Gainium Alpha Release and the story that brought me here

After weeks of relentless work, I proudly announce the public alpha release of Gainium's trading bots.

I want to take this opportunity to share the story that embarked me on this journey and the vision for the platform in the future.

Gainium's Story

1. To the moon, and back

It all started a year ago. I came across how some random person made a lot of money in crypto with zero trading knowledge by using DCA bots. I happened to have exited a business shortly before, so I had some cash on the sideline looking for a way to yield.

I was not completely new to crypto; I started buying bitcoin back in 2016. However, the volatility proved to be more than I could stomach, and I ended up selling all of it for a modest profit back then.

Getting back into crypto using trading bots and the idea that I had a second chance at 50x my investment sounded very appealing; after all, it was still early to get into crypto. Who says we are not going to the moon from here?

If you were around in the crypto sphere during September 2021, you might remember that it was quite a nice bull run. It didn't matter what you bought; everything was exploding in value. I spent most of my time learning about DCA bots, doing experiments, tweaking settings, optimizing... Profits were flowing in; I could not believe how easy it was. After 30 days, I managed to increase my portfolio value by 20%, and from what I gathered in the community, this was a modest achievement. I felt on top of the world; I had discovered the holy grail of trading! I could already picture myself sipping margaritas on some exotic island for the rest of my life.

Then November 2021 came along, and it brought two very memorable events: Bitcoin's all-time high and the beginning of the end of the bull run. Everything had mooned, and it was about to crash back to earth.

2. The macro bottom

The market downturn caught me completely off-guard. I had seen severe corrections on the chart before, but they seemed like a distant, utopian past. Crypto is much more recognized now than it was back then; it surely can't drop 60-80% from here... Boy, how wrong I was!

As Warren Buffet's famous quote puts it: "only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked." I didn't even know I was swimming naked, but the continued price drop that ensued revealed the cracks in my strategy. 

• None of my bots had enough DCA orders to cover that price drop, not even close.
• Some bots bought way more quantity of specific tokens than I had anticipated, unbalancing my portfolio.
• Some multi-pair bots with little filtering bought large quantities of obscure tokens, the kind of tokens that suffer the most drawdown in such market conditions.
• And perhaps the most important point, I was completely clueless about what was happening and reacted way too late

It became pretty clear: I had over-optimized for profit without knowing how much risk I was exposed to.

I kept watching my portfolio going deeper and deeper in the red. I was scared and paralyzed; I didn't know if I should get out before all my portfolio vanished or if we were already at the bottom, and things could only turn up from there. After some days of compulsive balance-checking, I decided to free myself from the psychological burden and sell.

Now you may think that after that experience, I came up with the idea of making a bot platform that focuses on risk so others won't make the same mistake. And that would have been a very noble mission, but unfortunately, that's not what happened. As it turns out, my life was mimicking the market. When you think you are at the bottom, the market surprises you with more downside.

As it happened, I received some personal news that turned my world upside down. If losing a significant chunk of money wasn't enough to make me depressed and anxious, this definitely was.

The positive side of being confronted with your own mortality is the complete re-arrangement of priorities, the realization of how many things that bother us in the day-to-day has, in fact, very little importance in the grand scheme of things. When you finally grasp that your life could be taken away instantly, you start seeing life from a different perspective. How much money I had lost a few days ago was suddenly irrelevant; the three real questions were: If I am gone tomorrow, what did I leave behind? Whose people's life did I touch? Did my life even matter?

And then, after simmering in depression for weeks, I came across a video and a quote that changed my life:

“The questions you ask yourself will determine the course of your life. I had been asking myself, what do I need to do to get rich? And it left me really unhappy. So I changed to the question to: what would I do and love every day, even if I was failing?” 

- Tom Bilyeu

The root of my depression was the weight of uncertainty. Several unfortunate events and bad news chained together made me look at life from a dark glass. But the above quote changed everything because it gave me a license to fail, as long as I have a purpose.

Once it became clear that I had to stop worrying about what I couldn't control and start acting on what I could, the next steps unfolded naturally. I always wanted to learn how to code, and I still believe in the potential of crypto bots. I was not particularly happy with any of the bot platforms I tried, and I knew there was a better way. A bot platform with cutting-edge trading tools and the right education so that others could avoid the mistakes I made.

3. Forward testing with purpose

Gainium was born to help others, but more selfishly, Gainium was my reason for waking up in the morning.

It's only been a few months into the development, but I am really proud of the positive feedback received so far. There are a lot of unknowns in the road ahead, but there are a few things that I know for sure:

• I will keep Gainium free for as long as I can, even though, at some point, it needs to be a self-sustainable venture.
• There will be a generous free-forever plan that will include all the risk management tools we develop.
• I will put a lot of effort into making the Gainium academy one of the best resources on the web for automatic crypto trading.

I can't develop Gainium alone. I am not a trading expert and didn't even know how to code before starting Gainium. I am just a regular guy who shows up every day to learn and to share. But I know that extraordinary things happen when people come together with a purpose.

I hope you join me in that purpose; just holla me on Discord. 

See you on the other side. 

/Ares