Author: thiccy, Co-founder of Scimitar Capital

Translation: Felix, PANews (This article has been edited)

Jordi is a true master of games. He participated in chess and bridge competitions in his youth, often winning medals, and in 2024, he won a World Series of Poker bracelet. Additionally, Jordi is the founder of Selini Capital, a cryptocurrency trading firm focused on market making, proprietary long-short trading, and venture capital. Over the past 13 years, he has achieved an astonishing 100% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), effectively doubling his net worth each year. Below are highlights from an interview on Twitter Spaces.

When did you start taking poker seriously?

I started taking poker seriously in 2003 when I was still in college. It was the peak time for Moneymaker (a legendary poker player in the U.S.). He had just won the World Series and was all the rage. Poker was one of those areas where a group of smart young people could make a lot of money, like a hotbed of cash. Now it’s cryptocurrency.

How much did you make playing poker in college?

I would say enough to pay for tuition and live a comfortable student life. Maybe around $50,000 a year. It doesn’t sound like much now, but at the time, it was a significant amount. I majored in economics, which isn’t a hard science like computer science or pure mathematics. Economics is a bit looser, but I did take a lot of specialized courses in game theory and wrote a thesis on it. I also studied psychology. I never wanted to be a pure mathematician. I enjoy the social aspects of life. So, I chose a double major in psychology and economics.

After graduation, I didn’t plan to play professional poker. It was just a part-time gig while I was in school. So, I moved to New York in 2007. I got a job at a big bank doing some very boring work, mainly paperwork and some asset management. I did that for about nine months, and then the financial crisis hit in 2008. I would sometimes play poker on weekends. At that time, I decided that instead of waiting for the financial crisis to resolve, I would take matters into my own hands. I was more inclined to become a professional poker player.

What was your biggest realization about yourself during that time?

On one hand, I built confidence, believing that I could compete with the best players. I wasn’t defeated when playing against Scott Seiver and the top players at the time. But on the other hand, I saw that I lacked emotional resilience. I’m not someone who easily loses control of my emotions, but I needed to learn how to cope with fluctuations and stay calm. You can imagine that if your life depends on your wins, and your first month is a terrible one, and you have no savings, the pressure is immense. You start facing your darkest fears.

I’ve noticed that many excellent traders played poker before trading cryptocurrencies. They can detach from emotional turmoil in poker. I’ve seen some people who had an advantage but became emotional over a small mistake, escalating it into a larger error. Before they realized it, they had lost 50% of their funds due to emotional trading.

When did you first get into cryptocurrency?

I started getting familiar with crypto technology because my company was in the Bay Area, which is a very unusual place. In 2016, it was the only place in the world where you could casually chat in a coffee shop and hear people talking about cryptocurrency. I think Bitcoin was around $1,000 at that time, and I remember thinking it was expensive, so I bought some Ethereum because it seemed cheap, and then I made my first cryptocurrency trade. I realized Litecoin was going to skyrocket because it was only a few dollars. I don’t remember what it was, but I recognized the normalcy bias. So, I bought a bunch of tokens like Litecoin and eventually sold them for $250 when it went crazy.

What were your thoughts when you first encountered cryptocurrency?

In 2013, I heard news about Bitcoin and thought the chance of it becoming a base currency was very slim; it seemed very far-fetched. So, I didn’t buy in 2013; at that time, I didn’t see Bitcoin as a store of value.

Your “jack-of-all-trades” trading style reflects your personality.

My strength lies in my strong curiosity; I don’t get bored easily. I can sit in front of the computer forever, and there are too many things to capture my attention. I have to force myself to exercise and get things done. Immersing myself in things and finding the nuances that others find boring, I find it very interesting.

Since 2022, the rhetoric around cryptocurrency as a casino has intensified. How do you integrate that into your long-term vision for cryptocurrency?

Given my background, I’ve spent most of my life in real casinos. It has shaped me; I was born into it. Personally, I’m very satisfied with it. I do believe that in the future, as the U.S. government holds Bitcoin, the importance of institutionalization will grow. That’s perfectly fine. But I don’t mind being in the thick of it.

How do you see the development of the crypto market in the coming years?

The market needs new Ponzi schemes. For example, this round hasn’t seen an NFT cycle. Some players have tried, but they haven’t succeeded. Then they tried meme coins because there were some stories about how they could be more liquid. So maybe that could work. But it might not be effective now.

