Unreal, how a year where “nothing happened” destroyed more players than the years everyone considered “crazy.”

Price illiteracy will be the biggest disadvantage going into 2026. (we'll come back to this in a bit)

Anyone who says this year was easy to trade is straight-up bullshitting you. Yes, in hindsight, it looks like one big range.

But navigating it definitely wasn’t.

This was a transition year for crypto. Not a mania year, not a bear bottom. A testing phase where institutions and governments quietly integrated into the system while retail was still trading it like the last cycle.

Safe to assume 2026 will come with its own set of curveballs, good or bad. Preparing for both makes the most sense.

I’m proud of how I navigated it compared to previous years, and if this helped you at any point (public posts, private education etc), give a shout out.

But I won’t pretend I played it perfectly either. Emotion showed up. I overstayed positions expecting higher at 126K, ignored market structure because I “bullieved”, and gave back a big chunk of my profits in October. That’s the part most never say out loud.

This write-up isn’t for active traders, because they already know what this summarizes. They’ve become ticker-agnostic by now. This is more of a reminder that

you’re not actually Tommy Vercetti. This is Vice City. It is a game. Play it.

The Euthanasia Coaster

Memecoin mania from inception with AI, animals, farts, houses, to its death reminded me of something we already know but ignore anyway:

Markets don’t change. They just change their disguise.

Once it was ICOs. Then NFTs. Then memecoins. This year? All of them, all at once. (think anime, pengu, stbl, avnt, aster. Yes, I named them.) Same behavior, different wrapper.

Most of us keep forgetting we’re on a ride engineered to extract until the loop tightens around us.

There’s a scene from Wolf of Wall Street that stuck with me:

"Nobody knows if something goes up, down, sideways or in circles. Least of all the people selling you the idea. It’s all fugazi. The game is simple. Keep them on the ride. If a client buys at 8 and it’s now 16, you don’t let him sell. Because selling makes it real. You sell him another dream. They get addicted. And the wheel keeps turning."

That line explains crypto more honestly than most threads I’ve read in two years. I’m not saying this as a cynic. I’m saying it as a player who has actually played it with size, won and lost equally. People who don’t understand the system think it’s random or unfair. But once you actually see the field you’re on, the game becomes interesting.

Until then, you’re just complaining, hoping, or getting punished.

Grinding Poet once made a deep thought provoking tweet:

You can never leave crypto. Only way out is death. Better get used to this shit.

You know there’s no way out. So why not play the game better than the others?

Why Do I Even Care

Because I got punished first. That’s why I care.

2022 was the first time I realised what ignorance costs. Two years as an artist, building community - my savings disappeared in a week or two. And I couldn’t even blame anyone for it. Collectors took profits, the market did what it always does, and I was simply on the wrong side.

They played well. I didn’t.

It forced a simple conclusion: If you can’t find the liquidity, you are the liquidity.

Liquidity moves before narrative, every single time. Backtest it if you have to.

I stopped treating price as noise and started treating it as information.

Hope vs Discipline

This year rewarded traders while forcing investors to round-trip their bags multiple times. There is a kind driven by hope, blindsided by Orange Man's hopium on our feeds. Then there are the ones who don’t care which direction price goes. They only care about stacking. Respecting downside alone was enough edge, after starting the uptrend from 16K in 2022. Being nimble every day sounds tiring. Watching risk, managing size, trimming when you should. It feels like a job. But complacency is a luxury only windows in a bull market offer.

All Roads Lead to Price

I was an artist in 2021. I was a builder until 2023. Now I’m a trader. (a bad one) I didn’t wake up one day and stop creating, only to stare at charts. But after being long enough in crypto (and losing enough), you realise everything leads back to price. Yes, extreme tail risk events can blindside the market. But most of the time, price hints at what's brewing.

News changes when something plays out, not what direction it was already leaning toward. That is the difference between surviving a move and being its exit liquidity. Not because a politician said X or a country did Y.

A lot of people will contest this mindset and that’s okay. After all, we’re in an industry that sells hope or takes someone who hit a 1000x and markets it as a possible reality for everyone.

for example: in 2026, If crypto is indeed lagging equities and commodities, a parabolic move isn’t impossible. But you cannot structure your entire portfolio based on a maybe.

You survive by making money, and make money by surviving. Not by imagining what you could have made.

Participation ≠ Protection

It doesn’t matter who you are in this space. Artist, collector, founder, trader or degen.

Participation alone doesn’t protect you.

Price illiteracy will be the biggest disadvantage going into 2026. If you want to avoid repeating this year’s mistakes, at minimum learn how price behaves. You don’t need to be a full-time trader. But you do need to know where you are in the cycle and what environment you’re positioning into.

Lessons

Positioning alone outperformed chasing most moves.

Just to name a few: @artoforb called ZEC in the low 100s and it gave a clean 7×. I gave Aster at ~0.25 thanks to @blergoom & it gave ~9–10×. Tokabu ran from ~600K to ~70–80M.

We didn’t have to do anything else. One or two correct rotations were enough. There were also moments where I completely underperformed despite extensive work. Being in positions on Oct 10 wiped ~400K because I overstayed and assumed strength in alts. I exited Hypurr NFTs for ~100K, then re-entered around 50K thinking I knew better. my spot bags, I rode it from early and missed exits by literal dollars. Just lessons along the way.

Outlook + Mindset

There will be a time to buy your favorite coins aggressively. But that time is decided by price and liquidity conditions.

My focus going forward is simple: stay liquid enough to actually play when it matters. Most people don’t lose because they were wrong. They lose because when the trade finally arrives, they can't play it. Being early costs just as much as being wrong.

Anyone can enter: an artist, a collector, a builder, a hustler, or a dreamer. Only the ones who learn the game get to stay.

Happy New Year. Rest, reset, and then execute.

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