I copied a $5000/year crypto tool—And I'm giving it away for free
TL;DR: I reverse-engineered part of the Larsson Line Pro service, only to realize it wasn’t as magical as advertised. Try the Crypto Trend Monitor and see for yourself!
Disclaimer: I don’t have access to the original tool, so any claims are based on my own implementation and might not apply to the original service!
In crypto investing you generally have three1 key questions:
- What coin should I buy?
- When should I buy it?
- When should I sell it?
Enter Anders “CTO” Larsson with his “Larsson Line” indicator and his “Larsson Line Process”.
The Larsson Line indicator aims to answer question 2 and 3: When to buy and when to sell your coins. If you apply this indicator to thousands of the top coins2 daily, you get “Larsson Line Pro”, which tries to answer question 1: What coins to buy.
You can check out his sales page here.
This sounded (very) interesting. But after watching almost all of CTO Larsson’s YouTube videos, I got annoyed by the constant promotion of this $5000 per year service.
Yes, I could see it being valuable—if it truly identified promising coins at the right time. But there’s one rule I always follow, that saved me from countless bad purchases:
If a product really makes so much money, why is the creator selling it?
Screw it, I’m building it myself!
Since I wanted to test the service, but wasn’t willing to pay $5000, I did the next logical thing: I rebuilt it.
My thought was simple: If it worked well enough, I could add extra functionality. And most importantly, I could backtest everything.
As a developer, this didn’t seem to complicated:
- Get daily price data,
- run the indicator on each coin,
- report a list of coins that changed trends.
The Larsson Line indicator itself had already been reverse-engineered by someone else years ago. I modified it slightly to get closer to the latest version of the indicator.
When I was done with my implementation, it was time to answer my most important question:
Is it actually useful?
Well… it depends. There’s a reason CTO Larsson also sells a course, I guess.
The Larsson Line indicator seems to be based on four moving averages. And like all indicators based on moving averages, it is a lagging indicator—meaning it’s always a bit “too late”: You can’t just buy and sell random coins based on the flips and expect to make money. Plus, sometimes you get false signals—especially when a trend slows down or when someone is orchestrating a pump-and-dump scheme.
When it comes to picking coins to buy and sell, the tool narrows down the list of coins to look at. But you absolutely need to do further analysis.
Maybe there’s some kind of structured method missing. Like some kind of process, to analyze coins further?
Adding a process
The “Larsson Line Process” takes the Larsson Line indicator and combines it with the human component of applying technical analysis and other discretionary factors. (It seems to be a blanked term to cover everything CTO Larsson does.)
At least, that’s how I understand it from watching his YouTube videos.
His process (as I understand it):
- Doing Technical Analysis on 4h timeframes and up:
- Checking if the coin’s trend flipped inside a range.
If it did, the flip isn’t valid—you need to wait to see which side the coin breaks out of. - Identifying head-and-shoulder and inverse head-and-shoulder patterns.
Both, as a trend reversal and as a continuation pattern.
Pattern invalidation happens when the second shoulder is breached (which is unusual, but seems to work). - Drawing support and resistance lines, waiting for breakouts:
- for price ranges
- for triangles (flags and pennants)
- Fitting a parabola onto the price chart, and watching for a break.
Instead of straight lines, crypto trends seem to respect parabolas more.
- Checking if the coin’s trend flipped inside a range.
- Looking at other markets and macroeconomics for clues:
- Comparing other coins to Bitcoin.
Do they outperform Bitcoin? Is Bitcoin in a bull or bear market? Are we in an altcoin season? - Doing fundamental analysis on coins.
- Does it have real utility, or is it just another meme coin?
- How does its blockchain usage compare to others?
- Applying risk management
- Use stop losses when entering a position
- Don’t put all your money into one coin—diversify between coins.
CTO Larsson compiles some(?) of these factors each Friday into a report that he sends you (if you pay $2888).
How do these factors translate to decisions?
In the past CTO Larsson built KPI scorecards, ranking different factors as positive (+1), neutral (0), or negative (-1).
Here’s an example from October 25, 2022 where he tried to assess whether the Bitcoin cycle has bottomed:
| Description | Score |
|---|---|
| Has a chart bottom pattern formed? | -1 |
| What is the Larsson Line trend color? | -1 |
| Does support hold? | 0 |
| Did we reach a retracement target similar to previous cycles? | -1 |
| Did we reach a recent TA pattern target? | -1 |
| Is Bitcoin held in the GBTC ETF discounted? | -1 |
| Is the DXY parabola bearish? | -1 |
| Sum: | -6 |
Conclusion: With a score of -6, a Bitcoin cycle bottom was unlikely at the time (which was correct, it came 27 days later).
The KPIs change over time, though. My guess is that he adds or removes KPIs as they become relevant or obsolete in his opinion.
Here are other KPIs that he used on different days:
- Market reaction to news
I.e. if the market does not react to positive news, or reacts badly, then this is a negative sign. - Low risk of catastrophic event
- Retail positioning
- Macro outlook (US02Y, Liquidity,…)
- BTC flows (ETFs, countries)
- Historical cycle behavior
I don’t know how useful KPIs are, if you add and remove them as you see fit. Maybe he sees some factors as neutral and just doesn’t list them?
Regardless, CTO Larsson treats the sum of the KPI values as “confidence in position size decision”. So in essence he tries to solve a fourth question that I omitted in the beginning:
How much do I risk?
Risk management
His risk management seems to relative simple:
- Set a stop loss:
- below a range, or
- below the last low.
- Don’t buy in a range—wait for the breakout.
- KPI scorecard helps to determine the position size.
Less confidence, less position size. Add additional size on confirmation of the breakout. (e.g. after a successful retest of a breakout.) - If the Larsson Line is gold, consider buying dips.
In terms of portfolio diversification, he splits assets into five classes:
- Bitcoin
- Altcoins
- Stocks
- Commodities
- Cash (and cash equivalents)
What do I take away from this?
The Larsson Line indicator is a tool—and like any other tool, you need to know how to use it. The hardest part is still you, the human.
Does my tool answer the original three questions, though?
- What to buy:
Yes, it is helpful for that. It highlights potentially interesting coins. But it needs more (human) work to distinguish between good and bad coins. - When to buy:
No, without further analysis it does not answer that question for me. A gold flip alone isn’t enough to buy. - When to sell:
No, it does not answer this question either. A blue flip is often too late to sell in my opinion. - Bonus question: How much to risk:
No, the tool doesn’t help with that. (The process does, however.)
Keep in mind: These answers don’t take the process into account. If you apply the process, you can answer all questions. Just be aware that those answers are then subjective—they depend on your ability to judge the facts correctly.
Try it yourself!
I named my tool Crypto Trend Monitor and put it online for free.
Check it out and let me know what you think: hello@anty.at