I've been using planetary cycles to predict Bitcoin price swings, a.k.a. astrology.

Last week's prediction was largely successful. We were able to place Bitcoin's Aug 9th $12,000 breakout to within 30 minutes--we had written "beyond 5pm and again after 9:30 pm could see breakout." Indeed breakout occured at around 10:00pm EST.

Astrology predictions have proven accurate, but have been unable to profit much due to lack of trading skills.

I've been studying astrology for 15 years, so my skill is quite evolved to make dramatic predictions. It took a lot of effort of analysis to reach these predictions, and have not yet analyzed for this week other than to say that the 13th and the 17th look positive.

However, my cryto trading skills are still very much beginner's level. I've been following crypto since late 2017, since then have made buy-and-hold orders. In the previous two weeks I've tried more active trading and here is my progress report. 

I started buying and trading with Coinbase, but have abandoned them since their fees are so high compared to other exchanges. Coinbase is user friendly, easy to place trades, and a good place for buy and hold strategies, but for trading, the fees are absurdly prohibitive. There is Coinbase-Pro, with more features and lower fees, but I did not like 'Pros interface. I continue to use Coinbase's prices page to monitor the market as a whole.

Next tried Robinhood which offers access to a handful of Bitcoin and Ether family coins, as well as Dodgecoin, with no fees at all. It is very easy to use, with a sleek interface. Robbinhood allows limit orders, but no stop-limit orders or any other trading tools for crypto, so it's only suitable for buy and hold methods. Robbinhood is much better for stocks, but I have continued using Robinhood's live price charts, which shows you the price in real time, both as a phone app and on desktop. It's my preferred way to monitor live prices. 

Finally got on Binance a few weeks ago, which is a robust crypto exchange that I'm liking so far. Living in the US, Binance US is the site I'm using, which offers access to many coins at low fees, able to place limit and stop limit orders, though no other fancy trading tools on the US site (that I could tell), I hear more options are on the way. I've abanded the two previously mentioned sites and went all in on Binance. I find the interface attractive and easy to use after some practice.

I'm also on Kraken but haven't done much there. It did seem more tricky placing trades. I got on the Kraken since it purportedly allows margin trading, which I hope to practice doing this week. Most references to margin trades speak of woes and risks, but if you're serious about making serious money in this, I hear that margin trading is the way to go. There's no gain without risk.

I started trading late July, but later found had placed my positions poorly, mistake was having placed 90% of my budget on small cap coins. The first two weeks the coins did well, then when Bitcoin/Ethereum surged, my gains in those coins were wiped out, as traders pulled money out of small caps and into Bitcoin. Now, I'm holding about 50% between small cap and large cap coins. It is not always the case that when Bitcoin surges all the other coins surge along with it, in fact the opposite has happened in the last three weeks.

The game changer so far has been learning how to place stop limit orders, which this past week I used for the first time. Stop limits helps lock in profits, and allows re-entry into market at favorable prices after sharp crashes. The first two weeks I operated with no stop losses in place, so rode the drops all the way to bottom then back up again, on repreat. This past week with stop losses, did much better, but blundered yesterday on Bitcoin's $12,000 surge when stop loss was triggered at $11,755 just minutes before it broke out, and missed that surge entirely. Lesson learned: don't set stop loss too high, especially when anticipating a breakout. Perhaps, if anticipating a breakout, don't use stop loss at all.

Another evolution over the last few weeks was gradually able to hone in on better quality coins, rather picking them at random as did in the begining. From reading posts on Publish Ox and other sources, as well as looking at price charts, coins like Chainlink, Tezos, and Cosmos have emerged as must haves, along with staples XRP, Ethereum, and Bitcoin. 

Trading cryptocurrency resembles a video game, only limited to numbers and graphs. It feels very much like a game, only the points represent actual dollar wins and losses. I'd say it's quite fun. Towards the end of last week began to get obsessed, unhealthily in that I was constantly checking the prices all day and late into the night, and worrying outcome of predictions, such that was unable to sleep till 4:00am in the morning of Aug 9th.

This week hope not to lose sleep over coins, and try placing margin trades (if possible). We'll see how that goes and hope to post a report, along with more predictions.

FULL TEXT OF LAST WEEK'S PREDICTION:

UPDATE August 8, 12am EST: The prediction this week so far has been only half correct. Indeed the bulls resumed after the stated time Aug 4 10:30pm EST, and continued for two days, but on the morning of August 7 the market crashed, and has not fully recovered. Indeed we anticipated a shift to occur on the morning of Aug 7 after 9:00 am EST, due to Moon and Venus changing signs, but we wrongly judged the shift to be positive (this was not stated in post). I even had set my alarm to get up early that morning and place trades in anticipation. Clearly the shift was negative and this pattern will continue till Aug 9, 9:30 pm EST when Moon again changes sign (still expect a boost during the day of Aug 9 due to other factors, though there is potential for downturn/crash around 3:30 am through 5 pm EST, a surge is possible around 12noon EST. Beyond 5pm and again after 9:30 pm could see breakout, with a crash coming around 8:20 AM EST Aug 10).

From last week have learned a lot that can be used for future reference. One thing that's become apparent is the need to focus on likely downturns, flash crashes. We've neglected to look for negatives since astrologers tend to look for positive influences and deliver good news, but in trading, downturns are highly valuable as well. Also apparent is the need to focus in on smaller time frames with specific hours mentioned, since crypto markets move rather quickly, and our method allows us this luxury. Since we've started this project two weeks ago, we've seen two major crashes, the first of which we were able to anticipate the shift to within a few hours, and called it correctly to be a downturn (though not stated on this blog), and the second more recent crash we again detected as a shift to within a couple of hours but wrongly judged the direction of the turn.    

Let's see how predictions fare this week. Current forecast is as follows:

The negative influences of Aug 2-3 have begun to clear up. August 4th the night will be better than the day, especially after 10:30pm EST.  So from the evening of the 4th resumes the upward trend with a new cycle that will gain momentum through the week and culminate on August 9th, to be a memorable day and week in the crypto market.

Market will cool off the 10th-12th.

General period remains bullish through early Sept.