This epic cleansing core warning: the biggest risk comes from the excessive pursuit of "security." Low leverage, stable financial management, and other seemingly stable choices can lead you to let down your guard, bet heavily, and ultimately get swept away in extreme market conditions.
-------------------------------------------
Master's strategy: Barbell principle. Abandon the middle, only take the two ends.
-------------------------------------------
One end: 80% of funds --> Extreme safety
Assets: Limited to BTC, ETH.
Operations: At most one layer of staking (like stETH), absolutely no nesting.
Purpose: Preserve principal, safely navigate through bull and bear markets.
-------------------------------------------
The other end: 20% of funds --> Extreme risk
Goal: Only chase the most cutting-edge, highest odds opportunities in the market (Meme, Perp airdrops, etc.).
Purpose: Seek excess returns while maintaining a keen awareness of the market.
-------------------------------------------
This strategy allows your assets to solidify while not missing out on explosive opportunities. It is suitable regardless of the size of the funds.
After messing around for a few days and tricking some traffic, let me share some valuable insights with everyone.
What is the most important lesson for us investors from this epic cleansing?
Let me share an example from when I first entered the crypto space.
When I first got into the game, I liked to play with low leverage, until a senior told me that low leverage inevitably leads to heavy positions, and it’s better to play with high leverage contracts.
This massive cleansing has truly illustrated the essence of that statement. I often thought that low leverage meant safety, which made me lose my vigilance.
This also applies to many arbitrage players and wealth management players; I wanted to earn stable and certain money.
At one point, Luna's UST consistently offered a 20% stablecoin interest rate for a long time, and Luna was thriving at that time. Many in the crypto space began to treat UST as a wealth management tool. Indeed, it had not encountered any issues, and amidst skepticism, Luna grew stronger, increasing by hundreds of times.
Until UST was swapped in a pool on CRV, and unexpectedly got targeted, losing its peg. The subsequent story is that Luna went to zero, and many UST wealth management users suffered greatly. UST was treated like the Alipay of the crypto world, with many people exchanging all their remaining USDT for UST to invest.
Is a 20% annual return high in a crypto bull market? Not at all; in the end, everyone lost.
This massive cleansing is similar; many people opened low leverage positions, like my position in Resolving, which was only 2x leverage, with sufficient margin. Can it drop 80% in a short term? That has never happened in history.
Then history played a huge joke on everyone. As long as it was a shitcoin contract with more than 1.1x leverage, it all went to zero. Even if you opened just 0.1x more, you would still be wiped out.
Why was this round so brutal? Because everyone was pursuing so-called certainty and a sense of security, often ignoring the emergence of the most extreme situations. It was precisely this sense of safety and certainty that led many to bet heavily, even risking their lives.
Those who opened high leverage contracts would have been liquidated with just a 10% drop. This wave of a 90% drop had nothing to do with them; they were already out.
This wave wiped out those who pursued so-called "safety and stability". This pool was too damn big.
So, how should we retail investors avoid these risks? Do you remember the "barbell strategy" I often recommended?
For example, in my own barbell strategy, I allocate 80% of my funds to BTC and ETH, with ETH only doing stETH, just locking in that layer of staking yield. Then I store it in an independent isolated wallet.
The remaining 20% only seeks opportunities at the forefront of the market, the highest risk, highest reward opportunities, which can be meme coins or perp airdrops.
The core point is that one end has 80% of extremely safe assets, not just relatively safe, but the absolute safest assets in the crypto space, and it cannot be a layered investment. I can't just go and do some wealth management; that's not allowed.
The other end, 20%, is for extremely risky assets, to maximize the odds of the highest reward assets or plays.
I’m glad I took this step; it not only makes you safer but also more interesting. I have to dig for opportunities at the forefront of the market every day, participating in the game, which keeps me in sync with the rhythm of the crypto space and prevents me from being eliminated. It allows me to maintain the most cutting-edge understanding of the crypto world, which in itself brings joy, rather than just holding BTC and ETH and living a boring life.
Abandon any intermediate opportunities; it’s either the most extremely safe or the most extremely risky.
This strategy doesn’t depend on the size of the funds; it’s very suitable for small funds to use the barbell strategy because it’s simple. Small fund retail investors often find it hard to solidify their earnings in the early stages.
Usually, it’s like this: bet right, then lose a lot, bet right again, then lose a lot again, and keep cycling until they are exhausted and retreat from the market, giving up their dreams.
The barbell strategy can precisely compensate for the fatal flaws of small fund players, allowing your funds to be safely solidified. The amount of funds is a magical thing; once you break through a certain financial limit, your cognition and perspective will inevitably change, while most people remain stuck below a certain financial line for their entire lives.
So, what is the best tool for investment?
I recommend the barbell strategy.
19.56K
31
The content on this page is provided by third parties. Unless otherwise stated, OKX is not the author of the cited article(s) and does not claim any copyright in the materials. The content is provided for informational purposes only and does not represent the views of OKX. It is not intended to be an endorsement of any kind and should not be considered investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell digital assets. To the extent generative AI is utilized to provide summaries or other information, such AI generated content may be inaccurate or inconsistent. Please read the linked article for more details and information. OKX is not responsible for content hosted on third party sites. Digital asset holdings, including stablecoins and NFTs, involve a high degree of risk and can fluctuate greatly. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you in light of your financial condition.