- Crypto Twitter is a hot mess of opinion, argument, faulty charting, bad advice, and shilling
- There are many types of trader in the space with varying motivations behind their actions
- We go through the five types of trader most commonly found on crypto Twitter and how to spot them
Those who join the crypto community learn pretty quickly that crypto Twitter is a hot mess of opinion, argument, faulty charting, bad advice, and shilling. It can seem at first that these cartoon avatars, followed by thousands, are there to help you make money, but this couldn’t be further from the truth.
As a starting point for new entrants to the space, we go through the five types of trader commonly found on crypto Twitter, describing how to spot them and how they operate, in the hopes that you can avoid the fate of many others before you.
The Pre-sale Dumper
The Pre-sale Dumper uses their influence to get into the pre-sale and seed stages of projects, buying up a big stack on the cheap before shilling it to crypto Twitter, telling their followers it will do a 10x out of the gate.
Knowing full well it won’t go that high, the Pre-sale Dumper sells his stack when the run tops out at 2x or a 5x, dumping on his followers who are left bagholding while the token drifts down into oblivion. Complaints are ignored or blocked as the Pre-sale Dumper moves onto the next pre-sale.
The Shiller
The Shiller doesn’t get in at pre-sale but still gets in when the project is in relative obscurity. They take a similar approach to the Pre-sale Dumper in that they hype up the coin on crypto Twitter, telling their followers that it is the next 100x project and insisting they are buying on every dip and will hold for the long haul as they ‘really believe in the team’.
When the hype kicks in, often with the help of other crypto Twitter influencers in a coordinated pump, the token moves quickly. The Shiller quietly gets out at 10x or 20x, failing to inform their followers that they have done so, and moves onto the next.
Meanwhile The Shiller’s DMs fill up with individuals asking when they should sell the already sold token, which The Shiller ignores or replies to with platitudes about holding for the long haul. Six weeks later The Shiller will quietly admit to having already sold, while placating outraged followers by claiming to still have confidence in the project.
Sure.
The Clout Seeker
The Clout Seeker is desperate to prove to the rest of crypto Twitter that they are some kind of trading god, boasting about their wins and showing how their charting predictions come true time after time. This desperation to prove their prowess is fundamentally down to a sense of innate insecurity, which they must artificially bolster by posting completely unverifiable profit and loss screenshots on a regular basis.
The Clout Seeker is not averse to a little evidence manipulation and retrospective editing in order to keep up their charade, with the most common question they receive on Twitter being ‘do you wish to delete this tweet?’. The Clout Seeker is also proficient at Photoshop, allowing them to retrospectively edit charts to match their ‘prediction’.
It is easy to spot a Clout Seeker on crypto Twitter – they are loud, brash, and often abusive, striking out when their 100% win rate is questioned by mere mortals. Avoid.
The Trading Group Owner
The Trading Group Owner is not necessarily a bad person, but you should be wary that their Twitter presence is carefully manufactured to act as an advertisement. This is why you will only ever see winning trades from them, often as a form of weekly or monthly ‘wins’ – a list of their most profitable gains during the period. You will never see the losing trades, either because they are not posted or are deleted retrospectively.
Anyone following a Trading Group Owner will only ever get part of the story, which is why you shouldn’t get swept away with their constantly victorious Twitter feed. There are a number of questions you should ask yourself before joining a crypto trading group, none of which should involve their semi-fictitious Twitter feed.
The Honest Joe
There are some crypto Twitter traders out there who actually offer honest assessments of the market, chart well, don’t edit retrospectively, and admit when they are wrong. The Honest Joe often gives you both the bullish and the bearish side of the coin, which makes a nice change from the 100x shillers, and they can provide a sobering outlook in times of euphoria.
The Honest Joe offers their insights and opinions to crypto Twitter because they love the space and they want to share their insight, not because they have an ulterior motive. They are hard to find but they are out there, and are the only crypto Twitter traders worth following. As a guide to finding them, the Honest Joe has typically been in the space for many years and, thankfully, keep emojis to a minimum.
Don’t Let Crypto Twitter Bankrupt You
There are of course many other types of trader out there on crypto Twitter, but these five categories are perhaps the most common you will come across. The sad fact is that following the wrong people on crypto Twitter will lose you money and following the right people will only lose you less money – the only way to spot the charlatans from the genuinely good traders is to educate yourself on the rudiments of trading so you can view them from an educated perspective.
If you don’t do this then you will be destined to follow crypto Twitter influencers into trades forever, which often means you’re too late to make decent gains and could well end up making continual losses.
