Many people aspire to become professional traders, but most traders often lose everything because of their out-of-control trading mentality and improper position management. Under the stimulation of the constant fluctuations in profits and losses, many people fall into it and find it difficult to extricate themselves, gradually getting lost in the endless cycle of trading and unable to get out.

But there are still people who make a living by trading. As the top trader on the Binance total revenue list, Nachi has a total contract revenue of more than 54 million US dollars on Binance as of August 7, 2024, ranking sixth on the entire site.

There is no doubt that Nachi's trading journey is successful. Many people are curious about what his trading system is like and how he grew from an ordinary investor to a trading master? Recently, BlockBeats conducted an in-depth interview with Nachi and talked about Nachi's own trading growth history, trading philosophy, and his views on the crypto market after the election.

Rise Story

Before becoming a full-time Crypto trader, Nachi was engaged in trading in traditional finance. After witnessing BTC's 25-fold increase in one year in 2017, he decisively resigned from the fund. Soon after, he achieved his first 100-fold goal in the DeFi Summer at the end of 2020, and his assets increased from $100,000 to $10 million. In this cycle, Nachi has successively seized important trading opportunities such as WIF and BONK, holding WIF from $0.22 to $3, making a profit of tens of millions of dollars.

However, even this top Binance trader did not have a smooth sailing in the process of asset growth. In May 2021, Nachi experienced a sharp retracement of assets in the black swan event in the crypto industry, with total assets retreating 60% to 70% from the high point. But in the end, Nachi held his main positions and set a new high in assets a few months later.

Today, Nachi has always been active in X to share his real-time views on the market, including but not limited to analysis of the macroeconomic environment, technical analysis, Alpha sharing, etc., and has gained more than 50,000 fans in 6 months.

BlockBeats: Many readers in the Chinese community may not be particularly familiar with the name Nachi. Can you briefly introduce yourself before you start? Share some of your work experience before Crypto, and how you came into contact with and entered the world of Crypto?

Nachi: My dream has always been to become a full-time trader. After graduation, I worked as a stock derivatives trader in a large bank, but I found that reality was far from what I imagined, and there were no very good traders in the team for me to learn from, so I did different jobs and used all my spare time to trade stocks and accumulate experience.

Until I switched to another job as a fund manager, the work was very busy, but I didn't want to sacrifice my trading time after work. For me, my true identity will always be a trader who is passionate about trading and has a keen sense of smell.

Trading is the source of my life. Even when I am working or off work, there is only trading in my mind. Whether it is trading stocks, commodities, foreign exchange or futures, as long as there is a good opportunity to make money through trading, I will be there. So I worked hard day and night, and finally got sick. At that time, my eyesight was only 10% of the original, and I couldn't see the text on the computer screen at all. I could only work limitedly for two years, and I lost the trust of my boss because of this, which made me rethink my life.

I began to realize that there is no future in balancing work and trading. My performance at work is not as good as others, and my performance in trading is just so-so because I don't have enough time to focus on research.

After careful consideration, I realized that time should not be wasted. Recalling that BTC soared from $800 to nearly $20,000 in 2017, I intuitively felt that this asset had great potential. So I resolutely decided to resign, combined with years of accumulated trading experience, and believed that this path had unlimited possibilities. So I bravely embarked on a journey in the cryptocurrency circle, trying to fight my way out, and chose the path of a full-time cryptocurrency trader, and it has been six years.

BlockBeats: Now, you are the 6th ranked contract trader on Binance, which means that the probability of users on Binance with the same trading ability and quality as you is only 3 in 100 million. What do you think is the main difference between these "3 in 100 million" people and most traders? Do they have some common "unique attributes"?

Nachi:Top traders are decisive, emotionally intelligent, experienced, have proper stake control, are picky about trading opportunities, have a plan, do moderate research and analysis, and have a desire and pursuit to constantly improve themselves. Ordinary traders are indecisive, too emotional, trade too much, have improper stake control, and have no plan/too rough plans.

BlockBeats: How did you make your first pot of gold in the Crypto world? When was the first time you experienced a large-scale asset drawdown?

Nachi:I made my first pot of gold from DeFi Summer. I traded different DeFi tokens in the early days, started investing 100k in mid-2018, and made my first 10 million US dollars at the end of 2020. It feels surreal and unbelievable. It is the most exciting moment in my life.

