Yesterday afternoon (December 22nd), I went to pick up my daughter from school. The weather forecast said it would snow that night. I looked up at the few clouds hanging in the sky, and since I don't have 100% trust in the weather forecast, I thought it was unlikely that it would snow that night.
When I looked through the window this morning, I found a thin layer of white snow on the terrace. It turned out that it really did snow last night!
Weather forecasts are actually quite accurate, but some people still don't trust their accuracy. And if someone tells you they can predict market trends 100% accurately, that's just nonsense.
If we put these two things together: the weather forecast says there won't be any more snow in the remaining days before the end of the year, would you dare to go all in on that?
I checked the weather forecast for the next few days; it's mostly sunny or cloudy. While it seems fairly certain, or even highly probable, that it won't snow before the end of the year, I certainly won't go all in on it. If I were to participate in this kind of short-term speculation, I'd only consider allocating a maximum of 10% of my funds to it. The longer I stay in this field, the more timid I seem to become. However, managing risk according to one's individual circumstances is an essential lesson in investing/speculating.
2025 is almost over. As far as the market is concerned, this year has been a year of relatively violent fluctuations. Perhaps some people have made money in this game, while others are still losing money. Of course, the most painful ones are those who had made money but lost it all back.
In ancient Greek mythology, there's a story about Sisyphus, a punished god who was forced to push a giant boulder up a mountain, only to have it roll back down each time, an endless cycle. This is a cruel thought; one of life's greatest anguish is watching months or even years of hard work suddenly vanish.
Everyone understands the meaning of unity of knowledge and action, but keeping actions consistent with intentions is one of the most difficult things for people to do, and the market always ruthlessly exposes the pain caused by this deviation. But failure and pain are not actually terrible, because every failure we experience builds a wall in our hearts. What we need to do is learn to understand it in our own way.
1. What is the thing you will persist in for the longest time in 2025?
Although a bearish sentiment has been hanging over many people recently, we will continue to do things step by step and do what we want and can do.
The next period will primarily be spent organizing ebooks. Next week (December 31st), we will continue with our planned release of the 2025 ebook collection. This year's ebook naming convention will return to its original form, simply titled "(Da Long's Encrypted Thinking Notes 2025)" (approximately 360,000 words). Simultaneously, we will also release a non-encrypted ebook (Cultural Journey Series: National Museum of China) (approximately 33,000 words) through the "Hua Li Hua Wai DAO" WeChat official account.
Have you ever thought about this recently: what is the one thing you will persist in for the longest time in 2025, and what are the corresponding successes or failures you will gain?
For me personally, it seems like I only did two things this past year:
1) Investment aspects
The core keyword this year is "selling," which means selling in batches according to plan. I have mentioned or shared these things in some of my previous articles.
In brief, we adopted an 8:1:1 allocation strategy for this round of positions (a slight change from the 5:5 strategy in 2019). 80% of the position was used for monthly dollar-cost averaging of Bitcoin from May 2022 to January 2024 (with an average cost of $25,700), and 10% was used for short- to medium-term altcoin trading (including FET, SOL, AVAX, ARB, etc., which have been shared in previous articles, or you can refer to the review article on Notion on January 1st of this year).
Following the continued selling in 2025, our current position only contains Bitcoin and Ethereum (excluding the Bitcoin and Ethereum held in our cold wallets from the 2021 bull market). Although we only successfully sold 30% of our Bitcoin holdings as planned over the past year (selling 10% at $100,000, $110,000, and $120,000 respectively), we have generally achieved our original profit target. However, in retrospect, the actual results are just barely passing; we haven't exceeded expectations.
For the next period, barring any major new market changes, I probably won't be making any further moves, reverting to a strategy of observation and patient waiting. Navigating the so-called bull and bear cycles is rather tedious, but thankfully I have other things to do, such as watching short videos and writing articles on Notion.
2) Writing
Writing articles is arguably the thing I've persisted with the longest this year besides investing; it's even become a weekly habit. Moreover, writing has significantly helped me stay informed about market changes and maintain my own critical thinking.
To put it simply, more than three years have passed since I decided to publicly share content through the self-media platform "Hua Li Hua Wai".
In 2022-2023, because the crypto market was mainly in a new bear market phase, the types of articles we published were mainly concentrated in four themes: projects (discovering and introducing various potential projects), tools (how to use and tutorials of various on-chain tools), airdrops (airdrop interactions of various new projects), and knowledge (basic knowledge related to blockchain).
As expected, the market ushered in a new bull market in 2023-2024. Therefore, in addition to retaining some of the original four major theme series, we focused more time and energy on the methodology (investment strategies, trading methods, technical indicators, investment psychology, etc.) of our articles, while also covering some market trends.
This year (2025), I hope to share some market observations and feelings, and witness the beginning of a possible new era of encryption from the perspective of a participant (and also an observer).
Looking back over the past few years, I have received a lot of positive feedback, as well as some targeted comments (in the background messages of the official account). In fact, I don't care about other people's evaluation and judgment of whether what I said (the words I wrote) is right or wrong, because the market cannot be accurately predicted. I am just recording some personal views or thoughts at different times and backgrounds. Moreover, some right or wrong may need more time to verify.
But even if you're right or wrong in the end, what does it matter? Different people often have different perspectives on problems, which can lead to different results. While I hope that everyone who reads my articles can gain something from the crypto space, ultimately I can only be responsible for my own results (positions) based on my personal views, ideas, and strategies, whether right or wrong.
