Crypto Spring Is Inevitable – Cointelegraph Magazine

In another reality, Bill Noble would be just another guy in a suit behind a big desk at the Fed or SEC, probably muttering negative incantations like “crypto is bad.”

He certainly has the track record for it: JP Morgan, UBS, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs. But it’s Noble in an evil mirror dimension. In our world, he’s a real crypto guy, talking to me in a bicycle t-shirt in the back of the room. He turned from the dark side and joined the rebels.

He is known for his popular YouTube podcasts and television appearances. Currently, he is a senior market analyst at Token Metrics.

Wall Street career

While studying economics (1987–1991) at Rutgers University in New Jersey, he managed to stumble upon one of only two coveted internships at the time at JP Morgan’s foreign exchange desk on Wall Street. Noble started when trading technology was primitive and many analyzes were done by hand on paper. In August 1990, he was put in charge of the desk while everyone went on vacation, “Because nothing happens in August, let the kid fill in.” Then Iraq invaded Kuwait, and all kinds of madness broke out in the markets.

“The price volatility seemed so extreme to me. I had no idea how anyone kept track of this. So I went to the technical analyst associated with the currency unit. I said, ‘I bet everyone comes to you looking for help to find out of this.'”

“He says, ‘Actually, no one does.’ So he gave me John Murphy’s map book [Charting Made Easy] and took me out for sushi. And I was off to the races from there using diagrams.”

During his years of progression through the conventional Wall Street environment, he became an expert technical analyst, which he combined with writing reports on various markets. During crashes and Black Swan events—like the 1998 implosion of Long Term Capital Management, which nearly destroyed the Western financial world—Noble was the favorite. “I’m like a fireman: When everyone runs out of the burning building, I run in,” he jokes.

From stocks and bonds to crypto analysis

In 2017, he became fascinated by crypto. He went to an Austin, Texas Bitcoin conference and started charting Ether by hand, which eventually became a giant scroll as the price went up and down. Then he met Bitcoin early adopter Charlie Schrem walking through an airport (who has had a crypto career of spectacular ups and downs, including jail time linked to the Silk Road marketplace implosion). They came together in crypto.IQ, a consulting service that aims to improve cryptocurrency analysis with stocks, bonds, interest rates and other mainstream data, something no one else was doing at the time.

In September 2019, Noble joined Token Metrics as a senior market analyst. Led by CEO Ian Balina, the subscription service provides retail traders with AI-powered insights, combined with the work of analysts who examine the volatile cryptocurrency markets to help make profitable trades, regardless of the general conditions.

He explains that it puts an “artificial intelligence system together with my mapping. You actually have a quantitative research product, an institutional quantitative research product that we can deliver to retail, which, you know, isn’t, doesn’t really exist. I mean, there are data- and service providers, but you know, we can give you tools that you can use yourself. Plus, we have top analysts who look at everything from chart macro to NFTs.”

As I recall, Sterling crashes are usually the start of contagion. $GBP has always been a canary in the coal mine. #DXY

— Bill Noble (@crypto_noble) 26 September 2022

Noble has 17,600 Twitter followers, a popular YouTube channel and is a sought-after guest analyst on crypto TV, with his Tony Soprano-esque, no-nonsense New Jersey accent.

He thrives on crypto’s volatility, “It’s 10% up or 10% down every day,” he says. “I don’t have to wait five years between crises. In fact, I only have to wait about 45 minutes.”

Noble emphasizes that you must be very flexible in cryptotechnical analysis and not bound to one methodology. Surprisingly, he looks to the distant past for his basic systems, “Gann works very well [William Gann, an influential early charting pioneer]. I find that the systems—Wyckoff is another—all that worked in the early 1900s when stocks were the wild west and there were 50 publicly traded auto companies [work well]. I also find Fibonacci useful; Tom DeMark’s work is excellent.”

Current state of the market

Taking somewhat of a contrarian position, he sees the current crypto winter as having a long-term benefit: clearing out the market and winding down terrible projects.

“The previous run-up was driven by massive liquidity pressure from central banks. So when central banks had to withdraw liquidity, you had the ‘2008 crash’ of crypto. Speculative assets that should never have gone up, to begin with, went back to zero.”

Noble predicts that for the crypto economy we may see the beginning of spring, a resumption of growth, after the crash, much like the many crises he managed in the conventional financial markets, such as 2008 or 1987. He points out that various gurus such as Warren Buffett wrote of the internet and Amazon after the 2002 crash. Buffett told CNBC in 2019 that he had been “a fool not to buy” Amazon stock earlier.

“Bear markets are good times to do your homework because Mr. Market is now sorting out who’s going to win — and who’s going to lose.” He is bullish on Ethereum as a Web3 backbone. “Web3 is the next internet, connected with Ethereum and Polkadot.”

Noble is also bullish on privacy coins, endorsing quotes from US National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden: “One day your wealth may be held against you.” Central banks’ push towards centralized digital currencies, which would mean all transactions would be monitored by Big Brother, would create momentum for privacy coins like Zcash. “Privacy coins are going to go from being for pirates to being for regular people.”

Psychology of trading

Psychology plays a big role in trading. Noble explains that many of the best traders use physical exercise early in the morning to prepare for the stress of trading.

“It’s really about emotional management,” he says. “They also set up a research framework and stick to it. You have to have a method or a style, and you have to study to get there.”

He explains that legendary trader Bill Williams (who invented a number of indicators including Fantastic oscillatorit Alligator indicator and Market Facilitation Index) had students write three pages of “stream of consciousness” writing before letting them trade, to clear their heads of emotional and intellectual blocks to trading. Noble encourages people to read Williams’ book, Trade chaos.

Noble advises that more emotional investors should take a long-term approach rather than the intense ups and downs of day trading. Hold a portfolio for a significant amount of time and make only a few trades per month or year. With yield farming, you will still get a return on your investment.

And of course, if you can keep at it, Noble says the long-term future is bright.

“During a tightening cycle, crypto is going to get hurt, like everything else, but when the tightening cycle comes to an end, crypto is the future of money.”