Please introduce yourself and your project Crypto.ro

My name is Alex Numeris, CEO at crypto.ro and advisor for newsbtc.com / bitcoinist.com, some of the biggest media platforms in the world. I have been running an SEO Agency since 2015, I have ranked top 3 most challenging keywords in the world, and I am running some of the largest affiliate marketing websites in Romania – https://gardianul.ro, but also smaller ones – https://manuka.ro

crypto.ro is the leading crypto platform in Romania. Our mission is to inform, educate and connect the crypto community. We offer cryptocurrencies and blockchain news, a recently launched podcast series, iOS & Android apps, and other educational tools.

What led you to become involved in the crypto ecosystem?

Long story short, I used to mine ±15.000 BTC in 2010, lost it all, and realized what a huge mistake I made only at the end of 2016.

Once I understood how cryptocurrencies work, there were three main facts that made me invest in anything related to crypto & blockchain:

– peer-to-peer, there is no middle man, you can be your own bank.

– cryptocurrencies can not be controlled or shut down.

– a fixed supply, you know how many coins are going to be created, minted or mined.

What’s your asset allocation strategy?

Since 2017 I have been fully invested in cryptocurrencies. It is very risky, and I do not recommend it, your asset allocation strategy should reflect your goals and your risk tolerance.

What is your opinion on bitcoin? Is it still a good investment?

I believe Bitcoin is still a good investment. In my opinion, it will continue to be the leading cryptocurrency, with time the market will get more mature and the volatility will flatten, hence it will be more desirable for all types of investors.

If you could hold only 3 crypto assets for the next 5 years, which would they be and why?

Bitcoin, Cardano and Zcash.

Bitcoin because it proved its reliance in time – Cardano because their approach is different, it is one of the most researched blockchains and they delivered all the features on their roadmap.

Zcash because it is privacy driven, there will be a time when privacy coins will be very desired.

How do you see blockchain impacting the world moving forward?

Blockchain will accelerate the world’s technological advancement, and it will make our life easier. I believe what we are witnessing now is part of the Digital Revolution, and it will be a huge leap in history. It will take a couple of years until we will figure out where and how to implement it in our daily lives.

What are your top 3 tips that you would give to an inexperienced crypto investor?

1. Do not start trading, 1% of the traders are profitable. Ignore the volatility and DCA.

2. DYOR and focus on something, it could be NFTs, Metaverse, Gaming, but don’t be all over the place.

3. Do not try to time the market, you can not perfectly buy at the bottom or sell at the top. DCA and just try not to lose money.

Tell us who Dan Rusu is and what made you enthusiastic about financial markets.

I started my career in finance back in 2005 at what is now the leading brokerage house in Romania. A late 90s documentary depicting a few notable geeks making fortunes during the dot-com bubble by trading stocks in the comfort of their own homes sparked my interest in the stock markets and investing from high school. Later on, I had a rare chance to join the industry as an equity research analyst as soon as I graduated, when a key emerging broker in the country set up their research department – note that back then research was almost unheard of, as most of the trading was conducted on the premise that everything you put your money into goes up eventually. Just needed to show up and buy each dip.

Bucharest Stock Exchange was a tiny, pumped-up-like-hell market as the country was on its way to joining EU (2 years later in 2007) – so lots of money was flying around, chasing a handful of assets. I remember everybody seemed to be making the big bucks, the trading rooms were overcrowded, but hardly anyone knew what they were doing. Research, trading systems or methods were of little interest, the investors, the traders, the brokers they were all just fine without it.

But then, no more than two years down the road, in the summer of 2007, the party ended abruptly when foreign investors started retreating from emerging markets as the Great Recession was looming. By March 2009, the local blue chips index was down by as much as 80% from its 2007 highs. The “buy the dip” approach was responsible for the collapse of virtually every investor portfolio. The noisy and overexcited clients were now muted, lots of them left the market for good, bankrupt, and indebted – not a few have taken out loans to buy stocks back in the bubble. Suddenly we found ourselves in a totally different world! To highlight a positive though, our research department was gaining visibility now, investors were flooding us with questions – how long until we bottom out? Is it a good time to buy? How much should I put in? etc. Now we were taking part in decision making when it came to investing in the house portfolio.

For the first time, it felt like our work mattered to investors. They were listening. They were trying out strategies with our help. Trying to be ahead of the market. In the end, it took a lot of time for us to recover, but the financial crisis had played a significant role in maturing the market – industry players and investors, alike.

I always say that I was extremely lucky to start my career in the midst of a bubble in an emerging economy, with a frontier equity market. I got to live very interesting times and learn tons. I’ve seen the boom, I’ve seen the burst, I’ve seen the recovery. And the psychological insights that came with each phase of the cycle are invaluable. Hard for anybody witnessing this not to get enthusiastic about financial markets.

Who is your hero (in business or personal life)?

Right now, with the raging war next door, it’s hard to talk about heroes other than the young Ukrainians (working until yesterday as software developers, game devs, finance professionals and so on) taking up arms to defend their country in what feels like the most unthinkable reality twist to be experienced in so many generations.

