2026 Cryptocurrency Investment: The Art of Abandoning Luck and Sticking to the Right Assets

What does it really take to succeed in the cryptocurrency market? The CEO of Real Vision offers a seemingly simple yet profound answer—choose the right assets and then do nothing. This seemingly ordinary advice contains a deep understanding of the market’s essence.

Liquidity Determines Market Rhythm

Currently, the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies has surpassed $3.5 trillion, but this only accounts for 3% of the future $100 trillion market. However, in the short term, the flow of wealth is primarily determined by one factor—liquidity.

Sources of liquidity include quantitative easing, central bank reverse repurchase operations, and the flow of government bond accounts. Recently, the U.S. government absorbed liquidity through government bond accounts, and subsequent government shutdowns further compressed available funds within the system. As the most liquidity-sensitive assets, cryptocurrencies experienced intense volatility, triggering chain reactions of leverage liquidations.

The Paradox of Short-Term Fluctuations and Long-Term Trends

Markets are filled with noise in the short term; only over the long term can signals be discerned. This truth is difficult for most investors to accept—people obsess over monthly and quarterly performance but ignore macro cycles spanning years.

Macro strategies inherently feature high volatility and long time horizons. A complete trading cycle typically takes 6 months to 3 years. After 2008, governments set debt restructuring cycles at 3-5 years, which were extended to 5 years in 2021-2022. This means that liquidity injected in the fourth year has now shifted to the fifth year—namely 2026. By then, $10 trillion in debt will need refinancing, triggering a new wave of liquidity tides.

Not All Tokens Can Be Saved by Liquidity

Today, the number of tokens in the market far exceeds previous levels. Even with abundant liquidity, not all projects can be saved. The era of “buy what rises” is over.

Different projects show significant variation during corrections: Bitcoin (BTC) corrects about 30%, Ethereum (ETH) about 40%, Solana (SOL) about 50%, while emerging public chains like SUI may reach 60-65%. This risk curve reflects the project’s maturity, user base, and market depth.

The core investment logic is not to chase maximum returns but to avoid excessive losses and profit through long-term compounding. It sounds dull, but this is the reality.

The “Minimal Regret Portfolio” Framework

What is wise asset allocation? It should focus on assets that can withstand long-term holding—L1 public chains are the most direct choice because they are large enough, have verified applications, and are unlikely to go to zero within a cycle.

Evaluation criteria include:

• Whether user growth exceeds comparable projects in the previous cycle
• The ratio of on-chain active users to transaction value
• The robustness of the technical foundation

Tools like ChatGPT can quickly verify these data points. They can reasonably define active user metrics (DeFi, gaming, etc.), classify and rank chains, and identify which are over- or undervalued.

Evolved DCA Strategies

Simple dollar-cost averaging (DCA) is better than buying the S&P 500 index. But smarter approaches include: investing at three times the frequency when the market drops X% (e.g., 30%), and maintaining regular investments when the market hits new highs. This compounding effect will inevitably be better.

Psychologically, this is difficult—many are forced to buy at local highs because they believe prices will continue rising. But over time, people tend to forget their specific cost basis unless it was a historic low.

Why 2025 Will Be So Difficult

Many early adopters (who entered between 2017-2021) are now shifting to AI, claiming that cryptocurrencies failed to deliver on decentralization promises. But the truth is: they haven’t enjoyed easy profits in recent years and have lost their market edge.

Conversely, Silicon Valley visionaries believe the greatest returns are yet to come. Electric Capital compares cryptocurrencies to more liquid venture capital—most projects go to zero, a few yield huge returns, and the key is to hold throughout. In public markets, the law of power is weaker, and price volatility is greater. But in the long run, the growth potential of crypto assets remains enormous.

The Main Players in 2026: Bitcoin and Smart Contract Platforms

Over the next decade, Bitcoin’s market dominance will decline, while the share of smart contract platforms will rise—because they will generate more application scenarios.

Based on conservative estimates, the crypto market still has 30x growth potential. This growth curve resembles tech giants (Amazon, Google, Tesla)—initially highly volatile, eventually stabilizing.

The Hidden Opportunity in NFTs and Digital Art

When Ethereum or Solana prices reach their high points, art sales will explode because investors start using appreciated wealth to buy art. When prices fall back, cash flow dries up, and purchasing power diminishes.

But this pattern also proves that every time the market hits a new high, art records are broken. Major investment institutions have entered, and the overall value of digital art continues to rise. The total value of Crypto Punks once reached $10 billion. From gaming assets to electronic tickets, financial contracts, and digital identities, the potential market size is enormous. In the blockchain space, the highest value density is in art—because digital scarcity is the eternal value anchor.

Practical Advice: Hold, Research, Patience

How to get rich in crypto by 2026? Hold the right assets and then do nothing.

This means:

• Conduct independent research, build your own investment conviction, and avoid relying on others’ judgments
• Choose your time horizon based on risk tolerance and goals
• View 5 years as a complete cycle; everything else is noise

When the market bottom has already appeared (such as the liquidity crisis in October), a new round of liquidity injection is brewing. The Federal Reserve has paused quantitative tightening, and debt financing needs to be completed by the end of the year. The banking system’s lack of liquidity causes frequent fluctuations in the money market, and the central bank is well aware—funds will inevitably need to be injected.

Final advice: don’t chase maximum returns—just ensure your direction is correct. Whether SUI drops 30% or rises 30% this week is irrelevant; what matters is that the market will eventually reach a $100 trillion scale.