Comparison, updated October 2026
Crypto Renegades vs Decentralized Masters:
one teaches you to hold. One teaches you to trade both directions.
Crypto Renegades vs Decentralized Masters comes down to one thing: one teaches you to hold, the other teaches you to trade both directions. Decentralized Masters is built around a long-term portfolio, DeFi yield and early token access, with an analyst. Crypto Renegades is built around bi-directional exposure: long and short, risk set before every entry, seven coaches, eight live sessions a week. Want an analyst, or the skill to make the call yourself? Here's the side-by-side.
What's the real difference between Crypto Renegades and Decentralized Masters?
The short answer: Decentralized Masters teaches you to build a long-term crypto portfolio and hold it, with an analyst helping you curate it. Crypto Renegades teaches you the skill itself: how to read the market, enter where other traders get stopped out, set the stop where the idea is proven wrong, size the position from that stop and take the trade in either direction.
Here's how we see it. Buying and holding is the basics. We teach it too. But it's the starting line, not the finish line. The finish line is a trader who makes their own decisions, and reviews them, in a rising market AND a falling one.
| Crypto Renegades | Decentralized Masters | |
|---|---|---|
| What you learn | Bi-directional exposure: long and short positions through contracts, with leverage treated as a tool and taught only after risk management | Long-term portfolio, DeFi yield and early access to new tokens (their "ABN System") |
| Market direction | Both. A falling market is a condition you can plan for, not one you wait out | Long-term holdings and DeFi; they state they are not a signal group |
| Who makes the decisions | You do, through The Decision Protocol: thesis, invalidation level, position size, total exposure, entry and exit, journal, review | A dedicated analyst helps guide the portfolio |
| Live coaching | Eight live sessions a week: live trading on Zoom Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern with Niko, Tuesday evening with Chad and Sunday evening with a rotating coach, plus two basics calls and an onboarding call | Live group coaching, on-demand mentors they state are available up to 12 hours daily, and an in-person summit twice a year |
| Coaches | Seven coaches: two co-founders, a lead coach who runs onboarding and the basics cohort, and lead traders who came up through the program | Co-founders and a team of analysts |
| Between sessions | One-on-one chart and trade reviews returned as a recorded video, a trade chat that runs around the clock and replays of every session | On-demand mentor access |
| Onboarding | A live onboarding call with a lead coach, then a basics cohort on Tuesdays and Thursdays before you take a trade | Online courses inside their membership |
| Time asked | Four to five hours a week. You do not need to watch charts all day | They state 3 to 5 hours a week during setup, then 1 to 2 hours |
| Refund terms (as published) | Refund requests within 5 days of purchase, unless your enrollment agreement states different terms. See our refund policy | Their terms state payments are "final and non-refundable" for the subscription term |
| Company and founders | Crypto Renegades LLC, Tarpon Springs, Florida. Started in a Facebook Messenger chat in 2020 by Niko Mercuris and Chad Wittfeldt, who teach live under their own names | DM Intelligence LLC; their terms list the principal place of business as the United Arab Emirates. Co-founders Tan Gera and Salim Elhila, per their about page |
| Where to read reviews | Google and Trustpilot, both linked from our reviews page | Trustpilot |
| Price | Not published; covered when you apply, before you decide anything | Not published; set in each individual order |
Facts about Decentralized Masters come from their about page, terms of service and Trustpilot profile as of October 8, 2026. If something has changed, tell us through the contact page and we'll correct it.
Don't take our word for any of it. Read their pages, read ours, and decide like an adult.
What you get here that a hold-only program leaves out
Three things decide whether a program teaches you to trade or teaches you to wait.
Bi-directional exposure
Long and short, through contracts, with leverage used as a tool, and only after risk management. A falling market stops being a drawdown you sit through. It becomes a setup you plan for.
Seven coaches, live
Eight live sessions a week. Open mic. The coach says the reasoning out loud before the order goes in, not after. Several of our coaches came up through the program themselves.
A written process you can audit
The Decision Protocol runs every position through the same seven decisions. Send in a chart or a trade and you get a one-on-one review back as a recorded video. No guessing what to fix.
Why does bi-directional exposure matter so much in crypto?
Because the market goes both ways, right? A buy-and-hold plan only works on one of them.
Volatility isn't a flaw in crypto. It's the product. The trouble is that most programs, and most people, only use half of it. They buy. They hold. And when the cycle turns, they ride the drawdown all the way down and hope it comes back. Hope isn't a plan.
Bitcoin has fallen more than 50% from its high in every cycle so far, and more than 75% in the 2018 and 2022 bear markets. A portfolio that gives back half needs to double just to get back to where it started. One that gives back three quarters needs to quadruple.
That's the plan you sign up for with a long-only program, whether anyone says it out loud or not. Why don't you hear that from the crypto gurus? Because "hold forever" is an easy thing to sell and a hard thing to sit through. You have to be fine with that kind of drawdown, because the only tool you've been handed is patience.
We teach the other half. Shorting through contracts, with leverage used as a tool, lets a trader take a position when the market is falling instead of waiting it out. That's what we mean by bi-directional exposure. Yield and holding are in our training library too, and we teach them. But they're the basics. They aren't complicated, and they aren't what separates a trader from a holder.
