People usually ask me about price. When did I buy, what did I sell, what's next. I understand why. But when I look back at fifteen years of trading crypto, price is the least interesting part of the story.
The interesting part is the person sitting in front of the chart, and how much he had to change to still be sitting there.
It started with one search
In 2007 the internet cost five rupees an hour at the café I went to. I didn't have money, contacts or a plan. I had that screen and one question I typed into it with very little English: how to earn money online?
I like to say I didn't start from zero. I started from minus. Around 2011 my family's situation changed, and there were days at home when there was nothing. After school and college I gave seventy or eighty interviews and heard "no" almost every time. I was an introvert, and every rejection stayed with me longer than it should have.
2011: The offer I ignored
Late in 2011, a man I had met online offered to sell me a pile of Bitcoin for about ₹2,700 and told me to hold it, because it would be useful later. I had been raised not to trust strangers. I never even searched what Bitcoin was, and I ignored the offer. That's how I first heard the word.
But I couldn't stop watching what it did. That year Bitcoin ran from under a dollar to around $31, then fell to about $2 by November after the first Mt. Gox hack. I watched a drop of more than 90% happen in a market most people around me had never heard of.
I didn't understand all of it. I just knew I couldn't look away. And the first thing the market taught me wasn't how to make money. It was that the market owes nobody anything: not for how badly you need it, not for how hard you've worked.
That one idea has saved me more times than any indicator.
My second lesson came in 2013. I held Bitcoin on Coinbase that year and later lost access to the account. Between that and the offer I ignored, I learned early that in this market, access and custody matter as much as the coins themselves.
Trading while working to survive
For years, trading was the thing I did after work. Work meant a footwear bench from 2011 to 2014, then telecom field jobs where I ended up leading a team of 10 to 15 people across 70+ areas, then an immigration agency that grew from about ₹1.5 lakh to ₹18 lakh a month while I was there. I was good at sales, marketing and people, and I helped those businesses grow. But they weren't mine.
I learned to trade with real money, never a demo account. I lost thousands of dollars, then more, and around 2017–18, in the ICO era and the winter after it, the total ran into tens of lakhs of rupees. At one point I left the market altogether. Then I realised a market that could take so much could also give, if I respected it. I came back with rules, recovered everything I had lost, and today I trade with discipline and consistency.
Most of my learning happened after midnight, with the charts open and the house asleep. I'd tell myself "one more candle," and then the sun would come up. I'm not proud of every one of those nights, but that's where my real education happened: in the quiet, by myself, making mistakes nobody else saw.
The losses nobody posts about
Social media shows the wins. I want to be honest about the other side.
The 2018 winter was the hardest chapter of my life in the market. Bitcoin fell more than 80%. In India, even buying crypto became difficult after the RBI's banking restriction. After my biggest losses I didn't sleep well for weeks, and I seriously asked myself whether I belonged in this market at all.
The hardest part wasn't the chart, though. It was home. Explaining crypto to my family was harder than trading it. There were worried faces and long silences. Their trust came slowly, one year at a time, and today it means more to me than any profit I've made.
What actually changed me as a trader
Looking back, I can point to a handful of shifts that turned me from someone who traded into a trader.
I put capital before profit. The winter taught me that you can't benefit from the next cycle if you didn't survive this one. Risk management and position sizing stopped being boring words and became the job.
I stopped trusting the crowd. In 2013, in 2017 and in 2021 I watched the room fill with greed and certainty. Every time, the confidence peaked right before the pain. Now, when everyone around me is sure, I slow down.
I stopped trusting platforms blindly. Mt. Gox in 2014 and FTX in 2022 taught the same lesson eight years apart. Because my earlier losses had already made me cautious, I stayed out of the "it can only go up" frenzy around Mt. Gox. "Not your keys, not your coins" isn't a slogan for me. It's a rule.
I made a plan before the market moved. On Black Thursday in March 2020, Bitcoin roughly halved in about a day. Panic is where patterns pay, but only if you already know what you'll do. Discipline turned out to be a trade too.
I accepted that nobody rings a bell at the top. I took profits in 2021 and I made mistakes in 2021. Both were part of the same lesson: every cycle feels like the last one, and it never is.
Becoming independent
I had been independent in my head since 2008, when I was paid ₹500 for a logo. In 2019, a week before my son was born, office politics left me one choice: stay silent and bow. That isn't in my blood, so I quit. One question hit me harder than any crash: if I can grow their business, why not grow myself?
That's when I went all in on my own road. In 2020 a brand offered me $500 for a YouTube video, and the collaborations haven't stopped since; there are more than 100 now. Today I'm a father of two, I work independently under my own name, and the market is part of a bigger picture: I build Web3 products and AI agents, I run disclosed KOL campaigns, and I teach.
Why I share education, not signals
I run a trading community, and people sometimes ask why I don't just post calls. The answer is that I've seen what signal culture does to new traders. They learn to follow, not to think, and when the market turns, they have nothing to fall back on.
So I share what fifteen years gave me: risk first, a written plan, self-custody and the patience to wait. The community is rated 5.0 from 27 reviews on Whop, and the messages I value most are the ones where someone says a video stopped them from making a bad trade. Nothing I share is financial advice, and I'll never promise anyone returns.
The other thing I'm proudest of is simple. In fifteen years in this market, I have never scammed anyone.
If you're where I was in 2011
- Only trade what you can afford to lose.
- Survive first. Profit is what happens to people who are still here.
- Write your plan before the market moves.
- Learn self-custody before you need it.
- Be suspicious of certainty, especially your own.
I'm still learning, and still at the charts more nights than I should be. You can read the era-by-era story on my journey page and more about me on my About page.
If you're building in Web3 and want to talk about a product, a launch or a disclosed campaign, book a call with me.
Saddam Malik has been a crypto trader since 2011. He is an independent Web3 and AI agent developer and crypto KOL. Market figures are approximate and based on public reporting. Nothing here is financial advice.
Top comments (0)