Everyone is shouting that the environment is bad, but why are some people quietly picking up chips?

Lately, whether scrolling through Twitter or lurking in group chats, a gloomy vibe is palpable through the screen. The economy is bad, the macro environment is deteriorating, another crash is coming... I'm pretty sure my ears have grown calluses from hearing this rhetoric over and over again?
When the candlesticks turn red, the group turns on each other; when prices drop, faith evaporates. But interestingly, history always completes wealth transfer silently with striking similarity.
Why, during the desperate decade of the Great Depression in 1929, did more than one-third of America's new millionaires emerge? Why, during the 2008 financial tsunami, did Buffett scoop $10 billion from a field littered with corpses?
Hidden within this is a rule that goes strongly against human nature, even a bit cold: real wealth has never been made through FOMO in a bull market, but in the bloodbath of a bear market.

Today, let's not talk about candlesticks. Let's talk about the underlying logic behind it all, and how ordinary people can avoid being cannon fodder and become players in this reshuffle.
1. Don't get trapped in the liquidity trap
Many think the biggest killer in a crisis is asset depreciation. Wrong! The real killer is liquidity drain.
Those in the crypto space should be most sensitive to this. The altcoins you hold look like tens of millions in market cap during a bull market, but once a bear market panic hits, buy orders vanish instantly. You want to sell? Sorry, that's the zero price.
This is the secret that allowed the Rockefeller family to endure for a century: cash is king. During the 1907 banking crisis, when everyone was selling, he used a pile of cash to sweep up Manhattan real estate, which multiplied eightfold ten years later. At the peak of panic, cash's purchasing power rises exponentially.
In the current environment, if you're still fully invested or leveraged, you're just providing liquidity for the whales. A truly defensive investment suggests adjusting your portfolio structure:
40% stablecoins: cash is king, wait for opportunities
30% core assets: BTC/ETH for stable returns
30% reserve funds: for black-swan bargains
This may seem cowardly, but it ensures you won't get liquidated in the crypto winter and won't be empty-handed when opportunities arise.
2. The so-called bottom fishing isn't about guessing the bottom, it's about picking bargains
Many have a misconception: bottom fishing means catching the absolute bottom. Bro, that's what gods do, not humans.
When Buffett bottom-fished Goldman Sachs in 2008, the index was still halfway down. But he didn't care, because he was buying a certain future: Goldman Sachs wouldn't fail, and the price was far below intrinsic value.
Look at the crypto crash on March 12, 2020: BTC dropped to $3,800. At that moment, if you had USDT, you were the market master. Many people panicked and handed over their chips, but those who dared to enter—even if they didn't buy the lowest point—had at least 10x returns by 2021.
The logic is brutally cold: when high-quality assets are unfairly sold off due to systemic panic, it's free money.
There's only one precondition: you must have bullets, and those bullets aren't locked up.
3. Old maps won't find new lands
Painful truth: the days of easily launching a coin for a hundred times or trading shitcoins with each other are probably gone forever. If you're still playing by the logic of the previous era, you're the one swimming naked in the new era.
Future opportunities lie in the integration of technology and real-world assets: the combination of AI and DeFi, RWA on-chain, and the restructuring of Web3 with physical industries.
The current bear market is the time to take root. Like the bamboo law: it only grows 3 cm in the first four years, but from the fifth year, it grows 30 cm every day. You need to learn new protocols, new narratives—even if you only understand a little each day, three years later you'll be a veteran in the new cycle.
4. The last to survive, the battle of mental fortitude
In crypto, you can learn technical analysis, you can follow news, but mental fortitude is something you have to endure.
Look at how desperate Ren Zhengfei was when he wrote "Huawei's Winter," but he didn't lay off people to survive; he bet everything on R&D. Chu Shijian, at 74 with nothing left, went to plant oranges, waiting six years for fruit. In crypto, that's called long-termism, diamond hands.
But diamond hands don't mean holding onto zero-value coins to death; it means steadfastly holding value coins with consensus and technical depth.

2025 to 2035 marks the end of the old era and the beginning of a new one. Which one will you become? The answer doesn't lie in tomorrow's red or green candles, but in whether you have cash in hand, new knowledge in your mind, and that steady resolve in your heart.
The wheels of the era are already turning. Stop struggling in the water. Find a way to get on board.