For anyone who tried to trade (cryptocurrencies) without indicators: what looking for?

A lot of people say they want to automate their trading, but they are sick of indicators. No more RSI to squint at, no more moving-average crossover to argue with at 2am. I spent the last eight months building and running a grid bot for exactly that itch, with small money on purpose, and I want to test what I learned here.

When someone says "no indicators," I think what they actually want is for the thing to predict nothing. An indicator is a guess about where price goes next.

The second thing is a rule they can read for themselves. Not some model that "learns" and then cannot tell you why it did what it did. If you cannot describe the whole strategy in one sentence and check every trade it made, you have only swapped one black box for another.

And they want to stay in control of their own money. The setups I would trust keep your keys on your own machine and never take custody, so the worst case is your money sitting untouched on your wallet.

So, honest question for the room. Those of you who tried to trade without indicators: what were you really after, and did you land on a mechanical rule you trust, or did you drift back to doing it by hand?