Original Author: CryptoSAWA (X: @0xsawa)
Introduction | One Thing I Learned in 2025: First Defense, Then Offense
We once looked forward to 2025 with great anticipation, and emotions peaked after the "crypto-friendly president" Trump took office; however, the market took a sharp downturn after October, surprising everyone.
In one sentence, my 2025: I accepted the chaos of the market and prioritized "survival."
I once believed in an eternal bull market, in narrative innovation, and in "spot is fine." But this year, the market told me in the most direct way:
When the time comes, the world works together; when luck departs, heroes are not free.
This piece is not a report card but a reflection—how I survived a series of erroneous expectations and how I saw my true choices for the year in the annual bill from Bitget.
1) Observations on Market Changes in 2025
My 2025 can be described as a catastrophic start.
At the beginning of the year, my judgment of the market was highly optimistic:
I believed that macro factors and the Federal Reserve would take a backseat, and the real variable was Trump; ETH would refresh its historical high, becoming the second crypto asset to surpass a trillion in market cap, and the altcoin season would arrive as expected.
Looking back now, I can only smile bitterly: entering 2025 with such a complete yet erroneous understanding and still being alive now is truly a medical miracle.
With a strongly bullish expectation, I chose to go long on the ETH/BTC exchange rate starting from 0.022, which means going long on ETH and short on BTC. The result is well-known: the exchange rate fell all the way down, and I kept averaging down until I was close to liquidation, and my mindset completely collapsed.
During that time, I happened to be attending a conference in Hong Kong, and the market conditions and emotions compounded, making me almost avoid reality every day. I drank late into the night, hoping to wake up slowly the next day to face the cruel numbers in my account a little less.
Fortunately, the EB exchange rate stopped falling and rebounded around 0.0177, and I eventually closed my position at break-even, but I missed the subsequent main surge of ETH.
This was the first lesson I learned in 2025:
No extremes, no trends; no trends, no extremes.
In terms of trading behavior, this means going against the trend to go long when the downtrend is not extreme, and not daring to go long when the uptrend is not extreme.
Another erroneous judgment came from my obsession with the "altcoin season."
I bought a basket of altcoin spots, only to end up trapped. I also attempted to compensate for missing out on ETH by going long on PEPE; although I made money, the holding experience was so poor that in the end, it was better to just go long on ETH directly.
The second lesson was even harsher and more thorough:
The altcoin season no longer exists.
This corresponds to the two most profound differentiations in the market:
The differentiation between U.S. stocks and crypto: the overall liquidity in the crypto market has dried up, with funds flowing into the more certain U.S. stocks;
The differentiation between mainstream and altcoins: the altcoin narrative has been completely debunked, and most altcoins are heading towards a gradually withering end.
The core reason behind the differentiation is that the false dream built by the crypto market on blockchain (emerging technology) has collapsed. People have realized that it addresses issues that are ethereal and largely unrelated to reality, akin to a poorly constructed building that, despite its surface grandeur, is ultimately hollow.
2) My Annual Keywords: Waiting / Defense / Restraint
As mentioned earlier, after experiencing a tumultuous half-year, I "painfully corrected my mistakes" and started trading only ETH contracts from September, specifically shorting ETH.
Shorting is very difficult and not smooth sailing. In the process of grappling with ETH, I gradually formed a robust trading model, which became my annual keywords: Waiting / Defense / Restraint.
Waiting: Observe more, act less, and avoid forced trading.
Defense: First learn not to lose money, then talk about how to make money.
Restraint: Control leverage, stabilize emotions, and let the system make decisions for me.
From the perspective of asset and trading concentration, my choices have become very clear:
Contract trading: Only trade mainstream assets like ETH, deliberately avoiding high volatility and low liquidity narrative-driven targets.
Spot allocation: Hold BGB and PARTI without leverage as a small alpha bet.
TradFi: Small positions in gold, silver, and other precious metal trades.
These are all insights I gained from the Bitget annual report, which served as a mirror reflecting my changes.
I started using Bitget in March 2024, and we have been together for 664 days. In 2025, I traded 651 times, involving 54 spot currencies, with an overall profit of 10%. 
