Don't waste every loss, the "Sisyphus Revelation" of the crypto market.

In 2025, the crypto market experienced significant fluctuations, resulting in heavy losses for many. This article explores how to transform losses into growth opportunities, establish a strict Risk Management system, avoid repeating past mistakes, and ultimately build one's moat in the market. This article is sourced from a piece written by thiccy and organized, translated, and authored by PANews. (Previous summary: Michael Saylor calls for Bitcoin to soar to one million, ten million dollars: wait until the day Strategy controls 5% or 7% of the total BTC supply) (Background information: Arthur Hayes predicts Bitcoin will bottom out and rebound in January: The Federal Reserve will indirectly implement QE, I have gone all-in with 90% of my assets)

In 2025, the crypto market once again staged an astonishing fluctuation script, but many suffered heavy losses in trading. This article is not written for those who have been losing money in trading, but for those with strong profitability who have seen a significant pullback in profits this quarter.

One of the greatest pains in life is witnessing months or even years of effort go to waste in an instant.

In Greek mythology, Sisyphus is condemned to endlessly push a boulder up a mountain, only to watch it roll back down each time he reaches the summit. The cruelty of this punishment lies in its precise hit on the core of human existence, that absurdity of futility and repetition.

However, Camus saw another possibility in Sisyphus: when he acknowledges the absurdity and no longer hopes for ultimate redemption, but instead wholeheartedly dedicates himself to the act of pushing the stone up the mountain, he changes his fate in the process. True victory may not lie in the stone resting at the summit, but in the clarity of consciousness and the unyielding calmness he experiences every time he bends down to push the stone.

Crypto trading also requires this quality. Unlike most professions, there is no “progress bar” in this field. A single wrong decision is enough to completely destroy an entire career, which has led many down a dead end.

When the boulder truly rolls down, people will respond in two ways.

Some people increase their bets in an attempt to recover losses. They adopt more aggressive trading methods, essentially trying to recoup their funds using the Martingale strategy (a method of doubling down when losing). If they can quickly earn back their money, they can avoid facing the emotional reality of losses. This method is often effective in the short term, but it is an extremely dangerous strategy, as it reinforces a trading habit that mathematically leads you to financial ruin.

Others, however, are exhausted and choose to leave the market entirely. They usually have enough capital to live comfortably and believe that the risks and returns of the market are no longer aligned. They comfort themselves by saying that there are no longer any advantages in the market, or those advantages are about to disappear. Their choice to exit is essentially a “death sentence” for the market, never to return.

These two reactions may be understandable, but they are merely stopgap measures that do not address the root of the problem. The real issue lies in the vulnerabilities of your Risk Management system. Most people tend to overestimate the actual level of their Risk Management.

Risk Management itself is not an unsolvable problem; the relevant mathematical principles have long been proven. The real challenge lies not in not knowing what to do, but in being able to consistently execute the established strategy in the face of emotions, self, stress, and fatigue. Keeping actions and cognition aligned is one of the most difficult practices for humans, and the market will relentlessly expose the flaws of this cognitive bias and disconnection from reality.

How to get out of losses?

First, you must accept one thing: you are not unlucky, nor are you suffering from injustice. This loss is an inevitable result of your human weaknesses. If you do not find and solve the way to address this problem, losses will occur again.

Secondly, you need to fully accept your current net worth; you cannot always anchor yourself to the historical highs of the past. “Getting it back” is one of the most dangerous impulses in the market. Step away from the screen for a while and be grateful for what you have already achieved. You are still alive, you are still in this game, and you are no longer trying to recover losses, but simply focusing on achieving new profits.

Consider this loss as tuition paid for your personal shortcomings; this is a lesson you will have to learn sooner or later. Fortunately, you are paying this price now rather than at a higher cost in the future. If you can respond correctly, you will look back on this moment with gratitude. Character is often forged in times of adversity.

To accurately identify the reasons for failure. For most people, the problem usually lies in a combination of the following situations: over-leveraged positions, not having a preset stop-loss point when entering, or failing to strictly execute when the stop-loss point is reached. Establishing iron rules regarding Risk Management and stop-loss can prevent most catastrophic losses.

Remind yourself that the only way to prevent the boulder from rolling down again is to strictly adhere to those rules. They are your only guarantee against the suffering you are experiencing right now. Without rules, you are nothing.

Let yourself vent your losses; you can scream or smash things. Express your emotions instead of keeping them bottled up inside.

The most important thing is that you must turn pain into lessons. Otherwise, it will surely repeat itself.

This insight into coping with pain applies not only to trading losses but also broadly to life. The common coping mechanisms mentioned earlier appear blunt in their driving force because they often introduce as many new problems while trying to solve existing ones. If you cannot recover from losses in a fine and precise manner, you will ultimately oscillate around the optimal solution like a gradient descent algorithm with too large of a step size, constantly overshooting and never converging to the correct position.

When Napoleon lost a battle, he would immediately begin rebuilding his army and preparing for the next move. One failure is not fatal unless you lose the ability to continue fighting because of it. The primary task after encountering setbacks is to ensure that this weakness is not exploited again and to recover your best competitive state as quickly as possible.

You should not seek redemption, nor should you seek revenge. You should not react passively, nor should you accumulate anger. You must become a cold machine. You must self-repair, and then rebuild the system, ensuring that the same mistakes are never made again. Every failure you endure will become a moat in your system, and this moat is something that everyone else must pay the price to learn personally.

Such losses can shape a person, so be grateful for them; their occurrence is meant to bring you insight. This loss did not happen for no reason. Allow yourself to feel the pain, but transform that pain into motivation, and ensure that you never make the same mistake again.

The difficulty of these matters lies in the fact that once you find the right direction, the continuous growth of wealth becomes a natural progression.

Good luck.