SteWie.

Ton explains how an early $3k loss on $LINK led to his first massive winner on $DIA: Jason: "How did you get your start as a trader?" Ton: "Actually at the end of 2018 and start of 2019, a friend of mine was in crypto and he was shilling me LINK. He told me to get into crypto because he knew that I have some money in my account that I don't use at all. So he tried to teach me, I bought LINK, and I lost like $3,000 on LINK." "At this point, many people would just give up and hate crypto, but I checked the other coins. LINK was going down, but other stuff was going up, so I thought, okay, there is an opportunity. There is no way I can earn this money back with my salary, so what can I do? I can learn more, research more, understand more, and then invest again with my knowledge to get my money back and maybe more." "My first investment after learning was the competitor of LINK, which was DIA, another oracle project. I bought DIA at $0.60 and I rode it all the way to $5." Jason: "Whoa! Let's go." Ton: "It's not good, because at that point I missed literally everything. Ethereum went, BNB was at like $1 and it went to like $300, so I missed every single other thing. I got a good profit, but I didn't know anything yet, so I just went all in with my crypto port into DIA and just watched all the other charts. I stuck to my thesis, and it did work out, but it could have been better."

Ton breaks down how a $20 buy on Floki turned into $200k: Ton: "I bought about $20 of a coin, I was in first-time buyers. It was a reflection coin, so every buyer was giving me supply actually. It was a tax coin, but the supply was going to other holders back then." "That $20 turned into, not $2,000, $200k dollars. I rode Floki from below $10k market cap till 3 billion." Jason: "Wait, what?" Ton: "Of course I sold so much on the way because I had no other money. Although I rode all the way to 3 billion, I sold so much it only became 200k. If I held all, it would be about 20 million actually." Jason: "$20 to $200k on Floki from 10k market cap to 3 billion! How much of your position did you have left at 3 billion?" Ton: "I don't remember, but at one point I sold everything to get my life back, and I just won a bit more. In total, I sold from $20 to 50k, and then I bought back that 50k around the same price and rode that to 200k at the end."

Ton reveals how emotional rage trading wiped out seven figures in three weeks before making an insane comeback: Ton: "After that Floki trade, I went to seven figures, and I was seven figures since 2021 until 2025." Jason: "Oh my God. What happened, if you don't mind me asking?" Ton: "Let's say a personal relationship. I'm quite an emotional person, and a personal relationship affected me a lot. After that, I just rage traded and lost seven figures in three weeks. It was an insane rodeo." "A lot of people in crypto trusted me because they know how good I am. I have a lot of six-figure and high six-figure PNLs from only three-figure or low four-figure buys. I'm a man of hundred-X-es, I catch those all the time. Right now I can't because I'm a bit more scared, my life depends on it." "A lot of people lent me money, and I was in six-figure debt after losing everything November last year. And last month in September, I turned $700 into $250k and paid all of my debt, almost more than half. Then I lost a bit more, now I'm earning a bit more, but at least I paid all my debt." Jason: "Bro!"

Ton reveals how spotting narratives early earned him respect, but his memory of past rugs often holds him back from taking winning trades: Ton: "I don't like to sound cocky at all, but I believe that I can always recover. I can recover even with $50 to six or seven figures." "After last year in November, I didn't have any reason to live, I'm living life in an automated way. I just live, I have no reason right now. But of course I didn't give up, I enjoy life, so because of that I just keep gambling." "If I don't gamble, I can just do a winning streak and I can just recover, but I keep sabotaging myself. Basically, I always trust that I can find the next runner because my specialty is seeing coins quite early and understanding their potentials quite early." "I'm actually a member of Pastel, which is a paid alpha group. I joined there as a person who paid, and after a couple of months they offered me to become staff because I was good at catching things early. So now I'm calling things in there. A lot of people in the group trust me a lot, they respect me a lot, because they know I see things early and understand narratives quite early." "Of course I'm wrong many times too, because I have quite a good memory and I remember everything, I remember every single rug. I know if a person or a dev rugged before, so I don't buy those coins. But people don't remember these, and those coins go up. So sometimes I FUD things that are going up too because I know their past, and yeah, that's also another bad thing."