The first time I experienced asset retracement was a week after May 12, 2021. At that time, Ethereum fell by 60%, and my assets also fell by 60% to 70%. I suddenly had to bear tremendous pressure, like a stone pressing on my heart, but I still firmly believed that the bull market was not over, so I decided to stick to it, hold my position, and continue to hold. As a result, I climbed to the peak again a few months later.

BlockBeats: Can you share with us the "leap road" of your Crypto asset scale? What are the reasons for several important rapid/substantial growths?

Nachi:From 100,000 in 2018 to 2021, there were tens of millions of US dollars at the peak. After that, I liquidated my position in January 22, but was affected by the losses of the FTX incident, and my assets retreated a lot. After this cycle restarted, I captured many good trading opportunities, and now my assets have surpassed the peak of the previous cycle.

This rapid growth may be due to my in-depth analysis of the market and my ability to predict major trends better than others. At the beginning of 2020, I felt that the investment in Crypto could grow more than 100 times, which means that every 10,000 yuan you spend is actually 1 million yuan in the future, and every 100,000 yuan you spend is equivalent to 10 million yuan in the future. Naturally, I entered the frugality mode and the extreme effort mode, insisting on sacrifice, sacrificing all my own interests, constantly delaying larger consumption, not buying a house, not buying a car, in order to maximize the funds that can be invested in Crypto.

And because of this huge opportunity, I worked much harder than others and discovered major opportunities earlier than others, such as investing heavily when the valuation of DeFi projects was only 10-20M, starting to pay attention to and buy Solana at $1-2, and leaving the market at a relatively appropriate time. It was not until this time that I began to consider consumption.

BlockBeats: What is your most successful transaction so far? What is the one you regret the most?

Nachi: The most successful and profitable transaction is WIF; the one I regret the most is AXS, which I bought at a few tenths of a dollar and sold at 5-6 dollars, missing out on the subsequent increase of dozens of times.

Trading Philosophy

In this market, many people make money, but few can make stable profits. Nachi believes that the biggest difference between ordinary traders and successful traders is that the former lack clear trading discipline and system, their decisions are often affected by emotions, and they lack the ability to manage positions and control risks. An excellent trader must not only have technical analysis capabilities, but also a certain macro analysis capability, expand his or her technical field, improve his or her sensitivity to the timing of opening and closing positions, select opportunities with high winning rates, and reduce the frequency of transactions, so as to achieve more stable profits.

The market is changing rapidly, and each cycle has a different trading logic. In this cycle, the performance of altcoins was far worse than expected, but Nachi outperformed most of the altcoin gains by holding SOL and BTC for a long time. In the "WIF transaction" with a strong narrative background, Nachi also made tens of millions of dollars through his understanding of the Meme community.

Decisive trading, strict stop-profit and stop-loss, control trading frequency, avoid emotional operations, and manage positions reasonably. These trading disciplines seem simple, but to truly achieve them, you need to constantly hone and self-discipline in the market. There is no so-called holy grail in trading. Build your own trading system, actively think about the market from all angles, and expand your own technical divisions. In Nachi's words, "Good timing with good assets, returns will come naturally."

Nachi always seems to make the right choice at the right time, avoiding the misunderstandings that most people fall into.

BlockBeats: After entering the world of Crypto, have your trading ideas, strategies and main battlefields changed? Can you share them?

Nachi: They are constantly changing. For example, in the last cycle, everything rose sharply in the environment of zero interest and large-scale printing of money. It was very easy to make money. I mainly speculated on DeFi and Layer1.

This cycle has been running in a high-interest environment, completely driven by the capital flow of BTC ETF institutions, but the money earned from BTC ETF will not flow directly into altcoins, so altcoins have been performing far worse than most people expected, but it is actually not difficult to estimate.

This cycle mainly uses the Barbell strategy, and part of it is holding large coins such as BTC and SOL.

The other part is to find opportunities based on the market narrative and my research, mainly around individual DeFi, Meme and AI, but as the market taste changes, I will also make corresponding changes.

BlockBeats Note: Barbell strategy means abandoning the stable average risk and allocating extremely large and extremely small risks. Holding large coins means allocating extremely small risks. Large coins have large market capitalizations and relatively small fluctuations. It is rare for the amplitude to exceed 20% in a day; holding small coins means allocating extremely large risks. Small market capitalizations correspond to shallow trading depths and relatively large fluctuations. There may even be an intraday amplitude of more than 50%. Combining the market narrative, the fundamentals of the project and market sentiment to make relatively short-term trends.

