The number one money-making player in the new crypto cycle: Bitcoin holders win

Author:1912212.eth , Foresight News

"I lost millions last year," Xiao Su told Foresight News.

As an old leek in the currency circle, he bought a lot of VC coins during the last bull market cycle. In 2021, Bitcoin once exceeded US$67,000, a record high. Many VC coins rose, with an increase even higher than Bitcoin. Xiao Su's first pot of gold came from this.

However, the market is unpredictable. Xiao Su fell into trouble in this cycle. Since 2024, many of his heavily invested VC coins have performed poorly and have been falling all the way. He was forced to become a diamond player and could not withstand it and could only cut his losses at a low point. After repeated attempts, most of his accumulated returns have been given up.

"Why is it so difficult to make money in this round? Who made money in the market?" Xiao Su was very puzzled. In his opinion, in the past, when the bull market cycles, when buying coins with your eyes closed, and making money by lying down and sleeping, it has become a must-run fast to make money. Market participants such as VCs, market makers, exchanges, project parties, retail investors, and hair-pulling studios all face their own significant new challenges.

Xiao Su's experience is not an isolated case. Not only old leeks like him, but some highly-known encryption VC institutions have also announced their transformation recently and admitted that this round of first-tier investment returns are very failed.

But judging from the history of cryptocurrencies, 2024 to 2025 was a magnificent year. The approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs has caused traditional financial institutions to flock in. After Trump took office again, the crypto policy ushered in an unprecedented loose environment. A series of positive factors have caused the price of Bitcoin to break through $100,000 from the bottom of $15,000, setting a record high.

Investors' longing for a violent bull market has reached its peak.

But Ethereum, another important leader in the market, shattered investors' dreams. Ethereum's cycle has not even hit a record high. DeFi and NFT, the two major coin price boosters in the past, have not seen a boom. Its founder Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation have been criticized. Under the sluggish ETH, the narratives of the second layer, re-staking, ZK, etc. have been disillusioned, and the performance of many related ecological tokens is disappointing.

The only hot topic - the Meme currency boom, to some extent, is also the dissatisfaction with the high valuation of VC coins. The return profit of VC coins has been divided up by VCs before the Supply, leaving only retail investors taking over and "endless decline".

But in this more rude "casino", there are only a very small number of smart traders, insider traders and coin-issuing groups making a fortune. Most retail investors who frantically rushed to Meme lost more and more in one lottery scrambler after another, and finally realized that the so-called wealth effect is only a "single show" that belongs to others.

So who is the winner? Foresight News interviewed several crypto practitioners on the track with the above questions, and they gave their own answers.

Bitcoin holder: Win

Bitcoin buyers undoubtedly made great profits in this cycle. On May 10, Bitcoin Magazine Pro data showed that since Bitcoin exceeded US$100,000, the address that was still in a loss state was only 0.55%, which shows that most Bitcoin players in the market are in a profitable state. As of press time, Bitcoin had exceeded $110,000, setting a record high. No one lost money because of buying Bitcoin, and all buyers made profits.

The NDV (NextGen Digital Venture) fund established in 2022 is one of them. Its founder Jason (@jhy256) told Foresight News that the NDV Phase I fund had cleared its positions in February this year, with a total return of 3.75 times, and recently launched financing for the 2nd fund.

Jason has rich experience in the venture capital field and has worked in institutions such as Huaxing Capital and Qiming Venture Capital. In 2023, at the age of 34, he chose to leave Blue Pond Capital, a family office jointly established by Jack Ma and Tsai, to establish NextGen Digital Venture.

Jason said, " In the broader world, there are still many external buying orders, and many institutions do not even have 0.1% allocation, so they may buy 0.1% first, which is insensitive to rise and fall. If traditional big money uses 1% of the amount of funds to allocate Bitcoin, it is also very considerable for the asset class of Bitcoin. " In the first year, he placed most of the funds' positions on GBTC, and last year he switched strategies and turned to cryptocurrency-related stocks, such as Coinbase and Strategy. These operations undoubtedly hit the market trend.

When discussing the increase in Bitcoin, he said that the launch of spot ETFs has made an indelible contribution. "Money in traditional finance can be directed from ETFs to BTC, which is also an important reason why BTC can continue to outperform many copycats. Perhaps Trump's election and issuance of coins will give other digital currencies some new opportunities."

