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8Hello everyone, it's me again!  It's been a while since I wrote a roadmap. In today's article I will talk about swimming with the sharks, this is an effective way in the market.  Now I will cover it more deeply for your reference

The Roadmap includes:

What is a shark?  Identifying sharks
How do sharks make prices?
How to Swim with Sharks
  Notes

I. Crypto sharks

Crypto shark is a term used to refer to individuals or organizations that hold one coin or many coins in large quantities. From there, they can control and manipulate prices and markets in the direction they want to make profits from retail investors, which is most of us.
So what is so outstanding about these sharks that everyone wants to follow, I guarantee that whoever wants to win, if they solo with them, there is only one way to die.

Hold a large amount of BTC, about 500 BTC or more. Being so rich, of course, the number is very small, mainly compared to the ancient ones ten years ago, which were many. As long as one wallet becomes active again, there will be an alarm, no one knows what they will do.
Able to predict market trends. And know how to influence the market to profit. The reason they can do that is thanks to their knowledge, experience and lots and lots of money.
Always act with a specific strategy that has been carefully prepared for every possible situation, so there is little possibility of loss. However, it is still possible to lose money or go bankrupt. The year 2023 also brought up some big names.
⇒ Because of their abilities, we can only swim along; if we oppose, we will only be killed.

II. How do sharks make prices?

In general, in each market period, there will be a new shark (MM) emerging, and the way of making prices will also be a bit different. However, no matter how smart you are, you must follow the rules, the new ways are just additional tricks to attract more retail.

1. Consolidation stage

This is the stage where it takes a lot of time to collect a lot of goods at a good price. You will choose coins with small or medium caps because you need a not too large amount of money to make the price. Besides, retail currently also wants to bet quickly and shorten the price. , the more I like small cap coins.
During this period, investors will be very bored and sideways for a long time.
Collect in batches, with small transaction volumes. You have to collect enough to push the price. If you don't push, there will be no coins to sell.
There is a lot of FUD about that coin, or the macro situation is causing retail to lock in stablecoins.
For example: YGG product, before MM pushed it up to nearly x10, there was a period of very intensive stock gathering, there will be forces pushing up to the resistance area for the old retailer above to release/run out of stock. Note that the volume is very small.
Combined with the news about MM pumping up tokens and releasing them +Gamefi is out of season, so everyone who has goods will gradually sell them all. The Short team also started, then just pushed the spot, the negative funding increased, recently the funding was pushed up to -2.5%. So there is phase 2.

2. Pump phase, growth

This is the stage of breaking out of the previous range sideway, there will be a lot of positive news about that coin, the volume will start to increase, creating liquidity for many retail to jump in.
Create a very beautiful chart, looking at it makes you want to fomo immediately.
Good news about the project, fund raising or hard fork, lots of good news to signal that the price will continue to increase.
⇒ Very easy to recognize, just look at the chart and see everything; break out, volume gradually increases.

In the past few days, Cyber ​​has caused a stir when it has x4.5 from the bottom. Along with Cyber, there is SEI, but SEI only increased 40% from the bottom because of playing dirty with commu, hastag #Seiscam everywhere so pushing prices is not feasible like with Cyber. When Cyber ​​broke to $5.4 after collecting enough goods, it increased very strongly.
I noticed that the two Cyber ​​and YGG and the crew were DWF. Let's collect goods, then trigger the short team and then push the price to kill the short. But much slimmer than when Alameda researched