Ton breaks down his edge for discovering early micro-cap runners using volume discovery and historical pattern memory: Jason: "Talk to me about this edge of yours. How do you identify the best of the best tokens at these low market caps? What specifically are you looking for that gets you involved?" Ton: "I don't trade on Axiom, I trade on fomo, but Axiom is always open on my screen because I always check the coins that are gaining volume, and Axiom has the best discovery for that." "I just check every single coin that's gaining volume in the last five minutes across all market caps, it can be a coin at $20 million or at $20k market cap." "I check what it is and try to understand it. For example, if there's a coin called 'Pods' on my screen, I look into what it's saying. If it says something like 'your coin, your holders, same market cap,' that will never work, but it can psyop people to go up. So I track these." "My greatest edge is unfortunately not something everyone can have, because it's my memory. I have a good memory, and I remember all the old coins and rugs. Not everyone has the same memory. Some people might have a better memory than me, but they don't spare as much time as me."

Prevaile says the single best habit for new traders is cutting losses fast instead of bag holding: Jason: "If a newer trader copies just one habit from you, what would you suggest they do?" Prevaile: "Cut your losses and compound your cash. Biggest thing. I know it sounds simple enough to say, but there's absolutely no reason you should be holding a coin, especially like a mid-cap or a low-cap, down more than 30 or 40%. I don't see the appeal in that. You could always buy lower, or you could cut and buy back on good news. There's no need to get caught with your pants down." Jason: "Is that a hard cut for you, like a 30% L?" Prevaile: "It really just depends on the size. If I've got a thousand bucks in a coin at $100k market cap, I'd lose 80% on it if I just looked away for too long. But if I'm sizing 5 or 6k into something, I don't want to dust money that could potentially be saved." Jason: "Any last actionable advice for new traders?" Prevaile: "There is absolutely zero rush to make it. There's plenty of time in the world, and time and consistency wins over everything. You don't need a big lucky play."

Ton explains how low-cap meme coins rapidly died after the market shifted: Ton: "Right now, the thing that surprises me the most is probably that everything went shit in a very fast way." "We were having nine-figure runners every single day, and then we just got to have like maybe 500k runners, 800k runners. Because I'm a meme coin trader, I mostly trade low-caps, so everything went to shit." "This actually happened after kind of Super Inu, like after Trump decided to change AI to SI." Jason: "That is kind of interesting. That is when it happened, isn't it?"

Ton and Jason discuss Stanley Druckenmiller’s historic first tweet endorsing Trade.xyz and what it means for perps: Jason: "It seemed like really fucking bullish news for perps, and maybe for crypto in general. I was curious if you happen to..." Ton: "Let me check who they just said?" Jason: "Stanley Druckenmiller. Like one of the most famous investors of our time. His first tweet ever in his life today about Trade.xyz." Ton: "I'm just checking right now." Jason: "It doesn't matter if you're not aware of it, it's not a big deal, I wanted to get your take on it." Ton: "I can tell you at least this: if a huge person who never had any social presence tweets about something as their first tweet or makes their first post on Instagram or LinkedIn, of course it's always bullish." "Unfortunately I don't know who Stanley Druckenmiller is, it's not in my scope, but you're saying he's a big name, so that's of course a big issue. He literally opened his account four years ago and this is his first ever tweet. It's kind of crazy to me." Jason: "It's kind of crazy. To me, this is the type of thing that is fundamentally really important, whether or not it actually marks the bottom for any assets."

Ton explains why XRP getting approval to open their own bank is massive bullish news being masked by macro FUD: Ton: "XRP just getting approval to open their own bank. I don't know if you see that news, like it happened two days ago." "XRP was trying to get that approval for like 10 years now or something, they were trying to open their bank." "They just got approval two or three days ago, which is also insanely bullish for crypto in my opinion. Maybe it didn't price in yet because every other stuff is going awful, like war and politics, midterms, blah blah blah. A lot of stuff going bad right now." Jason: "Right." Ton: "When we get to a more comfortable place in terms of politics and war, I think it's quite bullish news, especially when XRP is the project that had the most lawsuits when you think about it."

Prevaile explains why choosing not to buy malicious insider plays is counter trading in itself: Jason: "You said that one of the best skills a trader can have is knowing who to counter trade. I would love to hear some examples of this." Prevaile: "You gotta be in the know as far as trenching goes. You have to have a basket of names of the people that cause coins to move, and you have to understand that some of them are more malicious than others." "It's probably not gonna be the best trade to take, and you need to be aware of who's who. Counter trading them as in not buying what they're buying is still a trade." "If somebody's in something and I don't like the fact that they're in it, or they hold a certain amount, that's counter trading in itself even though you're not actually placing a trade. It's not always 'this person sold, I'm gonna buy'. Sometimes counter trading is just not taking the trade at all."

