The 2022-2025 Cycle Review and Some Help for Newbies
Level 2 - Value Investor
Welcome Avatar! We’re always going to be the first to tell you that we’re not a trading platform. We don’t make a lot of moves and we try to hit singles/doubles with consistency. Since this website is for opinions/information we’re not charging thousands of dollars for some Telegram that just goes down 99% in the next bear.
We cover: 1) investing in tech, 2) E-com, 3) macro and 4) some real estate. The rest we really don’t touch except for entertaining cultural/travel posts when bored.
In addition, we gave up responding to trolls. We wrote the following back in November of 2025 when everyone was still calling for super cycles (source).
No we don’t tag pico tops/bottoms. We don’t expect to shoot 100%. We also don’t claim to have some crystal ball. Our goal is to be good enough and follow the geezer advice from Buffet “Don’t Lose Money”. With this in mind, we do think we’re a good source for understanding what happened, why and how to manage your emotions. We write in probabilities and “second/third order consequences” so you can make your own informed decisions. Its one of the main reasons why we recommend everyone have a 3 sentence journal, you’ll see your emotional highs/lows then and how it negatively impacts your investing! Happens to everyone. You learn by doing.
Part 1: Transfer to Institutions and HNWI
This was the theme of the 2022-2025 cycle. If someone got caught up in memes/celeb coins, they got dismantled. Last cycle we learned that people don’t even mind getting rinsed. The celebrities and politicians who scammed their fan base? The fan base doesn’t mind. If this is a wild concept, we suggest you guys go meet some affiliate marketers. You learn that there is a never ending pile of people who believe in magic pills. A sucker is born every day.
The Good News: Anyone who played this cycle well (or decently like the Jungle), is sitting on significantly more coins on a relative basis. Read that closely. Relative basis.
If you did a few multiples, the vast majority actually lost money. As long as you wait it out for the next cycle, you will learn that you’re no longer a dolphin or a fish, but you’re now a whale/dolphin. Up an entire rung.
Liquidation of Trust
Before, in the 2017 and 2021 run ups, you would get DMs from people you never met. They would have some sort of angle into some sort of coin and it would actually run. 2022-2025 was not this way. Unless you knew of a specific influencer/politician/celebrity launch before the ticker dropped (“whats the ticker”), you were largely depositing money directly into their accounts.
Unless you’re in at launch (insider) nearly impossible to make money.
This made it a lot easier to see which coins were not entirely controlled by a cabal of insiders. Which left you with? BTC and ETH.
These two coins held up vs. Memes down 90%+. Wealthy individuals bought the coins in their brokerage accounts. The only problem? On the ETH side, whales (that were smart) were farming tons of ETH on various airdrops (Manta, Blast, Ethena labs, etc). This meant that the active users on ETH did not need to buy. They were getting 20%+ returns on their capital in a year and didn’t need to click the green button. For this reason, within private group chats, the peak for ETH was around the $6,000-$6,500 range (for heavy players).
Summary
In the general first phase, you had wealthy investors buying into BTC and secondarily into ETH. Other than that they were not participating. Within the crypto whale community there were two winning options: 1) farming and 2) the galaxy/FTX bankruptcy deal where the minimum was $100,000 - you were able to buy SOL at ~$65 (when it was trading at $130) and sell it a year later for ~$250.
Other than that, the initial phase was all meme coins and PvP where a celebrity/influencer was taking a cut of the casino.
Part 2: Crypto Gets Political
During the middle phase it became quite political. Trump came out as Pro-Bitcoin and there were wild rumors of BTC being bought by the US government (no it didn’t happen and no we’re not surprised). The consensus was that they would buy. The reality was that they simply said “we won’t sell and will try to keep coins we confiscate for illegal activity”. The second is much easier to sell to the public.
Anyway. Trump launched a coin, then Melania and people were Euphoric about memes. No one with a bigger microphone than the sitting President of the USA. This led to a massive drawdown in memes and Solana went into chop then down only mode.
Alts Don’t Budge
A lot of people misread 2025 as a “alt season guarantee”. It sounded like a good theory because of de-regulation. The mistake they made? None of the products beyond BTC, ETH, Stables and DeFi did anything!
Since the majority were focused on trading meme vapor the door was open for innovation. However. There were only a few things that had intrinsic value in the eyes of wealthy individuals and institutions.
In The Background: You watched as the following took place:
ETFs were all over, which meant that the excuse of not having a broker to buy was eliminated
Some basic regulatory clarity came through and both BTC and ETH are not securities
Instituions start pushing the 1-3% allocation to crypto narrative and the excuse to have “zero” was weakening by the second
Large career marketers start to create DATs (Digital Asset Treasury Companies). Just fancy for buying up a bunch of crypto
Since big players like institutions do not buy all at once, you saw a grind and grind higher all summer once the rules were clear for the major crypto assets
Expectations Get Out of Whack: Since price is going up, people claim that the USA is going to buy coins! They really believed we would take tax payer money and click buy. A good lesson from that is rumors create narrative which explains price. Extremely important.
