Survival First, Profits Second

Everything is secondary to survival. You have to show up everyday still holding capital to keep playing the game and to continue learning.

Most people don’t understand this when they first arrive. They come for generational wealth in a few months. They see crypto as a sprint to riches. And that misunderstanding is precisely why most of them don’t make it.

There’s a pervasive myth in crypto that time automatically equals wealth. The assumption goes: if you’ve been here for three , four , five years or more ,you must be living the dream and financially set for life.

People look at OGs and wonder “ How are you not a billionaire yet?”

Crypto isn’t about getting rich quick, it’s about surviving long enough to eventually make it and “making it” doesn’t happen on anyone’s timeline; it happens when preparation, capital preservation and opportunity finally converge.

The Core Thesis

The game isn’t won in your first cycle, or even in your second cycle. The game is won by the people who are still here, still learning, still holding capital when the right opportunities finally present themselves.

Survival First. Profits Second.

The Two Types of People Who Actually Make It

Walk through crypto long enough and you’ll notice that the people who actually succeed fall into two very distinct camps:

The Multi-Cycle Cockroaches

These are the battle-tested veterans who’ve survived multiple complete market cycles.

They saw the 2017 ICO bubble and crash, saw DeFi summer come and go , speculated in the NFT mania, got drained by FTX, and got liquidated a few times.

And through it all, they survived.

They survived because they learned to prioritize staying in the game above everything else.

These cockroaches have scar tissues. They know what capitulation feels like. They’ve been rugged, hacked and humbled. But each disaster taught them something. Each cycle refined their approach. They became more selective, more patient, more paranoid in the best possible way.

The Divinely Protected Individuals

Then there’s the second group: the people who, by all logic, should have been completely wiped out years ago.

They went to zero. Multiple times. They kept funds on FTX and lost everything. They got liquidated on October 10th because they were over leveraged on the wrong side. They bought tops, held through brutal drawdowns, fell for obvious scams and made every rookie mistake in the book.

Yet somehow, inexplicably, they’re still here.

Maybe they only had a small amount on FTX. Maybe the got liquidated but kept some capital in cold storage. Maybe they rebuilt from scratch; twice, three times, four times. Maybe they stumbled into one lucky play that gave them another shot. Maybe someone believed in them and gave them an opportunity. Call it luck ,divine intervention , or pure stubborn refusal to quit.

They are individuals who continually gambled until they eventually got lucky.

They learned survival the hard way.

Survivors vs. Losers

The difference between someone who’s still here for five years and someone who flamed out is simple.

Survivors learnt to protect the downside. Losers kept chasing the upside.

Survivors focus on:

• Preserving capital

• Taking only high probability trades

• Avoiding revenge trading

Losers focus on:

• Catching every single move

• How fast they can double their account

• “Every else is making money , why not me” instead of “what am i doing wrong”

Think about it like boxing. You can have the hardest punch in the world ,but if you can’t protect yourself, you won’t last a single round.

You’ll walk into a counter-punch, get knocked out and it’s over. Doesn’t matter how powerful your offense is if your defense is non-existent.

Trading works the same way, defense wins games.

You can have the best market analysis, best research skills but if you can’t protect your capital, none of it matters.

One bad position, one over leveraged trade, and you’re done. Game over.

Offense might be exciting, but defense is what keeps you in the fight long enough to win.

The harsh truth: most people who enter crypto become losers because they prioritize making money over not losing money.

The Irony of Survival: You Need to Lose It All (Unless You Don’t)

Here is something people talk about a lot: losing it all changes you.

There’s a humility and paranoia that comes from watching your portfolio go to zero, it’s brutal but can make you better.

Those Losses carve out the bad habits. The kill the overconfidence. They teach you that the market doesn’t care about your emotions, your analysis , or how smart you think you are. The market will humble you without hesitation.

