June 2026 Check-In — Krypto's DCA Drawdown, Key's Contrarian Hit, and 11 Weeks of Competition You Missed

What happened since April?

When we last checked in — week 16, April 6 — the competition was in a strange state. Krypto had three live bots running and Key had zero. Fear & Greed was stuck at 12. BTC was holding near $67,115 and had been going nowhere for weeks. Grid bots were grinding. Trend bots were bleeding.

Then the market moved, and not in a direction that favours DCA accumulation.

The short version: BTC fell. Krypto’s V3.7 scalper, which uses DCA accumulation in bear regimes, kept buying the dip. The dip kept going. Eight positions accumulated over that period are still open and underwater. The realized loss from closed trades is -$41.55 (the grid scalp component actually printed a small positive: +$2.43; the DCA exits are where the damage is, -$43.98). The unrealized drag on the 8 open positions is -$19.75 as of today. Total equity: $1,157.00 from a $1,682.40 April starting point. Down 31.2%.

This is not a broken strategy. DCA accumulation mid-cycle looks exactly like this: you buy, the market falls further, you hold open positions at a loss, and eventually either the price recovers or you exit with that loss locked in. The bet is on recovery. Eleven weeks in, recovery has not arrived.

Is the V3.7 strategy still intact?

Yes. The grid scalp component is producing small gains ($2.43 realized). The DCA component is doing what DCA does: accumulating positions at lower prices and waiting. The problem is not strategy failure — it is regime mismatch. A DCA accumulation strategy in a sustained bear market will show exactly this P&L profile. The question is whether this is a prolonged dip before recovery, or whether BTC continues lower and the DCA positions go deeper underwater.

Eight open positions with -$19.75 aggregate unrealized loss sounds manageable. The issue is the capital locked in those positions. It cannot be redeployed until the positions close, and they close only when BTC hits the take-profit levels or a stop fires.

Key’s V3.8 rebuild: three bots, one winner

Key’s previous strategy suite (BTC Trend EMA/MACD, BTC Grid Range, ETH Mean Reversion, SOL Breakout) has been replaced. V3.8 runs three bots on $10,000 each:

KSQ-V2 (Squeeze Breakout) — waits for Bollinger Band compression below a threshold, then enters on breakout. It has been waiting. Flat at $10,000.00. That is not a bad result in a choppy market — the strategy is designed to sit out conditions where it has no edge, and the breakout setups have not materialized cleanly enough to trigger entries.

KBTR-V7 (Trend Rotation) — reads the weekly EMA(6w) vs EMA(20w) crossover and rotates between BTC and USDC depending on regime. It is currently in USDC. Also flat at $10,000.00. In a bear regime, sitting in USDC is the correct call. KBTR-V7 is not losing money because it is not in the trade. That is exactly right.

KFGC-V8.3 (F&G Contrarian) — enters when Fear & Greed drops to extreme fear (≤15), with a MA200 trend filter and position sizing logic (sam=0.5). It entered during a fear spike and has been holding through a partial recovery. Current value: $10,064.86. Up 0.65%.

KFGC-V8.3 is the only bot in this competition — on either side — that has made money since April. The contrarian design paid off: it entered when sentiment was maximally negative and has been holding through the subsequent recovery. Whether that gain holds depends on whether BTC sustains any recovery from here or rolls back to the fear-entry level.

Why is Key +0.22% overall?

Because two-thirds of Key’s capital is completely flat (KSQ-V2 and KBTR-V7 both at $10,000.00), and one-third is up 0.65% ($10,064.86). The combined result is +$64.86 on $30,000, or +0.22%. It is not a dramatic result. But it is positive, and it is correct — the bot that was designed to profit from fear entered during fear and is currently ahead.

Head to head: how do you compare these?

This is genuinely difficult. Krypto is running with real money (live Binance). Key is paper trading. The starting balances are different. The strategies are structurally different.

Krypto took real financial risk during a bear market and is showing a 31.2% drawdown on the V3.7 allocation. Key took zero real financial risk and is up 0.22% on paper. That does not mean Key is winning — paper P&L and live P&L are not the same thing. It means the strategies performed differently under identical market conditions.

What the period from April to June has tested:

The bear market regime has been the most consequential variable in this competition since week 12. Any strategy that accumulated long exposure did so into a headwind. Strategies that either stayed flat or waited for the right entry signal came through better.

Where do things stand now?

Krypto’s V3.7 is still live. The 8 open DCA positions are waiting on BTC recovery. The realized loss (-$41.55) is locked in from closed DCA trades. The unrealized loss (-$19.75) on the open positions could narrow if BTC moves up, or deepen if it falls further. The grid scalp component continues running in the background and has been incrementally profitable.

Key’s V3.8 suite is in wait mode for two of its three bots. KFGC-V8.3 is the live trade — currently positive, exit conditions not yet met. KSQ-V2 is watching for a squeeze. KBTR-V7 is watching the weekly EMAs for a regime flip back into bull.

The competition has no formal end date. It runs until the participants call it, or until the data produces something definitive. Right now: Krypto’s accumulation strategy is underwater in a bear market. Key’s gate-heavy approach has protected capital and picked up a small gain through one correctly-timed contrarian entry.

April through June in two sentences. More when the market gives these bots something to work with.

📊 Live scores: See the full P&L scoreboard →

📖 Last recap: Week 16 — BTC Holds $67K, Key’s Trend Bot First Green Day →