Hi fellow crypto trader! How’s it going?

It’s Nina from TradeCrypto here, and today we are chatting-up our friend and colleague, Predrag. We are talking about early trading beginnings, experiments, altcoins, DEXs, and life between web 2 and 3. Join us!

The World From The Lenses of a Crypto Trader

Hi Predrag! 

Here at TC we know you quite well, but let’s introduce you a bit to our readers. How would you describe yourself?

I am just an average geek/programmer who wants to make more money and hopefully stop working from 9 to 5, 5 days a week before I turn 65.

That’s the dream! And mining and investing might just be the way to turn it into a plan. When did you start mining, what did that look like?

My first mining was back in 2013  when I was just trying to figure out how technology is working.

My first investment was after the 2018 bear market when I finally had enough money and when I realized my basic life needs.

Sure thing. I guess that’s a stumbling block for everyone who thinks about investing – to get their life in balance first thing first. What did you mine?

I did some small mining of ETH but I sold the rig in the summer of 2021 before London Fork. Currently, I like to keep my portfolio simple and decentralized: BTC / ETH/ ADA / DOT / MATIC.

I do not believe that it will be easy to find any 100x or 1000x gains in this bull market. Maybe we will never see such ROI in crypto anymore, who knows.

I decided that I do not have time to chase “moon shot coins” and additionally those gains come with really big risks.

For sure, with the mainstream coins, it’s easier to “play it safe”. 

And how about exchanges, can you tell me which ones you use? We have recently started publishing the guides on DeFi and using DEXs, so it would be handy if you tell us what are pros and cons of CEX and DEX according to you?

Centralized exchanges have the ability to retrieve your account if you lose your password or email. But your crypto is never 100% safe there.

On the other hand, your house can burn with a paper of your metamask wallet passphrase inside, and then you can lose both crypto AND your house.

Nothing is 100% safe. Diversification is the key, if you ask me.

What taxes for selling crypto are you facing? What would you recommend for making extra profit?

My country (Serbia) is taxing 15% of all profits. In general, it is possible to sell Stable coins for cash.

If you want to make more profit, one of the best strategies is just  DCA and HOLD. I am not the world’s best trader, if I’m being honest. I only trade when I see that something might happen and people are not noticing it – big events such as the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, for example.

Let’s talk about new fun stuff on the crypto market. Did you invest in NFT or any playful tokens?

I did play with Shiba a bit but only because back then all meme tokens were jumping like crazy and there was news that some whale brought 44 million $ of Shiba.

So I bought it with a small % of my portfolio and got out a week or two later with 3.5x.

I did not play with NFT-s simply because I can not quantify how much they are worth. Additionally, I am not yet quite happy with my crypto portfolio so I want to build this one first and then think about the rest.

Makes sense. And what do you plan to do next, in order to strengthen your crypto portfolio?

After this bull market ends I will think in detail about it but it will depend on my life situation.

The ideal situation would be to have some money:

– In celsius network (or similar lending platform)

– Some money on Quickswap as a liquidity provider

– Maybe I will move some money in stocks (but I do not know which one yet)

– And some in bank accounts in FIAT (yes I know inflation will eat some of that but security is not free).

Generally, I do not believe in the longevity of mining. POS is the future 🙂 

Generally, it makes sense to keep your funds in different places. It’s more secure than anything else. 

Exactly.

And, do you remember, how long did it take for your investment to have an ROI? What are your expectations for the near future, based on that?

I really do not know how much I needed to get my investment back. I was just DCA-ing slowly from 2018 to 2019 until … Well, I almost never stopped doing that (unless I needed money to buy something like a car or computer).

When I see that coins go up a lot I would just take off some profit and maybe sell them for some other coin (but in general I am not moving away from those 5 mentioned above).

What channels do you rely on to follow news and trends in crypto? What would you recommend, as a crypto trader?

Telegram Groups, Coin beray (on Youtube), Reddit, Twitter (but Crypto Twitter is full of crap like most of Youtube).

What are the highest and lowest moments in you experience so far?

The highest moment might be all period during the last big bull run from covid crash all the way until March/February of 2021.

The lowest moment was when I was playing with leverage trading and lost ~10% of my portfolio!

You are a crypto trader based in Serbia. Can you explain what are official regulations for mining and trading there?

Yes, I am doing that from Serbia. Our regulation is quite simple.

If you withdraw money from your bank account then you have to pay 15% of that money as taxes.

If you have proof that you paid your crypto then the taxable amount can be lower.

Okay, so here goes a crypto trader lightning round of some questions from the industry. You ready?

Let’s do it!

What is fiat currency and how does it differ from cryptocurrency?

FIAT is money that is not backed by any commodity instead it is backed by the government and its central bank, cryptocurrency is a currency that is backed by its users (it is worth the amount the users are willing to pay for it)  

What is the name of the probable author of Bitcoin?

The author of bitcoin is Adam Back.

Who is the creator of the cryptocurrency Ethereum?

The Creator of Ethereum is Vitalik Buterin.

What is the difference between a token, a coin, and a cryptocurrency?

Blockchain -> open-source decentralized database that everyone can read and copy of that database is saved on multiple computers and is maintained with the work of miners.

Miners are people that dedicate their computers to running cryptographic solutions to verify transactions on the blockchain.

Cryptocurrency is a currency that is running on blockchain thx to miners. Essentially it is program code that when is run by thousands or millions of computers to verify transactions on that blockchain.

A token is essentially a cryptocurrency that is using other blockchains to exist.

Explain blockchain technology very briefly. What is its essence?

Decentralized database that everyone can contribute to but only by following preset rules. 

Where are the Bitcoin servers located?

Everywhere. USA has the most hashing power, the second was Kazakhstan since miners moved there when China banned crypto mining, or at least it was until those protests, I am not sure right now who is second.

Explain briefly what is cryptocurrency mining and who are the miners?

Miners are people that dedicate their computers to running cryptographic solutions to verify transactions on the blockchain. The process is called mining.

Approximately how many cryptocurrencies exist in the world?

I am not really sure but I think that there are probably more than 10-100 thousand (it is really easy to make a fork of existing ones, create small changes and make a new one).

How is the exchange rate of any cryptocurrency formed? What affects him?

This is simply a matter of fact for what money someone is willing to sell or buy that currency at that particular moment, same as oil/gold/silver or any other commodity in the world.

What is the gas fee?

Gass fee is the measurement of the price of computing power on an Ethereum network. 

Ethereum network (or should I say blockchain) is not created to make just transactions of some Ethereum between multiple wallets. It is created to run different types of small “programs” and each of those programs (generally called tokens) are using some computing power gas fee you can imagine like a transaction fee for the Ethereum network but is variable.

What is an ICO? What is it for?

Initial Coin Offering -> when startups want to make a new project/cryptocurrency, they are doing ICO initial coin offering and they are selling their coins to investors to get money so they can create the project. 

Do you have cryptocurrencies? If yes, which one?

BTC / ETH/ ADA / DOT / MATIC 

Do you have accounts in cryptocurrency exchanges? If yes, in which?

Yes, CEX, Binance 

What is KYC?

Know Your Customer. The financial institution must know who I am and check that before letting me be their customer (that is why we have so looooong process of verification on exchanges)