MarketsOpinion
|5 min ReadTwelve hard lessons from six years in crypto
Maya Chen
Senior Analyst
Published
Jan 16, 2026
I have made millions, lost millions, built businesses, and felt every emotion this market can throw. Six years taught me one thing first. Pick a lane. In 2020 and 2021 I went deep into DeFi. I farmed across chains, ran loops and governance plays, and lived inside protocols. That focus taught me risk sizing, game theory, and how flywheels really spin. If I had tried to perp trade, snipe on-chain, and farm airdrops all at once, I would have learned nothing well. In crypto, the expert in one thing beats the jack-of-all-trades.
The foundation: niche, edge, conviction
Edge is everything. The best traders I know define theirs with scary clarity. Some win on speed. Some on patience. Some on network and information flow. Many win on risk management. Your edge depends on your skills, your time in the arena, and your personality. Name it. Master it. Execute it.
Only touch what makes sense. If you do not understand a token or a model, do not buy it. Hype is loud. Volatility is louder. Without a clear thesis and real conviction, you will sell lows and hold bags. Learn the thing first. Then act.
Narrative beats fundamentals in the short run. Flows move price. A brilliant team with a clean model means little if there is no community, no story, and no fresh liquidity. Bad fundamentals can pump when attention floods in. Study hype. Study community. Study flows. This is an attention economy.
Execution: plan, size, ride momentum
The market punishes traders without a plan. Go in knowing whether it is a long hold or a short trade. Set invalidation levels on the chart and in fundamentals before you buy. Mark take-profit zones ahead of time. Managing drawdowns is the key to staying alive. No plan is a plan to get wrecked.
Position sizing is where most people blow up. You can pick the right coin at the right time and still waste the win with a tiny size. You can pick the wrong coin and nuke yourself by going too heavy. Decide the percent of capital you risk per idea. Tie that percent to conviction, market conditions, market cap, and liquidity. Then obey your rules.
Ride winners. Cut losers. I see this mistake every week. People rotate from strong leaders into weak laggards trying to catch up. Momentum pays. Let your best positions run as long as the trend holds. Dump the ones that stop working. Do not fall in love with tickers. Fall in love with strength.
Portfolio mastery: choose vehicles, concentrate, stack BTC
The vehicle you use depends on where you are. The path to the first $10,000 is not the path for a multi-million-dollar book. Smaller bankrolls have an edge in lower-liquidity tokens and weird dislocations. Big whales cannot play those games. You can. Think airdrop farming, incentive programs, niche arbitrage, and on-chain low caps. Later, the tools change.
Concentrate to build wealth. Diversification protects it. Most people should keep only five to ten core positions. That keeps you close to the story, the news, and the risk. In frothy times you can expand, but keep a core you truly understand. If you want to spray and pray, put that inside a sealed “degen” sleeve. Ten to twenty percent of the book. Not more.
Remember the goal. Stack sats. Use altcoins to accumulate Bitcoin. When you frame trades in BTC terms, your behavior changes. You start charting vs BTC, measuring risk vs BTC, and respecting the macro trend that drives alts. The mindset alone can improve your risk discipline.
Sell into green and lock it away. Last cycle I re-gambled profits because stables sat on exchanges begging to be used. The better framework is simple. Take profit on alts into big pumps and strong green days. Then turn stables back into fiat to lock gains, or move them to a cold wallet that is painful to touch. Reduce your ability to overtrade and you keep more of what you win.
Modern-day secret sauce: measure yourself, let AI help
Data beats memory. Journal your entire journey. Post on X, log to Notion or Google Docs, use whatever system you will actually maintain. Track entries, exits, thesis, mood, and mistakes. Over time you will see patterns in your own behavior.
Then let AI do the heavy lifting. Feed it your journal. Ask it to find blind spots in your edge, patterns in your winners, and causes of your drawdowns. You are playing a zero-sum game. The opponent is ruthless. If you do not use tools that increase your edge, someone else will.
Six years gave me these twelve lessons the hard way. Focus on a niche. Define your edge. Only trade what you understand. Respect narrative and flows. Plan your trades. Size with discipline. Ride your winners. Cut your losers. Pick the right vehicles for your stage. Concentrate your best ideas. Stack BTC. Journal and let AI sharpen you. Simple rules. Hard to live by. But if you do, the market can be tremendous.
Disclaimer: This document is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. The views expressed in this document are not, and should not be taken as, investment advice or recommendations. Recipients should do their own due diligence, taking into account their specific financial circumstances, investment objectives and risk tolerance, which are not considered here, before investing. This document is not an offer, or the solicitation of an offer, to buy or sell any of the assets mentioned.