Life Insights in a Transaction
Original Article Title: Life lessons from trading
Original Article Author: thiccy, cofounder of scimitar capital
Translation: SpecialistXBT, BlockBeats
Editor's Note: Trading is a mirror, reflecting the relationship between people and reality. This article, on the surface, is about how to survive in the market, but in reality, it explores a more universal life theme: how to recognize your strengths, how to calibrate your understanding of the world, how to make decisions in uncertainty, and how to maintain humanity in a zero-sum game. The author says, "In a sense, everyone is a trader," as we all bet on the future with incomplete information, the only difference being the form of the chips.

1) Traders make money by speculating on fund flows.
2) There are many ways to win in the speculation game:
Some people can quickly read new information
Some people can quickly make speculations
Some people can accurately process new information
Some people can quickly identify patterns
Some people can see patterns that others cannot
Some people can accurately interpret others' predictions
Some people have a network of insiders who can gossip about fund flows
Some people can chase funds that others cannot, do not want to, or do not know how to chase
3) Each skill is called an "edge," and you can think of each skill as a attribute value in the game.

4) This game is winner-takes-all. If you want to continue making money, you need to fill in the attribute circles and cross the power law threshold.
5) Team hunting is easier. Overlaying everyone's best skills can cross more thresholds. A great trading team is a positive-sum game. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

6) Trust is built through constantly escalating trust tests. Calibrating the scale of trust tests is crucial. Too large will lead you to be scammed, too small will hinder the compounding growth of the relationship. Generosity is very useful. Most people in trading will feel lonely, so making this process fun is a valuable skill.
7) If you want to win, you must be willing to sacrifice everything. In reality, most people are not that eager for success, and that's okay.
8) Only play games that you can learn to consistently win. Honestly calibrate your abilities and your true level of ability in the world. Achieving a world-class level in any game requires intense focus, courage, and often rare talents shaped from childhood. Most importantly, find a game that suits your specific strengths. Playing a game that doesn't suit you is the most common tragedy in this industry. Trading has swallowed up and spit out millions of people, wasting their prime years and scattering their stories to the wind.
9) The guessing game always becomes increasingly difficult over time as it is an adaptive Darwinian system. People learn, knowledge spreads, advantages decay, winners grow, and losers perish.
10) Survivorship bias is everywhere. Always ask yourself why someone smarter, better connected, or faster than you didn't seize this opportunity before you.
11) Most market participants are just flipping coins at each other. Occasionally, someone will flip twenty heads in a row, looking like a genius, and then trigger a wave of blind followers.
12) Your best trades will be swift and fierce.
13) Trading exposes your deepest insecurities to yourself and the world. It is a rapid reckoning of reality and your place within it. In a sense, everyone is a trader. We make calculated decisions with incomplete information, manage drawdowns to avoid bankruptcy, and convert our natural advantages into returns. Almost everything boils down to aligning your understanding of yourself with your understanding of the world. Many people underestimate their most potent unique traits and take on too little risk when building a life around those traits.

14) Envy is the most potent emotion of the internet age. Handled well, it can quickly copy effective things from the best people. Handled poorly, it generates scarcity-driven anxiety and fatigue.
15) With the passage of trading time, you'll realize the eventual need to build an identity founded on something stable. Identities built on talent or a "niche perspective" are quickly challenged. Identities based on a problem-solving thought process are more sustainable, even if they sacrifice novelty and excitement.
16) Only paranoiacs survive. Panic before others. Always have an exit plan. Avoid deep drawdowns. Stay humble, leaving room for the unknown unknowns. Recognize when you're selling tail risk. Maintain liquidity. Respect counterparty risk. Respect path dependence.
17) People often build a man-made paradise around the goals they chase and a man-made hell around the anxieties they evade. This framework can inspire a temporary outburst of motivation, but it is not a sustainable way of life. The sense of scarcity and anxiety can distort decision-making, making you susceptible to ideological capture.
18) Trading is a zero-sum game within a larger positive-sum game. While each trade has a winner and a corresponding loser, the market as a whole allocates resources in space and time, aiding in the development of civilization. The emergent goals of a complex system are often only clear in hindsight. If you are too cynical about the futility of what you are doing, you will be spiritually annihilated and depleted.
19) It is challenging to see the big picture clearly. You are an individual ant trying to understand the collective behavior of the ant colony. Price and price action are a low-dimensional projection of a vast machine. The market fluctuates for various reasons, but we simplify views, compressing them into a single concise narrative.

