Inside the Mind of a 'Degen' Crypto Trader: Behind Seven-Figure Gains and Losses

Bloomberg's Odd Lots podcast delivers a rare, unvarnished look at professional crypto trading through Julian Malinek, a healthcare tech professional turned serious crypto trader who's made and lost seven figures multiple times.

Key Takeaways

• Julian started with low six figures in 2021, made seven figures multiple times, but gave up most gains after euphoric periods led to overconfident position sizing.
• The week he started looking at apartments to buy with cash was the same week he wiped out 40% of his net worth, illustrating crypto's psychological extremes.
• Crypto trading involves four main narrative categories: casino speculation, Bitcoin store of value, future of finance applications, and web3 consumer internet projects.
• Daily trading routine consists mostly of waiting for thesis-driven opportunities rather than constant action, with emphasis on immediate position management and stop losses.
• Market manipulation is more obvious in crypto than traditional markets, with stop-hunts and predatory tactics creating opportunities for aware traders.
• Asian trading hours tend to feature more "scammy" price action and manipulation, while New York hours provide better liquidity and cleaner price movements.
• The crypto trading community is overwhelmingly young men driven by "last chance to get rich before the fall of Western civilization" mentality adjacent to hustle culture.
• Most crypto professionals genuinely believe in the technology despite the speculative nature, though the gap between promises and reality remains substantial.

Timeline Overview

• 00:00–08:45 — Introduction and Crypto Market Context: Bloomberg hosts discuss current crypto cycle's relative boredom compared to previous cycles, focusing on price action and meme coins over technological innovation
• 08:45–15:20 — Julian's Crypto Journey: From healthcare tech professional in San Francisco to crypto trading, starting with Bitcoin/Ethereum and progressing through micro-cap coins, yield farming, and the Luna crash windfall
• 15:20–22:30 — The Psychology of Seven-Figure Gains and Losses: Making retirement-level money during Luna crash, looking at cash apartments, then wiping out gains through overconfident position sizing and euphoric trading
• 22:30–28:45 — Four Crypto Narratives Analysis: Breaking down casino speculation, Bitcoin store of value, future of finance applications, and web3 projects, with personal skepticism toward most narratives except tokenized marketplaces
• 28:45–35:15 — Alpha Generation in Micro-Cap Trading: Importance of thesis-driven trades orthogonal to price action, examples like pump.fun proxy trades and pcoin application usage tracking
• 35:15–42:00 — Daily Trading Routine and Market Thesis: Morning market assessment, Discord/Twitter research, setting price alerts, waiting for thesis-driven opportunities with immediate position management requirements
• 42:00–48:30 — Time Zone Dynamics and Market Differences: New York hours providing better liquidity, Asian hours featuring more manipulation and "scammy" price action, European market characteristics
• 48:30–55:45 — Risk Management and Position Tracking: Stop-loss discipline, immediate exit requirements for counter-trend trades, Excel spreadsheet tracking, and avoiding over-leverage through position sizing
• 55:45–62:00 — Discord Communities and Information Flow: Identifying quality trading groups, avoiding pump-and-dump schemes, finding legitimate alpha sources, and the myth of "inner sanctum" groups
• 62:00–68:30 — Crypto vs Traditional Markets: Why crypto appeals over zero-day options, more obvious manipulation patterns, less efficient markets, and stop-hunting opportunities
• 68:30–75:00 — Demographics and Culture Analysis: Overwhelmingly young male participation, "last chance to get rich" mentality, hustle culture adjacency, and societal implications of human capital allocation
• 75:00–82:15 — Industry Belief vs Reality: Gap between professional claims of revolutionary technology and speculative reality, taking people at their word while maintaining healthy skepticism
• 82:15–end — Future Perspectives and Retirement Plans: Moving away from "making it back" mentality toward trading discipline, balancing crypto with traditional career, and long-term sustainability concerns

The Seven-Figure Rollercoaster: Psychology of Extreme Gains and Losses

Julian Malinek's trading journey illustrates the psychological extremes that define crypto speculation, where life-changing wealth can be made and lost within weeks or even hours. His experience reveals how success breeds overconfidence, leading to position sizes that can destroy years of gains in moments.