BlockBeats: In today's Crypto market, what do you think it takes to be a good trader?

Nachi: You need to have macro analysis capabilities, sufficient trading skills and experience, high trading sensitivity, fast and accurate buying and selling and stop loss, strong risk management capabilities, and a desire and pursuit to continuously improve yourself.

BlockBeats: What do you think are your best trading ideas in the past two years? Which ones were finally executed and received satisfactory returns?

Nachi: WIF, SOL, PENDLE.

BlockBeats: WIF, SOL, and PENDLE can be regarded as the three best trading opportunities this year, and you seized them at the earliest stage. Can you share with us how you discovered these opportunities and how to build trading strategies around them?

Nachi：In investing, when you feel comfortable, it is usually seldom profitable. The best time to enter the market is often when others have not yet considered this to be a great opportunity.

In the trading of WIF, I actually noticed that it was different from other meme coins very early on. Its penetration and popularity were very different from other memes at the time. So I started observing it from November until February, when I saw that the time had come, I took action. With good timing and good assets, returns will naturally come.

Many times, many people encounter good coins at the wrong time, which often makes you lose confidence and lose opportunities later.

In the trading of PENDLE, I always feel that Defi is actually a very important part of Crypto. Unfortunately, there were no fantastic products in this cycle. Until the emergence of Pendle v2, the unique product with good topics, plus its TVL and trading volume have been rising, so I was very confident that it was an undervalued coin.

Pendle's TVL and trading volume in the past year: Source from DefiLlama

In addition, I really like this kind of product that has been working hard from the last cycle to this cycle. The team's motivation for progress is obviously much higher than other Defi. Buying high-quality coins often has higher returns than buying cheap coins.

SOL I didn't have much confidence at the beginning of this cycle, until Breakpoint 2023 learned that Firedancer would completely change Solana's performance, and then the memecoin craze in November, I realized that Solana was basically the ETH of the last cycle. From the public's complaints to the gradual acceptance, and then the MEV economy surprised investors, every step saw Solana slowly become as popular as ETH in 2021.

So I entered the market decisively, because I knew that Solana must be one of the big themes of this cycle.

BlockBeats: If you have to choose, which one do you think is more important, discovering and judging opportunities or subsequent strategy formulation and execution?

Nachi: Both are equally important, but of course discovering and judging opportunities is more important, because the former will lead to the latter, but both can be continuously improved and enhanced through actual combat.

BlockBeats: Many big V traders either open paid communities or gradually hide their transactions, but you insist on sharing them on social media for free. What is the logic and thinking behind doing this?

Nachi:I do everything with interest first. I think it's fun to open this account to share my views and insights on the market, which can help people and see the growth of followers. If one day I lose interest and enthusiasm in this matter, I may stop.

BlockBeats: Many people in and outside the circle call buying and selling Crypto gambling. In your opinion, what is the main or most essential difference between "ordinary Crypto users' gambling" and "top Crypto traders' gambling"?

Nachi:The biggest difference is the technical division and the frequency of action. A top trader values every transaction based on risk and reward, and will only buy or sell short when the risk-reward ratio is high. He is generally very patient and will definitely not make moves often, but he will be very decisive when he does.

BlockBeats: In your opinion, what are the best strategies to help people survive in the Crypto world for a long time?

Nachi: If you are not good at trading, it is suitable to hold BTC and some coins with huge moats for a long time. Don't do leverage. As long as you don't do leverage and your funds are safe, time will be your good friend. Even if you hold BTC for a long time without trading, everyone has a great chance to get rich or at least improve their lives.

Buying in panic and selling when the crowd is surging is always the best strategy. Although it is difficult for ordinary people to do it, they should also try hard. The low point of every major event is generated at the most panic time. To be able to go against human nature, as long as it is a good currency or asset, buying when no one dares to buy is always the best strategy.

Views on the market outlook

From January 2023 to March 2024, the cryptocurrency market has been operating in a high-interest environment. With the narrative of BTC ETF and the expectation of interest rate cuts, BTC has continued to accelerate its rise, and has continuously set new highs in resonance with the Nasdaq index. In this cycle, the yields of most traditional value coins have not outperformed BTC. Instead, the fully circulated Meme coins have become the object of speculation by everyone.

