Solaris

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Bitcoin

when

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Today, our guest is Ilnur Mukhtov, a trader, investor, and entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in the financial markets. Ilnur began his journey during the 2008 financial crisis and has lived through multiple market cycles — both in traditional equity markets and in crypto. Through firsthand experience, he has seen how psychology, strategies, and even the very logic of making money change across different market phases.
In addition to trading and investing, Ilnur is actively involved in business. In recent years, he has been living in Argentina, where he has launched and is developing several projects. In this interview, we’ll talk not only about the market itself, but also about trading psychology, mistakes from past cycles, the current state of the crypto market, and how to maintain clarity of mind and quality of life amid high volatility and uncertainty.
 – Ilnur, welcome! As we know, you’ve been trading and investing for over 15 years and started your journey during the 2008 crisis. How did you first get into investing, and how did working through such a turbulent period shape your strategy?
I started trading in 2008, right at the peak of the financial crisis. By education, I’m a financial manager — I studied at the Kazan Financial and Economic Institute. Even back then, as I analyzed different careers in finance, I realized that many of them have a clear income limit. That’s what drew me to the securities market.
In 2006, I moved to Moscow, where I combined full-time work with studying at Plekhanov Russian University of Economics, completing a master’s degree with a specialization in securities markets. At the end of 2007 and the beginning of 2008, I opened my first brokerage account — and at that moment, the market was falling every single day. For me, that turned out to be a plus.
Unlike those who traded during the “golden years” of growth, I entered the market straight into a crisis and immediately understood that you can make money not only when prices rise, but also when they fall.
Toward the end of 2008, I decided that the market had probably found a bottom, went long — and experienced my first liquidation. A loss of 500–600 thousand rubles became a serious lesson and quickly showed me that the market has nothing to do with overconfidence. For a 21–22-year-old, that was a very large amount of money.
The market made it clear to me that I wasn’t as great a trader as I might have thought. It took me a long time to recover psychologically, but I eventually came back. I entered this field with a clear intention: yes, I learned through my own mistakes, but my academic background gave me a solid foundation at the start — and beyond that, everything depends on you.
 – You often emphasize the importance of psychology in trading — especially during the toughest periods, when most traders can’t handle the pressure and fall into panic or chaotic behavior. How did you personally build a psychological state where market chaos and panic become an opportunity rather than a threat?
I’d even go further and say that a lot of success comes precisely from the ability to act calmly and not panic during crisis periods. I’ve always said — and will keep saying — that 70–80% of trading is psychology and mindset, and only 20–30% is knowledge, experience, charts, technical analysis, and everything else. You can know all the tools and be perfect at technical analysis, but without the right psychology it gives you absolutely nothing.
You can buy a coin or a stock at the right time, at the right price, do everything correctly — but if you’re psychologically unstable, you’ll either sell the position at the first pullback or start doubting and rushing. And this works both in losses and in profits. When you’re in profit, that pressure is still there — as we say, “the money starts burning in your pocket.” You don’t know what to do: take profits, lock them in, or keep holding. You start rushing, and that’s exactly when mistakes happen.
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 So even if you have the knowledge, but you can’t manage yourself, sooner or later it will still lead to wiping out your deposit.
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 – You spent a long time investing in the stock market before moving into crypto. Was that your own decision, or did someone push you in that direction?
For me, as a speculator — and any trader is a speculator — it doesn’t really matter which asset you trade. What matters is volatility and movement, because you can make money both on the way up and on the way down.
Out of all the assets at the time, Bitcoin caught my attention the most. But I didn’t have enough knowledge back then, so I didn’t dive into it right away. In 2015, a friend asked me, “Ilnur, what do you think about Bitcoin?” I said, “It’s a bubble, some kind of nonsense.” I was just as skeptical as 99.9% of people were in the early years.
But by the end of 2016 and the beginning of 2017, I started hearing about Bitcoin and the crypto market more and more often. I realized that Bitcoin wasn’t the only asset — there were many different coins. I saw how volatile they were, how they moved up and down, and something clicked. I wanted to understand this market.