Some things will change; it won’t be the same as before; it’s always evolving. I think we will continue to see more gaming cycles, but the situation will be different. Maybe at some point, we won’t have new Ponzi schemes, but people are very creative in this regard. I expect AI to play an important role in the future of cryptocurrency. I have always publicly expressed a very optimistic view of the integration of cryptocurrency and AI. I think that’s the trend of the future.

Many traders say AI will take over their jobs in a few years. Do you think that applies to your current work?

No, I think the tsunami of AI will eventually sweep everyone away, engulfing the whole world. I do feel like I’m at the peak of rising water levels, but it will take some time before the water level reaches me. The data I use isn’t the kind that is easy to train and replicate, especially now; it’s more like a combination that can generate alpha in the brain. Alpha doesn’t necessarily mean trading; it means running a business and adding value. I feel that my approach and knowledge are specialized and cannot be generalized for training. So, I personally am not worried.

What was the worst trade you ever made?

The worst trade was shorting altcoins around the end of 2020. At that time, altcoins had already risen tenfold. Then you think it’s just a pile of crap, like Cardano or Dogecoin, some of which I shorted. In Tradfi, at least some people care about fair value. People try to trade around that fair value. But for these altcoins, I think I had to learn through painful experiences that there is no fair value, just pure greed, and the level of greed far exceeded my imagination. I really came in with the expectation that if a token went up threefold, players would exit, and then there would be some sell-off. But the players here are more greedy. I shorted Dogecoin a few times, from one and a half cents down to one cent or half a cent. Then one day, Musk announced he would adopt Dogecoin. When it skyrocketed to ten cents, I suffered significant losses. I also made several similar mistakes with Cardano.

This has been a weakness for me, and now I’ve turned it into something manageable and actually profitable. But I would say shorting altcoins has been a major flaw of mine over the years, but now it’s one of my most profitable trades. You really have to understand the game you’re playing when shorting altcoins.

What would you advise others to improve their trading skills?

It’s all about inner psychology. Many things are like this, but it’s even more so for traders. If your judgment is clouded by arrogance, then you will find it increasingly difficult. Almost everyone is like this. Many people tie their identity and entire self to certain aspects. To become a world-class expert in something, you have to let your judgment be unaffected. This often means letting go of the ego. I think it takes some people years to achieve this. For some, it’s easy.

How do you think your perspective on trading differs?

For me, risk and reward are how I construct trades. Others have different ways; they just keep digging for alpha. I always have a probability distribution in my mind. We talked about this a few days ago; most of the time, you don’t have a position. You just go to sleep, wanting to wake up refreshed to make some trades, and then go back to sleep after the trades are done. I have this rolling position distribution. Many assets don’t need to have any fair value. Fair value basically means where the risk and reward balance within the timeframe I’m trading. That’s the position of not holding a position because if the risk and reward are balanced, there’s no edge. I have a risk-reward balance point for all these different assets. When it starts to deviate from the balance point, I start to add to my position, continuously adding until I reach my maximum position, and my maximum position depends on not losing a large percentage of my assets if a catastrophic error occurs. So, I calculate my scale this way. Then I adjust around this risk-reward.

Of course, the difficult part is determining the balance point of risk and reward. There are several ways to do this. At the end of the day, you have to summarize five to ten things. You have to consider the cost basis of short-term and medium-term buyers. I used to be very good at doing this. When I was doing high-frequency trading, I would sit at my desk all day with nothing else to do but stare at charts. I became very good at day trading. In a short time, I could look at the risk-reward for the next few minutes or hours and trade around it.

Additionally, my career has been a bit strange; I try to limit my net worth growth each year. I try to cap it at… a maximum of three times.

So how do you handle the remaining money? Do you donate it or…?

I spend time training myself. Imagine you’re a poker player who made $100,000 in a year. Then the next year, you make $2.5 million, and you spend the rest of that year not playing but entering a learning mode, laying the groundwork for your next advancement. Focusing all your time and energy on that instead of making more money that year. I’ve been doing this since I started my trading career, and I’ve been doing it for 13 years. My goal is to earn twice as much each year. I’ve stuck to that goal. So, it’s been double for 13 years.

Related reading: The 2024 "Cultivation Manual" for Senior Traders: How to Capture Opportunities from Volatility and Preserve Profits

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