On September 19, 2024, the US Federal Reserve’s interest rate decision was announced, and the expectation of interest rate cuts was implemented. BTC ushered in a small-scale stage of rising market. With the implementation of interest rate cuts, a large amount of capital liquidity has been released. In the traditional sense, risky financial products will have a positive impact on the capital side. From a larger time dimension, what will be the trend of Crypto? Will the project side change after VC coins/value coins are spurned by everyone?

As a professional trader, Nachi believes that after the interest rate cut, a large amount of liquidity will be attracted. Although VC coins/value coins are no longer loved by retail investors, they will also be the necessary capital allocation objects for players with large capital. When large funds begin to re-enter the market, a small part may have huge appreciation potential. With the cycle narrative and pull-up, retail investors will forget their previous hatred and re-recognize the value of VC coins.

BlockBeats: This round of Crypto cycle is called "Demystified Bull". VC coins/value coins have lost their audience, various encrypted narratives have lost their vitality, and everyone is addicted to the PVP carnival of meme coins. In addition to the lack of liquidity inside and outside the market, what other major factors do you think there are? From your trader's perspective, how will the Crypto market develop next? When will it get better?

Nachi：The most important factor is that most people in the cryptocurrency circle want to make quick money. VC coins are overvalued. Once listed, retail investors have no room to make money. They will be cut severely. After being cut several times, will anyone be willing to be cut by highly valued projects again?

And no retail investor wants to spend a long time to understand the technology of the public chain. What is the application of AI projects? The more difficult the project is to understand, the less people want to understand it. Meme coins are the easiest to understand and there is no VC to unlock, which is just what the market likes. For the market to improve, the central bank needs to cut interest rates and introduce a large amount of liquidity.

BlockBeats：For large players, VC coins/value coins are "have to play", but combined with the current market's perception and views on VC coins, do you think the logic and direction of traditional cryptocurrency speculation have changed significantly? What is the most important criterion for judging trading/investment opportunities? If you can only choose one VC coin, what would you buy?

Nachi:As I said before, the low point of asset prices often occurs at the most panic time. To be honest, there are too many VC coins and the valuation is too high. With insufficient market funds, retail investors have already lost a lot of money because of them in the early stage of the bull market, so I understand why retail investors are no longer attached to VC coins. However, when retail investors spurn VC coins, it means that they may have huge appreciation potential.

When big funds begin to re-enter the market, and some good VC coins show strong resilience, combined with the narrative of pulling the market and catering to the cycle, retail investors will probably forget all their previous hatred and re-enter the market. As traders, when the public is not in the market, it is a good opportunity for us to buy.

In my research, I prefer SUI.

SUI has higher performance than Solana. Although it does not have the same number of users as Solana at this stage, SUI will be considered a threatening competitor by the public in the foreseeable future. SUI's development in Gamefi is also quite exciting.

BlockBeats: In your opinion, is the current Crypto market going through a "garbage time in the history of cryptocurrencies"? At this stage, what should an ordinary Crypto investor/trader do or pay attention to?

Nachi: Now we are going through adjustments, and people's hearts are a little fragile. It will go down in the short term, but it also means that good opportunities will appear.

Pay attention to the macro environment, as well as the strength of Bitcoin relative to the Nasdaq Index and gold, do more research and analysis on altcoins, and wait for opportunities to build positions. September to November is a good time to build positions when the market has a deep adjustment.

BlockBeats: Many people are beginning to believe in the new narrative that the big bull market will come in 2025. Do you think the market will develop as expected?

Nachi:I think the real big bull market will not officially start until at least the fourth quarter of this year. As long as the economies of major countries do not fall into recession, the fourth quarter should be a good time for altcoins to do well, but it is still necessary to be very picky about choosing the best altcoins.

BlockBeats: For you personally, what is the most optimistic narrative for this cycle?

Nachi：We believe that the main theme of this cycle is meme and AI, mainly meme. The meme of this cycle is equivalent to DeFi in the previous cycle.

The first reason is that the valuation of VC coins in this cycle is too high, and the second is that their technology is more complex than L1 in the previous cycle. For retail investors, it is very difficult to understand the generation technology of these projects. However, the coin issuance mechanism of meme is relatively fair, and many of them are Fair Launch. Retail investors can directly buy the meme tokens of any MEME community they like, become a member of the community, and enjoy the fun of being in the community.