I asked friends and acquaintances whether anyone actually understood what Bitcoin and blockchain were. Today, crypto is full of information, courses, and videos — but back then, there was absolutely nothing.
At that time, I had an offline business — a hookah lounge in the city center. I came across an ad on Avito for mining equipment and thought: if someone knows how to set up mining, they probably understand Bitcoin and blockchain as well. I called him and invited him to my hookah lounge just to explain the basics to me.
He gave me three links to forums and said, “All the geeks and crypto people hang out here.” I started reading for five to six hours a day. Most of the information was garbage, but those 2–5% were truly valuable. After a month, I had a clear understanding that I needed to get into mining.
 – How did your journey in crypto develop from there?
I remember that in April 2017 the mining boom started. We somehow managed to find GPUs in Poland — that was the hardest part. We bought them and then essentially smuggled them into Moscow, negotiating with long-haul truck drivers. In the end, we brought 21 or 22 GTX 1080 Ti graphics cards to Kazan and built a mining farm with them.
I also decided to ride the Bitcoin hype and made my hookah lounge the first food-and-beverage venue to accept Bitcoin. Honestly, it wasn’t about payments — it was about hype. I personally photographed the storefront with a Bitcoin sticker, posted it in public groups — and things took off. A blogger from Moscow posted a photo, and after that I started giving interviews and improving my public speaking skills, constantly explaining what crypto was.
In reality, there were only about 18 payments totaling roughly 20–25 thousand rubles, but money was never the goal. When the hype faded and the bear market started in 2018, we simply shut this story down.
 – Based on your experience, how does trading and strategy differ between the stock market and the crypto market? Where do you think the most adaptation is required?
I had to completely relearn everything. I came into crypto as a total “hamster” — a complete beginner. My stock market knowledge didn’t help me at all back then. With the market capitalization at around $20 billion, any coin could be pumped or completely crushed. It was an extremely manipulative environment: there were no institutional players, only the same “wild” participants like myself.
Exchanges were constantly getting scammed — they would launch, run marketing campaigns, onboard users, and then shut down, taking all the funds with them. People mostly lost money when these exchanges closed.
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 If I had to compare: the stock market is like driving a Solaris or a Camry at 40–60 km/h, calmly in the right lane. Crypto is like a highway where you’re drunk, blindfolded, driving a Ferrari at 300 km/h. That’s roughly how it felt to me.
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– When did you make life change sum in crypto? Which case was truly a turning point for you?
There was a life-changing moment, but not in 2017. Back then I was the same “hamster” as everyone else — rose-colored glasses, belief in blockchain, and the feeling that this was just the beginning. At that time, we didn’t understand market cycles or the fact that bear markets even exist.
At the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018, I watched my portfolio grow every single day: plus 50, 100, 200, 300 thousand rubles in a day. It felt like it would last forever. I didn’t lock in a single dollar of profit. Then the correction started, and I learned another hard lesson: markets don’t only go up — there are also bear cycles. In the end, that entire story completely wiped out.
The real life-change happened in 2021. By that time, I already understood how the market works and had been gradually building my portfolio. In 2021 it grew significantly, and that’s when I made my first million dollars. The most important part is that I locked in profits three days before the flash crash. I was running my portfolio publicly: some people followed me and made money, while others repeated the same mistake I had made in 2017.
 – What did you buy with that first major crypto profit?
The first thing I did was buy an expensive car — a Mercedes-Benz. It was important for me to lock in the result and realize that I had actually taken money out of the crypto market.
I always say: you should definitely buy something with the money you earn — for yourself or for your loved ones. It’s an anchor and a reminder that even if things are difficult right now, you’ve already succeeded once. That’s why my life-changing moment happened specifically in 2021.
 – How would you describe the current phase of the crypto market over the past two years: is this a full bull market, or growth limited mainly to Bitcoin?
If we look at it formally, this has been more of a bull market for Bitcoin. Prices at $100–120K are undeniably bullish. But the picture for altcoins is very different. Since 2021, most of them have been falling, with only occasional bounces, and many coins have set new lows.
Projects with a history going back to 2021 are now trading much cheaper than they were one, two, or three years ago. New tokens often launch with inflated valuations and quickly deflate. Everyone is waiting for an altseason like in 2017 or 2021, but this long period of averaging down and continued declines is extremely exhausting.