Overall, in terms of investment, we actually started to simplify our approach in 2019, making long-term fixed-investment strategy our main strategy in this area for the past few years. As for whether this strategy will continue to be applicable in the future (to meet our return targets) and whether we need to make any new changes, it seems we're not in a hurry to find new answers right now. Anyway, we have plenty of time to think and adjust, so let's take it slow. As for writing, I've also been gradually simplifying my approach since last year (2024). I've not only stopped updating most of my other platform columns (but will continue to keep my WeChat official account and Notion), but I've also made some adjustments to the frequency of my daily output (from daily updates to weekly/irregular updates now).
Whether it's investing or writing, everything often goes through a process of going from little to much, and then from much to little. Then it's a matter of which thing is worth persisting with until the end.
2. What is the future of Crypto?
The word "crypto" is one that I personally prefer to use. In fact, whether it's called blockchain, Web3, or cryptocurrency, what it's called doesn't seem to matter. What matters is how you view the future of something.
I've been involved in this field since 2017. Over the past 7 or 8 years, we've witnessed countless changes in this market, including the ICO boom, the golden age of DeFi, the frenzy surrounding NFTs and the metaverse, the popularity of Memecoin, the milestone moments of ETFs, and so on.
In the past, the crypto market, whether it was the concept of blockchain or tokens like Bitcoin, was consistently labeled a scam by many, yet some retail investors still firmly believed that crypto would change the world. Now, while more and more major countries are recognizing the status of crypto and more institutions are deeply involved in the market, many retail investors have lost their confidence.
This is a rather interesting change. So how should we understand this change?
First, I certainly don't have a pessimistic view of this field; any change needs to be viewed dialectically. Second, at this stage, we seem to be moving from an old "bubble" to a new one, which in itself may not be a bad thing.
In this process of change, what we need to do is learn to adapt, rather than constantly complaining or being pessimistic. Those who only focus on historical bubbles (historical problems) and mistakenly believe that the industry has now completely come to an end will definitely be abandoned by the times.
From my personal perspective, for most of the past, the most active people in the crypto space have actually been a very small group, namely those who have already "gone on-chain." These people are always moving from one chain to another, or from one project (token) to another, which looks more like an MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online Game) game of repeatedly competing for existing liquidity.
Although on the surface, the number of users on different chains and projects is increasing, it is only a fixed small group of people switching back and forth between different niche communities, and what they are doing is nothing more than a few things, such as asset trading, leveraged operations, incentive gameplay (airdrops, mining, etc.)... Under such gameplay, we have experienced one so-called cycle after another, but this interesting virtual world still has a very small niche world.
As time goes by, even the most remote places will likely be integrated into the real world, and the original, interesting little world will gradually lose its niche culture. In other words, the concept of an independent crypto world that many veteran crypto investors hold in mind seems to be crumbling. In recent years, crypto technology (including cryptocurrencies) has begun to have more connections with the traditional financial world, including the fields of AI, payments, investment markets, and even some gray financial sectors (casinos). The boundaries between the crypto industry and the traditional financial industry are becoming increasingly blurred.
Therefore, if your vision remains stuck in the old bubble narrative, you're essentially heading down a dead end. Based on current trends, most crypto projects (including most tokens) will eventually disappear. We shouldn't limit our perspective to established labels, whether it's the initial blockchain concept, the cryptocurrency concept, or the later popular Web3 concept. These absolute labels will become burdens at a certain stage of development.
The real future of this industry is not about making more people on Earth new cryptocurrency users, but about enabling more people (or even everyone) to use or benefit from cryptocurrencies without becoming crypto users.
In other words, the future of the crypto industry shouldn't be about competing for more users, but rather about eliminating the so-called completely free, independent, and closed crypto microcosm, removing historical barriers and baggage, and directly integrating into the existing larger world so that everyone can benefit. To put it more bluntly: only when the current cryptocurrency is "dead" can this industry have a better future.
Of course, as you can understand from the above description, when I say "dead," I don't simply mean the crypto industry is completely wiped out or gone, nor do I mean blockchain technology has stopped operating altogether. My core point is that if crypto technology (or blockchain technology) is truly a mature and reliable technology, then it shouldn't be confined to a small group of fervent tech enthusiasts or staunch supporters. Instead, it should be integrated into the real world, into the daily lives of more people (everyone). Just like when the concept of "Internet" first emerged, it was merely a "technology," but it only became the true Internet after it was integrated into everyone's daily life. The condition for something to succeed is not to attract more so-called new users, but to enable more ordinary people to enjoy its benefits.
The future of encryption is not about getting more people to "come in" to learn or understand concepts like Rollup, zk-STARKs, UTXO, EVM, and PoW, but rather about letting encryption technology "go out" and integrate more directly, conveniently, quickly, and effectively into the lives of everyone in the real world.
It's no exaggeration to say that "crypto" may become a new center of the future world, but it needs to undergo at least one "rebirth" to fully integrate into the real world. One day in the future, when "crypto payments" become "payments," when "crypto products" become "products," when "crypto investments" become "investments"... then crypto will have a true future.
This process, which will take years or even longer, will inevitably involve choices and sacrifices. As for what will be preserved and what will disappear, I don't know; only time will tell. If you're only looking at this from a speculative (gambler's) perspective, then this process is indeed unfriendly to traditional crypto investors, because making money through speculation will become increasingly difficult for them as time goes on.
Frankly, if you've been in this field for a long time, going through the above process will definitely be difficult (and perhaps even unacceptable), but this may be the future of encryption. Some disappearances don't signify failure, but rather the price to pay for true maturity.
We need to learn to let go, and we also need to learn to adapt to new things. This is the worst of times, and also the best of times. May the heavy rain not extinguish your passion, and may the world continue to treat us gently. May we, after half a lifetime of wandering, return still as youthful as ever.
That's all for this issue (20251223). The above content is just my personal perspective and analysis, and is only for learning records and communication purposes. It does not constitute any investment advice.
