When I first entered the market, I firmly believed that cycles followed their own rules and that hard work would be rewarded. I always held to the crypto market’s four-year cycle, assuming that every rise and fall was predetermined. Lie low at the bottom, buy on dips, and as long as I had the patience to build a heavy BTC position near the lows and wait for the next bull run, doubling my wealth would follow naturally. Back then, I thought making money wasn’t hard: understand the cycles, stay patient, and you could reap the market’s rewards.

It took going through this market cycle for me to truly understand the deepest regret in investing: it’s never the loss from being stuck in a position, but accurately predicting what would happen and then missing out entirely. As the old saying goes, “You may strive for a perfect ending, only to wake and find it all slipped away.” At last, I know firsthand what that feels like.

As early as June, I had already read the market trend and predicted that conditions were about to recover. Waiting for the long-awaited opportunity to buy at a low, I closed my dual-currency investment and all my idle positions, moved all my funds into cash, and patiently stayed on the sidelines, waiting for a pullback. I stubbornly fixated on my ideal price, convinced that BTC would fall back to the $50,000 mark. Clinging to the belief that “after the clouds clear, the moon will appear,” I refused to enter the market too soon.

But things rarely go as we wish, and no amount of human calculation can outsmart the market’s unpredictability. The $50,000 low I had waited so long for never came—and most likely never will. The market does not cater to anyone’s expectations. It brushed past the floor I had set and kept climbing steadily. That wait ending in disappointment has become my biggest source of stress and anxiety lately. More than the sting of a loss, it’s the helplessness of having read the market correctly yet missing the move—watching prices surge while I sat on the sidelines the whole time—that leaves me tossing and turning.

To make up for waiting in vain, I started thinking about chasing quick gains. My original plan was to take small positions in speculative tokens as on-chain activity picked up, quickly build up some capital, and then put it all into a long-term Bitcoin strategy, steadily capturing the upside in the main market. But, as the saying goes, “haste makes waste.” The more desperate you are to succeed and make back your losses, the easier it is to fall into the market’s traps. The fleeting luck of short-term speculation could never overcome human greed. After several rounds of trading, I had not built up any capital—instead, I ended up losing money. I had put the cart before the horse and gained nothing but a loss.

During this period, I may have seemed to outsiders like I had nothing to do and was just taking it easy. In reality, I was consumed every day by inner conflict and self-doubt. Others only saw that I wasn’t trading frequently or taking large positions, but no one knew that I had missed this year’s most important and valuable crypto bull run.

I had always been certain that livestreaming, building my presence on Twitter, and reviewing market sectors were all valuable efforts that would pave the way. But I overlooked the very essence of investing: following the trend and putting plans into action. Xin Qiji once wrote, “I traded a strategy of ten thousand words for a neighbor’s book on tree planting.” I understood market cycles and saw the trend clearly; I had the right read, yet I was defeated by rigid convictions and hesitation.

Looking back, nearly all my work and effort during this period became a kind of “labor of love” that went unanswered. Without gains from the key market moves to provide a cushion, all my market reviews, sharing, community building, and persistence lost their most tangible foundation. They felt hollow and almost meaningless.

This experience has been a real wake-up call. I used to think investing was about knowledge, market cycles, and insight. Now I understand that it also tests your discipline, judgment, and adaptability. The market will never follow anyone’s script. Rigidly holding out for the bottom is foolish stubbornness; waiting too long drains you; and rushing to make back losses is a major mistake.

True trading wisdom isn’t about waiting endlessly for the absolute bottom. It’s about following the trend and aligning your actions with your understanding. No matter how deep your knowledge or how accurate your predictions, if you act too late and cling to your convictions, it will all come to nothing. From now on, I’ll let go of my restlessness and assumptions: no more betting on perfect entry points or chasing short-term luck. I’ll bring my actions in line with my judgment and follow the trend—that’s the way to last.