Crypto veterans, who is your counterparty?

Original title: "The Old Man Regions: Who's Your Counter Party?"

Author:Tulip King

Compiled by: Luffy, Foresight News

Alpha First:

• Retail investors did not participate in this cycle
• Your counterparts are veterans who have experienced many battles
• Follow consensus

Every war begins exactly the same. The elderly are trapped in irreconcilable debates over their beliefs, power and resources, and the ultimate solution is to send young people to kill each other. We all know the proverb of "The elderly declare war, and the young man dies", but no one talks about the post-war events.

As the war continued to consume and the manpower plummeted, countries had to recruit soldiers from larger age groups. Suddenly, a teenager and a middle-aged man appeared in the trenches. At the final stage, you will see children and elderly people shaking and holding rifles tightly. This is where we are in the cryptocurrency trenches today.

We have already passed the peak of 2021

"Cryptocurrency" Google search trend peaked in the DeFi summer in 2021 and has not recovered since then. Even if the "crypto brothers" helped Trump be elected, they could only bring the search popularity of "cryptocurrency" back to the previous high of 61%. It has to be said that there is almost no fresh blood in the crypto trenches. If you are reading this article, congratulations, you are already one of the "old men" who are still fighting in the trenches. Next, let’s make a survival plan.

Don't be afraid to follow consensus

"Consensus is always wrong" is a common fallacy, and when to follow the shelter is a subtle art. I still remember when Warren Buffett started buying Apple stock in 2016, it was already the largest listed company in the world with market value, rather than his typical "deep value investment". In this market, you must be a submissive sheep and don’t go against the trend.

In the past cycle, the influx of new retail investors has lowered the overall IQ and experience level of the crypto trenches. This allows you to easily use your experience to sell new Ponzi schemes to them. If we have the participation of retail investors in 2021, Launchcoin can easily exceed US$1 billion in market value, and now it has not even exceeded US$400 million and it has begun to fall back.

Remember, crypto Twitter is just a niche corner of the industry. We are all reading the same articles and tits, staring at the same 5-minute chart on DEX Screener, trading the same tokens. This also means that projects like Launchcoin are the fifth-generation harvest memecoin we have seen, and people are really not interested in playing this kind of game again.

The opposite of this phenomenon is also true. That's why Bitcoin and Hyperliquid outperform other networks. Everyone in the trenches reached a consensus: we are indeed optimistic about these tokens. Bitcoin has never let us down, and Hyperliquid is also a truly excellent product. As long as these tokens maintain positive consensus sentiment, you can continue to increase your holdings.

During this cycle, new inflows of consensus assets such as Bitcoin and Hyperliquid will come from institutions and veteran crypto traders who abandon counter-trend operations.

Don't go against the trend, act as soon as possible

Nowadays, the market lacks inexperienced retail investors, which also means it is difficult for you to make money by operating against the trend. During this cycle, your counterpart is as smart as you. If your counter-trend trading has not yet begun to reach consensus, it will not succeed.

Ethereum continues to underperform other networks

That's why .eth fans can't change the narrative of Ethereum. We've heard Bankless nag the same clichés countless times. Unless I see Vitalik put the Ethereum L1 expansion roadmap on your forehead, you will never be able to convince me to buy that "cursed coin" again. I'm smart and swapped Ethereum for Bitcoin before most of you (early in 2023), but I still regret holding it for so long. I think everyone else on the market feels the same.

Instead of going against the trend, it is better to intervene in areas that have not been discussed yet. Don’t bet on your ability to fight the market, but bet on your ability to study and tap potential projects harder. The real advantage is to discover high-quality targets before consensus is formed:

• Invest in a new network with incomplete bridging functions
• Buy small-cap tokens with high slippage
• Looking for projects with poor user experience but excellent creative ideas

Contact your friends who are most deeply involved in the Bitcoin and HyperEVM ecosystem, ask which emerging projects they think are not paid enough attention yet, and dig into project documentation. The strategy is not to confront consensus, but to deepen consensus faster than everyone else.

Where will institutional funds flow?

Although retail investors are on the sidelines, institutions are actually entering the market. The good news is: Institutions are essentially "consensus market participants":

• They cannot invest in poor liquid assets and must focus on the largest assets.
• They cannot justify the "betting against the trend of Memecoin" to investors, and they have the fiduciary responsibility to make reasonable decisions.
• They move slowly but have huge funds, creating predictable trends

Even better, the trends of institutions are relatively easy to predict, because there are only two large-scale business models:

Asset Management/Customization: Institutions such as BlackRock want to custody the largest assets to obtain the highest returns. Their ETF inflows are first favorable to Bitcoin and may spill over to other large-cap assets such as XRP.

Volume/Volatility: Institutions like Citadel Securities make money by trading more savvy than you in the order book. They require a market with sufficient liquidity and reasonable volatility, which is exactly what Hyperliquid offers in the derivatives field.

So ask yourself: What is the custodial asset with the greatest consensus? Bitcoin. Ask yourself again: Where is the consensus place for trading all new assets? Hyperliquid. Don't be clever and try to beat institutions. Sometimes things are that simple, put yourself where institutional funds will flow, not where you think they should go.

Areas where retail investors may enter

AI is still rising

Finally, leave a hedging strategy. The search popularity of "AI" is still climbing to new highs nearly three years after ChatGPT was launched. The intersection of cryptocurrency and AI has the potential to attract inflows of funds.

However, it is unclear how it will develop. Will retail investors really buy crypto projects, or will they continue to pursue Nvidia? Will they buy crypto projects like Bittensor, or Sam's Worldcoin? AI narratives may be the only catalyst that has enough power to bring retail investors back to the crypto market. But it may only benefit specific projects, not general rises.

The advantages of veterans

The absence of retail investors does not mean that this bull market cannot be profitable, it will reward different skills. Veterans still in the trenches have the following advantages:

• Ability to identify changes in trends before narratives are fully formed
• Understanding of the market cycle and judgment on when to settle profits
• Networks that share information with other veterans
• Risk management strategies that have been tested in practice

This cycle will reward patience, discipline, and consensus compliance, while at the same time, the ability to plan emerging narratives in advance. It won't reward counter-trend bets against established trends, or efforts to revive dead narratives.

Fighting in crypto trenches is not easy, but the rewards will be very generous for those who adapt to the new battlefield environment. The Veterans Corps may be smaller than the retail corps in 2021, but we are smarter, more experienced, and better at capturing value.