In January 2024, the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs became a milestone in this cycle. So far, the total net inflow of Bitcoin spot ETFs exceeded US$42.7 billion. Institutions represented by BlackRock, Fidelity and others have purchased Bitcoin spot ETFs in large quantities, and have become the most prominent winner in the market due to their early entry time, low cost and stable holdings. These funds mainly come from hedge funds, pension funds and family finance offices, and also mark the transition of the crypto market from retail speculation to institutional investment.

Not only that, various listed companies have also joined the Bitcoin purchase army and made a lot of money.

With its aggressive buying style, Strategy, a US-listed company, not only has its stock price returns soared, but its company's floating profits are also astonishingly large. As of May 18, 2025, Strategy held 576,230 bitcoins, with a total purchase price of approximately US$40.18 billion, and an average price of approximately US$69,726 per bitcoin. After Bitcoin broke through $1.097 million, its floating profit once exceeded $23.039 billion. Japanese listed company Metaplanet holds a total of 7,800 Bitcoins, with an average historical purchase price of 13.51 million yen per coin (approximately US$941.657 million). Based on Bitcoin’s $109,000 calculation, Metaplanet’s Bitcoin has earned $121 million.

Since its birth, Bitcoin's long-term increase has not disappointed any diamond player. Even the island country El Salvador has been holding more than US$357 million in floating profits.

Mining machines, crypto infrastructure companies, and financial derivatives derived from BTC are naturally profitable. Taking Canaan Technology as an example, the financial report data showed that revenue increased by 80.9% in the fourth quarter of 2024 and mining revenue increased by 312.5%. The company mentioned that customer orders in the first quarter of 2025 have been scheduled to the second quarter, indicating that the sales momentum of mining machines continues.

Meme Big Winner: Make millions of dollars in a single coin

"The current total profit has reached a hundred times, mainly from last year's AI, deSci and TRUMP," yuyue told Foresight News.

KOL yuyue, a well-known chain, seized the opportunity of TRUMP and earned millions of dollars to become famous. According to circulating community pictures, she spent $158,000 to buy TRUMP, and her floating profit once exceeded $2 million.

She entered the circle in March 2022. At first she just wanted to find an internship, but later she met more people through airdrops and community to review market opportunities. Finally, when the opportunity came, I dared to take up positions and finally got a big result.

In the crypto world in the past year, the most wealth-effect track is undoubtedly "Meme". Since the beginning of 2024, Meme coins have set off an unprecedented wave of frenzy in the crypto market. From WIF and BONK on the Solana chain, to PEPE and TURBO on the Ethereum, to DEGEN, MOCHI, and even Meme assets in the Bitcoin ecosystem, the emergence of every hot spot has quickly attracted tens of thousands of retail investors and speculators to influx.

Meme is no longer just entertainment, it has become a new experimental field for the wealth distribution mechanism. According to statistics from CoinGecko and Dune Analytics, the total market value of Meme coins soared from less than US$2 billion to more than US$60 billion in 2024, an increase of more than 2,900% this year. Among them, the market value of Meme coins on the Solana chain alone accounts for more than 1/3. WIF once rose from its initial market capitalization of less than $1 million to more than $3 billion, and early holders even received more than 100,000 times of return. A user purchased a new Meme coin BOME for less than US$200 in April 2024, and the account value soared to more than US$2 million in just 72 hours.

These Meme coins often have no traditional technical background and do not even rely on a complete project white paper. They can trigger millions of dollars in transaction volume with just a sentence of slogan or a simple dog avatar.

The craziest Meme wealth effect belongs to the Meme currency TRUMP before Trump officially entered the White House. Traders such as 0xSun, Daewoo, Calm, and CryptoD made tens of millions of dollars in a single currency, which triggered the entire crypto circle, and countless people exclaimed. However, only a very small number of players who can earn such huge profits per coin. Position management and risk preference are also a major issue.

yuyue admitted that she is relatively flexible in position management and has no other positions to hold for a long time except Bitcoin. In terms of trading style, "there are currently scanned schools and second-level schools. These two styles are clearly different, but I prefer the second-level schools. The second-level style focuses on narrative."