If in 2017 almost everything was going up, and in 2021 you already had to understand narratives, then over the past few years — aside from memes and a handful of individual coins — the market has essentially shown no real growth.
 – So you believe that each new bull cycle becomes harder?
Yes. Altcoins have already deflated — it was mostly a narrative. Usually, where the crowd goes, there is no profit. Profit is where the crowd isn’t.
I was always skeptical about memecoins — they seemed like empty assets with no real value. But it turned out to be the opposite: technology-focused projects collapsed under their own weight, while memecoins, where there were few participants and a lot of degens, took off.
There were several strong inflows into the meme sector, which quickly pushed prices up, and once that narrative ended, they deflated just as fast. The key thing to understand is this: in coins where a lot of retail investors and funds are stuck, it’s very hard for the market to move higher — any upward movement immediately runs into selling pressure.
 – Do you link this to the arrival of institutional players? That because of them it’s become harder for retail to make money, and that we’re now in some kind of transition period?
There are several reasons. First, retail investors saw the market grow in 2017 and 2021 and got used to four-year cycles: Bitcoin goes first, then altcoins. People started projecting past patterns onto the current market. But the market works very simply: I make money when someone else loses it. I buy at the lows, sell into euphoria, and the “hamster” buys at the highs. We decided that this would always work the same way — and that’s exactly what backfired.
People have become smarter, market awareness has increased — and making money has become harder. There are fewer fools in the market now, and profits come from inefficiencies. A “hamster” is someone who sees a green candle and buys at the top. A trader’s job is to be in the minority: buy in fear and sell in euphoria. That’s how institutions and large players operate. But in the end, almost everyone decided they were smart — and as a result, almost everyone became a hamster.
– What advice would you give to someone entering the market now, in these “Wild West” conditions of high volatility and flash crashes, but without a large capital base?
First, this is not financial advice. Right now I see that most people are locking in large losses and are simply exhausted by the market — and I completely understand them.
Against this backdrop, a friend recently wrote to me and asked: “If everyone is exiting, maybe it’s time to enter?” The logic is correct, but I can’t tell you how much money to deploy. The only thing I would recommend is to split your portfolio into two or three parts. Enter in stages at current prices and add more if the market goes lower. For example, if Bitcoin drops below $80,000, altcoins could get completely crushed.
I would allocate around 30–50% to Ethereum, and spread the rest across different coins in small portions.
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 This is about diversification: some coins will go to zero — that’s normal — but others may deliver multiples and cover those losses.
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– So diversification matters even for a small portfolio?
One hundred percent. No one knows which coin will take off or what kind of manipulation is being prepared. That’s why diversification is crucial. I personally buy many coins in small allocations. It’s better to put 1% of your portfolio into a coin: if it rugs, it’s not a problem; if it flies, you’re already in. This helps avoid FOMO.
Again, it all comes down to psychology. People can’t handle dumps not because of the market, but because they invested more money than they were prepared to lose. Losing 50% from $100 isn’t stressful; losing a large amount triggers panic. You need to find a “comfortable” amount — money you genuinely don’t care about. Then drawdowns feel manageable: it drops, you can add more.
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 Technical analysis is secondary. The most important thing in crypto is inner calm.
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– To sum it up: what is the most important piece of advice you would give to everyone — both newcomers and those already in the market?
My main advice is to try to be happy, regardless of the market!
What matters most is your loved ones, your family, and your health — including mental health. Traders often, especially when things start working out, dive headfirst into the market and neglect everything else. That’s bad both in profit and in loss.
We only live once. To distance myself psychologically from the market, I launched offline businesses and shifted my focus there. When the bull market starts, I’ll shift my attention back to crypto.
There’s no point in staring at charts 24/7 — you can’t influence the market anyway. You have a plan, and that’s enough. Crypto isn’t the only thing in life. Don’t waste years on constant stress.
 – Thank you so much for this conversation — it was really interesting and genuinely useful, especially in such a difficult market!
Likewise. Guys, it’s better to buy a Christmas tree than Starknet. Much love to everyone. Bye!

From the 2008 Crisis to Crypto: Ilnur Mukhtov on Trading Psychology, Cycles, and Surviving Volatility

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Other articles published on Jan 5, 2026

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