⚠ Spot Bitcoin ETF: $2.7B Inflows!

Añadido: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I'm surprised that this [music] here is not yet common knowledge. My thesis is that Bitcoin has already matured in 2018.

[00:00:11]This here is the number of active addresses on Bitcoin over time. It peaked at the end of 2017, beginning of 2018, and since then just went sideways.

[00:00:23]Now, there are several metrics that coincide with the peak for the beginning of 2018. For example, this year, Bitcoin relative to technology stocks. How did Bitcoin outperform? Very well up until the beginning of 2018. But since then, Bitcoin tends to trade in a range versus tech stocks. It didn't outperform in the last 8 years. Or check this out. This is Bitcoin relative to gold. Again, 2018 was the time when Bitcoin stopped outperforming or at least where the outperformance isn't that obvious anymore, where from one cycle top to the next, we don't necessarily see that much more progress. Now, there are two potential conclusions from this. The first conclusion is that we just treat Bitcoin as any other long-term asset.

[00:01:12]So, we buy regularly into stocks, we buy regularly in our house via mortgage, we buy maybe regularly into precious metals, and we might do the same for Bitcoin and not even try to time the market that much since the volatility isn't that big anymore. But then there's also the other approach. Since Bitcoin doesn't outperform that easily anymore, maybe we try to find market structure and maybe now timing the market becomes even more important than just time in the market because the market itself isn't outgrowing other markets that quickly anymore. Hi, my name is Gad.

[00:01:47]I've been in crypto for the last 8 years. I started this channel 5 years ago and three years ago I hit my first million. And I did this mainly through active trading to timing the market to trying to figure out what market structure can we potentially exploit to beat the average market participant. My portfolio history is pinned down below in the comment. On average, I outperformed buying and holding by roughly 2% per month, but of course there's some volatility in that outperformance as well. But in the end, the long term matters. And in this video, I want to share how we can time the Bitcoin market and that sometimes the easy trading rules tend to be much better than very complex approaches.

[00:02:28]Now, if this is not your first video on this channel, you know that I trade Bitcoin according to the golden and def cross of the 2-day simple moving average and the 116-day simple moving average.

[00:02:39]that comes after an extensive back test of trying to figure out what's the best moving average combination and then the long-term outperformance of that strategy is shown over here quite consistent over time and that's why I use it but then there are also simpler approaches and sometimes the simpler approaches are even better than the more complex ones for example we can just look at a simple moving average this here is a back test of all the moving averages up to the 200 day this here is the annualized performance and the Best moving average historically is this one over here, the 109day simple moving average. And that is since 2018. So you're looking at Bitcoin's price history since the market has matured. We don't want our data to be skewed from any price action that happened before that point in time.

[00:03:31]2018, I believe, is a cutoff where something has fundamentally changed. And so this is much more representative of what's going to happen in the future. So the 109day simple moving average tended to work the best. We are going long and we're going short. We have our typical financing fees of 11%. So that's perpetual futures and we've got a trading fee of 0.05%. Again, non-disounted trading fees on something like Hyperlid. This is then how that looks like over time. Let's have a look at the best back test. Let's get the calculations running. And that's then our performance. Very nice, very constant straight out performance. At the bottom, we see the strategy measured in BTC. This is now without any leverage. Once we include leverage, then our long phases here will also outperform and it looks even more steady. But that's the kind of delta that we can get, right? Buying and holding would have given us 23% perm since 2018. But even without any leverage, just using long and short with the 109 day simple moving average brings us 71% per enm. But here's something I want to share. Sometimes I get this feedback.

[00:04:41]Why are you just using simple moving averages? Have you checked the exponential moving average? Have you checked the double or triple exponential moving average? How are those indicators actually working? Now, first of all, I want to talk about this performance here again, right? This is the best data point. And one might argue this is a bit cherry-picking, but really when we take a data point, a moving average duration that's not too short, where we've got all of those trading fees, but we take something that's more reasonable, right?

[00:05:09]The 25day simple moving average. We tend to have outperformance following the trend in Bitcoin. We only get underperformance once it's too sluggish, once our moving average duration is too long. But if you take a reasonable moving average length, we tend to do better than buying and holding Bitcoin.

[00:05:27]The only question is how much better?

[00:05:30]And that's why I like this approach so much. But again, this is the simple moving average. Now, the bet testing tool here again available to all the members here. It does not just have the simple moving average. It has all kinds of moving averages. Also has oscillators like the MACD or the RSI etc. But have a look first at the moving average types.

