In the world of trading, conviction is often mistaken for competence, and discourse becomes discord when driven by ego rather than insight.
Despite it being impossible to time the market, traders will never be able to stop themselves from believing they can time the market perfectly. While discourse is healthy when there is a discussion between bulls and bears, it has been at its most toxic over the month of June as people were unsure of which direction the market was going. As the market environment got more hostile, this led to direct confrontations between market participants.
People take pride in their positions and get angry when things don’t play out as they expect. Meanwhile, most of the arguments are between market participants that operate on different timeframes.
Scalpers and long-term investors bickering over price leads to two idiots arguing over things where they can’t reach a conclusion, as it goes over both of their heads.
It’s been a while since I shared how I perceive things in the market, so here it is.
Market Perspective
Here is one question I’ll start with: If you think BTC is going to >100K and ETH 10K (insert the next coin of your liking here e.g. SOL, TON), do you care if you buy something with a large part of your portfolio when BTC is at 48K instead of 53K? Do you care if you buy ETH at 2800 instead of 2600?
I have mentioned before that many people in this industry get lost in the discourse on Crypto Twitter and have not identified what type of market participant they are.
On CT, you have:
Long-term investors
Short-term traders
Swing traders
Scalpers
Perp traders
Long-only traders
Short-only traders
Memecoin maxis
Venture capitalists
True tech believers
And the list goes on.
All the market participants argue amongst each other about the market direction. When you put it out like this, you realize how pointless it is because everybody views it differently.
I, for one, was very excited to add to my positions across the board when we hit 53-54K, and I made it clear to myself that “if I buy here, I have to be comfortable with it going down 10-20% lower because I am a bad trader who can’t time the market or buy the exact bottom.”
Did I suffer some drawdowns? Absolutely.
Am I happy in the grand scheme of things because my bias and belief is that we will be trading higher in a couple of months? Absolutely.
Did we bounce? Yes.
Could we go lower? Sure, but I don’t care what happens in the next weeks. If you have another time frame, that’s on you.
If you didn’t plan on selling everything now anyway I don’t see the need to be stressed about it here.
At this point, I think there are very good alts you can pick up at good value to hold further down the line. I don’t operate through a lens of “what if I am right and everything happens like this?”
I operate through a lens of: “If I am wrong, how will I react to this?”
What I’ve noticed with myself over the last few years is that regret minimization is much more important to me than being right.
I wish I could tell my younger self this earlier, but we live and learn.
The Importance of Separate Wallets
The majority of my portfolio has been in spot positions of majors (ETH & SOL, with some BTC but underweight in comparison to the others) since the summer of 2023. These I have largely not touched, and this will continue to be the case until further down the line.
If you’re going to partake in different trading activities as I mentioned above, I strongly suggest you separate each wallet activity for each purpose with no intention of interacting with each other. I emphasize no interaction because I think it’s healthier if your long-term portfolio never interacts with your short-term unless it only goes in one direction after making profitable trades.
If not, that’s how you mess everything up.
As an enthusiast of altcoins and the associated PvP/PvE trading, I also participate actively on-chain and maintain core positions in resilient protocols and communities I support. Each wallet is for a different purpose.
Setting it up in similar manners limits how you can mess things up this cycle and gives me a base sector of my portfolio that I need to outperform to justify the extra trading activity amongst the alts I have.
Belief
What I consider most alarming to me at this stage and arguably disappointing is that we are finally at a pivotal point regarding crypto regulation. Many people who have been here for a couple of years know how the preparation for the last bear market in 2022 was that “regulators would start going after crypto,” and we knew that we would suffer onslaught after onslaught.
And while we have finally weathered the storm and there is finally starting to be a shift in how it is being viewed with openly receiving support from Trump as well, the current set of crypto natives have completely stopped dreaming and actively hate the industry they partake in every day.
I find it very confusing that you put yourself in the misery of partaking in something you hate every day. Have you ever considered just logging off and stepping outside for once?
I find it encouraging that they see parts of this industry as investable after the hard work builders have put in over many years while being viewed through a skeptical lens.
DeFi sentiment has been horrible, but it works better than ever.
“DeFi is dead” - somebody that uses DeFi every day.
Will it turn out to be rails institutions build on in the future? Maybe not until the infrastructure is safer and even more resilient towards hacks. But if institutions are intrigued by it and want to invest in it for the rails to be stronger in the future, I don’t see it as a bad thing.
Retail
Let’s make it clear that considering how people's emotions shift on CT, you are not “dumping on institutions.”
You panic when the majors go down and FOMO when the price runs from you.
You are as much retail in the stock market as you are retail here. You just got a head start which you haven’t capitalized on.
We’re all retail, so let’s not kid ourselves.
Does that change anything? Not if you don’t have delusions of grandeur.
Alt Dispersion
With that said, this market owes nobody anything. If you hate it, then leave. If you’re mad about “your bags” not going up, so be it, but being lazy and buying any altcoin and expecting it to go up is not the way it should be.
Alt dispersion being a thing and it being harder to find good alts that sustain good price action is a sign of the market maturing and the market participants becoming smarter.
Imagine if you got mad that your random penny stock didn’t go up because the S&P 500 made an all-time high. That’s how it sounds.
Every time people clamor for alt season, it is because they haven’t been sitting in the alts that have sustained runs while Bitcoin had its run-up. Alts going up in price happens during times when Bitcoin normally is in an uptrend.
You won’t believe this but in early 2022 people were still “waiting for alt season”
If your plan is to buy alts you hope pumps during “alt season” you are in for a rude awakening.
Whenever someone says, “I’m looking forward to BTC weakness and alt strength,” my answer is: “Do you want to die?”
Because that is what normally happens towards the end of cycles and lasts for about 2 weeks. It’s not the time to get excited; it’s the time to protect your capital aggressively.
I’m going to stop rambling here and just end it by saying that you will be better off sticking to your strength instead of getting lost in what is being talked about on CT.
You rarely hear from the 90% of market participants who lose money in this market.
Focus on your book and do so with high discipline, and the rest will take care of itself.
And for the love of God, stop worrying about what another man is doing with his book.
In the world of trading, humility is often recognized as wisdom, and discourse becomes collaboration when driven by insight rather than ego.
I hope you enjoyed the post. Don’t forget that you are more than welcome to leave feedback or drop any questions in the comment section.
Steer clear of security compromises and safeguard your assets reliably with GridPlus - The Fortnox of Hardware wallets here.
Bypass the complexities of crypto tax calculations effortlessly with the best-in-class tax calculator app – sort out your taxes in a few clicks here.
Wallet security overview for beginners here.
Sharing this post helps it reach out to more readers which would be great. If you are interested in future posts from me or premium research, do not hesitate to subscribe. Thanks for taking the time.
Disclaimer: All Content on this site is information of a general nature and does not address the circumstances of any particular individual or entity. Nothing on the site constitutes professional and/or financial advice, nor does any information on the site constitute a comprehensive or complete statement of the matters discussed or the law relating thereto. This post may contain affiliate links. I am just sharing an opinion.