Playing with contrasts: an inside look at the world of longs and shorts

Hey, friends! I want to share my personal thoughts on how I encountered these two sides of trading. The Crypto world is a real roller coaster, where you can profit from both the rises and the falls. And you know what? Most "experts" will never tell you the whole truth!

Long: betting on a bright future

A long is when I buy a coin and pray for its price to rise. It's as simple as two plus two: bought cheap, sold high. When I first opened a long on Bitcoin, my heart was pounding like crazy — it's pure adrenaline!

The reality of the long:

• You buy Crypto and become its hostage.
• Every morning you check the schedule instead of having breakfast.
• Profit can soar to the sky, but...

Once I bought BTC for $60,000, and it rose to $70,000 — and I was already mentally choosing the color of my Lambo. But that $10,000 profit is such a small thing compared to what could have been!

Short: Dancing with the Devil

A short is when you borrow a coin from someone, sell it immediately, wait for the price to drop, buy it back cheaper, and return the debt, keeping the difference for yourself. Sounds like fraud? Almost!

My experience with shorts:

• It's like playing Russian roulette, but with five bullets in the chamber.
• If the market goes up sharply — goodbye, deposit!
• You look in the mirror and see a bear with red eyes

The short statistics for BTC currently show about 30,000 positions against 27,500 longs. And short sellers are gradually exiting the game — do they sense the arrival of a bull?

Longs and Shorts Ratio: The Market's Secret Compass

Long/short ratio — my personal crowd sentiment indicator. When everyone rushes to open longs, I consider going short, and vice versa.

Currently, the coefficient on the daily chart is about 2.02 (66.86% longs ) — people are optimistic. But I know that "smart money" often does the opposite of the crowd!

Recent data shows an interesting trend — top traders are starting to increase long positions (+6.48%), while retail investors are still hesitant. This could be a signal for a trend reversal, but I personally will wait for more clear confirmations.

My approach to choosing a side

I stopped believing in "gurus" and technical indicators. Instead:

• I see what the whales are doing ( but I don't copy blindly )
• Tracking the long/short ratio
• I trust my experience and instincts
• I never use leverage greater than 3x ( after that incident in 2021...)

I won’t be dishonest – I lost more than I earned on shorts. But those rare successful short positions during the market crash completely covered all my mistakes!

Instead of boring conclusions

The crypto market is not a place for the weak. Choosing between long and short, I choose freedom of action in any conditions. Sometimes it's better to just stand aside than to jump into every pit or climb every mountain.

And remember - someone always stays in the negative so that you can be in the positive. Such is the harsh truth of this game. Good luck to you, and may the force of making the right choice between longs and shorts be with you!