Why You Should Exit Crypto Assets

Author: hitesh.eth Source: X, @hmalviya9 Translation: Shan Oppa, Jinse Caijing

Why did you initially get into cryptocurrency? Most people enter the cryptocurrency space because it offers a greater possibility of improving their lives. You believe that it is possible to make a substantial amount of money in cryptocurrency, thereby positively changing your life.

At first, when you step into the world of cryptocurrency, it feels like entering a new world that promises a shortcut, allowing you to reach a life that you once thought would require decades of hard work. You see it not just as an investment, but as an opportunity to rewrite your life story. You fantasize about breaking free from the ordinary struggles your family once experienced, escaping the cycle of "waiting for a promotion" or "saving for twenty years" to buy a car or a house.

You see cryptocurrency as a time machine. If operated correctly, it can compress ten years into two, and two years into two months. This is its original appeal. You enter cryptocurrency not just for the numbers, but for freedom, to fight against time, and for the chance to live without having to wait.

Do you think you can achieve your dreams, buy the luxury car and mansion you desire, and even help your parents retire early in certain situations? This is mainly to gain additional sources of income, to pursue those worldly desires that bombard you every day while scrolling through social media. Ultimately, this will make you feel inferior, but it will also ignite a fleeting passion to want to change the status quo.

The metaphor of "flame"

That fleeting passion is more like a spark, unable to withstand even a drop of water. Yet you naively believe that when the rain, heavy with dark clouds, tries to engulf it, you can transform this spark into a flame without being affected.

But the harsh reality lies here. That passion is not just a flame; it is also the driving force within you wanting to prove that you are not insignificant. Every notification on Instagram, every comparison, and every person flaunting their success adds fuel to this spark. However, the spark itself is fragile and weak, unable to burn continuously.

The dark clouds of rain are not just a market crash or red candlesticks. They are the whispers of doubt from family, the rejection from friends who think you are wasting your time, the fatigue of staring at charts at three in the morning. These dark clouds of rain will always come, testing whether the flame you have lit is strong enough.

The intensity of the flame will depend on two things:

• How much effort did you put into transforming the initial spark into a flame, which represents your level of focus on the process.
• The "base" quality on which you choose to ignite the flame.

This foundation determines everything. If the foundation is weak, no amount of sparks will help. This foundation is your discipline, emotional endurance, and the ability to stay focused when the market plays with your psychology. If the foundation is shaky, even a small storm can drown the flame. If the foundation is solid, even a long season of blizzards can only test you, not break you.

Your actions during those blizzard seasons will determine how long you can maintain the flame. Once you have fulfilled all the desires you initially craved, the flame may begin to lose its allure. And when the flame loses its charm, what will keep you going? If you cannot stick to discipline when desire fades, you will collapse. Whether you can hold on at that moment decides how far you can go in your career.

The Illusion of the Crypto Market

Cryptocurrency always gives you the illusion of an easy path to success, a shortcut. It can fulfill more wishes than you can imagine. With your ordinary degree, you might not even find a job that pays $500 a month, and the effort required to earn that $500 is unimaginable. But in the world of cryptocurrency, it is not the same.

Although you will ultimately spend more time in front of the screen, the hope is so strong, the dreams are so grand, and the desires are so magnified that you almost forget that you might have a life outside of cryptocurrency.

But the illusion is right here. Cryptocurrency creates a mental simulation of a world that feels real but is not around you. Every victory feels like a stroke of genius, and every failure feels like bad luck. You scroll through Twitter, read charts, chase "alpha," and every time your wallet balance increases, you feel like you’ve cracked the code of life.

Your brain is flooded with dopamine. You forget that this is a closed loop, not the real world. The market makes you believe you are in control of everything, but in reality, you are only reacting passively, always in reaction. You are not the driver; you are bound to the back seat, and the road bends according to the will of the dealer. Because this simulated world runs around the clock, you forget to breathe outside of it. You no longer eat well, sleep well, or dream outside of the charts. Your reality has shrunk to numbers.

Self-doubt has never arrived

But the reality is that you are not that clever. This is just another illusion you are trapped in. You think you are in control of everything, but in fact, you are not.

When you truly find that you cannot control things and cannot achieve great success through a relative perspective, some things within you will begin to change. If this change comes in the form of self-doubt, it could be a significant transformation. However, in the world of cryptocurrency, self-doubt is rarely present.