These reasons make meme particularly prominent in this cycle and become the main theme. You can see that the most famous new KOLs in this cycle, such as Ansem and Murad, are MEME KOLs, which is another important indicator. There is also Solana, the strongest public chain in this cycle. The main reason for its success is also due to the outbreak of MEME. In addition to MEME, the second important sector is AI.

BlockBeats: What is the reason for being optimistic about Crypto AI?

Nachi:AI is a very important topic. We can see that the stock with the largest increase in the US stock market is NVDA, and AI-related targets such as Microsoft and Google have also increased rapidly. Basically, the explosion of the entire US stock market in the past two years is mainly due to AI.

I believe this is not just the US stock market, in fact, there is such a phenomenon in the crypto market, the problem is that people still don’t know which one is the NVDA or Microsoft in Crypto. In fact, some of it has been hyped, but I think there is still a lot of room for growth.

The most important thing is that I think the AI sector basically has no ceiling, because AI can create many things that people can’t imagine, and push productivity very high. So the market actually has no concept of the valuation of AI coins. Will it surpass Solana? It’s hard for us to say. But this uncertainty is what Crypto traders like most. We don’t know what its peak is, one billion, ten billion or one hundred billion, you and I can’t be sure.

In addition, the AI sector has special significance in the Crypto world, because AI and Crypto have great synergy. Because in the traditional financial world, only large companies and large institutions can invest in AI, and small companies simply don’t have the resources to compete with them.

But in the world of Crypto, everyone is talking about decentralization. Everyone can contribute his resources. In the past, it was GPU computing power, and now it may include Coding or Programming capabilities. When this kind of resource integration reaches a certain level, it is possible to compete with large companies and institutions. So we are very confident that when capital returns to the crypto market, many AI talents will enter Crypto and accelerate its development.

In the AI sector, one of the ones I am particularly optimistic about is TAO. I believe that basically many people say that AI coins should be concentrated on Bittensor. Because retail investors like public chains the most, and TAO is obviously an "AI public chain". Of course, we also know that TAO has many development plans behind it at the beginning of next year, which may push the price of TAO to a peak.

In addition, their ecosystem is also very good, and the reward mechanism also allows builders to get a lot of rewards, promoting more good Subnet AI models to develop on Bittensor. Of course, we are very optimistic about the entire AI sector, because the industry has not yet developed a complete gameplay and new imagination space.

BlockBeats: You just mentioned meme narratives. What is your favorite target in the meme sector?

Nachi: I think after the meme craze of the previous dynasty, the market is beginning to look for some new ways to play memes. One of the hot spots that I am most optimistic about is AI meme.

As I just said, AI and meme are the main themes of this cycle. Everyone's eager anticipation for the future of AI technology coupled with the speculative nature of meme makes AI meme a sought-after asset.

The speculation of AI meme has accelerated the development of AI Crypto, making this sector full of infinite imagination. In the past, many fund managers avoided meme because it was difficult for them to explain to LP why they bought coins representing different animals.

Now, they can finally find some coins that they think are reasonable. The first choice is of course the leader GOAT. It is the first coin to trigger the AI meme craze and the AI meme with the best liquidity. Although other AI meme coins have also developed very fast, the leading position is often difficult to be replaced.

And GOAT at this moment is like YFI at that time, and I believe that the next few months will be the most glorious time for GOAT.

BlockBeats: Recently, the crypto market has improved. What are your expectations for BTC's future performance?

Nachi: I estimate that Bitcoin can reach the range of $85,000 to $95,000 this year. The timing depends on the results of the US election. If Trump is successfully elected, I think Bitcoin will reach this target range soon, but if Harris is elected, it may take a little longer, maybe around the end of December.

Next year, my basic target price for Bitcoin is $120,000, which I estimate will be reached in the first or second quarter of next year. Of course, how far Bitcoin can run in the end depends on the market situation, which is difficult to accurately estimate. If the market liquidity is particularly good at that time, it is possible to rise to $120,000 or even higher, but I think it is more stable to set the basic goal at $120,000.

BlockBeats: It only took you about a week to go from the top 10 to the top 6 on Binance. Do you want to challenge No.1? How long do you think it will take to achieve this goal?

Nachi:The profit of No.1 is too exaggerated. It is probably a company rich enough to rival a country. I just need to continue to do my best. It is not easy to be among the top 10 and maintain it for a long time.

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