Crypto veterans, who is your counterparty?
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Crypto veterans, who is your counterparty?
This cycle will reward patience, discipline, alignment with consensus, and the ability to proactively position within emerging narratives.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: Tulip King
Translation: Luffy, Foresight News
Alpha First:
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Retail investors have not participated in this cycle
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Your trading counterparts are all battle-hardened veterans
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Follow the consensus
Every war begins the same way. The elders fall into irreconcilable disputes over faith, power, and resources, and the final solution is to send the young to kill each other. We all know the saying "old men declare war, young men die," but no one talks about what happens after the war.
As the war drags on and manpower dwindles, nations are forced to draft from older age groups. Suddenly, teenagers and middle-aged men appear in the trenches. In the final stages, you’ll see children and elderly trembling as they grip rifles. This is exactly where we stand today in the crypto trenches.
We passed the peak moment of 2021 long ago
Google search trends for "cryptocurrency" peaked during the DeFi summer of 2021 and have never recovered since. Even with the "crypto bros" helping Trump win, the search interest only rebounded to 61% of its prior high. There’s almost no fresh blood in the crypto trenches. If you’re reading this article, congratulations—you’re already one of the remaining "elders" still fighting in the trench. Now, let’s make a survival plan.
Don’t fear following the consensus
The idea that "consensus is always wrong" is a common fallacy; knowing when to follow the crowd is a subtle art. Remember when Warren Buffett started buying Apple stock in 2016—it was already the world’s largest company by market cap, far from his typical "deep value" investment. In this market, you need to be a compliant sheep, not a contrarian.
In past cycles, the influx of new retail traders lowered the overall intelligence and experience level in the crypto trenches. That allowed you to easily offload your experience-based knowledge and dump new Ponzi schemes onto them. Had we seen retail participation at 2021 levels, Launchcoin could have easily surpassed a $1 billion market cap. Today, it couldn’t even break $400 million before reversing.
Remember, Crypto Twitter is just a niche corner of the industry. We all read the same articles and rants, stare at the same 5-minute DEX Screener charts, and trade the same tokens. This also means projects like Launchcoin are already the fifth generation of extractive memecoins—we’ve simply lost interest in playing that game again.
The flip side of this phenomenon holds true as well. This is why Bitcoin and Hyperliquid outperform other networks. Everyone in the trench has reached a consensus: we genuinely like these tokens. Bitcoin has never failed us, and Hyperliquid is a truly excellent product. As long as positive sentiment around these tokens persists, keep accumulating.
In this cycle, new inflows into consensus assets like Bitcoin and Hyperliquid will come from institutions and seasoned crypto traders who’ve abandoned contrarian plays.
Don’t go against the trend—act early instead
The lack of inexperienced retail means it’s now hard to profit from going against the market. In this cycle, your trading counterparties are as sharp as you are. If your contrarian trade hasn’t started gaining consensus, it won’t succeed.
Ethereum continues to underperform other networks
This is why .eth loyalists can’t shift Ethereum’s narrative. We’ve heard the same old clichés from Bankless countless times. Unless I see Vitalik tattooing Ethereum’s L1 scaling roadmap on his forehead, you’ll never convince me to buy that “cursed coin” again. I’m smart—I swapped Ethereum for Bitcoin early (back in early 2023)—but I still regret holding it for as long as I did. I suspect most others in the market feel the same.
Instead of going against the grain, get ahead by diving into areas not yet widely discussed. Don’t bet on beating the market—bet on doing more research and uncovering hidden gems. Real edge comes from identifying quality before consensus forms:
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Invest in new networks with poor bridging capabilities
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Buy small-cap tokens with high slippage
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Seek out projects with terrible UX but brilliant ideas
Reach out to the friends in your circle who are deepest in the Bitcoin and HyperEVM ecosystems. Ask them which emerging projects they think are underappreciated, then dive deep into the whitepapers. The strategy isn’t to fight consensus—it’s to get deeper into consensus faster than everyone else.
Where will institutional money flow?
While retail remains on the sidelines, institutions are actually entering. The good news: institutions are fundamentally "consensus market participants":
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They can’t invest in illiquid assets—they must focus on the largest ones
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They can’t justify "contrarian bets on memecoins" to their investors; they have fiduciary duties to make rational decisions
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They move slowly but with massive capital, creating predictable trends
Better yet, institutional moves are relatively easy to predict because there are only two dominant business models:
Asset Management / Custody: Institutions like BlackRock want to custody the largest possible assets to maximize fees. Their ETF inflows benefit Bitcoin first, possibly spilling over to other large-cap assets like XRP.
Volume / Volatility: Institutions like Citadel Securities profit by being smarter than you in order books. They need markets with strong liquidity and reasonable volatility—exactly what Hyperliquid offers in derivatives.
So ask yourself: What’s the largest consensus custody asset? Bitcoin. Then ask: Where is the emerging consensus venue for new exchange listings? Hyperliquid. Don’t try to outsmart institutions—sometimes things are this simple. Position yourself where institutional capital is going, not where you think it should go.
Potential entry points for retail
AI interest continues to rise
One hedging strategy remains. Search interest for "AI" keeps climbing to new highs nearly three years after ChatGPT launched. The intersection of crypto and AI could attract meaningful capital inflows.
But how it unfolds remains unclear. Will retail actually buy crypto projects, or continue chasing Nvidia? Will they opt for crypto-native projects like Bittensor, or Sam’s Worldcoin? The AI narrative may be the only catalyst powerful enough to bring retail back into crypto. But it might benefit only specific projects—not a broad rally.
Advantages of the veterans
Retail’s absence doesn’t mean this bull run can’t be profitable—it just rewards different skills. Veterans still in the trenches hold several advantages:
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Able to spot shifts in trends before narratives fully form
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Understanding of market cycles and when to take profits
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Networks for sharing information with other veterans
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Proven risk management strategies
This cycle will reward patience, discipline, alignment with consensus, and the ability to position early in emerging narratives. It won’t reward contrarian bets against established trends or attempts to revive dead stories.
Fighting in the crypto trenches isn’t easy, but for those who adapt to the new battlefield, the rewards will be substantial. The veteran army may be smaller than the 2021 retail mob, but we’re smarter, more experienced, and better at capturing value.
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