I have decided to resume Core Number Compounding, a system created by a YouTuber known as The Oracle. I've mentioned CNC in the past. To quickly recap, you choose a core number ($100, $500, $3000?) with which you are comfortable trading. You set limit orders at 5% up and down from your last executed order. When executed, the order will always bring your position back to your core number. This ensures you're always buying low and selling high. In a fast moving market, you can math in your brain when you've gained or lost 5% to manually put in an order. In a slow market, you can just walk away and let the limit orders do their job.
Core Number Compounding is a great way to harvest volatility in a market. It's great during market consolidations and amazing during uptrends. During market downtrends, you are better off just putting things on pause.
I have decided to do CNC with the CRO token. During the worst of the market, CRO lingered around $0.08. During the last bull market, CRO had an all time high of around $0.97 back in November 24, 2021. CRO was trading above $0.20 earlier this year. Now it is in the $0.12 range. If CRO were to go back down to $0.08, I'd be OK with it as it's a strong support. It would set me up for nothing but gains should there be an upswing.
However, I have some doubt it would stay at $0.08 very long as the long-term trend for CRO is that it has had higher lows over time. So, there would be some gain in the long run, even if it's glacial.
Crypto.com Exchange
I have been tinkering with the Crypto.com Exchange, which is separate from the main Crypto.com app. I had not realized that the CDC Exchange rewards you for having CRO on the platform. Not being a crypto degenerate, I never really compared exchanges. I've mostly stuck with Coinbase, which gives you perks if you subscribe to Coinbase One, which is more than $200 per year. Whereas the CDC Exchange gives you perks depending on how much CRO you hold on the exchange, such as discounts on trading fees.
There is one feature that is going to be useful, Zero Maker Fee Trading. As far as I can tell, only CRO has that feature. When I activated it, I wasn't paying attention and did not realize what I was doing. So, I have to wait until it expires before I can change it. But I likely won't.
While zero maker fee trading on CRO is a bit self-serving, there is incentive in using their own utility token to trade. The first benefit is that CRO has high liquidity on the exchange, which means the spread is extremely tight. It also helps towards the goal of accumulating CRO. Once you hit certain milestones of CRO, maker and taker fees on other trades go down. The first useful milestone to me, in this regard, is the 10,000 CRO milestone. This comes with 8% off of maker/taker fees and 2% p.a. earnings on my CRO.
The next major milestone is 50,000 CRO, which zeroes out maker fees on all trades, and discounts 12% on taker fees. More importantly, the lockup rewards go up to 4% p.a., which is paid daily. Ensuing tiers raise the daily lockup rewards to 6%, 8.5%, 9%, and 9.5%. Of course, those amounts are for hundreds of thousands and millions of CRO. A bit rich for my humble holdings at this time. But it's something to aspire to.
You also get rewarded for 30D Total Spot Volume. The more you trade, the lower fees get, including zero maker fees.
All of this relies on accumulating a large position of CRO. But the way I figure it, trading is trading. If I can accumulate CRO to significant levels, then I'd benefit from larger wins and from CRO income from staking.
To avoid confusing things, the CDC Exchange lets you create sub-accounts to keep your trading bags separate from other bags. I have created the sub-account to avoid mingling my long term hold from the CRO for trading.
Something else I wasn't expecting was that the main Crypto.com app will aggregate your Exchange balance with your app balance so that you have a single view of your entire holdings.
Other Trading Pairs
Historically, The Oracle has used BTC and ETH for core number compounding, particularly because of the high liquidity and face-melting swings. But lately both have not had the crazy runs of yesteryear. Other highly volatile coins I have considered are SOL and SUI. But, CRO tends to have outsized responses to BTC swings. When BTC goes up, CRO goes up more. When BTC goes down, CRO goes down more. Except that once there is consolidation, CRO tends to deflate.
Litecoin is also a good option as it tends to trade within a range. Since CNC relies on up and down price movement, LTC certainly offers that quite reliably.
Trading Bots
From poking around the CDC Exchange, I have also looked into their trading bots. One that intrigues me is their Grid Bot as it does something similar to CNC. The main difference is that Grid Bots buy and sell in allotments, whereas CNC only buys and sells the difference from your core number. Yet a Grid Bot is one of those tools that you can set and walk away with periodic check-ins. There's no need to watch your holdings or keep checking if your orders were filled.
I never set out to be a trader. But it seems like the most viable option for me to generate some income to supplement my meager earnings without getting a second job. I've always been hesitant to become a trader as I've known people who have blown out their portfolios. But thinking back, they were playing with margin. I got burned with margin on some loans using my crypto as collateral. Lesson learned. I think that so long as I trade with what I have, I should be fine.