20) Money can change a lot of things, but not everything. When you understand what truly changes and what remains constant, you will experience the pain of growth.
21) Profiting in trading means your view of the world is closer to reality than the average market participant. However, seeing through the essence in one market does not mean you can do the same in another. The ability to transfer across markets is a higher-order skill: discovering and capitalizing on advantages, insight into adverse selection, and knowing where the power-law critical points lie.
22) Those who make a living from trading often age rapidly. The mental stress cost is high. Make a conscious effort to take care of yourself. Without health, money loses its meaning.
23) Winning streaks often mask bad habits that will eventually backfire over time. Losing streaks will make you question the entire process. Do not get too excited at the peak or disheartened at the trough.
24) The world is in a constant state of decay. Reality is ever-changing, and everyone's models will become outdated and misaligned. That's why there's always room for young, success-hungry, and obsessed individuals to make money. People are like their life's moving average. Short windows are the first to capture new trends, even if what they capture is partly noise.
25) The market trains you to see self-reinforcing and self-correcting loops where you look.
26) Most of the excess opportunities in the modern market ultimately stem from people trying to fill the void of existential meaning.
27) I am grateful to be able to play this game with friends and reap rewards from it. Life is indeed beautiful.

You may also like

Morning Report | OpenAI has submitted an S-1 registration statement draft to the U.S. SEC; Morpho completes $175 million financing

Galaxy Deep Research Report: How Hyperliquid's HIP-4 Upgrade Changes the Landscape of Prediction Markets?

Latest research from 13 top universities including Cornell University: The current state, challenges, and misconceptions of the fusion of Crypto and AI

Deconstructing Anthropic: The Best AI Company, Possibly Also a Type of Organizational Invention

Every exchange is a "Universal Exchange."

The counterattack of traditional finance: Alliance chains are quietly reviving

Pantera Capital Partner: How Tokenization is Restructuring the Private Equity and Early Investment Ecosystem?

Mastercard Launches Agent Pay for AI, Plans to Record AI Agent Payment Authorizations on Polygon
Mastercard launched Agent Pay for AI, a new payment protocol designed to help AI agents make small payments such as pay-per-use access to data and APIs. The system plans to record human-granted AI agent permissions on Polygon, focusing on verifiable authorization, identity, and payment controls.

Curve Deploys Llamalend v2 on Optimism With 250,000 OP Incentives
Curve launched Llamalend v2 on Optimism with 250,000 OP incentives from the Optimism Foundation. The upgrade expands Llamalend beyond its earlier crvUSD-focused model, adding broader collateral support, LlamaRisk market reviews, and the ability to use Curve LP tokens as collateral.

Raydium Old Liquidity Pool Reportedly Exploited, With $1.34 Million Moved to Ethereum and Tornado Cash
An old Raydium liquidity pool was reportedly exploited for around $1.34 million in USDC, RAY, and wSOL, with the stolen funds bridged to Ethereum and deposited into Tornado Cash. The incident highlights the tail risks of legacy DeFi pools, old contracts, and cross-chain fund laundering paths.

Kalshi Executive Challenges “SBF Backed AI Unicorns” Narrative, Says Leopold Aschenbrenner Was Key Figure
Kalshi executive John Wang questioned the “SBF backed AI unicorns” narrative, saying Leopold Aschenbrenner was the key figure behind major AI investment decisions.

New York Proposes Stricter Stablecoin Issuer Rules Aligned With Federal GENIUS Act
NYDFS proposed stricter stablecoin issuer rules aligned with the GENIUS Act, covering reserves, custody, redemption timelines, audits, and capital buffers.

CryptoQuant Says Bitcoin Profitable Supply Is Near 45% Pressure Zone as On-Chain Data Points to Market Repricing
CryptoQuant said Bitcoin’s profitable supply is nearing the 45% pressure zone, signaling rising market stress, unrealized losses, and a possible on-chain repricing phase.

Bitcoin Falls Below 200-Week Moving Average as On-Chain Data Shows Over Half of Supply in Loss
Bitcoin dropped below its 200-week moving average as on-chain data showed over 50% of circulating supply is now in loss, signaling rising market stress.

CFTC Reportedly Plans New Prediction Market Rules Focused on Manipulation Risk and Public Interest Review
The CFTC is reportedly preparing new prediction market rules focused on manipulation risk, public interest review, and retail trader protections.

Meet the new WEEX trial fund—your gateway to greater profits

WEEX Labs Lands at Dutch Blockchain Week: A Disruptive Crypto × AI Conversation Sets Sail in Amsterdam

SK Hynix Reportedly Plans U.S. ADR Listing as Early as August, With SEC Approval Possible in Late June
SK Hynix may pursue a U.S. ADR listing as early as August, with SEC approval reportedly possible in late June amid strong AI chip supply chain demand.
