NextGen Investing: Young crypto trader feels the rush

Matthew Tweed is worlds apart from Wall Street traders. The 20-year-old finished high school just two years ago, never went to college and works out of his bedroom at the family home in Surrey, England. After learning how to build algorithms from a stranger on Reddit, he’s trying to get rich in digital currencies before more institutional players enter the industry in droves.

"I’ve very much enjoyed doing it independently — not having to work for half a decade as a young analyst at a bank in 100-hour weeks," Tweed says.

Tweed is small-time player in the industry, which sees hundreds of billions of dollars changing hands every day. His ambitions would be nigh impossible in highly regulated and liquid markets like stocks where deep-pocketed pros with their high-frequency tech ramp up the barriers for entry for the little guys. But crypto trading remains slow and decentralized while data and access are free, putting it within reach of Reddit-fueled amateurs.

Tweed, who incorporated his one-man band as Pine Financial, seeks to make money from the spread between the bid and ask quotes for bitcoin perpetual futures — a uniquely crypto speculative wager.

Thanks to a reliable slew of trading opportunities that help returns grow, Tweed says 100% annualized gains can be reasonably expected, declining to disclose precise figures.

Tweed says now is the time for early converts to go all-in, given the abundant opportunities. "You don’t know necessarily if cryptocurrency is going to be the same in a decade," he said. "So, you might as well use it while you got an advantage."