Author: Lucas Kiely, CEO of Future Digital
The biggest challenge facing cryptocurrencies is the lack of quantifiable value compared to traditional stocks, which keeps them in a state of high speculation. Additionally, investors can leverage trades, causing billions of dollars to vanish overnight.
Proponents of technology argue that the innovative infrastructure of blockchain gives it value, but there is little evidence that these innovations can provide real, tangible benefits to token holders.
Professional investors from traditional finance often struggle to adapt. Cryptocurrencies lack referenceable price-to-earnings ratios, monitorable supply chains, and essentially have no physical assets. This is what sets cryptocurrencies apart from all other asset classes: they are entirely driven by sentiment—and this sentiment is often extremely difficult to predict.
Cryptocurrencies truly reflect the power of a completely free market. Bitcoin (BTC) may be the only exception, as its supply is limited and an increasing number of institutional investors dominate its holdings. However, the price fluctuations of most cryptocurrency tokens are extremely difficult to predict and are primarily driven by traders.
One might argue that the valuations of many stocks are also not based on real value. Indeed, the valuations of tech stocks like Apple, Meta, and Nvidia have been inflated for some time. However, aside from their high price tags, these companies still have fundamentals to support them: earnings, cash flow, supply chains, and products. Most digital assets lack these.
Nevertheless, cryptocurrencies offer investors life-changing return expectations, and sometimes these returns are indeed realized. These success stories are permanently recorded on the blockchain and widely disseminated on social media platforms, making the current market, valued at $4.3 trillion, impossible to ignore. In the largely unregulated realm of cryptocurrencies, investors often behave irrationally, making significant mistakes.
This phenomenon is primarily reflected in the risks brought by leveraged trading. In fact, leverage is not a new concept in the investment field. Retail investors can also use leverage in traditional finance, but it is regulated. For example, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in the U.S. sets a maximum leverage ratio of 2:1 for margin accounts; forex leveraged trading can only be conducted through professional platforms and is strictly limited; and derivatives trading is mainly aimed at qualified investors.
In the cryptocurrency space, any investor can easily engage in 100x leverage trading or even higher on exchanges. Today, the entry of the largest global institutions into the crypto space has made this issue particularly prominent. The proliferation of leverage has triggered a chain of liquidations, causing the digital asset market to lose billions of dollars in market value in a short time, sometimes in just hours or minutes.
Take the large-scale liquidation events at the end of September 2025 and the beginning of October 2025 as an example. During the former, over $1.8 billion in leveraged trades were liquidated, while the latter saw losses exceeding $19 billion within hours. Although there is much speculation about the true causes of the latter, it is certain that when market sentiment turned, long leveraged positions were caught in a chain of liquidations.
Some astute traders undoubtedly profited from this round of volatility. However, most cryptocurrency investors had their positions forcibly liquidated before they even had a chance to log into their trading accounts. In the cryptocurrency space, the cost of these mistakes is far higher than in traditional finance, as there are very few rules. When the market direction reverses, these positions collapse like a house of cards, taking billions with them.
Cryptocurrencies are continuously evolving. The world's most renowned asset management institutions have become involved, and the global regulatory environment is becoming more favorable. However, cryptocurrencies still lack protective mechanisms that can instantly prevent significant market events from occurring.
A large part of this is due to unlimited leverage, unrealistic expectations, and the ability of institutions to move the market with a single trade. Every cryptocurrency investor must take the market more seriously. Some have made millions on Bitcoin, while others have suffered greater losses on Dogecoin (DOGE).
As the industry matures and large institutions join, overconfidence and excessive leverage have become significant risks in the current market. Every investor needs to approach this new reality with a more systematic method.
Related: Bitwise: 48 new Bitcoin (BTC) reserve companies added in just three months
Original article: “Opinion: The Maturity of Cryptocurrency Requires Systematic Discipline, Not Speculation”
免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。