I do think it’s very important for the development of one’s character to have someone to look up to and get inspired by. Even when one does not have it all, you can still look for specific traits in a range of people and built your very own composite model.

Professionally, especially when coming from a finance background, I like to see moral integrity, first of all, then transparency, good communication skills and the capacity to express vast and complex realities in short and compelling statements. I really believe that every expert in finance should make it her/his duty to promote financial education as it’s so critical in building a wealthy and stable society.

On a personal level, my role model is authentic, restless in the quest for personal growth, resilient and brave, curious, always speaking truth to power and living up to his/her word.

Describe one of the toughest challenges you’ve ever faced when dealing with financial markets.

Being in the advisory business, there’s no doubt that the toughest challenge I face over and over again is sticking to investment advice or decision when the market goes against me. It never gets old, it never gets easier. When you see an opportunity for yourself before anybody else, you are free to take the risk and just stick to your guns for as long as you can do it.

But when your position is public and others have invested based on your advice, it’s a whole different level of stress and challenge – especially when the markets go against you, and your views and position are being second-guessed at every turn. It’s hard to stand your ground in the face of adversity, that’s why it’s so important that all your investment decisions or investment advice have solid reasoning behind them that allows you to withstand unfavorable market conditions and public pressure. You must remember that at key turning points in a market you need be the contrarian voice of reason since most people will be either partying like hell (during booms) or frozen with fear (during bursts). And that comes with a cost and will most probably be appreciated (if correct) in retrospect.

On the other hand, you need to have the modesty to admit when wrong and the flexibility to adjust your view based on new market action and changes in the underlying fundamentals. For that, you need to be humble. If not, markets will teach it to you time and time again.

What is your investment philosophy?

I think successful investing is very much related to knowing and understanding yourself, adopting a style that fits your profile and gives you a return-to-risk ratio that lets you sleep at night. And last but not least, to learning self-discipline – this makes or breaks everything else.

A strategy or style may work perfectly for your friend but not as much for you. It should be clear to you what’s the effort you are willing to put into learning, what you are willing to risk, and what is enough for you in terms of profits. What is the amount of time you are willing to sacrifice for this, what is the money you are able to invest and what can you afford to lose when everything goes south.

Discipline is key in execution. You may find the best system out there, figure all else out, but if you lack the discipline to follow through and you find yourself on the emotional roller coaster, quickly shifting from fear to hope and then to greed, you are set up for failure.

What piece of advice do you wish you’d been given at the start of your career?

I wish somebody had told me to start investing as soon as possible, irrespective of the amount of money I was making. The trick is this: once you start earning, start investing a regular amount of your money, no matter how small and no matter how passive the method (index funds, mutual funds or, more actively, one or more assets you truly believe in in the long run). Do it month by month, automatically, forget about it and let the compounding effect work its magic over the long term. Don’t touch that money – it’s your ticket to early retirement.

How do you see blockchain impacting the world moving forward?

Blockchain, cryptos, digital assets – they took off and despite all reservations are here to stay. I think no finance professional and no investor should be a stranger to the subject. I like to compare this emerging new asset class to a primordial soup – we’re still in the beginning, there’s a lot that can still happen and it’s difficult to separate the wheat from the chaff… That being said, I totally endorse getting some skin in the game as early as possible. Not too much, only based on each individual’s risk profile and enough to make one want to stay up to date on the subject. And either go for a passive dollar-cost averaging approach or a carefully audited and tested trading system with exit strategies to protect capital.

I also think that this new asset class still needs to undergo a trial by fire – experience a global recession or financial crisis to prove its worth and get validated. We will then understand how investors relate to this emerging asset class: is it purely speculative or, on the contrary, will it provide a safe haven against adversity – as in gold 2.0?

Question What are the top 3 tips that you would give to an inexperienced investor? Why?

1. First study. Study at large, then study in depth. Understand how financial markets are working but don’t believe in a holy grail, in the ultimate solution. Remember that all is relative and that financial markets, no matter the asset, are 80% psychology. Understand human nature, fear and greed, and our lack of reason. But studying has its limitations: avoid paralysis by analysis and then …

2. Begin investing as early as possible and use that amount of money that lets you sleep at night no matter what you may wake up to in the morning. No matter how small. Just start putting some money in. You’ll probably lose initially, but that’s just the “entry ticket” to the show – everybody’s paying it. That’s why the sooner you start, the more time you have before discovering your style and method or identifying the key people and experts you need to give heed to.

3. It will be stressful. At times, you will feel on top of the world, and then the next thing you know you are the dumbest person that’s ever lived. You’ll feel like quitting but later you’ll be ready to risk it all. You need to adopt a style, a method and the mental fortitude to go with it no matter what. But also the flexibility to change and adapt when needed. Discipline and flexibility are opposite concepts, yet you need to internalize both in order to become a seasoned, smart investor.

Avoid wasting time and money on timing the market – no matter how tempting that may be (literally everybody secretly believes they can do it). A method, a strategy that has been successfully tested for all types of markets (bullish, bearish, sideways) and has managed to avoid major drawdowns in your portfolio should be something to aim for. As well as, again, being able to sleep tight at night no matter how invested you are in your favorite mix of assets.

