Viewpoint: Why is this cycle so difficult, and what can I do?

Controlling the risk of fall, rising returns will naturally take care of themselves, this famous saying will always be true, this article originated from Aylo's tweet, compiled by Deep Tide. (Synopsis: V God revealed that BTCHoldings are less than 10%, and the rest is all-in ETH!) Community emotion: 90% of the heavy position ETH back then, now BTC has become the largest position) (background added: Trump 2.0 tariff war begins! 2/1 tax increase on Canada and Mexico, U.S. stocks closed black, BTCfall broke 102,000 magnesium) First of all, this cycle is really tough, don't let anyone pretend to tell you it's not tough. But the reality is that each cycle is harder than the last. You're competing with a larger pool of players, and more and more players are becoming more sophisticated and ultimately losing more. If you don't have the majority of your holdings in the Bear Market being BTC or SOL, then you may not be making any money and may even be tearing your own hair. If I hadn't denominated in SOL, I'd be struggling myself, and yes, we do have some big individual winners, but I guess if you speculate heavily on these assets, you might end up getting some or even a large portion of your gains back. Especially since people don't quit after a big win. They'll say "there's still time in the cycle" and then think it's okay to keep going up, and that's how they get the gains back. The truth that "play stupid games and win stupid prizes" will never fail. Sometimes, this situation simply plays out for traders and gamblers on longer time frames. So why is this cycle so tough? PTSD (Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder) We have two examples of large AltCoin cycles where most tokens fall 90-95%. Add to that the collapse of Luna and FTX, which has led to a ripple effect across the industry, with asset prices likely to fall lower than they should. Many big players have been swept away, and we haven't seen the return of cryptocurrency lending platforms in this cycle. This PTSD has deeply influenced the encryption indigenous people. In particular, the way the AltCoin market is traded, mainly because "everything is eyewash" has become the mainstream view of this cycle. In the first two cycles, the belief that "this technology is the future" was more prevalent, but now this has become a minority view, or alongside "everything is eyewash". No one wants to hold anything for the long term because they simply don't want to lose most of their portfolio again. This creates a "maximum jeet period". This sentiment is also amplified on Crypto Twitter, as participants constantly look for the top of the cycle. This psychological impact is not limited to trading behavior – it also affects the attitude of the entire ecosystem towards building and investing. Projects now face higher standards of scrutiny, and the threshold for trust has been raised exponentially. This has both positive and negative sides: while it helps filter out obvious eyewash, it also makes it harder for legitimate projects to get follow. While innovation continues and infrastructure improves, there is no longer a jaw-dropping 0-to-1 breakthrough like Decentralized Finance. This makes arguments such as "no progress on cryptocurrency" more acceptable, and also leads to more "cryptocurrency does nothing" narratives. The pattern of innovation has shifted from revolutionary breakthroughs to incremental improvements. While this is a natural evolution of any technological development, it poses challenges for a narrative-driven market. We also still lack the breakthrough apps that are necessary to bring cryptocurrency to hundreds of millions of on-chain users. The corrupt U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has caused chaos. They hinder the progress of the industry and prevent the further development of certain areas where product-market fit (PMF) can be obtained for a wider audience, such as Decentralized Finance. They also prevent all governance tokens from passing any value to holders, thus creating the "all these tokens are useless" narrative, which is somewhat true. The SEC drove out developers (see Andre Cronje's description of the SEC letting him go), prevented TradFi (TradFi) from interacting with the industry, and eventually forced the industry to raise money from VCs. This leads to poor supply and price discovery dynamics, where value is captured by a few. Now, though, we're seeing some positive changes, such as the Echo, Legion, and more public sales. Financial Nihilism All of the above factors have made financial nihilism an important factor in this cycle. The "useless governance token" and the SEC-induced high FDV (Fully Diluted Valuation), low circulation dynamics have pushed many encryption natives to memecoins in search of "fairer" opportunities. It is also true that in today's society, where asset prices skyrocket, wages cannot keep up with the endless depreciation of Fiat Currency, and young people have to gamble to improve their status, memecoin tickets are attractive. The lottery is attractive because it offers hope. Since gambling has product-market fit (PMF) in cryptocurrency, and we have access to better technology in gambling (such as Solana and Pump.fun, etc.), the number of tokens in issuance has surged. This is because many people want ultra-high-risk gambling, where there is demand and there is supply. "The trenches" has always been part of Cryptocurrency, but in this cycle, it has become a well-known term. This nihilistic attitude manifests itself in a number of ways: The rise of the "Degen" culture and its mainstreaming Shortened investment time cycle More focus on short-term trading rather than long-term investing Normalization of extreme leverage and risk-taking Attitude to Fundamental Analysis The experience of previous cycles became an obstacle Past rounds have taught people to buy some AltCoin in the Bear Market and ultimately reap the rewards by outperforming BTC. Almost no one is a good trader, so in the past this was the best path for most people. Overall, even the worst AltCoin has a chance. But this cycle is a trader's market, more suitable for sellers than holders. Traders even reaped the biggest gains of the cycle with HYPE Airdrop. The narrative of this cycle does not last long, and there are few convincing narratives. There are more sophisticated players in the market who are better at extracting value efficiently, so the mini AltCoin bubble is not particularly big. The first hype cycle of AI agents is an example of this. It's probably the first time people feel "this is something new we've been looking for". But this is still early stages, and the long-term winners may not yet be there. BTC has new buyers, while AltCoin mostly does not The divergence between BTC and other assets has never been more pronounced. BTC unlocks the demand for TradFi. For the first time, it has an incredible new source of passive demand, and now there is even central bank talk of adding it to its balance sheet. AltCoin is more difficult than ever to compete with BTC, which makes sense because BTC has a very clear goal – a market cap for gold. AltCoin really has no new buyers. Some retail investors returned when BTC hit new highs (but they bought XRP), but overall, new retail money inflows were inadequate, and cryptocurrency still had a bad reputation. The decline in BTC's dominance is largely due to Ethereum...