After a decade of experience in cryptocurrency trading, I entered the market with $50,000—and today, I'm able to support my family solely through crypto. Over the years, I’ve experimented with nearly 80% of the strategies and techniques out there. If you're considering crypto trading as a second career to provide for your family, I can help you avoid five years' worth of costly trial and error.

How do you determine if a cryptocurrency has truly broken out?

You can evaluate this from four key dimensions: volume, price, time, and space:

1. Volume: Just like a military operation needs supplies before deployment, a genuine trend requires a noticeable increase in volume at its early stage—especially the first volume spike after a long period of sideways movement. However, this is rarely the best entry point. The second volume surge—after an adjustment phase and market "shakeout"—is usually when real opportunities arise.

2. Price: The closing price matters most. Regardless of intraday fluctuations, if the closing price consistently holds above a resistance level, it signals that institutional players are committed. This is a crucial indicator that separates a genuine breakout from a false one.

3. Time: True breakouts are typically preceded by a prolonged period of low activity—at least three months of sideways movement with declining volume and concentrated chips (below 10%). This gives large players time to accumulate positions, setting the stage for an explosive move.

4. Space: Identifying resistance zones is key. These could be previous high-volume adjustment points, necklines of chart patterns like W-bottoms or inverse head-and-shoulders, or psychologically significant price levels (like round numbers). Once these levels are broken, the potential for upward movement becomes measurable.

These four dimensions form the core of my approach to spotting breakout opportunities. To help deepen your understanding, I’ll also be sharing some of my personal handwritten trading notes—insights refined through years of hard work and countless late-night reviews.