• Starting with "low six figures" in early 2021, Julian progressed through the typical retail crypto journey: Bitcoin/Ethereum, mid-cap altcoins, micro-cap speculation, and yield farming strategies.
• His "all-time high" came during the Luna crash when he shorted various positions and made seven-figure gains—enough for "modest retirement" money at his age.
• The psychological peak occurred when he began "looking at nice apartments to buy with cash," which coincided exactly with wiping out 40% of his net worth in the same week.
• Post-euphoric periods consistently led to giving back gains through overconfident position sizing: "I just gave up most of that money in the following months right and I think that often those kind of euphoric periods you have end up being your downfall."
• The trauma of sudden losses creates lasting psychological impact: "it was kind of traumatic in the sense that it was just so sudden and so fast and I think it really was pretty hard to recover from that from a trading perspective."
• Current approach focuses on trading discipline rather than "making it back" mentality, recognizing that chasing previous highs often leads to destructive behavior patterns.

Four Crypto Narratives: From Casino to Revolutionary Technology

Julian's framework for understanding crypto breaks down the space into four primary narrative categories, revealing how different philosophical approaches compete for mindshare while often serving the same speculative function.

• The Casino: Trading tokens for profit, with exchanges making money from trading fees and everything else being "narrative fluff" to justify speculation.
• Store of Value: Bitcoin as "digital gold" or potential reserve currency, the most legitimate fundamental case for crypto investment outside pure speculation.
• Future of Finance: Three sub-categories including "be your own bank" (trustless financial products), modernizing settlement systems (near-instantaneous transactions), and tokenizing marketplaces (bootstrapping networks through token incentives).
• Web3: Consumer internet applications where users control their own content and data, which Julian considers the most questionable category.
• Most crypto participants are "either entirely skeptical like it's just a casino or they're entirely on board" with revolutionary narratives, missing the nuanced middle ground.
• Julian's personal evolution toward viewing crypto as "mainly a casino" while remaining interested in store of value and tokenized marketplace applications reflects growing sophistication about realistic use cases.

Daily Trading Reality: Boredom Punctuated by Volatility

The actual practice of professional crypto trading contradicts popular images of constant action, instead requiring patience, discipline, and thesis-driven decision-making more similar to professional poker than day trading stereotypes.

• Mornings begin with market assessment through Discord groups, Twitter research, and chart analysis to develop falsifiable hypotheses about daily price action.
• Most trading time involves waiting for thesis-driven opportunities rather than constant position taking: "most of the time in the market you just don't want to be entering."
• Successful trading requires "almost a kind of bored curiosity—it's like the opposite of FOMO" where clear opportunities emerge from patient observation.
• Position management demands immediate attention once entered, especially for counter-trend trades that require quick reactions to thesis validation or invalidation.
• Research involves identifying narrative opportunities like "real world asset" coins or sector rotation plays, often through specialized services like Messari or Twitter analysis.
• The emotional state during profitable periods mirrors professional poker: "if it's done well it should be boring" rather than exciting, contrary to popular gambling perceptions.

Market Manipulation and Time Zone Dynamics

Crypto markets exhibit manipulation patterns that are "more apparent than in other markets," creating opportunities for sophisticated traders who understand these dynamics while presenting risks for naive participants.

