A starter guide to the crypto MMO
Author: jez
Compiled by: Zombit
This is a challenging game, one that requires intelligence, skill and mental toughness. Hopefully this guide will help you find your edge in this crypto MMO and level up all the way to the top.
The biggest risk in investing lies in the “you don’t know, you don’t know” quadrant
Traditional finance (TradFi) has decades of experience and regulatory agencies that have largely reduced this risk – what we often call “investor protection”. In comparison, cryptocurrency is like an untamed Wild West, a relatively small arena where people relearn the rules of traditional finance through bloody lessons. This situation creates an uneven playing field: some players understand the "unspoken rules" better than others.
This guide aims to impart those hard-earned lessons. Unfortunately, selection bias means that those who need this advice the most may be watching YouTube videos or following KOLs like LilMoonLambo instead of reading this guide. But I hope you, the astute reader, can still find some useful content.
I choose to liken cryptocurrency to MMO games
The crypto world has all the characteristics of an MMO game: Health, Levels, Online Friends, PvP, PvE, Town Square, and Economy—all elements are complete, except here the 'coins' are worth much more than those in (World of Warcraft). This is the origin of the 'Monetary Metaverse.'
The following concepts are roughly arranged according to their impact on your outcomes, starting with the most important and influential strategies.
1. Team up
Many people on this path are essentially rebels or lone wolf players. They choose to ignore warnings from friends or family. Any early success only deepens this personal superiority. 'I just need to listen to the market,' this lone wolf player insists.
Discard this independence
The problem is that only listening to the market is a 'lagging learning method.' The market will only tell you where you went wrong after you make a mistake, and this industry develops too quickly to wait for you to learn slowly.
Find an excellent team composed of ethical, diligent, and like-minded people. The most important trait is resilience—make friends with those who take action after making mistakes rather than just complaining. A high-trust group can cover a broader area faster than going solo and quickly tell you where you are right and where you are wrong.
If you find it difficult to find a team, consider the 'value proposition' you can offer. Unless you know someone offline and become friends, online invitations are usually based on 'potential value' and 'cultural fit.' A well-functioning machine is made of solid gears—work to improve your reputation until you can join the group you want as an equal, rather than as a member in need of charity.
Types of Useful Team Members:
The Guide: Early teacher of truths, like I’m trying to impart to you now.
The Partner: Spending 10 hours a day sending 2000 private messages, working together during key times.
The Signal: More discerning partners who help distinguish good ideas from bad.
The Prospector: Less discerning but can discover new opportunities for everyone to filter.
The Wizard: Technical expert dealing with complex technical issues.
The Expert: Provides contextually applicable professional advice.
Many people believe these teams are so-called 'cabal,' but in reality, they are often just a high-trust chat group formed by a group of friends growing together, now wielding influence.
2. The Importance of Home Base
Not all chat groups are equal. There is a concept called 'Home Base' chat group—where you prioritize logging in, responding, and most importantly, sharing information.
When considering whether to invite someone into your high-trust group, you must think in reverse, excluding high-profile accounts, as they likely already have a solid home base. Instead, the best candidates are still hungry strivers who do not have stable teams.
3. Growth Inertia
Every chat room has its lifecycle.
Peak: Most members are eager and motivated, often driven by some new, sharp players.
Dusk: Members have reached a higher level, the pace of the game slows down, and discussions shift to life, politics, etc.
If you want to stay on the cutting edge, remember to befriend new players and join chat rooms that haven’t 'succeeded' yet. Recall your initial enthusiasm and surround yourself with that energy again.
4. Choose a profession – Seek advantages
To achieve long-term success in this field, you must cultivate a true edge.
False edge: Buying coins that will rise in a bull market.
True edge: Identifying the conditions for a bull market or obtaining valuable information from the group.
Different strategies suit different personalities:
DPS (High Risk High Reward): Traders
Tank (Stable Low Risk): Farmers
Support (Other Types): Insiders, Builders, Onchain Rogues
DPS – High Risk High Reward Players
These are different types of directional trading styles that offer high returns but come with high risks. Successful stories often overshadow the losses of the vast majority.