What separates them is a process that works in both directions, and that's what the live sessions are for. You learn to enter after a level gets taken, where everyone else is getting stopped out. We call it the equal lows strategy. You put the stop where the trade is proven wrong. No padding, no guessing. You set your contract size from the distance to that stop, so the dollar risk is the same on every trade, long or short, and leverage is the last thing you choose. Then you journal it, review it and bring it to a coach. Every one of those steps is written down in The Decision Protocol, and the full version is in crypto risk management.
None of this removes market risk. Shorting has its own rules, and we teach them after position sizing, never before. What it changes is how much of the cycle you actually get to use, instead of just sitting through it.
Built for both sides of the volatility.
Most people only love volatility when it's moving their way. We teach you to plan for it in both directions: a written process, a stop set where the idea is proven wrong, a position sized from that stop, and coaches who check the work.
Volatility is a byproduct of crypto. The problem is people only appreciate the volatility when it moves in their favor.
So what does a week inside Crypto Renegades actually look like?
Day one, you get a live onboarding call with a lead coach, who sets up your platform, your charts and your access. Then the basics cohort on Tuesdays and Thursdays walks you through placing a stop, identifying a trade, setting a contract size and setting leverage. Step by step, with people at the same stage as you. Never bought crypto before? That's exactly who those calls are built for.
From there, the live trading sessions are the core of the week: Monday, Wednesday and Friday at noon Eastern with Niko, Chad's Tuesday session at 6 PM Eastern, and a rotating coach on Sundays at 8 PM Eastern. Add the basics calls and onboarding, and that's eight live sessions a week. It's open mic. Share a chart. Ask whether your lines are right. Watch a trade go on with the reasoning said out loud before the order, not after.
Between sessions, you send in a chart or a trade and get a one-on-one review back as a recorded video. The trade chat runs around the clock. Every session is recorded, and you can ask questions right under the replay. We also run in-person Mastermind retreats.
Seven coaches teach here, and several of them came up through the program before they ever led a session. Different coaches trade different timeframes and styles, so you can learn from the one whose approach fits your schedule. For how the format differs from a course, read what a crypto trading Mastermind is.
Why build it this way? Because information is not the problem. Everyone has access to the same videos and the same posts. The risk is in the implementation... so that's where we put the coaching.
When is Decentralized Masters the better fit?
Let's be straight. If you want to buy and hold, Decentralized Masters is built for you. They teach a long-term portfolio, and an analyst helps you curate it.
Just know what you're signing up for: one-sided exposure on one of the most volatile asset classes there is. When the market falls, a hold-only portfolio has no position that benefits from the move. And it has retraced hard in every bear market cycle from its highs. The most recent one was over 50%, and the average person in a one-sided portfolio felt every bit of it.
Crypto Renegades is for you if you want a real skill. You want to read the market yourself. You want to trade it in both directions. You want to be in control, at the click of your own mouse. And you want coaches checking your work and guiding you through the process every single week.
That's the real difference right there. One program pairs you with an analyst. We hand you the process... and then we make you use it.
What should you check before you pay either one of us?
The same checks apply to any paid program. Ours included. Anyone worth their salt passes them without blinking.
- Get the total price and the refund terms in writing before you pay.
- Look up the named founders and the business address.
- Read the reviews where they were written, not only on the program's own site.
- Ask what a normal week looks like and how much live time you actually get.
- Confirm they never manage your money or ask you to send crypto anywhere.
If a program gets cagey on any one of these, you don't need to dig any further.
For a full checklist, see how to compare crypto mentorship programs and course, signals or Mastermind. To check us specifically, start at our verification page. We'd expect nothing less.
Common questions
Pick by what you want to walk away with. If you want a long-term portfolio with an analyst helping you curate it, Decentralized Masters is built for that. If you want the skill to read the market and trade it long and short yourself, with seven coaches checking your work across eight live sessions a week, that's Crypto Renegades.
Crypto Renegades. It teaches bi-directional exposure, meaning long and short positions with the risk set before entry, through live trading sessions with seven coaches. Decentralized Masters is built around a long-term portfolio and DeFi yield with a dedicated analyst, and states it is not a signal group.
Yes. Shorting through contracts is taught after position sizing and risk management, with the stop placed where the trade is proven wrong and the contract size set from that stop. Leverage is treated as a tool and chosen last.
Crypto Renegades teaches a written process, The Decision Protocol, that runs every position through the same seven decisions: thesis, invalidation level, position size, total exposure, entry and exit, journal, review. Decentralized Masters describes a portfolio approach with analysts and mentors, and its about page doesn't lay out a written trading process.
Both accept beginners. Crypto Renegades starts beginners in a live onboarding call and a basics cohort before they take a trade, then moves them into live sessions with coaches. Decentralized Masters suits a beginner who mainly wants a long-term portfolio with a dedicated analyst and a light weekly time commitment.
Our refund policy accepts refund requests within 5 days of purchase, unless your enrollment agreement states different terms. Decentralized Masters' published terms state that payments are final and non-refundable for the subscription term. Read both documents before paying.
Crypto Renegades never manages capital or positions for members and never asks anyone to send crypto. Decentralized Masters describes itself as an investment education and research company. In both cases, you keep control of your own accounts.
Want to trade both directions?
If you want an analyst, you know where to look. If you want the skill, apply for the Mastermind. We check that the program fits your goals, your schedule and your capital before anything else, and if it doesn't, we'll tell you straight.
5.0Based on 95 reviews