• Stop Hunting: Coordinated price movements below obvious support levels to liquidate long positions before reversing higher, requiring counter-intuitive stop placement strategies.
• Asian Hours Manipulation: Lower liquidity during Asian trading sessions enables "weird kind of wicks and stuff" and "really wacky things happen at strange hours" on projects with American teams.
• New York Hours Advantage: Better liquidity and "less involved wicks" during US trading sessions provide cleaner price action for technical analysis and position management.
• Predatory Patterns: Julian learned to "counter trade myself right I'm counter trading who I was when I started trading futures" by avoiding obvious stop losses that get hunted.
• Time Zone Arbitrage: Projects founded by American teams sometimes show suspicious activity during Asian overnight hours, creating opportunities for alert traders to identify manipulation.
• These inefficiencies may not persist indefinitely: "I could see a world where in 5-10 years it's just been captured a bit more" by institutional players.

The Demographics of Crypto Trading Culture

The overwhelming male dominance in crypto trading reflects broader cultural dynamics around risk-taking, technology adoption, and economic anxiety that extends beyond simple gender preferences to deeper societal patterns.

• Crypto trading is "definitely overwhelmingly young men" from teens to early 40s, with global participation but very few women, particularly in active trading communities.
• The cultural vibe involves "this is your last chance to get rich before the fall of Western Civilization" mentality that's "adjacent to kind of the hustle culture."
• This demographic overlap with sports betting, zero-day options, and meme stock trading represents competition for the same "supply and demand for gambling and speculation" among young men.
• The "human capital component" concerns Julian: "is it a great thing that a lot of guys like me are spending all this time gambling? I don't know if it's awesome for society."
• Fight Club philosophy pervades the space: "if you don't make a fortune now before you're like 25 you're going to be doing a 9-to-5 office job until you're 65."
• This contrasts sharply with crypto's stated goals of financial democratization, as "half the population is basically being left out" of supposedly revolutionary financial systems.

Industry Belief vs. Speculative Reality

The gap between crypto industry promises and actual practice creates ongoing tension between genuine technological optimism and obvious financial speculation, with most participants managing this cognitive dissonance differently.

• Julian's interactions with VCs and founders suggest "most people actually believe in the technology" despite obvious speculative motivations: "it's just hard to work on this stuff" without some genuine conviction.
• Professional crypto participants need to maintain belief in revolutionary potential to justify fundraising from LPs and sustaining long-term projects beyond pure speculation.
• The challenge involves "taking people at their word" while maintaining healthy skepticism about implementation timelines and real-world adoption prospects.
• Projects like tokenized health data marketplaces represent potentially legitimate applications where "you can create a token out of thin air and that's a better cost of capital."
• However, Julian remains "skeptical of most of it but I hope I'm wrong" regarding revolutionary technology claims, preferring to evaluate projects on individual merits.
• The industry's search for narrative coherence often jumps between contradictory themes: "disintermediating the entire financial system but also boosting profit margins for BlackRock."

Crypto as "Easier Stock Market" for Internet-Native Traders

Joe Weisenthal's theory that crypto appeals as a "more level playing field" compared to traditional markets dominated by institutional advantage provides insight into the space's fundamental attraction beyond pure speculation.

• Traditional stock markets feature "armies of professionals looking at every piece of data" with "multi-billion dollar institutions that have been doing this for decades" and "thousands of books" on security analysis.
• Crypto offers seemingly easier alpha generation through narrative identification: "I think that the First dogcoin on pump.fun will do well" based on internet culture rather than fundamental analysis.
• Internet-native participants may have genuine advantages in "picking up on the next big thing that's going to drive the price either higher or lower" through Twitter and Discord immersion.
• Understanding manipulation patterns and "identifying stop hunts" provides edge over naive participants who leave "obvious tells in the nature of the way I traded."
• This dynamic makes crypto trading feel accessible to people who "spend a lot of time on the internet" without traditional finance credentials or institutional resources.
• The appeal reflects desire for markets where personal internet savvy translates to financial advantage rather than competing against professional institutional infrastructure.

Risk Management and Emotional Discipline

Professional crypto trading requires sophisticated risk management that goes beyond simple stop-losses to include emotional discipline, position sizing, and systematic trade evaluation processes.