She said that market participants must have their own judgment on the benchmark. For example, focusing on the second paragraph, you need to pay attention to the narrative and market value estimation range, and trade on these basis. The narrative here is not fantasy, but can be supported by the K-line and the market.

On-chain OG player "Bit Factory Director" also made a lot of money in the Meme currency gold rush. He told Foresight News, "In the last cycle, SHIB achieved dozens of times the high returns in just a few weeks, he started his on-chain trading journey. In the last one or two years, the profits were around millions, and he seized opportunities on targets such as ORDI, GOAT, and TRUMP."

But it is not easy to get high returns. " Those who get big returns are often invested in on-chain research and time. This is what they deserve, and most people may not be able to do it. " He sighed.

Trading Meme coins tests players' level more than mainstream coins. The factory manager of Bit said that Meme trading must grasp big names, big trends, big narratives, and big hot spots are also very critical. Searching keywords or contract addresses on Twitter can also be used to observe short-term popularity."

The profits of his Meme coins will also be used to purchase Bitcoin. "Now the position of Bitcoin accounts for 85%, Ethereum BNB accounts for around 13%, and there are some copycat Meme coins left."

The wealth myth of Meme coins was temporarily shut down due to the sluggish market, and even large orders were rarely posted on social media. Many Meme coin players who have dreams of getting rich have been repeatedly frustrated in the repeated scratching campaigns, and are repeatedly anxious and uneasy in the zeroing and selling flying. Some people choose to return to mainstream altcoins again, while some players choose Nuggets in other tracks.

Perhaps, every Meme player who is unwilling to leave is waiting for the opportunity for the altcoin market to completely recover, while some market players have achieved great results through effective strategies and perseverance. They are airdrop players.

Airdrop from the sky: From national carnival to game inner scroll

" In 2023, Arbitrum airdrop became my biggest return project, about 30 million yuan. " Fengmi, a well-known airdrop player, told Foresight News.

He has been practicing traditional finance for more than ten years and has done hedging trading and investment banking. In 2017, he entered the crypto circle due to ICO, and in 2020 he discovered opportunities to fuck hair through DeFi. Since then, he has been out of control. His wealth is even more powerful than mining or cryptocurrency speculation.

Since then, "Wormhole has brought higher book returns in 2024, and the corresponding value at TGE even exceeded ARB. Unfortunately, the time nodes of collection and sale are not well grasped, and the book is only brilliant in the end, and the actual amount of money is limited."

The golden age of airdrops is not far away from us. During the crypto bull market from 2020 to 2021, the surge in DeFi, NFT and Layer1/Layer2 projects provide fertile soil for hair caress. Airdrop activities of DeFi protocols such as Uniswap, 1inch, dYdX often bring thousands of dollars in returns, attracting a large number of retail investors and early studios to enter. During this period, the threshold for masturbation is low, and ordinary users can participate through simple wallet operations or social tasks. That was indeed the golden age of hair fucking. At its peak, Fengmi, a top player in hair fucking, told Foresight News, "The reward of the single number of the ENS airdrop when issuing coins is more than 100,000 yuan, and multiple numbers get rich directly. When PSP (Paraswap) was used, one number started with 10,000 US dollars."

The subsequent hair care industry gradually shifted from wild growth to specialization. The studio improves efficiency by creating accounts in batches and automating scripts. But even so, the industry still has a lot of airdrop wealth effects.

Airdrops from test network projects such as Aptos and Sui have further boosted the hair-feeding craze, and some studios have obtained millions of dollars in revenue through the "multi-account strategy". In order to prevent "Sybil Attack", the project party has generally raised the airdrop threshold, such as introducing identity verification, on-chain behavior analysis or community contribution requirements. This makes it more difficult for retail investors to feed their hair, and studios with technical advantages and resources are gradually taking the dominant position.

When talking about his experience, Fengmi admitted that first of all, choosing the right project is the most important. "Airdrops that can truly change their lives must come from projects with products, innovations, capitals, and patterns. They cannot be supplemented by 100 low-quality activities. It is better to invest in three accurate ones than cast 3 projects without any certainty." Secondly, participants must learn to understand what kind of people they want to screen out, understand the logic of the protocol, understand the characteristics of the protocol, and make a very clear global judgment. The more they look like "real users" and are substituted into the "developer perspective", the more likely they are to be included in the distribution rules and reward models of high-quality weights in the future. In addition, just like the sensitivity of professional traders, you must be decisive when it is time to stop loss, and giving up also requires neatness and neatness.

