It's fallen again! The price of Aster has been declining, and there are complaints everywhere in the community, with the most intense criticism directed at the person who originally recommended it—CZ. Many people are furious: because he said it, I bought it; now I'm at a loss, who can I blame if not him? But if we calm down and think about it, are we blindly following a big name and forgetting the most important lesson in investing: when you bet all your chips on a highly volatile narrative, you should have already paved a 'retreat route' for yourself.
This 'retreat route' is not about cutting losses and exiting, but rather about pre-allocating stable assets in your investment portfolio that are completely unaffected by the fluctuations of a single project. This is precisely why, while focusing on high volatility opportunities like Aster, I always keep a portion of my position in @usddio. When the market goes out of control due to emotions, a decentralized stablecoin like $USDD acts as a ballast in turbulent waters—its value does not rely on anyone's calls, but is guaranteed by transparently over-collateralized assets on-chain, providing certainty through the noise.
To get to the point, why does CZ favor Aster multiple times? This is by no means a simple call. On a deeper level, this reflects his core judgment about the future structure of the crypto market: the ultimate fate of derivatives trading will shift massively towards on-chain and non-custodial models. After incidents like FTX, 'asset self-control' has become an irreversible trend. The new generation of on-chain derivatives platforms must overcome three major challenges: trading experience, speed, and liquidity. Aster is one of the projects targeting this goal.
For CZ, what Aster is doing is actually something that Binance, as a CEX, cannot fully do — building an efficient on-chain derivatives protocol that is not subject to strict regional compliance constraints. This is not competition, but a complementary ecological niche. More importantly, Aster plans to build its own dedicated chain (Aster Chain), and this 'from application to underlying' approach is something that CZ, who is familiar with promoting the rise of BNB Chain, understands well — it concerns future discourse power.
Compared to the currently trending Hyperliquid, the situation is quite interesting: Hyperliquid seems like the 'present perfect tense', having validated the excellent experience of on-chain perpetual contracts; Aster, on the other hand, resembles the 'future continuous tense', sketching out a grander blueprint for the derivatives ecosystem. What CZ is concerned about may not be who is the strongest right now, but who can define the track in the future.
This does not mean Aster is guaranteed to win. In the derivatives battlefield that heavily relies on liquidity and trust, if you cannot quickly attract real funds, all visions are mere talk. Therefore, for investors, the key is not 'whether to invest', but 'how to protect your overall assets while taking on high risks'.
It is here that we return to the essence of risk control. When you use part of your position to chase high-beta opportunities like Aster or Hyperliquid, you must use another part of your assets to build your 'defensive fortifications'. @usddio was born for this purpose. By allocating funds to $USDD, you not only gain the stability of being pegged to the dollar, but also can earn steady returns in DeFi ecosystems like Tron, allowing this portion of assets to continue appreciating during 'watching' or 'hedging' periods. It is unrelated to your bets on any ecosystem, only providing one thing: regardless of how the market changes, you have stable chips and a calm mindset that you can use at any time.
Ultimately, understanding CZ's perspective allows us to transcend the emotions of ups and downs. More importantly, it is about understanding the art of asset allocation between 'offense' and 'defense'. In the crypto world, those who survive long and walk steadily are not the gamblers who go all-in on a single myth, but those rational allocators who always reserve a degree of 'certainty' while embracing the future.
#USDD sees stability as trust — not gambling on the outcome of a single market, but seeking stability throughout the entire cycle.
