned out that the 'skill' in the earlier years was mostly just luck and survivor bias, but most of all reflected a rising stock market (a rising tide floats all ships, as they say) - most shares moved with the market, and as the market rose, so did your 'skillful' pick. Once the rising tide turned, nobody was able to consistently make money trading against the momentum of falling prices. That's my worry here, too.

fwor

Another thing that you should be aware of - if you are not already - is that there are a large number of companies that facilitate trading in a way that is essentially just a confidence trick.

They employ clever techniques to make it appear as though you are making regular gains, but the process is designed in such a way that these gains are very difficult to get back out of your account.

So it would be wise for you to find out which company is facilitating his trading, and then do a bit of research about it. If it is based outside the UK (for example a significant number seem to be based in Estonia or Cyprus) then alarm bells should be ringing. If you can get more information about the company or companies involved, someone here will be able to give an independent opinion about whether it is likely to be legitimate or not.

jonesMUFCforever

If he is day trading like this - is he sending funds to his account to trade?
Is this to an international bank?
This might be costing him more than he is supposedly making?