5 Tips From A CryptoCurrency Expert — Kunal Desai of Bulls on Crypto Street

I had the pleasure of interviewing Kunal Desai, Founder and CEO of Bulls on Crypto Street. Kunal began trading stocks during the Dotcom Boom, and now teaches traders and investors how to trade cryptocurrencies profitably. In addition to Bulls on Crypto Street, Kunal is the Founder and CEO of Bulls on Wall Street, one of the fastest growing online trading academies, having taught thousands of students how to trade stocks over the course of the last decade.

Gene: Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me. Please give us a brief overview of your background and how you got started in this industry.

My dad got me interested in stocks. He was always looking at CNBC talking about stocks. Then the .COM boom hit and its all anyone would talk about. If you think the craze in cryptocurrency is wild it holds nothing to the .COM boom in the later years! Just seeing all these people make money and do this really had me curious. Once I got to College it was this whole new world. We are taught in high school that college is so hard. What they dont tell you is that you get all this free time! You really only have a few classes a day. Its not the same 7am to 4pm structure like highschool. I spent all my free time in the computer lab. Having access to this thing called the ethernet was so amazing. It was quite a difference from my old prodigy internet. Alll I did was go to the computer lab to research stocks.I started to get a lot better with my trading but would always have one bad losing streak that would wipe out my gains. This happened for a long time. Later II found a mentor that was able to help me fine tune my weaknesses. Soon after I started trading full time for a living. During this time twitter started to really get some buzz. I started posting on there and built up a nice loyal following which really showed me the power of the social network. Right after I started Bulls On Wall Street I got involved in the crypto trading after one of my students told me he made six figures trading cryptos using the same strategies I taught him with stocks. So I started testing it myself and realized how much potential there was. After some really great months of trading cryptos I decided to start a new platform to teach others how I was doing it. Our mission is to to make cryptocurrency income opportunities easy to understand so everyone from all over the world has the chance to benefit from them.

Gene: Can you please tell us more about what your company does? I love learning about advancements in the crypto space, so please feel free to geek out with me on this.

We teach people how to trade cryptocurrencies. We have a bootcamp course that teaches everything you need to know to trade them. We also have a trading room with hundreds of traders and investors where we communicate our trading ideas. I also send out my alerts to the group. In addition to that, we put out content on a daily basis that educational and news based. We built this part out to educate people to crypto as most don’t understand it. Our next phase to the business is to make the tools that people and institutions will need to take their trading to the next level. We are starting to build out with our partners technology with algo’s, A.I, and numerous other tokens that will really take the space to the next level

Gene: Who are your competitors in this space? What makes your company stand out?

I’m one of the few people that spends 0 time looking at their competition. My mentor once told me that if I am the best at what I do then the rest will take care of itself. Thats what we spend all our time on. How do we fine tune our trading but also the user experience for our customers to that everyone hits their goals.

Gene: What sort of traction have you guys gotten so far? Are you a well known brand? Still in the startup stage? Or somewhere in the middle?

I would say in the middle! My stock brand has been around for a decade so I am well known in the industry. That has carried over to our new crypto platform. We were able to get off to a great start since we had a great following already. We have also made some strategic partnerships and are looking to do more of that in the future. That has given us a leg above a normal startup. We started the business running full speed with a model that we know works and a following that is very loyal. But crypto is still a relatively new industry. There are many things to learn. Sure there are parallels to the world of stock trading but also its completely different!

Gene: What is the most innovative project that you have ever worked on?

The things that we are working on right now I would say is the most innovative. There is so many holes in the crpyto experience for traders. Our next phase is to take the experience and ease of getting into the stock market and bringing it to the crypto markets which can be a very opaque industry. There are so many smoke and mirros and it is not user friendly. We are currently building out some interesting technology that will incorporate machine learning along with algo’s to really supercharge the retail traders experience.

Gene: What are some up and coming coins that we should keep on our radar?

Out of the major altcoins ETH and NEO are my favorites. Out of the smaller coins that have the potential to really have utility along with major price appreciation I like UKG which is UnikoinGold.

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

I like to think of Bitcoin as the gold standard of cryptocurrency. It has such a strong brand name that I feel it will stick around for awhile. With such a new industry it’s hard to say what will exist in 5 years. Any new tech can come in wipe out any coin. Right now it offers great trading opportunities. For all we know Bitcoin could be like myspace and just be gone one day or it could be like Microsoft and endure for decades. The key for bitcoin will be can they have more utility then just digital gold. When I first started trading bitcoin it was essentially a cheap, decentralized, annonymous version of paypal. You could buy goods or exchange services with another person near instantly for next to nothing. Then the fee’s started to get very high and the network extremely slow rendering bitcoin to just being branded as digital gold as the money transfer solution was unusable. Now we are stating to see a speeding up of the network and if they can keep working on it then I think bitcoin is hear to stay. The key is to wait for a crash and scoop it up. Every few months you will see bitcoin drop 50% or more on all sorts of random news those are usually your spots.

Gene: What sort of regulations do you think we can expect to see in 2018? How will it impact the industry?