Hope is like a drug, and the market will constantly supply you with doses. A single green K-line can erase a month of red shadows. A tweet from the founder can make you believe again. You keep telling yourself "next cycle, next pump, next trade." Self-doubt won't knock on your door because hope always whispers louder in your ear.

When they see stupid people making millions, or at least pretending to make millions, they don't really question their own abilities. Who has the time to verify all of this? Who has that time?

A second can make us miss a bigger trade. So, in the end, it's more like a game of bluffing, pretending to understand technical analysis (TA), reading articles, and researching posts to convince ourselves of the decisions we make. But most of the time, you're just selectively accepting information. You're deceiving yourself every day.

The Feeling of Being Left Behind

Then, the darkest moment arrived. When you really reach a point where you feel like you have been left behind by this game.

It feels like everyone else is moving forward, accumulating wealth, and building connections, while you are stuck. At this time, the "shelf life" of hope lingers in your mind every day. It's an inescapable shadow.

Every time you refresh the chart, your heart races, waking up with regret and falling asleep with anxiety. You are facing ongoing financial difficulties, and cryptocurrency has not become your salvation but rather your crutch. You see no other opportunities now. Even if you stumble upon one, you ultimately lose more than you win. Then you may reach a point where the cryptocurrency that once gave you dreams now makes you a painful prisoner.

The Role of Leverage

You are losing every day, but you can't extricate yourself. You decide to completely surrender yourself to cryptocurrency, allowing it to devour you alive.

In this sense, what is cryptocurrency? It is a market run by the collective, a market of trading sentiment, with some market makers taking advantage of the emotions of retail investors. Your economic value is generated by sacrificing the value of others in the chain.

You are just a role that switches back and forth between the sacrificer and the sacrificed, depending on how much leverage you have from your skills, knowledge, and connections.

This is where leverage truly comes into play. It's not the leverage in the market, nor the 10x long or short positions. True leverage is skills, knowledge, and connections. If you lack these, if you only rely on borrowed market leverage, you are blindly walking towards the slaughterhouse. If you do not build your own advantages, do not sharpen your cognition, and do not associate with those who know more than you, you are destined to be sacrificed to the flames you initially ignited, even before any blizzard arrives, before any dark clouds approach.

Burning State

In that state, when you are burned alive by the flames of cryptocurrency, you will scream for help. It's not just a whisper, but a cry that only you can hear.

You have also seen the way out, perhaps a job offer, perhaps a new skill that needs to be learned, perhaps a friend telling you to take a break. But your body cannot move. You cannot take any action because, at that moment, you have become so obsessed, thinking that the flame will extinguish itself.

You believe that the bull market will return tomorrow, that losses will miraculously heal, and that patience will save you. But the truth is, it won't. The flames won't stop. And you will be burned alive.

Should You Exit Cryptocurrency?

Yes, if you feel like you are burning in flames, if you find that you are losing money every day, if you find that you have been losing money for the past few years, if you find that you cannot focus on your work or business, then you should exit.

At this moment, quitting is not weakness, but survival.

But if you can't exit, and cryptocurrency is the only place you can make money and make a living, then exiting is not an option.

In this case, you need to build leverage. Real leverage. You build knowledge, skills, and connections. You learn new things, adjust your strategies, learn to use tools, talk to people, understand more about how cryptocurrencies work, attend events, build relationships, grab airdrops, and think about how you can learn everything in crypto.

The more you focus on learning rather than making money, the more you can bounce back.

Farewell to the Past

But for this, you need to completely free yourself from the memories of losses. You cannot always dwell on how much money you once had and how much you later lost. That kind of memory is a ghost. If you keep feeding it, it will always haunt you.

You cannot change the past, but you can change the future. Moving out of the past is your only antidote. Even if it makes you uncomfortable, even if it feels like tearing your own skin, you need to put your energy and thoughts into getting rid of it, so that you can think about how to do better things with your time and money in this area.

Trust me, if you can truly overcome these mental barriers and step out of the market's past, the market will reward you more.

Sometimes, just like me, even though my crypto assets have shrunk by 99% from their peak, I still feel happy and wise enough to discover better meanings in life.

On a spiritual level, truly transcending cryptocurrency feels so easy. Transcendence has become the ultimate leverage. Once you have it, you are no longer the person burning in the flames. You will be the one calmly watching from the sidelines, knowing when to enter and when to exit.