That’s what a lot of people don’t understand about the journey. There’s almost a rite of passage element to it. The person who’s been to zero and back has learnt lessons that someone who’s only seen green can never fully grasp. They know what rock bottom feels like.And that knowledge makes them dangerous in the best way; cautious, calculated and patient.

In some twisted way, it’s almost good to lose it all once or twice. It purges the delusions. It separates those who are meant for the game from those who are just tourists. The ones who come back from zero are different. Stronger. Smarter. More resilient.

But here’s the irony

If you learn how to survive from the beginning, you won’t have to make that mistake of losing it all one or two times.

Thats the paradox. The lessons that come from losing everything are invaluable but they’re also completely avoidable if you approach the market with the right mindset from day one.

If you understand position sizing early, you won’t blow up.

If you practice proper risk management early, you won’t need to learn it through catastrophic loss.

If you prioritize capital preservation before chasing gains, you won’t have to experience the pain of starting over.

If you learn from other people’s mistakes instead of your own, you can skip the tuition payment entirely.

The divinely protected had to lose everything multiple times to learn survival. The cockroaches either lost it once and learned, or were smart enough to learn from watching others lose it. But the best outcome? Never losing it all in the first place because you understood survival from the beginning.

You don’t have to touch the stove to know it’s hot. You can listen to the people with burnt hands warning you. You can learn the lesson without paying the price.

But most people don’t. Most people need to feel the burn before they believe it’s real. Most people need to go to zero before they understand what they were doing wrong. That’s human nature, we learn best through pain.

The lessons are the same either way. It’s just a question of whether you pay for them with other people’s money ( by watching and learning) or your own ( by experiencing the loss firsthand). ** degens love the latter lmeow

The Survival Trap

But here’s when things get dangerous: you can become too focused on survival

Yes, survival is paramount. But there’s a dark side to the survival to the survival mindset that nobody talks about; The Survival Trap

It happens gradually. You start prioritizing not losing. You become more cautious, you wait for better setups and fresh narratives to spawn. But then something shifts. The caution becomes fear.

You fall into the survival hole.

Suddenly, you’re not waiting for good opportunities, you’re waiting to perfect ones and since perfect doesn’t exist, you wait forever.

You watch everything pass by. Fresh narrative emerges? “no one is talking about this on the TL, i will skip.” Good set up? “too late, probably a bull trap.”

Your confidence erodes with each missed opportunity. You become so afraid of losing that you forget the point was to eventually win.

You use “waiting” as an excuse. But really, you’re hiding. You’re using survival as an excuse to avoid risky entirely.

And risk; calculated and well-sized is how you actually make money.

The survival trap is especially common amongst who’ve been burned badly. They went to zero, rebuilt, and now they’re so traumatized by the loss that they can’t pull the trigger anymore.

You see this in your group chats. That one guy who’s always analyzing, always commenting but never actually buying anything. They’ve been “about to enter” for 5 months. The opportunity that was obvious at $100 is now $500, but they still can’t act because “it might come back down”

Survival without execution is spectating

You need to find the balance. Survival isn’t about never taking risk, it’s about taking calculated risks. Its about protecting your downside while still playing for the upside.

The best traders survive. But they also strike when the setup is right. They don’t overthink it.

The goal is calibrated aggression, not permanent defense

If you find yourself sitting on the sidelines for months, watching opportunity after opportunity pass by, justifying each miss with “ waiting for a better entry/narrative” ; you are trapped in the survival hole and you should probably read that article i wrote on confidence.

The market rewards patience, but it also punishes hesitation. There’s a difference between waiting for your pitch and watching the entire game from a dugout.

Learn to survive. Then learn to act. The complete player knows how to do both.

The Math That Everyone Ignores: Compounding Survival

Here’s what people don’t talk about enough: you can’t compound if you keep going to zero.

Let’s say you start with $10,000:

• You 3x it to $30,000. Great

• Then you lose 80% in a bad trade. You’re at $6,000

• You 5x that to $30,000. Nice recovery

• Then you go in with 90% of your port and go down to $3,000 for the second time.

