I’ve been thinking about this lately: whether you can’t hold onto spot or you get liquidated on futures, at the end of the day it’s all because you can’t control your position size. Put simply, it’s the old saying: “Don’t let the pot burn your hand, and don’t smash the bowl.”

On spot, when it ticks up you want to run, and when it dips even a little you panic—that’s because you treat the money you put in as “betting capital,” forgetting that it’s originally part of your asset allocation. With futures, don’t even get started: once leverage kicks in, liquidation can happen in minutes. Even if your direction is right, if your funds and risk management can’t keep up, it’s all for nothing.

Recently I’ve been looking at RWA, where people compare U.S. Treasury yields with on-chain products. The logic is the same: no matter how high the return is, if your position size is off, it’s effectively zero. In plain terms, making money that you can sleep soundly with is better than anything else.