Recently, I reviewed my portfolio and went through the charts of all the popular sectors and various altcoins on the market.

After looking, my mentality completely collapsed.

Counting from the highs in December last year to now, over this whole year, apart from those top projects with inherent halos and strong consensus, the rest? Over 90% of altcoins have dropped so much even your mom wouldn’t recognize them.

Dropped 3 to 5 times? Congratulations, you’re already considered a “resilient player.”

Even worse are those that got halved, then halved again, dropping to a tenth of their original price—you don’t even dare open your holdings chart to look. Holding for a year feels like slicing off your money piece by piece to feed it to the market like a dog.

Many people will say, wasn’t it just because of that black swan crash on October 11 last year?

But if you pull up the full-year candlestick chart and look closely, you’ll notice something even scarier: the cumulative decline over the entire year is basically like experiencing a “slow-motion black swan.” It didn't crash all in one day; instead, it’s been a year-round, nonstop bloodletting—slow declines, gradually eating away at your principal.

By the time you realize, all that’s left in your account is a mess.

Where did the money go? Who siphoned off the liquidity?

The answer is brutal but simple:
The market didn’t crash at all; the money just escaped from those junk coins, vaporware projects, and fringe tokens, and all flowed into truly strong assets with a story, consensus, and solid fundamentals.

Some people are sinking deeper into the pit of altcoins, while others have quietly shifted and are positioned to ride the leaders and the trend. Some have stubbornly held onto their fantasies all year, while others have already swapped out their chips and are starting to reel in profits.

It’s not that you can’t ever touch altcoins.

But the times have really changed.

Those projects without a story, consensus, or solid base are now just sitting ducks—they’re the ones systematically getting wiped out.

This year’s altcoin massacre wasn’t an accident; it was an elimination round. The ones who truly make money are never the reckless gamblers going all-in blindly, but the smart ones who know when to exit and when to go all-in.