Prevaile says you don't need to catch pico bottoms to make money in crypto: Prevaile: "There's no problem with being a quarter of the way late to something. You do not have to catch pico bottom. I'm all for buying green." "The timeline discourse right now is pretty bearish, so you don't have to be the contrarian guy who's like, 'I'm bullish, I'm longing everything'. You can wait and you have plenty of time. There's no rush to make it." Jason: "Sitting on hands is an acquired skill." Prevaile: "Yeah, and I learned that the hard way. Back in May, I had a pretty nasty drawdown whenever Saylor first sold Bitcoin. I was like, 'Okay, it's gone down enough,' and I was firing into alts and everything and I got hit pretty hard." Jason: "Famous last words: 'It's gone down enough'. Can always go down 100% more, huh?" Prevaile: "Yep." Jason: "Are you getting any ideas from what other traders on fomo are trading, from group chats, or anywhere else?" Prevaile: "Most definitely Telegram. I'm in a few pretty solid groups with guys that are a lot smarter than me and also guys that have been around for a lot longer than me."

Prevaile explains why simple left curve trades work best when reacting to market FUD: Prevaile: "I just really like the left curve trades. As dumb as it sounds to be like super, super left curve, but like, okay, Bitcoin's potentially getting hacked by quantum, and that's the FUD everybody's spreading. I'm gonna buy the quantum coin." "Like, there's not much of a thought process there, it's simple. And you just buy it. I think that's kind of what I like, simple stuff. You don't gotta overcomplicate it, you know."

Prevaile explains why he stays heavy in cash instead of guessing what catalyst resets the market: Jason: "Do you have any sense of what's gonna be the thing that's gonna knock the market back into shape?" Prevaile: "To be honest with you, I have no idea, and that's why I'm so cash-heavy right now." Jason: "Do you feel like you'll know it when you see it?" Prevaile: "Yeah, that's what I'm saying, I'll know it when I see it. And I'm not in the game to try and be early and guess either, cause I don't want to risk any money that doesn't need to be risked. Like I said, I'm fine with being a quarter of the way late." "I'll know it when I see it, and I also have friends that are smarter than me that'll know before I know it, and they'll tell me, thankfully."

Prevaile explains why privacy coins will thrive under Democratic governance and how retail relies on AI recommendations: Jason: "In your expectations, privacy continues to be a main theme?" Prevaile: "Yes, most definitely. Especially if we get Dems winning. Have you ever seen the joke about Zcash being AOC Zcash? That was a bit on Twitter for a bit, but the privacy narrative is something that can only grow underneath Democratic governance." "Another thing too is if you ask an LLM about that, that's exactly what they'll tell you to buy. They'll be like, 'Yeah, you're going to want to load up on privacy coins.'" Jason: "How often are you using LLMs to make trading decisions, and what types of questions are you asking them?" Prevaile: "I don't ever. But I'm assuming the majority of investors are. So it's kind of like, okay, what are these guys thinking? What are these guys being fed, what are these guys being told?"

Prevaile explains why rigid position sizing limits upside on clear market winners: Prevaile: "I definitely do not agree with the 10% rule, because if there is a specific opportunity, what if we did get a Trump or another Aster where it's a clear winner?" "You'd be pretty mad at yourself if you only allowed yourself to allocate 10% of your cash to that asset, considering it's gonna be the best performing thing in the next however long it lasts. Afterwards you'd be pretty pissed that you didn't allocate more." Jason: "What's your risk tolerance? How are you thinking about it?" Prevaile: "It varies. Depends on the market cap of the coin. My risk tolerance goes up the higher the coin is. I have no issue longing $400,000 of Bitcoin, but I do have an issue with buying $20k of a $2 million market cap Solana coin." "It varies from market to market, but if I have a good idea and I have conviction behind it, I'm fine with sizing something for sure."

