Fixing the broken trading reputation: fake gurus and hidden losses

A trader could miss the mark 20 times, erase 19 bad calls, and highlight just 1 good call, making them look like a star. This is a major issue in trading circles. Every day, traders, crypto analysts, and market bloggers drop their predictions. But when they bomb, those bad calls can be scrubbed, altered, or simply ignored. The successful calls get all the attention, shared widely, and build a so-called "perfect" reputation. This poses a risk for newbies. They might end up following fake experts, paid shills, and overhyped frauds who only flaunt their wins. But there’s another downside. It’s not fair to genuine traders. A serious trader might share valuable analysis for months or even years, making accurate predictions, discussing risks, owning up to mistakes, and gaining real experience. But it’s tough for people to find and trust them because they get drowned out by flashy influencers with fake reputations. Someone with a knack for marketing, eye-catching screenshots, and hype can seem more "credible" than a trader who has a genuine track record of good calls. And that’s the issue. A true trading reputation shouldn’t hinge on cherry-picked screenshots, deleted posts, or highlighted wins. A real public track record should display: - what a trader predicted - when the prediction was made - what happened after that - both hits and misses - no chance to rewrite history based on outcomes That’s why I believe unchangeable public posts could really benefit traders. I’m part of a PoW blockchain social network called Opstan. Check it out at opstan.org The concept is straightforward: public posts are saved on the blockchain.

Well, there are lots of fake gurus; we don't know if they actually make a profit, even though they show us that we can't believe because we are thinking it might be fake or edited. That's why I keep learning about the market. Mistakes are actually the ones who will teach you everything until you discover a strategy that works for you. Those you see as gurus on YouTube, their guides are not complete. I mean, they simply teach how to do the strategy, but it does not have any conditions and rules, plus they only give you basic information. If I follow some traders, I only trust them if the majority of their analysis is similar to mine. I understand that we have different perspectives on the market, but we can see what professional trading analysts do.

Beginners shouldn't be listening to anyone's advice in the first place. It doesn't help their learning process at all. Unfortunately, we only learn from our own mistakes, so they need to actually feel the pain of making them firsthand. In fact, market predictions should be treated like a year-long weather forecast—they have absolutely nothing to do with real trading. In day trading, tactics win. In the long term, strategy wins. Neither of them relies on anyone’s forecasts. If I open a position based on someone's advice, I’ll just have to wait for their advice on when to close it. What if that advice comes too late? As for reputation, look at Buffett. He spent decades grinding before hitting his real stride, and only started making the real big money in his 50s. Did that slow start ruin his reputation? Not at all. George Soros was struggling in the late '80s and even saw a psychologist because he failed to accurately predict the mid-80s crisis. But the moment he "broke the Bank of England," he became a legend for life. Everyone has a rough patch in their past. Why immortalize it on a blockchain? Some things are better left as skeletons in the closet.

I said it before I will say it again, and again. Trading tipsters and gambling tipsters that share everything transparently do exist, but they are so few and on this forum, almost impossible to find (that's why they're such a treasure). Another thing I say: actually sharing just the tip is not enough. Constant unit management and size of trade, against bankroll, more important. What's the point of stats like 90+% win rate when units is all that matter in the end.

I agree, there are still good traders out there who share some content about their trades still have good intentions. But if you spot a traders that just taking advantage of their and followers, expect that they are always  lying = there are LOT of them like this. Some may not agree because for example - they will say, "Why they are still sharing it if they are already making good enough money?".

You are right that people should learn to think for themselves, especially in trading. Blindly following someone’s advice is dangerous. But that is exactly why reputation matters. Everyone makes mistakes. There is nothing terrible about being wrong. A real trader, analyst, journalist, economist, blogger or politician can be wrong sometimes. That is normal. The problem starts when mistakes become constant — and instead of admitting them, a person deletes them, hides them, edits history and continues selling himself as someone with a perfect record. That is dangerous for beginners and unfair to honest people. A person who is truly good at what he does can easily get lost among louder scammers with artificially clean reputations. Someone may spend years posting honest analysis, including both good and bad calls, while another person deletes all failures and shows only victories. From the outside, the second person may look more successful, even if his reputation is fake. This is one of the reasons I created Opstan. Not to punish people for mistakes. Not to say that everyone must be perfect. The goal is different: to make public reputation harder to fake. If someone is a serious blogger, trader, economist, journalist or politician, users should be able to look at their real history and decide for themselves whether they trust that person. And people who create honest content over time should be able to build a reputation that cannot simply be erased, rewritten or manipulated later. Mistakes are not the problem. Fake perfection is the problem.

