Structural Opportunities: The Only Repeatable Winning Path for Retail in the Bitcoin Ecosystem — A Retrospective and Conclusion After Surviving Three Market Cycles, from a 2017 Newbie --- I. I'm Not a Genius — I Just Survived I entered the market in 2017. Not a miner, not a developer, not an OG. Just an ordinary person dragged into the bull market by friends, looking at the charts and thinking, "This seems like a way to make money." 2017: Small bets, small gains. Back then, I dared to buy anything, and everything went up. I even started to believe that making money was just this simple. 2018–2019: The bear market arrived. I didn't run. I stuck with "value investing," continuously averaging down, continuously learning, and continuously getting schooled. 2020–2021: The macro cycle began. I started betting big and winning big. This time, unsatisfied with going slow, I began adding leverage, taking on debt, and going all-in based on my conviction. You can guess the outcome. 2022: Bear market + real-life emergencies. At the worst possible time, when selling was the last thing I should have done, I liquidated, cut losses, and stopped the bleeding. A zeroed-out account was nothing. Being over a million in debt was true hell. At that moment, I finally understood one thing: The market is never afraid of you being wrong. It's only afraid you "won't live long enough to see your thesis play out." 2023: The Bitcoin ecosystem restarted. I made no grand declarations, only daring to make small investments and proceed slowly, earning money while paying down debt. Today, I am more convinced than ever: Bitcoin and the Bitcoin ecosystem remain the best path for ordinary retail investors to turn their fortunes around. But the prerequisite is that you must understand exactly what kind of money you should be aiming to make. --- II. Seven Years in Crypto Taught Me Only One Thing The market doesn't reward the smart. It rewards the survivors. This isn't a motivational platitude; it's what my debt bought me. Looking back over these years (whether you entered in 2017 or 2010): · Some were technically brilliant but died on valuation. · Some got the direction perfectly right but died on leverage. · Some were ahead in their understanding but died from cash flow breakdown. · Some saw the future clearly but sold at the bottom. I was one of them. There's only one reason: we treated crypto as our only source of income. But those who truly survived across cycles almost all share one common trait: They don't rely on the market to stay alive. --- III. Why "Off-Chain Earning Ability" Is the Most Important Moat for Retail This is a fact many are unwilling to admit. If you: · Have no stable cash flow · Have no truly disposable income · Cannot survive for 3+ years without this money Then you simply do not possess the qualification for structural investing. Because you will break in three places: · During prolonged consolidation, you'll start questioning everything. · During deep drawdowns, you'll be forced to sell at the bottom. · If your timing is off, your capital chain will snap. I've seen too many people whose logic was perfectly sound but who lost because they "couldn't afford to wait for the day of validation." Therefore, I now prioritize in reverse order: Survival Period > Sector Judgment > Asset Selection This is the only correct sequence for a retail investor to counter the market. ---