Prevaile breaks down how he survived a market flash crash while holding a leveraged $PUMP perp position: Jason: "Recently you wrote about shitting your pants a wee bit in a position." "What do you do in the moment that a position causes you to feel that way? When a position induces panic, what's your protocol?" Prevaile: "It depends on that position in particular. That was my Pump long a few weeks back, and it was a nasty flash across the market. I was at dinner with my girlfriend, which was the worst part too. I'm eating, I have price alerts on TradingView, and they all just get crushed." "My upwards PNL on that at the time was like $50k, and I watched it nuke all the way down. I was only up like $15k after this flash crash." Jason: "Were you spot or perps?" Prevaile: "Perps. Still plenty above my entry, but at the time I was like, this looks god awful now." Jason: "How levered were you?" Prevaile: "It's gonna say 10x, but I added a shit ton of margin, so effectively it was probably 2x leverage. I'm pretty sure like $65k on 2x leverage on a 30 million pump. There was no chance I was getting liquidated, but it was more so just like, oh my gosh, this asset looks god awful now." "I think I added a bit actually on the dump. I fired off another buy because my thinking was usually on these flashes there's a pretty mechanical V-bounce upwards. So I was like, alright, I'm gonna add on this here, and then I'll take the little bit I added off on whatever kind of recovery we get in case it's just gonna keep trending downwards. I executed that, and then it just kept going up." Jason: "Sick, so you came out unscathed?" Prevaile: "Yeah, unscathed, but I did round-trip quite a bit. I think I was up like $70k on the position at the top, and I only took like $33k profit."

Prevaile explains why he derisks into spot when he cannot stomach market volatility: Jason: "I do this more than I like to admit, where I'll be in an oversized position with too much exposure, I cut it, and then for whatever reason I add back some." Prevaile: "For me it was, okay, the market is extremely volatile, I can't stomach the swings anymore, and I cannot look at TradingView any longer. I'm gonna cut size in half and buy spot. If it goes up without me I'll be slightly mad, but not nearly as pissed as I'd be if I wasn't in the trade at all." "I was actually on that same Pump trade that I round-tripped quite a bit on, and it ended up just going down from where I bought the spot at, so I actually ended up cutting that as well. It's more of a coping mechanism. If it does go higher, I know that I'll force my way back into a trade, and that's probably not a good idea. So it's kind of like a risk management deal." Jason: "Do you feel like moments like that are the big things we as traders should be paying close attention to, making micro adjustments and writing journal entries? Because you were long, you cut the position, why did you immediately take another long? Theoretically it makes no fucking sense to do that." Prevaile: "No, none at all."

Prevaile explains why abandoning daily PNL targets and logging off during dead market hours protects traders from forcing bad plays: Jason: "Walk us through a normal trading day for you. Do you have PNL goals every day, or what does a trading day look like?" Prevaile: "Definitely no PNL goals. The very first thing I do in the morning is check majors like Bitcoin and ETH, then I'll do a dive through Telegram and Discord to see what went on overnight, who made money, and what narratives picked up." "Throughout the day, it's not like I'm on from noon till 10. If there's volume and good stuff happening, I'll stay on. But if there's absolutely nothing going on, I'm probably better off logging off, and I'm good about doing that as well. No PNL goal, more so just play what I'm dealt."

Prevaile explains why watching traders cope and force low tier betas is an immediate signal to unfollow: Prevaile: "I have had to unfollow guys before that I'm like, 'Yeah, these guys are goated,' and then a few weeks later I see maybe just too much spam or ideas that I don't agree with. I definitely try to curate as good as possible." Jason: "How do you decide, 'This guy I'm not going to follow anymore' versus, 'I gotta start following this guy'?" Prevaile: "I'll give you a recent example. There was a token called Agency, and this guy hit it very well, sized it, had a great thesis, and wrote it up. But he never sold, wrote it all the way down, and was hitting a lot of theses on the way down as to why it should go back up." "Afterwards, there was an influx of really low tier pieces that he was forcing into and low tier betas. He had some motion from the Agency trade as well, so he was pumping these things. I was like, 'This feels like a little bit of cope to me here'." Jason: "That's a good example of a legitimate reason to unfollow somebody."

Prevaile explains how counter trading peak capitulation on $FWA got him out of the hole: Jason: "What was the first trade that kind of kicked off the run?" Prevaile: "The first trade that got me out of the hole was FWA. I bought the absolute bottom of that. It had a really nasty drawdown from like 40 to 5 million, and I was tracking one of the bigger wallets and bigger raiders for it on Twitter. He capitulated this nasty 4 million dollar bottom wick where you can see where I bought." "That was the majority of my account too. I was just like, this is peak capitulation here, do or die. If it loses this level it is cooked, but then the dev Adam started cooking up some good stuff." Jason: "This is such a crazy trade. This thing was trading at 40 mil, pulled back 90%, and you bought the pico bottom at 6 million." Prevaile: "That goes into what I was saying about counter trading. One of the largest holders and biggest raiders just fully exited in one clip and left the nastiest wick I have ever seen in the chart. That is probably a good scoop, and if it does not look good in the next 12 hours I am out. It ended up looking pretty good, so I stayed in."