After the price has already moved, people come up with wild rumors and narrative to justify it. The real answer was much more boring and consistent: a new set of buyers entered via ETFs/DATs and started accumulating the two decentralized crypto assets.
Part 3: Peaking Out and Decline
If you agree with our write up so far, it also explains why we didn’t get a huge alt season mania phase. If the real buyers this cycle were HNWI/institutions, they are not going to dump millions of dollars into a “ticker” that was launched last week.
Instead they buy up a percent of allocation and forget about it. Eventually this new sub-set reaches a peak. If anything all of the DATs dragged forward all the purchases!
Anyone who wanted exposure via their brokerage built it up and once it was a certain percent they said “okay stop”. Once that green button buy shifts to “no button” the price dies off and we slowly start to bleed.
After price breaks you see people fill in narratives “Quantum computing” “China ban” “expensive to mine a coin now vs electrical costs” etc. Pick your poison.
Decline Phase: After that the decline phase starts because of human emotion. People look back at when the ETFs launched and they say “hey i am up 50-100% this is good enough”. So they sell. Then their friends get nervous. They sell. So on and so forth.
Eventually this will exhaust and we form a bottom. Hence why the 1-year HODL wave for BTC is no longer going down. Lines up pretty well with a standard 4-year cycle anyway.
Part 4: Important Takeaways
Once again, assuming you agree with what we outlined, the main ones would be as follows:
Crypto isn’t dead, the easy scams and terrible business models are dying. Much harder to raise money and give it away without free flowing money printer + low interest rates
ETFs/DATs were massive. Absolutely massive. The vast majority (90%) apparently have no interest in cold storage. This means they have no clue what it is for and just want exposure to price. That’s it. Price
A large amount of money is now in the hands of investors who will not touch memes/ponzis. They have to do diligence which requires real products
Political pandering works but can force price to get way ahead of reality. Next time someone says the USA is going to buy crypto, know that’s a bad sign not a good one. Unless there is an official announcement, assume it’s mania vibes (or close to it)
You definitely do not need to swing for the fences to do well. Anyone upset about buying at $20-25K and selling at $90-100K is simply greedy. Emotional. Greedy. Entitled. In fact, if you were late and got in at $40K and sold at $100K, that is still a 2.5x. You’d need to wait ~13-15 years to see those types of returns. Nabbed it in 2-3 years. Let the screen cappers sell their dreams built on sand. You build your castle in the background since the real way is always painful and requires patience
If you want a good way to think about it. You want to be temporarily unpopular.
Each cycle is defined by new sets of buyers, they come in, they get exhausted, enter bear. This means you want to track the new set of buyers and people who have survived multiple cycles. The new set of buyers will determine the end. The people who have lived this stuff a few times are generally going to do better than most. Again. Better than most does not mean pico top, pico bottom into perpetuity.
For some Bull fodder. You know we’re really getting into a run (next time) when a completely new zoomer/Gen A teenager becomes the “it person”. If you’ve never heard of them, that’s a good sign. New buyers. New cycle!
Where We Are Now
Paid subs already know where we stand on all this stuff but we’ll give you some consistent things to watch for.
You will see celebrities claim victory “always said it was a scam” despite saying the same thing when the price was at $3,000. TSLAQ type personalities
Quantum computing gets bigger and bigger as a reason to worry about it. While their ATM pin codes are secured by a whopping 4 digits. And. RSA keys would be worthless
“Dividend” investors come in to grave dance. Historically, in crypto bear markets, risk assets don’t do as well. Look at 2022 and 2018 for reference
People will claim that the industry is dead forever. Any big name who sells anything will be highlighted for a 72 hour hazing
Bitcoin HODL Wave (Source) starts to go up while people claim long term holders are the one selling. (see the conflict?)
Engagement bait shifts from insane $1M Bitcoin targets to “XYZ company is going to go bankrupt!”
Before anyone panics. No, crypto is not going to zero. This is just another standard cycle.
Ironically, you know we’re further along the bear market (getting closer to bottom every month) because people no longer debate if it is a bear market! As early as January people were still claiming we could go to $200K etc.
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Stay Toon’d!
Disclaimer: None of this is to be deemed legal or financial advice of any kind. These are *opinions* written by an anonymous group of Ex-Wall Street Tech Bankers and software engineers who moved into affiliate marketing and e-commerce.
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