Definitely more regulations for exchanges and ICO’s. We have seen many scams take place and many innocent people lose money. The government’s job is to protect people so I see them looking over crypto exchanges closer and making sure scammy ICO’s aren’t taking place. Also, the government is going to get stricter with taxes when it comes to cryptocurrency profits. The regulation will be great for the industry. It will weed out a lot of companies and really bring to the forefront quality companies and technology with real utility. Light regulation can only be good for the market.

Gene: Who is your hero (In your business or personal life)? How have they inspired you to become the person you are today.

My mother is my hero. She is a true momma bear. She takes care of everyone in our family. Not just her kids but her little brothers and their kids. We have a very tight knit extended family which is all due to my mom coming here and then taking care of our whole family. She is the boss. My parents came to this country with barely a dollar in their pocket. My parents instilled a great work ethic in me. No matter how tough things were or good they kept pounding away day after day taking care of their family but also showing us how to have fun!

Gene: If you could jump into a time machine, go back in time, and change one aspect of your past, what would it be, and why?

Great question! Ive recently been thinking about this quite a lot. If I could change 1 thing it would have been to take college more seriously. It wasnt the schooling that I slacked on I didnt really take in the college experience in the way a lot of people do. I work with my 4 best friends from grade school at our companies. Ive always had them around so I think I didnt make enough effort to go out and make new friends. Try new things that people do in college from joining clubs to going to football games. I never really did any of it and didnt do a good job keeping in touch with the friends that I did make in college that I spent day in and day out with. I see this happen to me even now. When your trading its so easy to put off a phone call to an old friend. Miss one of your nephews baseball games. Its this endless pile of excuses you can always say your busy! Everyone is busy. Well busy is a choice and I think I used that excuse too much at times and it all started in college. I was trading in college and so focused on it, I left very little room for anything else. As an adult I am very cognizant that life is short, the years pass by quick and each day I have to take in those moments.

Gene: How will the work your team is doing impact humanity in the future? For example, bringing people closer together, creating more jobs, create killer robots that will destroy all of humanity (joking), etc.

What we do is even the playing field for regular people. We give them better training then the professionals. We give them that level of tools and then show them how as a retail trader we actually have the advantage against the big money traders and institutions. Beyond that we build communities where people can interact with each other and build real relationships and take their finances into their own hands. If you read any study on advisers or mutual funds what you will see is that after fees + taxes very few hired guns can beat the general markets in investing. The returns are minimal. We show how to supercharge that but to take your destiny into your own hands and that is a powerful thing!

Gene: Throughout our careers, we have all run into a few roadblocks. Can you please tell us about a time that you failed? How did you motivate yourself to keep going?

I have failed so many times in this business. A person once told me “You only have to get rich once” . Look I have tried dozens up dozens of ideas and products. Only a few worked! That is all you need is to find that 1 and then build it and make it the best. When I started up my company in 2008 it took us a couple years and we built our company very fast. I was soaking in more success then I or anyone who knew me would have imagined. But our culture at the company it was missing. There was something off in it and I knew it wasn't sustainable for long-term success and I had to part ways with one of my partners and release nearly every single customer we had that took those 2 years to build and start over. It was heart breaking I had my first taste of business success and it was gone in a heart beat. But that decision paved the way for what we have now. I was able to build with values and a model that every single one of our employees shares with me along with our students.

Gene: What are a your 5 tips that you would give to an inexperienced investor? Why?

1. Keep reasonable expectations. Everyone wants to take 500 dollars and turn it into a million. That type of thinking leads to emotional trading mistakes. Often a new trader will be faced wit solid profits and repeatedly give them back as they are searching for a home-run that will change their life. Greatness is a series of small things done day after day for YEARS!
2. Pick a specific style or method. Don’t be a generalist. In investing its better to be the master of something even if its 1 specific strategy vs being proficient in many things. Your competing against the smartest people in the world you must obtain master in something.
3. Study like its your JOB. Take the long view of things. Everyone wants to get rich quick. Doesn't work like that. This is a job no different then being a doctor, lawyer, engineer, anything! Think about how much schooling and work those guys go through. Why would this be any different?
4. Risk management is #1 priority. The protection of capital is the most important. If you lose 50% of your money on an investment and hold on to it. It needs to go up 100% for you to break even. Cut your losses quick. I very rarely am willing to lose even more then 10%. I know I can always come back from that type of loss and it wont ruin my day or week so I plan around that.
5. Trade Trends. Dont get into getting “picks” or “signals” from other people. Its all b.s. There is no such thing. Your responsible for your own trades. If you can at worst stick to just trading with the trend you will always be trading with the wind at your back . Traders in general want to bottom fish things because they are cheap or get too cute with their analysis. The most powerful thing in this business is trends.

Gene: If you could spend one day with any person (alive or not), who would it be any why?

It would be Harry Truman. I’ve always wondered what the thought processes are for people in stressful situations like times of war. What was he thinking or the real rational when he dropped the nukes. Did he feel guilty? Was he haunted by them or was he able to compartmentalize what he thought needed to be done. This could be said for Abraham Lincoln or many other leaders. Most people lose in trading because they cant handle stress. Yet there have been times in the history of the world where a person has the lives of millions in their hands. I’d love to see how they handled it or the processes they went through to make decisions. The thought of losing/making money makes people to make decisions that they know are counter productive yet there are groups of people who can block things out and those are the ones who consistently make money.