Webinar Highlights — Digital Asset Education Series: “Investing and Trading Digital Assets” (Panel Session)*

6 min readJul 16, 2020

On July 8, 2020, VegaX Holdings kicked off the VegaX Digital Asset Education Series, in Partnership with Chinaccelerator! The first webinar focused on “Investing and Trading Digital Assets,” with industry leaders sharing their insights on the current digital asset and blockchain investment landscape, China’s role in digital assets, and ways to improve returns in the highly volatile digital asset market! 🚀

VegaX Digital Asset Education Series: “Investing and Trading Digital Assets” in Partnership with Chinaccelerator — Panel Session Highlights

Read highlights below and/or replay the webinar via zoom! Special thanks to Sino Global Capital, Covario, Seaquake.io, & TabTrader for their participation. Highlights below are from the Panel session, participants noted below.

*Please note, these highlights represent summary statements from participants. No statements or representations should be taken as financial advice. Do your own research.

Access Webinar Recording: Digital Asset Education Series — Investing and Trading Digital Assets

Investing and Trading Digital Assets Panel Highlights:

Featuring:

Kirill Suslov, Founder & CEO — TabTrader
Daniel Large, CIO — Seaquake
Mark Banner, Co-Founder & CEO — Covario

Moderator: Natasha Bansgopaul, Co-Founder & COO — VegaX Holdings

Digital asset investing is still a relatively specialized industry, but it has evolved from the secrecy of the shadows to an investment class that is being discussed seriously all around the world. Many investors are seemingly still sidelined because the industry is still evolving in its practices, but also because it is relatively difficult to approach and the information seems fragmented all over the place. During this panel session of the “Investing and Trading Digital Assets,” we had the opportunity to ask industry experts from Chinaccelerator Batch 17 portfolio companies in the FinTech space about their perspectives on the investment landscape for digital assets and tips on what to look out for.

Thoughts on Current Status of Digital Assets:

Trading is usually considered a professional sport. The digital asset industry is even newer and probably requires some foundation. What’s your perspective on the digital asset trading scene today?

Digital Assets/Crypto was originally for hobbyists, then retail, and now it’s appealing to institutional and professional investors. The market is maturing, experiencing less swings, with bigger trade volume, better volume and security. — Mark @Covario
Digital assets have a massive community market; it’s susceptible to macro events that influence the market prices, and is definitely an up and coming field. — Daniel @Seaquake.io

Trends on Investors Across Exchanges Worldwide:

Seaquake works closely with some of the major exchanges in the world. What are you seeing as a general trend among the different exchanges? Are there any big differences across regions and investor types?

We definitely see a growing focus on derivative products, which give new viability and risk management strategies to traders. We’re also seeing more KYC practices and customized product development, across major exchanges. — Daniel @Seaquake.io

Tabtrader is working with investors all around the world that interact with multiple exchanges. Are investors becoming more active in trading and what markets are being the most active?

Right now, crypto trading is mostly retail, including API traders (DIY algo traders and fund managers). About 75% of trading is done via mobile browsers and apps. We also see geographically, most trading is from South Korea, Japan, UK, Vietnam, Turkey, Russia, and the U.S. Based on the usage, mobile platforms tend to appeal more directly to “millennials” and younger demographics (Closer to Gen Z). — Kirill @TabTrader

Institutions & Activity in Digital Assets

Covario is acting on behalf of some major investors in the industry and executing big trades. Some of these trades are somewhat invisible for the average investor. What are the institutions doing right now? What do these movements indicate for the industry at large?

Essentially, now there is a lot of growth in DeFi and traditional financial products for institutional investors. Large institutional trades are not publicized, mostly because they may be over the counter or party-party negotiation generally. As the digital asset market becomes more popular, it will begin to support greater liquidity volumes, larger players (like Paul Tudor Jones), and more investment product innovation. — Mark @Covario

Considerations for Selecting an Exchange

What should the average investor look out for in exchanges when they are trading to ensure that they aren’t being disadvantaged or on the losing side of the trade?

It’s important to consider who is on the other side of your trade. Looking into the freely available statistics help to protect from market manipulating players. Also be sure to work with exchanges that have good security practices and good trading volume. For full-time traders, consider API rate limits, that’s an important consideration. — Daniel @Seaquake.io
To be clear, 90% of investors lose money, but you can negate the risk by trading with exchanges that have public profiles as a start. Other key points to consider include:

- Spot trading: no leverage, make sure you use legitimate, secure exchanges
- Withdrawals: speedy withdrawals of funds, do NOT store crypto on the exchange, exchanges are susceptible to hacks no matter who you are!
- Leverage Trading: use stop losses to protect against matching engine freezing and high volatility
- API trading: make sure up-time of API methods is 99.9999…; that way you are always able to cancel trades
- Decentralized exchanges: this is a relatively new innovation, and therefore recommend using most liquid ones — Kirill @TabTrader

Retail Investors — Time to Invest?

Should retail investors be getting involved directly? What are some of the pitfalls in the current environment of trading themselves?

Professionals who have studied in school and/or trained in traditional banking, usually tend to trade better. Institutional investors approach markets in a different way than retail investors. Market forces will eliminate poor performing professional money managers. Park your money with professional money managers who typically outperform individuals. If you are a full time, DIY fund manager, feel free to trade on your own. — Mark @Covario
If you are looking for gains only, work with professionals. If you want the experience and learning process, crypto has a phenomenally low barrier of entry and minimum orders. The public, community-driven market gives room for experimentation and the volatile market’s technical indicators are great for learning. — Daniel @Seaquake.io

Final Thoughts: Tips for Making More Money from Investing/Trading Digital Assets

The most important question of our webinar today, how can you make more money from trading digital assets?

Casual traders, trade with an amount you can afford to lose; do NOT borrow money to trade, and ultimately, be sure you enjoy trading. For the trade-savvy and experienced: diversify your portfolio, do not go all-in into crypto/digital assets. Given the volatility of the digital asset market, trading with options and derivatives is particularly powerful. Also, volatility can be a friend! It introduces additional trading volume which creates additional opportunities to make more money. Learn! — Kirill @TabTrader
Never have your portfolio keep you up at night. Crypto is a 24/7 market, unlike the US equity markets. Pick larger “Dow Jones”-like tokens like Bitcoin (BTC) or Ethereum (ETH), over the more obscure “pink sheet” alt-coins. In opposition to Kirill, stay away from derivatives if you do NOT fully understand what’s going on. — Mark @Covario
It’s important to learn to use all trading tools and features to manage risk: limit orders, bill and kill, icebergs, etc., which are being released on most exchanges now. Be consistent with risk strategy overall to best navigate the markets volatility. Also use an exchange partnered with a market maker and liquidity provider, so you can exit at moment’s notice. — Daniel @Seaquake.io

We’d love to know what you think. Send us an email ANY time, tell us what you want to learn more about and if you have any questions about digital assets, our speakers, their firms, and the hosts!