After struggling in this market for 5 years, the most intuitive feeling is: the days when you could earn money by buying coins with your eyes closed are completely over. Now, staying up until dawn staring at K-lines and flipping through project white papers may yield less stable returns than casually buying a mainstream coin back in the day. This skyrocketing difficulty in making money is not a matter of luck, but rather a result of technological iteration, tool popularization, and cognitive awakening weaving together a 'precise sieve' that filters out all rough arbitrage opportunities.

1. Technical Involution: From 'Single Point Breakthrough' to 'Comprehensive Encirclement' of Profit Squeeze

The technical dividends in the early crypto market were too easy to earn— as long as a certain public chain had a TPS slightly higher than Ethereum, its tokens could double; a simple staking function could support an annualized return of 300%. But now, technological iteration has shifted from 'incremental innovation' to 'stock involution', making it almost impossible for ordinary people to make money through technological disparity.

On one hand, the homogeneity of infrastructure has led to the disappearance of technical premiums. Now, any public chain can achieve low gas fees and high throughput, and the proliferation of Layer 2 has largely filled the performance gaps of mainnets. Projects that once attracted capital solely through 'cross-chain functions' now find it difficult to break ten million in TVL—after all, assets in users' hands can be traded smoothly on any chain, and there is no need to migrate for a single technical highlight. I tracked a project last year that claimed to be 'AI + public chain', which wrote 50 pages of technical documentation, but upon launch, it was found that the core functions were not fundamentally different from similar projects six months ago, and the token directly dropped 80%.

On the other hand, the rising technical threshold has kept retail investors out. In the early days, playing DeFi only required knowing how to authorize wallets and use leverage; now, to do arbitrage, one needs to understand smart contract auditing, on-chain data modeling, and even write simple automation scripts. For example, in liquidity mining, it used to be enough to choose pools with high APY, but now one must calculate impermanent loss, token unlock cycles, and monitor for contract vulnerabilities—recently, a vulnerability attack on a certain DEX caused even professional teams to lose millions, let alone ordinary retail investors. Technology is no longer a 'money-making tool'; it has become an 'entrance ticket', and without some professional accumulation, one would not dare to touch it.

Secondly, the popularization of tools: the disappearance of information gaps has caused retail investors to lose their last advantage.

When I first entered the market, I could earn a lot of money by 'discovering new coin listing information in advance' and 'manual arbitrage'; the core was that the tools and data were in the hands of a few. But now, the universal availability of tools has directly eliminated this information gap, even causing retail investors to fall into the 'tool dependence trap'.

First, let's talk about the 'excessive transparency' of data tools. In the past, viewing on-chain data required code queries, but now any app can show changes in large holders' positions, capital inflows and outflows, and staking unlock schedules. What institutions can see, retail investors can also see—when everyone knows that 'the top ten addresses of a certain token account for over 60%' and '1 million tokens will be unlocked next week', it is impossible to rely on this information for early positioning. Ironically, data tools have also become accomplices in institutions exploiting retail investors: they deliberately create false data of 'net capital inflow', and retail investors follow the tool signals to enter, only to be caught in a dump.

Next, let's look at the 'dimensionality reduction strike' of trading tools. Institutions have long used high-frequency trading robots and cross-platform arbitrage systems, with reaction speeds measured in milliseconds, while retail investors use ordinary trading software, which has delays of several seconds. I previously tried to do contract arbitrage, and as soon as I calculated the price difference and placed an order, I was preemptively filled by an institutional robot; after a day's work, not only did I not earn anything, but I also lost on fees. Now, even the margin trading's fault tolerance is terrifyingly low; a 1.5% daily fluctuation in ETH can trigger a chain liquidation, and the liquidation probability at 3x leverage is as high as 37%. Retail investors simply cannot keep up with the market rhythm through manual operation. Tools have shifted from 'empowering retail investors' to 'widening the gap', which is the most helpless change.

The core of why making money is difficult is actually that 'there are not enough fools'—after several rounds of bull and bear washing, investors in the market have finally awakened, and those once 'get-rich-quick myths' can no longer deceive people, making the capital in the entire market extraordinarily cautious.

First, there is immunity to 'narrative hype'. In the past, as long as one shouted slogans like 'metaverse' or 'AI + blockchain', tokens could surge several times, but now no one pays attention to PPTs. Investors around me have started to ask, 'Does the project have actual income?' 'How many users are there?' 'Where are the technical landing cases?'. Last year, a certain meme coin was hyped on social platforms, surging 10 times on the day of its launch, only to drop back to the issue price in 3 days due to the lack of any substantial value, with 99% of participants losing money. With such lessons, no one dares to chase hot spots casually anymore; projects relying on hype to drive prices can't raise funds and naturally lose short-term arbitrage opportunities.

Secondly, there is the 'chip solidification' effect of long-term holding. Now 70% of Bitcoin is held by long-term holders, who have not moved their holdings for more than 12 months, and the circulating chips in the market are becoming increasingly scarce. In the past, when a bull market arrived, retail investors could still ride a wave of price increases, but now the chips are locked by institutions and long-term investors, making it difficult for retail investors to liquidate easily even if prices rise. More importantly, everyone understands that 'short-term fluctuations cannot make money', and more and more people choose to hold and lie flat, naturally leading to fewer short-term trading opportunities in the market.

Lastly, it is a warning against 'high-risk strategies'. In the past, leverage and contracts were tools for retail investors to pursue 'quick doubling'; now they have become traps for 'quick zeroing'. After experiencing several chain liquidations, no one around me dares to add more than 5x leverage, and many have even switched their positions back to mainstream coins. When the market's risk appetite collectively declines, those short-term gains driven by high leverage disappear, making it naturally slow and difficult to make money.

Conclusion: It’s not that money is hard to earn, but that the logic of making money has changed.

Looking back now, making money in the crypto market has become difficult, and the essence is the inevitable transformation from 'barbaric growth' to 'meticulous cultivation'. Technological internal competition has eliminated 'pseudo-innovation', the universal availability of tools has eradicated 'information gaps', and cognitive awakening has burst the 'hype bubble', leaving ordinary people with the only path of 'earning money through professional ability'.

For me, the operational logic has long changed: no longer chasing new coins, but instead researching RWA projects with real cash flow; no longer trading based on feelings, but using on-chain data modeling to find opportunities; no longer betting on market trends with leverage, but instead using low positions to layout clearly defined technical tracks. This market has never lacked opportunities; it just no longer offers chances to 'lazy people' and 'gamblers'—if you want to make money, you first need to earn the ability to deserve it.

A River · Rio October 7, 2025