High risk tolerance
Strong risk management skills
Psychological resilience in the face of failure
Perseverance to remain vibrant in the face of failure
1. Trench Warriors
Attributes: High risk, high return, low capital threshold. Characteristics: Mainly focused on low liquidity, newly listed 'shitcoins.'
There is a vast difference in the skill levels of altcoin traders—the worst are terrible, while the best can perfectly leverage the available information. They usually rely on on-chain analytics tools for strategic planning.
The only real alpha (advantage) is: If you position yourself as an 'altcoin trader,' but you don’t run your own on-chain analytics tools, then you have a lot of room for improvement.
However, this role has a fundamental flaw: it cannot scale as capital size grows.
Reason 1: Liquidity—New projects have very low liquidity, and large purchases can easily lead to slippage.
Reason 2: Mismatched supply and demand—Holding too much supply can ruin the economic model of the entire token.
Players who successfully escape the 'trenches' are advised not to look back easily unless there is a special advantage or significant opportunity.
2. Good New Thing Hunter
Attributes: Medium to long-term holding, new project discovery goal: Find a new token with a strong fundamental narrative, position early, and enjoy the returns from the appreciation of the token price.
This is my personally preferred style because it is a repeatable and stable strategy.
Ideal buy market cap range: $50-100M
Ideal sell market cap range: $1B
Why choose new projects?
Market pricing is imperfect: The market has not had enough time to properly price new projects.
Capital flow advantage: Fewer holders of new projects, more potential buyers.
How to find 'good new things'?
Is it novel?
The first project to tap into a new narrative usually gains the most momentum.
Does it have a flywheel effect?
For example: As the price rises, holders become increasingly excited, attracting more new buyers.
Is there onboarding friction?
If there is absolutely no friction, what makes you think you can buy in cheaply?
In the future, there needs to be foreseeable paths to reduce friction, such as cross-chain migrations, feature optimizations, etc.
3. Meme Priest
Attributes: High risk, emotional, high return strategy: Buy meme coins based on intuition and market sentiment.
The role of the meme priest does not care about 'fundamentals.' They focus on the atmosphere, sentiment, and consensus. This path requires a strong sense of belief:
You must be able to withstand the psychological pressure brought by sharp price declines.
Excellent meme priests often change the chances of success personally, such as through community dissemination, creating viral content, etc.
Thought: Bitcoin is essentially an epic meme coin.
When I look back at my investment journey, I find that if I went into a coma right after buying meme coins, I often performed better than when I was 'actively trading.'
4. Leverage Wizard
Attributes: Ultra high risk, ultra high reward. Issues: Most leveraged traders end up in 'liquidation.' Joke: 'There are no successful leveraged traders, only those who have yet to get liquidated.'
The biggest trap in leveraged trading is:
Overtrading
Too high leverage
Long-term holding of losing positions
This path seems simple but is actually a brutal PvP battlefield. Even if leveraged trading is profitable, it often cannot compare with straightforward asymmetric spot investments.
Suggestion: I strongly advise you not to choose this profession.
Tank – Low Risk Stable Players
1. Stable Farmer
Attributes: Low risk, stable income strategy: Earn returns by providing liquidity or participating in stablecoin lending markets.
Main sources of income:
Funding Rate Arbitrage: When the market is highly leveraged, borrowing rates rise, and stablecoin deposit profits increase.
RWA Yield (Real World Assets): Treasury yields have successfully entered the crypto market.
Token Emission Yield: Earn protocol token rewards by providing liquidity.
Recommendation:
Jupiter LP (JLP)
Hyperliquid LP (HLP)
2. Sybil/Wash Farmer
Strategy: Utilize multiple accounts to participate in new protocol airdrops or events to gain high rewards. This is a strategy with the highest risk/return ratio since it requires almost no capital investment.
Core Logic: The project party is willing to pay tokens to exchange for impressive data indicators (user numbers, transaction volume, etc.).
Support – Other strategies
1. Insider
Advantages: Getting project information early or participating in early rounds.
2. Builder
Suggestion: Stop reading, go back to building.
3. Onchain Rogue
Traits: Technical experts who profit through technical loopholes or special mechanisms.
Upgrade Guide
In the world of cryptocurrency, understanding your 'level' is very important. Different asset sizes can have a significant impact on your strategies and decisions. Here is a tiered guide to help you position yourself more clearly and find the right upgrade path.
