SmartX founder David says AI should assist, not decide, as retail traders face a harsher survival test
SmartX founder David said in an interview with PANews that artificial intelligence is pushing crypto trading from a search-driven model toward a recommendation-driven one, but that shift will not make trading easier for ordinary users. In his view, AI is most useful when it helps traders understand their own habits, risk tolerance, and preferred assets, rather than acting as an autonomous decision-maker. He warned that polished AI analysis can create a false sense of mastery, leading users to take on larger leverage and position sizes than they can actually handle. David also raised concerns about copy trading. Screenshots of profits, he said, do not necessarily reflect real performance, and many users end up outsourcing trust without being able to verify whether a trader’s record is genuine. He said SmartX is trying to combine the smooth user experience of centralized exchanges with the transparency of onchain data to address that gap. On his own trading approach, David described himself as a medium- to long-term swing trader who keeps roughly 80% of his trading book in blue-chip assets such as BTC, ETH, BNB, SOL, HYPE, and UNI, with the remaining 20% allocated to smaller tokens. He said the rule that matters most for retail traders is survival: do not go all in, understand leverage in the context of total exposure, set drawdown limits, and keep enough capital to stay in the market.