You’ve had two massive wins but you’re still down 70% from where you started.

Now compare that to someone who focuses on survival:

• starts with $10,000

• makes 50% in a good trade: $15000

• Sits waiting for a good set up: $15000

• makes another 40% in the next good trade: $21000

• waits again

• Makes 50% in the next opportunity: 31500

• waits again through the noise

• makes 80% when the market gives a clear signal: $56700

Smaller wins. Longer timeline. But nearly over 5x their starting capital because they never went backwards ( or hard any huge drawdowns)

Real compounding isn’t about hitting crazy trades; its more about consistent, protected growth.

The cockroaches understand this. The divinely protected learnt this through pain. The losers never figure it out.

The Unsexy Superpower: Risk Management

Risk management isn’t exciting. nobody gets twitter engagement for tweeting “I’m sitting in stable coins this month”

But risk management is the difference between being here in five years and being a cautionary tale.

Everyone should understand this key principles:

➜Position Sizing

Never put so much in a single play that losing it would cripple you. If you can’t stomach a position going to zero, it’s probably too big. Size down until you can sleep at night.

➜Counterparty Risk

After FTX, this should be non-negotiable. Don’t keep meaningful capital on centralized exchanges. If its not in your custody, it’s not yours.

there is no “too big to fail” in crypto. Withdraw to self-custody.Every single time.

➜Leverage = Amplified Destruction

Sure, leverage amplifies gains. It also amplifies losses and make you vulnerable to flash crashes and leverage hunts. October 10th was just one example of many. The market has no mercy for over leveraged positions.

If you use leverage, use it sparingly and understand that you’re accepting the risk of total loss.

➜Liquidity Management

Always keep dry powder. When everyone else is capitulating, having capital available lets you take advantage. But you can only do that if you haven’t blown it all chasing pumps. Some of the best opportunities happen when blood is in the streets but only if you have ammunition left.

➜Emotional Circuit Breakers

Set rules for yourself before you’re emotional. Walk away after a big loss. Take profits when you’re up. Don’t revenge trade. Don’t FOMO in at tops.

The market will test your discipline constantly. Have systems in place that protect you from yourself.

Risk management is simply about being smart enough to survive until the next thing spawns.

Waiting for Good Enough Opportunities ( Not Just Perfect Ones)

Waiting is a core part of trading. In fact, it might be the most important part.

The best traders wait for good enough opportunities to deploy capital; they are constantly on top of new narratives, tracking where smart money is moving, reading research reports. They’re pattern matching constantly ,comparing what’s happening now to what happened in previous cycles.

Good enough opportunities are situations where the risk/reward is so skewed in their favour that it’s almost obvious. Where the understand the narrative deeply, believe in the thesis and can size a position appropriately without losing sleep.

These moments are rare. Thats why they wait.

You don’t have to participate in everything to win, wanting to participate in everything is how you lose.

No trade is also a trade.

The Comparison Trap

Social media makes this worse. Everyone’s posting wins. “I told you so” victory laps. Threads about how they turned $10000 to $1,000,000. It creates this illusion that everyone’s getting rich except you.

But what you don’t see are the blown accounts. The people who got liquidated and quietly left. The October 10th casualties who didn’t recover yet.

Survivorship bias is real and brutal. The people posting gains are the survivors. For every account posting wins, there are dozens who got wiped out and aren’t around to tell their story.

So when people ask “You’ve been in crypto for x years and you’re not rich yet?” that question reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how this works.

X years might include:

• X months of bear market where the best play was to do nothing

• The FTX collapse that wiped out people’s holdings

• Multiple flash crashes that liquidated leveraged positions

• Countless scams and rugs that caught people off guard

• Expensive mistakes that were actually learning experiences

• Time spent studying instead of gambling

The person who’s been here X years and still has capital, who understands the market, who knows what not to do; that person is in a good place.

