Introducing Myself: I'm a Tokyo-based crypto trader and blogger

Hey there, my name is Misha and I'm a full time writer/blogger. I'm typing this right now in a co-working space in the heart of Shibuya (near the famous crossing).

After some encouragement, I finally decided to get on Steemit -- shout out to @bistonic and also to Mark @vdux for pushing me on this.

Before becoming a blogger I was a full-time recruiter for 5 years in Tokyo. I helped startups enter the Japanese market (Uber, Spotify, Criteo, Netflix, Appsflyer, Buzzfeed, Houzz, Outbrain etc.), from country leads and community managers to entire teams.

Towards the fourth year of my job, one of my colleagues starting working with bitcoin.com as a recruiter. I never met Roger Ver myself, but we helped them hire for developers and engineers. That was my first introduction to the world of crypto.

Around that time I started dabbling as a trader, and like many, became enthralled. I bought some Ethereum, made some money, and started trading more actively. Then I lost a lot more than I made (lost over $100k +)...and have the battle scars to prove it.

But, I managed to keep some. And I'm still in the game.

Eventually I decided it was time to call it quits at my job (was getting bored) and decided to travel around South East Asia for. I got my hepatitis and tetnus shots, packed my bags, and bought a one-way ticket to Ubud, Indonesia.

I spent the first half of 2018 backpacking around Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, India, and Cambodia. It was amazing and I made some great friends along the way.

While traveling, I started a weekly newsletter about productivity and basically whatever I found interesting that week. And I started writing a lot. I wrote about my experience in recruitment, my views on hiring talent, travel, and eventually crypto.

When it comes to crypto, I'm no longer an "active" day trader. Rather, my basic stance on crypto is twofold and I try and keep the two views very separate.

1. As a trader/investor, I'm pretty impartial to all the social media chatter and don't take sides. I trade only where there's opportunity for 40-50% gains and position-size to manage risk (no more than 4-5% risk).

2. My other stance is as a longer term investor and participant, where I’m keen to be involved as a writer, marketer, and potentially even considering doing a startup - we’ll see :)

I came out with a book on trading/investing crypto which you can find on Amazon. It's a compilation of my lessons-learned from the past two years, along with interviews with blockchain startup founders. --> https://amzn.to/2Lt5nF6

If you'd like a free copy, just drop me a message.

I plan to write weekly, perhaps more! This is still all new to me, so if there's something I totally screwed up on this post, feel free to call me out.

So, I'll leave you with some of my favorite quotes that have spoken to me in the past year:

"There are no rules that require us to obey rules. If there were, there would have to be a rule for those rules, and so on." -James P. Carse

“Not all who wander are lost.”- J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“Risk” does not exist “out there,” independent of our minds and culture, waiting to be measured. Human beings have invented the concept of “risk” to help them understand and cope with the dangers and uncertainties of life. Although these dangers are real, there is no such thing as “real risk” or “objective risk.”— Daniel Kahneman

“Just because the conditions aren’t exactly to your liking, or you don’t feel ready yet, doesn’t mean you get a pass. If you want momentum, you’ll have to create it yourself, right now, by getting up and getting started.”- Ryan Holiday

“To the experts, what looks like hard work from the outside, is play from the inside. So a good area to focus on is an area that looks like work to others, but feels like play to you – That’s your superpower.”- Naval Ravikant

“One of the problems with self-help books is they rivet your attention on exactly the one thing it ought not to be focused on: yourself. You look at any of the great religious traditions, and the great philosophers, and the great poets, they all had the same message of focusing on others, and being of service to others. I think the people who are going on search to “find themselves,” will never find themselves. You find yourself only in the midst of others.” - Adam Robinson