## The Core Rules for Crypto Investing in 2026: Hold the Right Assets and Keep Quiet

The crypto market size has surpassed $3.5 trillion, only 3% of the way to the ultimate goal of $100 trillion. This macro landscape determines the main investment tone for the next decade—long-term trends are far more predictable than short-term fluctuations.

### Why did most people see mediocre returns in 2025? Liquidity is the real culprit

Short-term market volatility is essentially noise, while the long-term market is driven by two main engines: network adoption rate and monetary issuance. The core contradiction facing the current crypto market is the mismatch in liquidity.

From a macro perspective, after the 2008 financial crisis, countries set debt maturities to 3-5 years, rolling over every four years. When interest rates hit zero again in 2021-2022, countries extended debt durations to 5 years. This means the printing of money originally scheduled for the fourth year was delayed to the fifth year—2026. Over $10 trillion of debt requires liquidity support, which is the fundamental reason for the large liquidity cycle in 2026.

However, the current market has an oversupply of tokens, and even ample liquidity cannot save all projects. **The era of buying anything and it rising has ended**. There is a clear risk curve divergence among different L1s—Bitcoin retraced 30%, Ethereum 40%, Solana 50%, SUI 60-65%, with specific ranges depending on each chain’s maturity, user base, and market depth.

### DTFU Framework: Don’t aim to earn the most, focus on not losing too much

"DTFU" (Don't F*** This Up) is a seemingly simple but profound investment philosophy. Its core goal is not to maximize returns but to **minimize losses in a single cycle based on long-term compound interest**.

The standard for building a "least regret investment portfolio" is simple: choose assets with sufficient size and real adoption fundamentals, ensuring they won’t go to zero within one cycle. They might bleed slowly, but won’t be wiped out instantly. L1 tokens are the most straightforward choice—Bitcoin’s current price is $91.89K, with a 24-hour increase of +1.15%; Ethereum is priced at $3.16K, with a 24-hour increase of +1.91%. Although these top assets fluctuate, their long-term trend is upward.

For emerging chains like SUI, the risk curve is steeper, but their user growth exceeds the performance of Solana during the same period, and on-chain active user value/volume metrics show it is undervalued by about 80% compared to Solana. Currently, SUI is priced at $1.81, and although it has underperformed Solana in the short term, it remains in an upward trend.

### Don’t borrow others’ beliefs: doing your own homework is the real key

Many traders from traditional finance have shifted to AI, claiming that the crypto market is mature, with institutional inflows and more professional traders, making alpha nearly disappear. But this overlooks a fact: **the larger the market, the simpler the way to make real money—pick the right assets and do nothing**.

This is not a new idea. As early as 2004, macro strategy traders faced the same dilemma. Fund investors are forced to value assets monthly and judge performance based on monthly gains or losses, which destroys the advantage of macro strategies—macro trends often take 18 months to 3 years to fully unfold. This forced realization logic not only damages professional investors’ returns but also suppresses the overall market’s yields.

The crypto space is repeating this pattern. The rise of high-frequency trading, systematic funds, and other tools makes short-term speculation harder to profit from. The real path to wealth is actually quite "boring"—**long-term dollar-cost averaging (DCA) into Bitcoin outperforms DCA into the S&P 500**. To optimize this strategy, you can accelerate DCA when the market drops more than 30%, at three times the frequency during market highs, significantly boosting compound returns.

A classic example: a certain investor’s girlfriend started DCA into ETH and BTC in 2019, ignoring social media, and greatly outperformed her boyfriend. Brokerage data shows that the best-performing accounts are often those of long-term "deceased" clients who did not operate. This fully demonstrates the value of keeping quiet.

### Liquidity cycles and adoption rate double game

The current crypto market is engaged in a double-layered game. The first layer is liquidity—The Fed has stopped quantitative tightening, but systemic liquidity remains tight. The US Treasury General Account (TGA) is being replenished and drained like a checking account, and reverse repo funds are exhausted, keeping liquidity growth rates low.

The second layer is adoption rate—Even with liquidity, the long-term value of tokens is truly determined by their network adoption speed and devaluation extent. L1, L2, application layers, DeFi, and other fields are competing for this limited adoption space.

This explains why tools like ChatGPT are becoming useful—they can value chains by the ratio of stablecoin transfers to active users, and define active users across five dimensions including DeFi and gaming, helping to assess which chains are over- or undervalued. Such on-chain indicator analysis provides investors with a fairly reliable basis for judgment.

### Practical operations in 2026: Hold, wait, and compound

The market bottomed out in the October 2025 liquidation. The US Treasury withdrew liquidity via the TGA, the government shutdown froze accounts, and crypto markets, being the most liquidity-sensitive assets, exposed all leverage weaknesses, triggering systemic liquidations.

But if the liquidity research is correct, **a wave of liquidity is about to arrive**. Tight funds in the banking system cause frequent volatility in money markets. The Fed has stopped QT and recognizes the need to inject liquidity to complete year-end financing. This paves the way for an upward cycle in 2026.

Under this framework, the secret to getting rich in 2026 is: choose the right assets, maintain your time horizon (at least 5 years recommended), and everything else is noise.

Do not copy others’ beliefs or investment allocations. Every investor has different risk tolerances and goals. Some have other cash flows and can tolerate higher volatility; others need conservative allocations. The key is to develop a framework based on your actual situation and stick to it.

### Long-term potential of NFTs and digital assets

Although most people mock "Monkey JPEGs," speculative assets markets tend to validate new ideas fastest. Crypto speculation has proven that the value of digital assets far exceeds exchange tokens. The CryptoPunks series alone is valued at $10 billion, and applications like gaming assets, tickets, financial contracts, and digital identities have broad potential.

In the digital world, everything can go to zero, but digital scarcity preserves value. When liquidity is abundant (e.g., Ethereum price reaching the upper range), wealth flows into art. This is not only speculation but also a new way to store wealth.

### Key takeaway

The success of crypto investing has never been about timing or chasing the latest hot spots, but about **understanding long-term cycles, choosing assets with adoption fundamentals, and holding steadily**. A 30% short-term decline is just a normal risk curve; what matters is the market’s evolution toward the ultimate goal of $100 trillion. The process has already begun, with 30x upside potential waiting to be validated.