I agree with you here. A transparent tip alone is not enough. A prediction without context is almost meaningless. Win rate can look beautiful on paper, but if the position sizing is irresponsible, the bankroll management is bad, or the risk/reward is terrible, then the whole “90% win rate” story becomes just marketing. That is why real reputation should not be built only on “I was right” or “I was wrong.” It should also include how the person thinks, how they manage risk, whether they are consistent, whether they admit bad calls, whether they explain their reasoning, and whether their public history shows discipline over time. And yes, honest tipsters and analysts do exist. The problem is that they are very hard to find because they are mixed together with people who only show selected wins, delete bad calls, exaggerate results, or use fake confidence to attract beginners. This is exactly where immutable public history can help. Not because it magically tells you who is good or bad, but because it gives users more information to judge for themselves. Over time, a serious person can build a visible track record of reasoning, risk awareness, honesty, and consistency. And those who only rely on hype, selective screenshots, and edited history become easier to detect. So I agree: the tip itself is not enough. The real value is in the full history, the risk approach, the discipline, and the transparency behind it.

I agree. There are still honest traders who share their thoughts, ideas and trades with good intentions. Not everyone who posts market content is a scammer. But the problem is that there are also many people who use trading content only to take advantage of their followers. They sell confidence, not real skill. They show winning trades, hide losing ones, delete bad calls, and build an image that is much cleaner than reality. And yes, some people ask: “If they are already making good money from trading, why would they share it?” That is exactly the question users should be able to judge for themselves. Maybe the person shares because they want to educate, build a community, or show transparent analysis. That is fine. But maybe they share because the real business is not trading — the real business is selling signals, paid groups, courses, referrals, or influence. This is where Opstan becomes useful. Opstan is not about saying “trust this trader” or “don’t trust that trader.” It is about giving people a public history that cannot be quietly rewritten. If someone is honest, consistent, transparent and serious, their reputation can grow over time. If someone constantly lies, deletes failures, changes stories, or only shows selected wins, users will also be able to see that pattern. In trading, one post means almost nothing. The full history matters. The discipline matters. The risk management matters. The honesty after bad calls matters. That is why I think immutable public posts can be useful — not only for traders, but for anyone whose reputation depends on trust.

Hahaha...this didn't just start, it has been happening for decades and many have been deceived or swindled by it to enrich the perpetrators or/and their paymasters. The world of trading and gambling are deceitful, so we should be very careful about then, as what you see might not be so. Especially the social media influencing, where influencers that couldn't hold an account successfully for a full month flaunting wealth online just because of their popularity, social media pays and endorsement from brokers and other companies. Some will even borrow the luxury. So, in real life, they are nothing. You will see many of them using demo or simulated accounts online, showing fake or planned withdrawals. Let's be wise!

These gurus buy a camera, buy lights and other necessary accessories, i.e. they buy a setup to create a beautiful studio for YouTube channel and then they start recording videos about how they make money in trading. The question is, if they make money from trading, what's the point of spending so many hours on creating a YouTube/TikTok/Instagram content? Why do they try to monetize their channels? Wouldn't it be better to spend those hours on trading, market analyses and research? I think that, they don't make money from trading but trading is a gate for them to create a content in this niche and earn money from their content.

Wisdom will tell you not and rarely to trust online influencers blindly. There are cues you should watch for from the posts of these traders, crypto analysts, and market bloggers who publish every day, and that should be the organic nature of their content. In nine out of ten cases, from my assumption, traders who turn out to be spotless without any record of failure are almost all scammers, and based on your understanding of trading, knowing that losses are part of the game, any trader who wants to pose like they do not have any losses whatsoever and does not follow any clearly defined principle that you as a trader can get to observe in the market is a scammer.

If trading is that common we could have seen almost everyone who are venturing into trading to be wealthy by now or those who are venturing into gambling to be the richest people right away. But guess what? Those who thinks that trading is that easy today are suffering big loses and some of them today are often gotten liquidated because they felt they candle the derivative market. People have to wise up, instead of supplying to the market it would be that better for them to focused on holdings at least that would do more better than this.

And what's the point of posing as a successful trader if the deposit is reset? This can only be important for those who sell their signals and profit from it. But it is appropriate to say here that you should not build your trading strategy on copying other people's signals, as any trader makes mistakes, which eventually leads to the loss of the deposit.