• Immediate Exit Requirements: Counter-trend trades demand immediate reaction validation: "I want to see reaction immediately" or exit before hitting stop-losses.
• Stop-Loss Discipline: Every trade requires predetermined exit points, but psychological discipline to cut losses quickly proves more important than mechanical stops.
• Position Sizing Awareness: Post-euphoric overconfidence consistently leads to position sizes that can "wipe out months and months of gains in literally minutes."
• Trade Documentation: Excel spreadsheet tracking includes trade rationale, execution details, and profit/loss analysis to identify pattern improvements over time.
• Thesis Falsification: Each trade requires falsifiable hypothesis about price reaction within specific timeframes, enabling objective evaluation of trade logic.
• Emotional State Management: Successful trading requires maintaining "bored curiosity" rather than FOMO-driven position taking during volatile periods.

Conclusion

Julian Malinek's honest account of professional crypto trading reveals a market that combines legitimate technological innovation with casino-like speculation, dominated by young men chasing narratives rather than fundamental value creation. His experience of making and losing seven figures multiple times illustrates the psychological extremes that define crypto trading, where life-changing wealth can disappear in hours due to overconfident position sizing after euphoric periods. The daily reality involves more patience than action, thesis-driven speculation on micro-cap projects, and sophisticated understanding of manipulation patterns that are more obvious than in traditional markets.

While crypto offers a seemingly more level playing field for internet-native traders compared to institutional-dominated equity markets, the space remains primarily a casino with some promising technological applications around tokenized marketplaces and store of value functions. The overwhelming male demographic reflects broader cultural dynamics around risk-taking and economic anxiety, with participants driven by "last chance to get rich" mentality that may represent misallocation of human capital despite generating individual wealth. Despite industry promises of financial democratization, crypto trading continues excluding half the population while concentrating extraordinary resources on speculation rather than productive economic activity.

Julian's evolution toward viewing crypto as "mainly a casino" while maintaining interest in specific use cases reflects the mature perspective needed to navigate this space professionally without losing sight of both its limitations and genuine potential.

Common Questions & Answers

Q: What does a crypto trader actually do all day?

A: Mostly wait around observing markets after developing falsifiable hypotheses about daily price action. The routine involves morning research through Discord/Twitter, setting price alerts for thesis-driven opportunities, and then patient observation until clear setups emerge. Successful trading requires "bored curiosity" rather than constant action.

Q: How much money can crypto traders really make and lose?

A: Julian started with low six figures, made seven figures multiple times, but gave up most gains through overconfident position sizing after euphoric periods. The week he looked at apartments to buy with cash was the same week he wiped out 40% of his net worth, illustrating the psychological extremes involved.

Q: Is crypto trading really just gambling?

A: Julian views it as "mainly a casino" with some legitimate applications. While thesis-driven trades on tokenized marketplaces or store of value functions have merit, most activity involves narrative speculation rather than fundamental analysis. The key difference from pure gambling is understanding manipulation patterns and market inefficiencies.

Q: Why is crypto trading dominated by young men?

A: The culture involves "last chance to get rich before the fall of Western civilization" mentality adjacent to hustle culture. This demographic overlaps with sports betting and meme stock trading, representing competition for gambling/speculation demand among young men rather than the financial democratization crypto promises.

Q: Do crypto industry professionals really believe in the technology?

A: Julian's interactions suggest most VCs and founders genuinely believe in revolutionary potential despite obvious speculative motivations. It's "hard to work on this stuff" and raise funds without some conviction, though the gap between promises and reality remains substantial.

Q: What makes crypto different from traditional stock trading?

A: Crypto features more obvious manipulation patterns, less institutional competition, and narrative-driven price action where internet savvy can provide genuine advantages. It's like an "easier stock market" for people who "spend a lot of time on the internet" rather than competing against professional fundamental analysis infrastructure.