Author: Blockchain Knight
After BTC broke through $100,000, the entire Crypto market no longer saw a steady rise, but instead a continuous three-month decline, with the most common word being "impoverishment," and many players who had previously benefited were now struggling again.
On the one hand, the BTC ETF has made a grand debut on the historical stage, while on the other hand, the market has deteriorated significantly. Faced with such a terrible market, in order to survive the ups and downs, we can no longer hold the same mindset as in the past few cycles, because we have to admit - the market has changed.
So, in the face of this market that makes you want to curse, how do we survive? The author has recently seen some good insights and thoughts, which are shared here.
Let's first consider a question: in a high-level Grand Slam tennis match, is skill more important or is mentality more important, and which one is more important in an ordinary amateur match?
To answer this question, Dr. Simon Ramo, a scientist and statistician, specifically wrote an excellent book on tennis strategy called "Extraordinary Tennis for the Ordinary Player".
Through long-term observation, he found that there are two forms of tennis: one is the competition between professional players and a few talented amateurs; the other is the competition between ordinary amateur enthusiasts. Although they use the same equipment and follow the same rules, the essence is vastly different.
Through systematic scientific statistical research, Dr. Ramo concluded that professional players win matches by actively scoring points, while amateurs constantly lose points due to mistakes. Professional players engage in long and brilliant counterattacks with accurate and powerful shots, constantly putting pressure on their opponents to force them into mistakes and score points. These top players rarely make mistakes, and their matches can be called "winner's games," where the outcome is entirely determined by the winner's active performance, and victory not only means a higher score, but also means achieving dominance through active scoring.
Amateur tennis, on the other hand, presents a completely different state. Brilliant shots, exciting prolonged rallies, and miraculous saves are rarely seen. Instead, the ball frequently hits the net and goes out of bounds, and service errors are common. Amateur players rarely truly defeat their opponents, but rather constantly defeat themselves. The reason why the winners of such matches score higher is often due to the fact that their opponents make more mistakes.
Dr. Ramo verified his theory through innovative methods: he abandoned the traditional scoring system and instead counted the ratio of points scored to points lost, and the data showed that 80% of the points in professional matches were scored through active offense, while 80% of the points in amateur matches were scored due to the opponent's mistakes.
This means that professional tennis is a typical "winner's game," where the outcome is determined by the winner's outstanding performance; amateur tennis, on the other hand, is a "loser's game," where the outcome is determined by the number of mistakes made by the losers. The two types of matches are fundamentally different in nature.
Based on this discovery, Dr. Ramo constructed a complete winning strategy: ordinary players only need to follow the simple tactic of "reducing mistakes and inducing the opponent to self-destruct" to continuously win matches.
He clearly pointed out that if the goal is to win rather than for entertainment, the core strategy should be to play a solid defense, maintain a high shot success rate, and give the opponent ample room to make mistakes. After all, amateur players are often trapped in the "loser's game" without realizing it, and will ultimately be defeated through self-consumption.
Dr. Ramo revealed the fundamental difference between the "winner's game" and the "loser's game" in his book: the so-called "winner's game" is where victory depends on exceeding expected skills, while in the "loser's game," victory depends on making fewer mistakes than the other players.
As Charles Ellis, who was hailed by the American magazine "Fortune" as "the smartest person on Wall Street" and a leading figure in the investment industry, classified modern investment as a loser's game and wrote a bestselling book called "Winning the Loser's Game".
As Ellis said in his book, investing is like playing tennis, where the winner only needs to make a little less mistake to achieve better long-term performance, while the losers will ultimately lose because they keep repeating the same mistakes. No one can avoid making new mistakes, but successful investors repeat old mistakes less frequently.
Looking back at the Crypto market, it used to be a winner's game, where participation and victory required skills above the average level. But today, the Crypto market has largely evolved into a loser's game - just survive by making fewer mistakes, and you can win.
Therefore, the logic becomes that as long as we don't do anything beyond the boundaries while others are frantically PvPing or frantically leveraging, we can greatly increase the probability of winning this game.
This is also why the market a few years ago only needed to buy blindly when the bull market arrived to make a profit, but now it is completely impossible, because this game has undergone a fundamental change. More than 90% of the players in the market do not need sophisticated operation techniques and strategies, the important thing is to reduce the frequency of mistakes and errors to achieve above-average returns.
As Howard Marks, the founder of Oaktree Capital, said: For me, perhaps the best way to achieve long-term success in investing is to not make mistakes, not make wrong investments, and have no bad years. As long as we accumulate good investments step by step, as long as the performance is stable year after year, for twenty years, thirty years, forty years, fifty years, it will be a successful investment career.
That's all. Let's all strive to win in this game.