Being a fake guru is a really profitable business, nowadays a lot of people are trying to share their success and make their own e-book how to become a success like them, social media platforms are optimized for aesthetics, not accuracy. In a system where you can delete your mistakes, performance art beats real performance every single day. This is an exceptional diagnosis of the 'Fake Guru' epidemic. The fundamental flaw with modern social platforms is that they allow users to curate the past to exploit the present. By letting people delete their losses, standard social networks turn reputation into a marketing metric rather than a performance metric. So the GURU share Screenshoot or their success gather lot of people do some magic and then left and the cycle is repeat

Yes, yes and yes. And I can tell you there's no tipster or signal channel I ever been in that showed all this. And its up to the follower to see this for themselves and make the right judgment call. Actually, assume this first. As this is the majority of it. I always assume the worst, and then happy to admit a mistake if it turns out I'm wrong. There are good people in this world, and on this forum, I found enough people who helped me personally for no benefit. But these guys have no followers, have never said they are always right and never bragged. The signs are always there

Don't follow any trading guru instead learn trading yourself and become a good trader. It's not that hard to be a good trader yourself, all it needs is patience, understanding of market, and improving yourself over time by fixing your mistakes. A good trader often learns trading in his/her own way rather than trusting forecasts/predictions of other trading gurus. In my eyes, all trading gurus are fake gurus, if you really want to be good at trading then just start analyzing the market and learn to be patient. Overtime, you'll see that your trades will become winning trades, and during such time you should build and improve a trading strategy because if you master a single good trading strategy then you most probably get higher win rates than those who just blindly follow fake gurus.

Exactly. This is one of the reasons we created Opstan. In normal social media, people can delete bad predictions, edit their history, hide mistakes, and show only the profitable side. That makes fake reputation very easy. In Opstan, public posts are stored in a Proof-of-Work blockchain, powered by mining. Once someone publishes forecasts, opinions, or trading ideas, that history cannot simply be deleted or rewritten later. Opstan does not magically make everyone honest, but it makes fake reputation much harder to build. In trading and gambling, transparent history is everything. Website: https://opstan.org Explorer: https://opstan.org/blocks.html GitHub: https://github.com/OpstanGit/opstan

Exactly. That is why reputation matters more than words. There are serious people with money who want to find real analysts, traders, forecasters, and researchers. But the problem is simple: on normal social media, anyone can delete bad calls, edit old posts, hide mistakes, and build a fake image. This is where Opstan can be very useful. In Opstan, public posts are stored in a Proof-of-Work blockchain. If someone makes market predictions, writes analysis, or shares opinions for months or years, that history stays there. It cannot simply be deleted or rewritten later to make the person look smarter. So a real analyst can build a reputation that is much harder to fake. And investors or readers can check the full history before trusting anyone. For me, this is the kind of social network the internet is missing: not just followers, likes, and beautiful videos, but a real public history and reputation. Website: https://opstan.org Explorer: https://opstan.org/blocks.html GitHub: https://github.com/OpstanGit/opstan

I agree with this. A real trader cannot have a perfect history, because losses are part of the market. For me, the important thing is not whether someone was wrong, but whether their full history is visible. A person who keeps both good and bad calls public is much more trustworthy than someone who shows only wins. That is exactly the kind of reputation Opstan is trying to make possible: public posts, market thoughts, forecasts and analysis saved in a PoW blockchain, where people cannot simply clean their past later. In the long run, real reputation should be built by history, not by expensive cameras, edited screenshots, or perfect-looking social media posts. Website: https://opstan.org Explorer: https://opstan.org/blocks.html GitHub: https://github.com/OpstanGit/opstan I agree. Trading is not easy money, and people should stop treating it like a shortcut to becoming rich. Losses, liquidation, emotions, bad risk management — all of this is part of the market. That is exactly why transparent history is so important. In my opinion, Opstan can become one of the best tools for building real reputation in trading and many other fields. If a trader, analyst, journalist, researcher, or blogger publishes thoughts and forecasts publicly, that history should not be easy to delete, edit, or fake later. In Opstan, public posts are stored in a Proof-of-Work blockchain, secured by mining. Over time, people can check the full history of a person’s posts and decide for themselves whether this person deserves trust. Not only in trading — this can be useful for crypto, economics, journalism, politics, research, predictions, and any field where reputation matters. Website: https://opstan.org Explorer: https://opstan.org/blocks.html GitHub: https://github.com/OpstanGit/opstan

I agree. Blindly copying signals is one of the most dangerous mistakes, because even a good trader can be wrong, and one bad period can destroy someone’s deposit. For me, the real value is not in “copy my signal,” but in a public history of thoughts, analysis, decisions, and mistakes. That is why Opstan can be very useful here. A trader or analyst can build a long-term reputation by publishing market opinions and forecasts in a place where the history cannot simply be deleted or rewritten later. Then people do not need to trust beautiful screenshots or paid signal groups. They can look at the full record and decide for themselves. This is important not only for trading, but for any field where reputation matters: crypto, economics, journalism, research, politics, and public predictions. Website: https://opstan.org Explorer: https://opstan.org/blocks.html GitHub: https://github.com/OpstanGit/opstan