I have survived a few crypto cycles. Long enough to see euphoria turn into despair, screenshots of 10× gains turn into silence, and “next big things” fade into forgotten tickers. My strategy is simple and it hasn’t changed much over the years: I accumulate BTC and ETH, and when the market gets irrational, I look for suspect tokens to short rather than chase.

If you stay around crypto long enough, you notice a pattern. New tokens launch with a compelling story, a shiny website, tokenomics that promise scarcity, and a community convinced it’s early. Liquidity flows in, influencers amplify it, early holders mark up the price, and for a while it feels like a self-fulfilling prophecy. But fundamentals rarely justify the valuation.

Take Tagger (TAG) for instance. Right now, TAG is trading around ~$0.00043 USD, with relatively low volume compared to major assets. Its market capitalization is roughly $45–48 million, while its fully diluted valuation (FDV) sits around ~$170–180 million based on total supply.

That gap between market cap and FDV is exactly the kind of thing people ignore in bullish phases. On paper, the price looks “cheap.” In reality, dilution risk is sitting there in plain sight.

That price may feel attractive to someone in the community, especially compared to previous highs — but significant drawdowns are not rare in crypto. They are the norm. Once you strip away the branding, you have to ask simple questions: who is actually using it, who is paying for it, and why does the token need to exist at that valuation? If the answer leans more on speculation than real cash flows or indispensable utility, history tells us how it usually ends.

The brutal math of dilution plays a bigger role than most people admit. Tokens launch with a fraction of supply circulating, creating artificial scarcity. As unlocks hit, supply expands into a market that may no longer have demand momentum. Add farming incentives, mercenary capital, and perpetual rotation into the “next narrative,” and the pressure compounds. A 90%+ drawdown isn’t an anomaly in this structure — it’s almost a base case.

There’s also the psychology. In bull markets, people extrapolate growth infinitely. They assume traction will accelerate, partnerships will convert to revenue, and token value will inevitably capture protocol success. But when liquidity tightens or attention shifts, the reflexivity works in reverse. Lower price reduces enthusiasm, enthusiasm reduces liquidity, liquidity increases volatility… and before long the chart looks like every other cycle’s graveyard.

Meanwhile, BTC and ETH continue to absorb value over time. They have liquidity depth, institutional rails, derivatives markets, Lindy effect, and a level of decentralization and brand recognition that most tokens simply cannot replicate. They still correct hard, but structurally they survive. Most alts don’t. They dilute, pivot, rebrand, merge, or quietly disappear.

I’m not saying every token is doomed. There are exceptions. But statistically, the burden of proof is on the new project, not on skepticism. After a few cycles, you stop asking “how high can it go?” and start asking “how low can it fall when conditions change?”

That shift in perspective is what keeps me grounded.

Accumulate the assets that have proven resilience. Be patient. And when the market starts pricing narratives instead of fundamentals, remember how many charts from previous cycles are still down 90%… and never came back.