The market is currently undergoing a subtle shift that is worth carefully sorting out.

There has been a change in the Federal Reserve's direction. According to the latest signals from the FOMC voting members, 6 out of the 12 members are inclined to achieve a 25 basis point rate cut in January. This shift is quite critical — the policy is gradually leaning from "maintaining high levels for a longer time" to "releasing liquidity in advance." Once this policy expectation materializes, the global liquidity environment will experience significant easing. As a representative of risk assets, crypto assets are often most sensitive to changes in liquidity.

At the same time, another set of data is more concerning. In November, the margin debt in the US increased by $300 billion in a single month, bringing the total to over $1.21 trillion, setting a historical record. What does this mean? A large number of institutions and individuals are leveraging up to enter the market. This figure itself reflects that market participants' optimistic expectations for future trends have reached an extreme.

The current market is facing an interesting asymmetry: on one hand, the expectations of interest rate cuts are providing support for liquidity; on the other hand, historically high levels of leverage mean that any risk trigger could lead to a rapid deleveraging process. These two forces are at odds.

It is worth noting that the current policy environment still presents uncertainties. Any statement from the White House or economic data that exceeds expectations could change market expectations. The cryptocurrency market, as the asset class most sensitive to macro liquidity and risk sentiment, faces significant volatility pressure.

In simple terms, the future scenario might be as follows: either interest rates are cut as scheduled, leverage continues to accumulate, and the bubble expands in greed to a certain critical point; or the expectations of interest rate cuts are disappointed, emotions reverse, and the impact of deleveraging exceeds most people's imagination.

The key is that when the entire market is leveraging to chase after gains, the warning light for risk has actually been on for a while. Managing risk well may be wiser than blindly following the trend.