“At a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island, Kurt Vonnegut informs his pal, Joseph Heller, that their host, a hedge fund manager, had made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from his wildly popular novel Catch-22 over its whole history. Heller responds, “Yes, but I have something he will never have … enough.”

Between the ages of 0 and 25, the brain does most of its development. Specifically, we learn to use and listen to our prefrontal cortex more than our emotional brain centers.

We learn to think rationally and to make decisions based on what we think is right vs what we feel.

When looking at the research around mental health and addiction, it becomes clear that what happens to us during these years is very important. Sometimes we are forced into traumas we didn’t ask for, sometimes we get wasted on booze and adderall before our 20th birthday.

Or sometimes our brains get hijacked by the age of dopamine, a polite way of saying how screen time and social media has fully fucked our ability to go offline before our bodies have fully developed.

All these things have changed the way our brains work, making it harder and harder to think clearly in a world that pulls on every emotion daily.

We are entering the part of the crypto cycle where it gets harder and harder to think rationally.

If you are up big, sitting on some huge profits, you will think there’s another 2–3x to go.

If you are breaking even from the 2021 highs, you will convince yourself that this breakout is what you’ve been waiting for all year.

If you are underperforming the market, you will feel so much FOMO and pain that you cannot possibly quit now.

It’s all the same shit — your prefrontal cortex unable to overcome the emotional lightning running through your veins. The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master.

The title of this post is Enough because in the end, markets are really a test to see if you know when to stop. That’s what it all boils down to.

Can you make a good decision and then walk away. Can you make money and then keep it. Conversely, can you cut your losses before they take you out of the game.

Markets, especially ones as volatile as crypto, are not about who can make the most, it’s who can keep the most after 5 years. After you pay your taxes and avoid all the dumb trades or investments that will surely come your way after the highs of a bull market, what are you left with?

The ultimate goal of this journey is not to make a mind bending amount of money. The goal is to make enough money and keep it.

Everyone has their own number that is enough. One person may think $10,000 will forever change their life, others are not satisfied until they have $100M.

But what matters is whether each of those people can actually walk away once they get it.

And the craziest part is that we are in control of what we think Enough is, yet we keep going on X dot com, surrounding ourselves with bull posts and P&Ls that keep us hungry for more.

As someone who has successfully navigated a few crypto cycles, I can promise you that it will never feel like you have enough.

You can buy the lows and sell the exact top, it won’t feel like enough.

You can look at your Phantom wallet in disbelief, unable to comprehend that this amount of money is now yours, and with two weeks you will be dipping your toes back into a few “easy” trades.

People get into crypto bc they are the kind of people who struggle with having enough, who thrive of risk and feel a deep fear that time is running out. If they don’t make generational wealth now, it’s over.

And this type of thinking is exactly what will keep the struggle alive for another 4 years, constantly chasing that elusive 100x that will be Enough. Ignoring the advice that building wealth takes time in the pursuit of somehow getting ahead, that if you just had more money you would finally feel the sense of arrival that’s been missing for all these years.

Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen for most people.

Whenever this market tops, maybe today, maybe in a few months, maybe in late 2025, you will not feel like you have Enough.

You may even see the craziest parabolic moves and every top signal in the book and sell all your coins at a huge profit —one month later it still won’t feel like Enough when you see another memecoin exploding higher.

You may start seeing the market sell off soon and you take profits to protect your trades — it won’t feel like Enough.

There is simply no scenario that will ever feel good when trading this shit. That’s the whole point — making money this fast destroys the ability to think rationally for most people with any sense of emotion.

The only answer is to accept this truth of crypto and realize that comfort is your enemy when it comes to making money. You must replace excitement with boring, practical planning if you don’t want to round trip.

It will feel emasculating and painful to accept that you won’t go down in crypto history like Cobie or Bonk Guy. You may not be the God that you secretly desire to be, that you’ve always desired to be — the kind of guy who people love and respect, the kind of person who will finally experience love and unconditional admiration.

You must divorce yourself from these ego driven beliefs and accept the reality of markets. None of us are special, most of us are just lucky and autistic enough to handle the volatility.

This is not a prediction on pricing, Lord knows what will happen next. It is a reminder that you will never FEEL like it’s enough. If BTC goes to $300k, it won’t feel like enough. If SOL hits $1,000, it won’t feel like enough. You need to make decisions in spite of these emotions, the same way you need to eat organic food and go to the gym even when you don’t want to.

A depressingly small number of people actually make money in crypto after taxes and fees. An even smaller number of people keep that money years after the bull run ends.

The only way to guarantee your success is to stop listening to your gut and start listening to your brain. Save the intuition for your love life. Markets are for logic.

This game is supposed to be fun but not feel good. It should feel the way athletic training feels — hard, difficult and rewarding. The pleasure comes from the progress and not from the vanity.

Once you realize that you already have enough, you’ve won. That’s when you start getting rich.

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