Four digits and below: Fiat Farming
If you already have a job or are still in school, skip this level. At this stage, your time is best spent on fiat farming—like finding a job with stable income. Even a minimum wage job offers an APR (annual percentage rate) far exceeding 150%, which is something most DeFi strategies cannot provide.
Key Points:
If you live in an area with scarce job opportunities, consider joining emerging protocols as a community manager or in other positions.
Become an 'original member' of a protocol and gain more opportunities as the protocol grows.
Don't waste time overtrading on trivial portfolios.
Five-digit hell: Focus on increasing fiat inflow
This is the most difficult stage. Every dollar is crucial, as they are the ammunition for your future 10x return operations.
Common Traps:
Many people try to become 'trench warriors' but do not put in enough technical effort.
Some people venture into the abyss of leveraged trading, ultimately trapped by liquidation, unable to escape this stage forever.
Suggestions:
'Meme coin holders' and 'Good New Thing Hunters' are the most reliable paths to successfully escape five-digit hell.
Sybil farming remains the strategy with the highest risk-to-return ratio at this stage. Just one big airdrop can elevate you to the next stage.
Six-digit hell: Seeking 10x returns
This is the golden age of the cryptocurrency market. You have enough capital to make a 10x investment meaningful, without worrying about liquidity or slippage issues.
Strategy:
Closely monitor new narratives and new projects.
Test your investment hypothesis with small capital.
Once your hypothesis is confirmed, invest the majority of your capital and wait.
Gradually take profits when the market starts discussing the project widely.
Review: Every time I successfully escape six-digit hell, I bet on exchange tokens. After all, speculation has always been the most lethal product-market fit (PMF) in cryptocurrency.
Seven-digit hell: Seeking several 2-3x returns
When you enter a seven-digit asset scale, the rules of the game begin to change. You may no longer be able to invest all your capital into a single opportunity, as the market's liquidity may not support such scale.
Core Challenges:
Capital allocation: Balance between optimal investment opportunities and robust capital preservation.
Liquidity: Large amounts of capital can more easily trigger violent price fluctuations in low liquidity markets.
Recommended Strategies:
Consider participating in private rounds: Although liquidity is lower, the returns are often very substantial.
Stablecoin farming: Let your capital earn stable returns while waiting for the next 'good new thing.'
Eight digits and above: Protect your capital
When your capital reaches eight digits, the only advice is: 'Don't mess it up.'
Key Principles:
Don't Stand in Fire: Avoid known common mistakes.
Avoid trading during emotional fluctuations: Anger, excitement, or fear are never good trading partners.
Avoid reckless trading after big wins: The 'winner's effect' can make you arrogant and reckless.
Avoid giving back profits: Often think to yourself, 'Who else would buy this asset?'
Forget unrealized profit and loss (uPNL) and all-time highs (ATH): Past mistakes cannot be changed.
Don't average down losers: If the market tells you you're wrong, don't increase your position without clear reasons.
Winner Traits: from (Playing to Win)
David Sirlin is a champion of competitive fighting games. He listed the traits that successful players must possess in his book, and these traits also apply to the crypto market:
Deep understanding of the game: Historical precedents help predict the future.
Passion for the game: You must love this game enough to invest sufficient time.
Psychological resilience: This game will crush you, then crush you again.
Attitude toward victory/failure/improvement: When facing failure, do you complain or take action?
Technical ability: Do you have a real 'edge'?
Adaptability: Can you quickly adjust your strategy in a new market environment?
Predictive ability (Yomi): Can you predict the actions of other participants?
Assessment ability: Can you accurately assess the relative value of things?
Recommended Reading
Thank you for reading this far! I hope you gained something from this guide. If you want to delve deeper into more thinking frameworks, here are a few articles and books I strongly recommend:
(Trading the Metagame) – Cobie's narrative, rotation, and meta trading guide.
(Geeks, Mops, and Sociopaths) – Exploring different roles in niche ecosystems.
(Why the Yuppie Elite Dismiss Bitcoin) – Explaining how biases distort logic.
(Playing to Win) – A psychological and strategic guide for competitive gamers.
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