In his opinion, hair caressing is not an isolated act, but a typical structural arbitrage method. Participants can regard hair caress as the "left hand" of steady returns: low cost, high odds, and time for opportunities. At the same time, use the "right hand" to allocate positions in the secondary market, hold underlying assets such as BTC/ETH, or boldly bet on some long-term high-elastic speculative projects such as meme. Take certainty on the left, and fight uncertainty on the right. "At present, this is a more stable and cycle-travel combination in my eyes."

The airdrop track remains hot in 2024. Projects such as Starknet, Hyperliquid, Magic Eden, Pudgy Penguins have distributed hundreds of millions of dollars in tokens through airdrops. Subsequently, the market trend suddenly changed, from climax to low point. Those players who chose to sell at the beginning maintained a big profit, while those who chose diamond players, chose, etc. became the exit liquidity of "running fast players".

In this regard, Fengmi reflected on the fact that "hair caress is never an assembly line mechanical operation. Behind every account, every TX, and every project token, I interact, record, wait, and even lose. They are not just numbers, but also like a game of strategy and luck, and it is also a kind of emotional investment with extremely strong emotional investment. A project has devoted a lot of effort and time, and Gas and principal. Because of this, this is an emotional investment. But it is this "feeling" that has become my biggest failure in this round: I am reluctant to sell when I should sell, and I watch repeatedly when I should leave. As a result, I handed over the profits I had already obtained to the market, but I just walked a long way with it. "

There are both wins and losses in the market players, and there are always a few winners. In the future, whether it is an individual or a studio, they were repeatedly beaten back. As soon as the airdrops of zkSync, LayerZero and others were released, the market was filled with wailing sounds. The small retail investors were pitifully airdropped, and the hair-pulling studio suffered heavy losses and was even forced to close the door. The project party was criticized, but the project party was quite tough. Since then, most projects in the market have also begun to follow suit, sending less or even airdrops.

Fengmi told Foresight News, " The era of hair-pulling is over long ago. The bonus window where everyone can make the first pot of gold from the chain is closed. Now it is no longer the stage where you can earn rewards by simply interacting with a few buttons. "

When players generally find it difficult to persevere, it will be even more difficult. Many players miss their wealth opportunities due to lack of patience. Fengmi analyzes the root cause of many players' inability to persevere lies in "the airdrop is delayed, Gas is constantly investing, the interaction is boring, the tasks are becoming more and more formal, and points are becoming more and more rampant. When the reward is not reached, doubts will erode execution slightly, and complaints will follow. But the real big result is often hidden after the persistence you almost want to give up and almost think it is ineffective. You have to believe that the result never happens first, but is believed first, and then you will be fulfilled."

Fengmi also shared the failure cases he encountered during the hair caress. "Babylon has done a lot of BTC pledge interactions and invested a lot of money and attention. As a result, the airdrop distribution is extremely limited, and the returns are so bleak that he can't bear to look at it." In addition, he has a heavy investment in the entire Move ecosystem, including Aptos, which invested more than US$4 million at the peak of the market value. As a result, the ecological projects are collectively awkward, and none of the ecology can fight, and the official lacks a sense of direction and top-level operational capabilities.

Airdrops also have various ups and downs.

However, compared to buying coins, airdropping may still be one of the few tracks where you can make a lot of money from the initial small principal. Multi-number strategy and high-quality number strategy are still practical methods, but they also pay more attention to methods. The game of fighting wits and courage with the project party still tests the cognition and execution ability of hair-punching players.

Conclusion

The only thing that remains unchanged in the crypto market is change. The currency circle is a day, a year in the world. Although it is suspected of exaggeration, it also indirectly reflects the rapid change speed. If you can't see it correctly or seize it, the opportunity will be gone. For those who are constantly pursuing more wealth in the industry, it is undoubtedly the most tormenting.

However, the most fascinating convenience of the encryption circle is that every time when market participants think that they have reached the end of the wealth effect, they will always grow vigorously in some inconspicuous corners and a certain field, raising their energy for their subsequent rise, and through another amazing wealth effect, they will continuously attract curious young people to flock to the Nuggets.