Happy Tuesday, friends! With the current AI Agent narrative likely leaving your heads spin as you scramble to deploy capital, let’s reflect on how to truly make money consistently in this market, regardless of what the meta is. 🧵

Professional cryptocurrency trader with a passion for teaching others.

While all of those things can sometimes get you into profitable positions, if you can’t define your strategy to me within 60 seconds, you are unlikely to achieve long-term success in this market.

Countless cryptocurrencies will go up and come down. You do not, nor does anyone, have the capacity to be involved in every successful project. You only have so much time in the day. You must narrow your focus. You must narrow your entry and exit conditions. You need, in short, an actual strategy.

Trading without a strategy is riding turbulent waves of emotions: utter joy when your portfolio goes up, utter terror and uncertainty when it goes down. Inevitably, you will make emotional, impulsive decisions on whether to buy or sell, often determined by others’ “alpha.”

There is no single successful trader out there who outsources their decision like this. Every successful trader I’ve met and interviewed can define their strategy within 60 seconds. That doesn’t mean the strategy has to be simple, but it has to be definable and actionable.

Example: “I monitor high-volume projects fitting the current meta-narrative. I then wait for a bullish MA cross on the 1H timeframe and go in with x profit target and x stop loss. My win rate is X. My average win per win is X. My average loss per loss is X.”

There could have been a few more sentences to describe the entry and exit conditions; some traders don’t use hard stops or profit targets and instead rely on alerts or technical signals. There’s nothing wrong with this. But your strategy needs to, in essence, be quantifiable like this. Otherwise, you’re just randomly buying and selling. Your strategy is luck. Unfortunately, this market does not reward those who depend on luck; it rewards those who put in the hard work.

If you know you’re just relying on luck, I challenge you. Spend one week trading a simple strategy. It can be on Bitcoin, on any timeframe, or Solana meme coins. I don’t care. Just sit down and define a strategy. If you can’t be bothered, I’ll supply you with one.

1H Timeframe: Bullish EMA Cross - 21/55. Your buy condition is active when the 21 EMA crosses over the 55 EMA. That’s your overall “we can buy” signal.

Entry Signal: 5-Minute Timeframe: Buy when the 5-minute RSI is oversold (below 30%). 

Exit Signal: 5-Minute Timeframe: Buy when the 5-minute RSI is overbought (above 70%).

Sell at a loss if the One-Hour 21 EMA crosses below the 55 EMA.

It is a simple technical strategy that works very well in bull markets. I’m not promising you’ll make money, but you have a good chance to. But I want you to focus on your mental and emotional state over the week of this challenge. You will notice how in control you feel and how calculating you become. You will no longer be gripped by anxiety or a feeling of missing out. You will simply be waiting for your opportunities. Ultimately, you can reflect on what went well, what went wrong, and how you could improve. This is the mindset I want you to carry forward because once you start trading with a strategy, you’re unlikely to look back.

Onwards and upwards, friends!

Well, what’s the secret? Scrolling X all day and night? Buying whatever your favorite influencer shills? Listening to every Bankless podcast to keep up on the current alpha?