I opened my holdings and took a look; the purchase price at the beginning of the year is almost overlapping with the current price—this is not investment, it's just a "year-round freezer" for my funds, and I have to keep staring at the candlestick charts to scare myself every day.

To be honest, after five years in the crypto space, this market is truly a ghost. Don’t just focus on the mainstream coins in your hands and lie flat; the entire crypto market is collectively slacking off. How many people shouted at the beginning of the year, "The halving market is sure to break new highs"? What happened in the end? The expectations were already fully digested by the market, and once the macro liquidity tightened, it would be considered a blessing if it could just hold steady without dropping.

Compared to other assets, it's more heartbreaking: U.S. stocks have been climbing steadily thanks to technology stocks, gold has repeatedly proven its anti-dip capability amidst inflation and geopolitical conflicts, and even the A-shares that are constantly criticized have had a few decent rebounds this year. The returns from products like Yu'ebao, which are considered "laid-back players," are even more stable than those in the crypto circle.

Looking back at the previous group chat records, those influencers were constantly promoting "anti-inflation artifacts" and "hedging tools", but now the performance is indeed face-slapping. They used to say that altcoins had large fluctuations and suffered greatly, but why is there no comment when mainstream coins have been stagnant for a whole year? Aren't we buying digital assets for high growth potential? As a result, funds have been stagnant for more than half a year, and the returns are not even as good as a spare change account; who wouldn't be frustrated?

However, to be fair, we shouldn't completely dismiss the entire sector. The essence of this year's sideways movement is an overextension of expectations combined with a macroeconomic environment that is dragging down the market, which is digesting bubbles and repricing. It's just that this process is indeed much longer than expected.