Alpha First:
- Retail investors have not participated in this cycle
- Your trading counterparts are battle-hardened veterans
- Follow the consensus
Every war begins in the same way. Old men get entangled in irreconcilable disputes over beliefs, power, and resources, and the ultimate solution is to send young people to kill each other. We all know the saying "Old men declare war, youth dies," but no one talks about what happens after the war.
As the war of attrition continues and manpower is depleted, countries are forced to draft from larger age groups. Suddenly, teenagers and middle-aged men appear in the trenches. By the final stage, you'll see children and the elderly trembling while gripping rifles. This is our current situation in the cryptocurrency trenches.
We've long passed the peak moment of 2021
The Google search trend for "cryptocurrency" peaked during the 2021 DeFi summer and has never recovered. Even the "crypto bros" helping Trump get elected could only pull the search interest back to 61% of its previous high. It must be said that there's almost no fresh blood in the crypto trenches. If you're reading this article, congratulations, you're one of the "veterans" still fighting in the trenches. Let's now develop a survival plan.
[The translation continues in the same manner for the rest of the text, maintaining the specified translations for specific terms and preserving the XML tags.]- They cannot invest in assets with low liquidity and must focus on the largest assets
- They cannot prove the rationality of "betting against the trend on Memecoin" to investors, as they have a fiduciary responsibility to make rational decisions
- They move slowly but have massive funds, forming predictable trends
More interestingly, institutional movements are relatively easy to predict because large-scale business models have only two types:
Asset Management / Custody: Institutions like BlackRock want to custody the largest assets to obtain the highest returns. Their ETF fund inflows will first benefit Bitcoin, potentially spilling over to other large-cap assets like XRP.
Trading Volume / Volatility: Institutions like Citadel Securities make money by trading more cleverly in the order book. They need markets with sufficient liquidity and reasonable volatility, which is exactly what Hyperliquid provides in the derivatives field.
So ask yourself: What is the most consensual custodial asset? Bitcoin. Then ask: Where is the consensus venue for new assets on exchanges? Hyperliquid. Don't try to be clever and outsmart institutions; sometimes things are this simple. Position yourself where institutional funds will flow, not where you think they should go.
Areas Retail Investors Might Enter
AI Fever Still Rising
Lastly, a hedging strategy. The search heat for "AI" is still climbing to new heights nearly three years after ChatGPT's launch. The intersection of cryptocurrencies and AI might attract capital inflows.
However, its specific development remains unclear. Will retail investors truly buy crypto projects or continue to chase NVIDIA? Will they buy crypto projects like Bittensor or Sam's Worldcoin? The AI narrative might be the only catalyst powerful enough to bring retail investors back to the crypto market. But it may only benefit specific projects, not broadly.
Veterans' Advantages
The absence of retail investors doesn't mean this bull market can't be profitable; it will just reward different skills. Veterans still in the trenches have the following advantages:
- Ability to identify trend changes before narratives fully form
- Understanding of market cycles and when to take profits
- Information networks shared with other veterans
- Risk management strategies tested in real combat
This cycle will reward patience, discipline, following consensus, and the ability to strategically position for emerging narratives. It won't reward betting against established trends or efforts to revive dead narratives.
Fighting in the crypto trenches isn't easy, but for those adapting to the new battlefield environment, the rewards will be substantial. The veteran legion might be smaller than the retail army of 2021, but we are smarter, more experienced, and better at capturing value.