The data may seem unremarkable, but it hides tumultuous waves: at the end of September, I shorted ETH at a temporary bottom, faced a rebound, and held onto my position, ultimately stopping out at the highest point of the rebound, resulting in a 20% loss of principal. This was akin to going long on the EB exchange rate at the beginning of the year; ultimately, it was human nature at play, failing to adhere to trading discipline and succumbing to greed and fear.
All that happened yesterday has shaped who I am today.
3) The Most Common Features I Use on Bitget: Contract Trading & TradFi
I still love trading, enjoy the game, and am willing to continue improving.
The contract experience on Bitget in terms of execution, depth, and stability allows me to focus more on judgment and risk control rather than being interrupted by the tools themselves.
As for TradFi, especially precious metals, volatility surged dramatically at the end of 2025. I must say Bitget was a timely help, making it easier for users to participate in the precious metals market.
I increasingly feel that the world is entering a chaotic era, with financial markets becoming more chaotic and crypto declining. In this context, U.S. stocks and precious metals may be better choices; diversification itself is also a form of defense.
Lastly, I must mention Bitget Launchpool, which had a total of 33 sessions throughout 2025. As a BGB Holder since 2024, I can only say that the passive income from LP is a steady happiness~ 
4) My Changes in Mindset, Growth, and Summary in 2025
In 2025, I finally truly accepted three things:
Acknowledge chaos: The market is not a predictable system; many "correct outcomes" are just one realization among probabilities.
Accept probability trading: What we do is not predict the future but judge probability distributions and decide whether to bet and how much to bet.
Change the goal from "earning the most" to "losing the least": When you try not to lose money, the remaining question is just how much you earn; survival itself is an advantage.
When I no longer obsess over "hitting it big" but focus on "staying at the table," trading becomes simpler.
Slow is fast; I have begun to truly believe in the power of compound interest.
GetAgent's advice based on my annual bill is similar; from the results, I accumulated my gains in 2025 through multiple small positive returns. There was a single drawdown of 20% during the year, but overall, I maintained a positive return.
This itself indicates one thing: what truly determines the outcome is not whether I made the right judgment once, but whether I allowed mistakes to spiral out of control.
5) Outlook for 2026: For the Next Year and for Readers
I believe the main narrative for 2026 will be RWA, focusing on two things: first, the tokenization of gold driven by the World Gold Council; second, the tokenization of stocks driven by Nasdaq.
Real asset on-chain has been discussed for some time, but the market is mixed, filled with many low-quality projects disguised as RWA, with their underlying assets being garbage.
I believe 2026 will see a cleansing wave, and RWA will accelerate towards the right track, bringing quality assets on-chain for freer circulation.
As I write this, I recall a line from "The Three-Body Problem":
The primary goal of civilization is not expansion, but continuation.
Those civilizations that truly survive are not the most radical or the most dazzling, but those that accept reality early, lower expectations, and actively adjust their structures. In a highly uncertain and almost unpredictable universe, continuation itself is a victory.
The market is not friendlier than the universe.
It is equally indifferent, equally unexplanatory, and will not change its operation based on your efforts or beliefs. What you can do is always limited: you cannot control when volatility occurs, nor can you decide when a narrative is established or collapses, and you cannot even guarantee that a correct judgment will necessarily lead to a corresponding outcome. The only things you can control are your level of exposure, your betting methods, and whether you still have an exit when mistakes happen.
After 2025, I no longer try to understand all the fluctuations, nor do I expect to seize every opportunity. What I care more about is whether my account can still withstand when judgments fail, liquidity shrinks, and emotions are rapidly amplified, and whether I still have the qualification to participate in the next round of the game. As long as I can stay in the game, let time continue to flow, and let compound interest continue to occur, even if the pace is slow and the returns seem less dazzling, it is still a path worth taking.
For me, this is what 2025 has truly left behind: no longer treating trading as a war that must be won, but as a relationship that needs to coexist in the long term. First defense, then offense; first survive, then talk about expansion.
Humans are the end, not the means; I want to become myself.
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