3. Distribution phase

This is the stage when the fish has pushed the price up, it is time to take profits. Discharge time can be several days or longer. Recognizing the distribution stage is also very simple through the volume x5 x 10 times higher than when sideways. When fomo investors have the most liquidity, MM will release gradually, slowly, without any rush. Because "liquidity" is what determines whether a fish is profitable or not!
Let's look back at the pre-dump stage of YGG and Cyber, or APT, OP (who have analyzed the Pump dump process), and see that the Volume of this stage is very large, the red and blue columns are very high. And the crew will gradually discharge their cargo, why not discharge it all at once? Because it will cause retail to sell off and panic, causing a lack of liquidity because the driving team has accumulated a lot and needs at least a few days to discharge.
This is also the stage where a lot of good news comes out, because the most out is the Pump stage. When everyone knows about it, it's time to run away.
⇒ In short, we should learn that things will change every day, the way the team plays will be different from before. Wintermute or DWF also know that this is a downtrend so it is difficult to make long-term gains like before during alameda research. We must have a plan for this if we want to be profitable.
This process can still be applied to coins/tokens at DEX, including memes. For goods that have not listed CEX drivers, DEV still uses this process to set prices and attract liquidity to sell goods. Many goods do not even need to list CEX because the price at DEX is too much.

III. How to swim with sharks

And this is how we eat the waves of MM, the shark.
1 First, you must understand everything I shared above to be able to follow along. Understand how sharks make prices and manipulate the market. This stage is very important, you must understand that each MM team and the shark it controls are different. Have knowledge first.
I summarize it in these 3 ideas:
Understand technical analysis, pump dump process, and funds
You are also quite familiar with the pump dump process like this:
List ⇒ FUD, News ⇒ Dump collect and collect ⇒ News push prices ⇒ Distribution ⇒ Dump. Most people follow this process, and if they understand the process, >50% of them will survive and be profitable.
For me, I only rely on technical analysis to see what stage it is in, because the price line shows everything. My gameplay is very basic:
Consolidate according to MM's consolidation stage, there is a stop loss when breaking down to the range sideway. For example, for the previous CTK, if the break falls to 0.7$ in the collection area, then cut, because MM, the project determines that there will be no push for at least a few months, the lower the collection the better, the PRICE is equal to $0.50 per hour. . Cut to play new goods.
Wait for the break, create a new trend and then play. Notice that the general bar is that the previous resistance break turned up very strongly, that is a good point to buy. According to Dow theory, Trend 1 continues, buy very short stop loss except in case of fake break out.
There is also Onchain when MMs and individuals organize it to deposit and withdraw coins/tokens, but there are also many ways. I don't use this method.
Follow the funds: https://chainbroker.io/funds/list/
Catch up on fund actions and fund news. The latest example is DWF accepting to be MM for $KAVA.

2. Understand different market stages and times
Cannot apply to all periods, uptrend season is different from downtrend season. The biggest difference is in liquidity, the uptrend is abundant because many new entrants and many large institutional funds have entered. Downtrend, there are few new chickens, old players play together. So if MM wants to make money from retail, they have to change their driving style a bit.
And now the preparation stage is waiting for halving 2024, and there will be a new way to play from the creator, MM, fish.
So the thinking here I advise you is to stay awake and observe the new driving style of MM and Fish. Jump, wintermute, DWF all have different ways of driving, so you have to learn a little bit. Talking about YGG, Cyber's new family wins a lot, most of the users are killed, the short team is also killed because the new mechanism is to pay funding once every 2 hours, 24% per day is already paid.

3. Upgrade yourself and your knowledge.
The most important thing is to upgrade yourself, increase your knowledge and experience in the market to survive. Regarding this part, just read the articles I shared.
Knowledge is an important core factor, but to make money you need to be a bit clever. Observe the market a lot.
Back to the funding issue, there have been many coins/tokens playing this game before. There are those born just to kill short and kill long. So if you look at this game, you will see that it is not new. Fish do this to optimize profits, both kill long and short and sell goods on SPOT.

IV. Extremely important note

Swimming with the shark is not 100% profitable, many coins/tokens in the fund are not good and will only swing to the top. And it is very normal for funds and fish to lose money, so it is also very normal for us to lose money.
So don't go all in on a coin/token driven by the fund. There are many crypto niches, evenly distributed will be very good for your risk management. And don't trust too much in anyone, any fund or token, that's your death point. Therefore, investment must be flexible and adapt to the stages of the market.
Wish you all the best and gain more knowledge.