[00:05:52]We've got the exponential moving average. We've got the weighted moving average. There's the double exponential, etc. Many different types of moving averages. And I have run all of them and I want to share the result. Again, this is the simple moving average with a best annualized return of 71%. Here we've got the exponential moving average. The best data point over here is only 52%. Again, a very similar setup as in when we've got too short of a moving average, we tend to lose. When we've got too long of a moving average, we tend to lose as well. The vast majority of exponential moving averages tends to do better than just buying and holding. But how much better? That's actually worse for the exponential moving average versus the simple moving average. So, I prefer the SMA over the EMA. Let's go on. This is the weighted moving average. A very similar setup. This time though, the longer moving averages aren't as bad, but the best back test we get is 62% perom. Again, compared to the simple moving average, 71. Here is the hull moving average. This becomes already a bit more exotic. We have to go really far out until we get our positive returns. And the best beta point we have is again 55% worse than the simple moving average. Here's the double exponential moving average. 66% is the best value. Here's the triple exponential moving average with 44% as the best result. And we go on. This is the Calfman adaptive moving average. 48% being the best. Here's the zero lakh exponential moving average with 68%. We are getting a bit closer to the simple moving average returns. Still, especially the shortterm results are very very poor. And this is a finding that we actually find across all trading strategies. Whenever we trade too often, we tend to lose versus the trading fees.

[00:07:48]So really, I think the sweet spot is always in several days of holding.

[00:07:53]Trading just hour by hour can only work if you've got a massive edge, if you've got some kind of arbitrage opportunity.

[00:08:00]But if you're just following trends, if you just trade the market structure in general, I think it's better to hold for longer. The longer we hold in general tends to make a trading strategy safer.

[00:08:10]We can also see this in the extreme, right? If we buy an asset and we forget about it and we hold this just over the next 20 years, it's very likely to go up versus the US dollar because the US dollar just goes down over time. There's more more money printing. So no matter what we buy, if that's houses, if that's gold, if that's Bitcoin, if that's stocks, whatever it is, if something holds its value a bit, if it doesn't degrade, if it doesn't decline in its value by 6.8% 8% peranom. That's how quickly the money base expands. Then it should go up over the years in US dollars. The shorter we go with our holding period, the more risky something becomes. So day trading is hyper risky.

[00:08:51]Trying to follow trends just on a few days is very risky. The sweet spot personally for me and looking at the data I think is holding several weeks, several days. And it's also the sweet spot looking at all of those back tests.

[00:09:04]Very rarely do we see something positive in the early part of this graph. We've got the smoothed moving average here, by the way, with the best result being 51%.

[00:09:13]Here's the least square moving average with 65%, the anolu moving average with 64%. And last but not least, the Tilson T3 with 60% perom. And this is actually a finding that we find across all kinds of cryptocurrencies. This is just showing Bitcoin, but we see the same for Ethereum. We see the same for Solana.

[00:09:36]Very rarely and for only a few selected time windows do we see those more complicated moving averages, those more complicated indicators outperforming a simple moving average. Now, why is that?

[00:09:50]I don't know. Maybe it's a self-fulfilling prophecy effect. Maybe a lot of people use a simple moving average, thus reinforcing the trend, right? when we are bullish and the SMA fires, maybe a lot of other people buy as well, reinforcing the trend. Maybe that's one of the effects. I don't know.

[00:10:06]It is interesting though that more complicated does not necessarily mean better. Yes, I personally I like to use two moving averages, crosses versus just a price cross versus a moving average.

[00:10:17]It tends to eliminate some of the bad signals. It tends to be easier to trade.

[00:10:21]But just because there is an exponential moving average and a double and triple exponential moving average doesn't mean that those things work better. My experience running all of those back tests across various assets is the simple moving average, the simple approach tends to be the best. It tends to perform the most consistently and it tends to perform the highest in terms of returns as well. If you want to keep it simple, then feel free to check out the premium membership. You've got some copy trading strategies over here. I've already shared my performance historically over the last 5 years, but there's also a lot to learn. For example, here is a tutorial section.

[00:10:58]This is where I share how I think about asset allocation, how I think about portfolio management, and how to not just allocate to crypto, but to various asset classes long term. If it's your first time here, feel free to subscribe.

[00:11:09]I publish this regularly. A like would be very much appreciated as well. It helps the channel grow. See you next time here on YouTube or see on Premium.

[00:11:14]Thanks for watching. Chest.