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Be a submissive sheep and don't go against the trend. This article is written by Tulip King and is compiled, compiled and contributed by Luffy, Foresight News. (Synopsis: 30-year U.S. Treasury yields soar above 5%!) The United States loses all 3A credit reviews, should investors be nervous) (Background added: If the cottage season comes: how to build a suitable altcoin portfolio? Alpha First: Retail investors are not participating in the current cycle, your counterparties are veterans of the battle, follow the consensus, and every war starts the same. The old people are caught up in irreconcilable arguments over their beliefs, power, and resources, and the ultimate solution is to send young people to kill each other. We all know the proverb "old people declare war, young people die", but no one talks about the aftermath of the war. As the consumption of war continues, manpower has plummeted, and countries have had to recruit from larger age groups. Suddenly, teenagers and middle-aged men appeared in the trenches. In the final stage, you will see children and old people trembling and clutching their rifles. This is where we are in the cryptocurrency trenches today. We're past the peak of 2021 The Google search trend for "cryptocurrency" peaked in the DeFi summer of 2021 and hasn't recovered since. Even if the "crypto brothers" help Trump get elected, it can only pull the search for "cryptocurrency" back to the previous high of 61%. It has to be said that there is almost no new blood in the crypto trenches. If you're reading this, congratulations, you're one of the "old men" still fighting in the trenches. Next, let's make a survival plan. Don't be afraid to conform to consensus "Consensus is always wrong" is a common fallacy, and when to conform to the crowd is a delicate art. Remember when Warren Buffett started buying Apple stock in 2016, it was already the world's largest public company by market capitalization, not his typical "deep value investing". In this market, you have to be a submissive sheep and don't go against the trend. Over the past cycle, the influx of new retail investors has pulled down the overall IQ and experience level of crypto trenches. This makes it easy for you to use your experience and sell them new Ponzi schemes. If we had retail investors on the scale of 2021, Launchcoin could easily break through the $1 billion market cap, and now it has not even broken through $400 million and started falling. Keep in mind that crypto Twitter is just a niche corner of the industry. We're all reading the same articles and spitting, staring at the same 5-minute chart on DEX Screener, trading the same tokens. This also means that projects like Launchcoin are already the fifth generation of harvesting memecoins we've seen, and people really aren't interested in playing this game again. The opposite of this phenomenon is equally true. That's why Bitcoin and Hyperliquid outperform other networks. Everyone in the trenches agreed: we are indeed bullish on these tokens. Bitcoin has never let us down, and Hyperliquid is a truly excellent product. As long as these tokens maintain a positive consensus sentiment, you can continue to increase your holdings. In this cycle, new inflows into consensus assets such as Bitcoin and Hyperliquid will come from institutions and veteran crypto traders who abandon contrarian operations. Don't go against the trend, act early There is a shortage of inexperienced retail investors in the market today, which also means that it is difficult to make money by operating against the trend. In this cycle, your counterparty is as smart as you are. If your contrarian trade has not yet started to gain consensus, it will not succeed. Ethereum continues to underperform other networks That's why .eth fans can't change the Ethereum narrative. We've heard Bankless nag the same cliché countless times. Unless I see Vitalik tattooing the Ethereum L1 scaling roadmap on my forehead, you'll never be able to convince me to buy that "damned coin" again. I was smart enough to swap Ethereum for Bitcoin before most of you (early 2023), but I still regret holding it for so long. I think everyone else in the market feels the same way. Instead of going against the trend, it is better to intervene early in areas that have not yet been discussed. Don't bet that you can fight the market, but bet that you can work harder to research and tap potential projects. The real advantage lies in the discovery of high-quality targets before consensus is formed: Invest in new networks with imperfect bridging capabilities Buy small-cap tokens with high slippage Find projects with poor user experience but great creativity Reach out to your friends who have the deepest understanding of the Bitcoin and HyperEVM ecosystem, ask them which emerging projects they think haven't received enough attention, and delve into the project documentation. The strategy is not to fight consensus, but to penetrate consensus faster than everyone else. Where will institutional money go? Despite retail investors watching from the sidelines, institutions are actually entering the market. The good news is that institutions are essentially "consensus market participants": they cannot invest in illiquid assets and must focus on the largest assets They cannot justify "betting on Memecoin" to investors, and they have a fiduciary responsibility to make sound decisions They move slowly but have large pockets that create predictable trends Even better, institutional movements are relatively easy to predict, because there are only two large-scale business models: Asset Management / Custody: Institutions such as BlackRock want to host the largest assets, for maximum returns. Their ETF inflows are initially positive for Bitcoin and could spill over to other large-cap assets like XRP. Volume / Volatility: Institutions like Citadel Securities make money by trading smarter than you in the order book. They need markets that are liquid and reasonably volatile, which is what Hyperliquid offers in the derivatives space. So ask yourself: What is the largest custodial asset of consensus? Bitcoin. Ask yourself again: Where is the consensus place to trade all new assets? Hyperliquid。 Don't be clever trying to outperform institutions, sometimes it's as simple as that, put yourself where agency money will go, not where you think they should go. Areas where retail investors may enter AI heat is still on the rise, leaving a hedging strategy at the end. The search for "AI" is still climbing to new highs nearly three years after the launch of ChatGPT. The intersection of cryptocurrencies and AI has the potential to attract inflows. However, it is unclear exactly how this will develop. Will retail investors really buy into 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 with enough power to bring retail investors back to the crypto market. But it may only be positive for specific projects, not general growth. The absence of retail investors does not mean that this bull market cannot be profitable, only that it will reward different skills. Veterans who are still in the trenches have the following advantages: Ability to identify trend shifts before the narrative is fully formed Understanding of market cycles and judgment of when profits are closed Networks to share information with other veterans Battle-tested risk management strategies This cycle will reward patience, discipline, and the ability to conform to consensus while laying out emerging narratives ahead of time. It does not reward contrarian bets against established trends, or efforts to try to resurrect dead narratives. Fighting in crypto trenches is not easy, but for those who adapt to the new battlefield environment...