Dan Rusu is a finance professional with almost two decades of experience in financial markets and financial services. He led for 10 years the equity research efforts at the top banking group in Romania. Dan has been closely involved in a series of projects and partnerships with the Bucharest Stock Exchange, some focused on financial education, while others promoted local entrepreneurs and their growth stories. He is a Chartered Market Technician – widely regarded as the gold standard in technical analysis – and an active investor in stocks, commodities and bitcoin.

Tell us who is Alex Hobincu and what drives him to create content about the crypto ecosystem

Basically, Hobincu is one of the many traders who struggled at the beginning of the crypto trading space in Romania. By the time my company went bankrupt, I decided to start crypto trading and suddenly it all became clear to me that this is what I’m gonna do for the rest of my life. I started from the bottom as many would say, with only the dream of living carefree and without the issues that I used to have having my own company. The problem was that by the time I started trading, there were so few people that were really aware of the fact that you can turn this into a daily job so I needed a community. So after checking a lot of Romanian communities and being totally disappointed by the level of the people over there I decided to do something and gather only the high perspective people into my own community by creating YouTube Video content and keeping it at a high trading level so that only people who were particularly interested in trading would join. So that’s what I did and here I am today with almost 20.000 people followers on all the social platforms.

Who is Alex besides being a key opinion leader in the crypto space? 

First of all, Alex is always direct and sincere with his followers. I really hated that kind of marketing videos with Lamborghini’s and Ferrari’s and people selling fake perspectives upon the trading area like it’s some kind of easy game and everyone can do it. I wanted to present the reality, the struggle from behind starting from scratch. A lot of people joined my community by complaining about the losses they got for trusting so many fake people out there. Unfortunately being so direct and sincere about the fact that crypto trading is really hard and you need a lot of discipline to become one of the 10% that are actually winning in this game, didn’t really get the maximum attention compared to the Lamborghini influencers, but it’s ok, at least mine are smart. 

How did you come up with a trading course and why do you offer it for free?

Well, a short time after I started trading in YouTube Live videos, lots of people asked me to teach them.  It really was an easy task to spend time with my community in the first part of my Influencer life, because there weren’t many people that were following me. The problem started when literally thousands of people asked me to teach them Crypto Trading. And it was taking me so much personal life that I barely had my own trading time. So, for a short period of time, I asked them all to just wait because they will have a full course on my website, which will be free and which will teach you all the stuff that I learned being a full-time trader. 

But where did I start? I had no idea how I learned all this stuff, I had studied continuously for over 2 years by the time I decided to release the course. So the idea that I had by that time was brilliant, I gathered a mentorship group on which I focused for over 200 hours of online trading, and they showed me what it’s like to be a beginner again. So yeah, mostly I learned from them as much as they learned from me. That’s how I built up my whole course based on the actual learning experiences of my successful students. 

What is your trading style? What indicators or formations do you use? Tell us a few tips and tricks :)

I don’t really rely on indicators, to be honest. I always thought the indicators are lagging so much that by the time they show you the moment to initiate the action, most probably the action is at the end of it. Instead, I loved the price action part of the trading. That really caught my eye. What’s happening over there? Who is in control? Will buyers take action? Will the price bounce back? … trying to understand the market psychology and the key level zones was really fascinating for me. The problem was that keeping in mind so much information of this kind was a struggle so I developed my own trading style based on institutional orders which are really amazing and easy to use. I think at this moment is the most reliable way of trading considering the current bizarre fluctuations of the market. 

How do you see blockchain impacting the world moving forward?

This is a great technology. I’ve met so many companies who switched their old system to blockchain technology and doing such an amazing job. Imagine you can practically attach a smart contract to anything now. People are earning crypto in so many forms that previously we were doing for free, gaming, chatting, watching videos, participating in events, it’s an incredible way of living your freedom at this moment. I love it! 

If you could hold only 3 crypto projects for the next 5 years, which one would those be and why?

Unfortunately, I’m a trader. Being a trader means that basically every project that is released at this moment has a bottom and a top. My job here is to make sure that I’m buying as close as I can to the bottom and selling as close I can to the top. I’m not gonna lie to you, most of the time I don’t even care what a project does … I’m not an investor, I usually don’t lock up my money for more than a few days and very few times I’m going into the weekly timeframe. There’s always a correction to wait for and an impulse to take. :)  But if I would really have to expose my favorite projects, those would obviously be Bitcoin, Ethereum and Shiba. Why? Because of the hype. Where all the people are putting their money, it means that the project is supported by trust. And this basically creates fluctuations which I always benefit from by taking the right actions at the right time.

What are your top 3 tips that you would give to an inexperienced crypto investor? Why?

Tip number 1:  If you see a Lambo in a commercial regarding crypto learning space … run. That Lambo is most probably bought with your money.

Tip number 2:  Trading is hard, that’s the reality. You can win a ton of money, and I literally mean that. But you need to work harder than the 90% of the people that are losing.

Tip number 3:  Don’t be greedy, rather than trying to buy the bottom and sell the top take into consideration the compound way of doing money. You’re gonna be amazed by its power.