They might not be rich yet, but they’re positioned. They’re ready for when the next opportunity spawns.

Compare that to the person who’s been here three years and blown their account four times. same time period. One survived. One didn’t.

Stop comparing your journey to cherry picked highlights on X. Everyone’s timeline is different. Everyone’s risk tolerance is different. Everyone’s starting capital is different.

The only comparison that matters is your personal growth; if you’re further ahead in knowledge, capital and positioning than you were last year then you’re winning.

Study First, Earn Later

Every successful trader goes through the studying phase

This is where you’re not making life changing money. You’re currently learning and paying tuition through mistakes. You’re figuring out how market psychology shifts, how to spot red flags, how cycles progress , how narratives work.

You can’t skip this phase.

Some people try. They come in during a bull market, make money on a few lucky plays, and think they’ve figured it out. Then the market shifts and they lose everything because they never learnt the fundamentals. They were earning before studying. It doesn’t last.

The cockroaches went through years of studying. Reading whitepapers. Understanding different L1 architectures. Learning about DeFi mechanics. Studying how ponzi economics works. Figuring what actually creates value versus what just extracts it. They paid attention during the bear markets when everything went quiet and there was nothing to do but learn.

The divinely protected eventually figured out they needed to study. After losing everything enough times, they realized that luck alone wasn’t enough.

The pattern is always the same: study first, earn later.

The people who try to earn without studying eventually lose it all. The people who study first might take longer to make money, but when they do, they tend to keep it.

This is why being in crypto for x years without being rich isn’t a failure; it might mean you’ve spent x years in study mode. Building knowledge. Developing pattern recognition. Learning risk management. Thats not a waste of time, you’re simply building a foundation.

The earning phase comes after. And when it does, you’ll be ready because you put in the work when everyone else was either gambling or complaining.

Surviving Long Enough for the Next Thing to Spawn

Here’s the ultimate truth about crypto: you just need to be around when the next real thing happens.

After FTX collapsed, people thought crypto was dead. But if you survived FTX, you would still be here when the next cycle start warming up. You would be positioned for the next opportunity.

After October 10th and other flash crashes wipe out leveraged traders, the Doomers flip to bearish and start calling for the top and end of the cycle. **ahem this Doomers have probably lost their edge long time ago.

But if you survived, you will still be here waiting for whatever comes next.

Every disaster in crypto creates a new batch of survivors and a new batch of people who leave. The survivors stick around for the next thing and the leavers end up missing it.

Bitcoin wasn’t supposed to work. Then Ethereum wasn’t supposed to work. Then NFTs were “all going to zero.” Then every bear market was “the end of crypto.” Yet every time, something new spawned. And people who survived long enough were there to catch it.

Your job isn’t to predict what the next thing will be. Your job is to survive long enough to be around when it spawns.

Maybe its a breakthrough in scalability. Maybe its a new fun tech to play around with. Maybe it’s something nobody’s even thought of yet. You don’t know. You can’t know.

But if you survive, you’ll be here when it happens. And that’s the only edge that really matters.

Slow Motion is Better Than No Motion

Let’s be honest: surviving doesn’t feel good most of the time.

It’s watching opportunities pass by because the risk isn’t right. It feels like you’re moving in slow motion while everyone else is sprinting.

But here’s the thing: slow motion is better than no motion.

The people who sprinted off ran off a cliff. They’re not here anymore.

You’re still here. Still Learning. Still moving forward, even if its slower than you think. Thats not losing, that’s winning the long game.

Every day you survive is a day you get smarter. Every piece of capital you protect is fuel for the next real opportunity.

The tortoise beats the hare, not because the tortoise is faster but because the hare makes mistakes, takes unnecessary risks and doesn’t finish the race.

You don’t need to move fast. You just need to keep moving. Keep learning. Keep protecting your capital. Keep showing up.

And eventually you will win the race.

And I’ll be right there at the finish line, cheering you on.