Market Segmentation and the Revival of old Edges
Throughout 2025 I noticed that edges that had worked in 2023 but had since been arbed out, reappeared on specific coins, particularly those from the ' Trenches'.
Like I’ve extensively covered in my first article, assessing the degree of intellect and way of thinking of the participants (or the average dollar-weighted market participant) of the market you are trading is one of the most important aspects in discretionary trading. You need to assess how high their intellect is, what they’re thinking, how they think and how many steps they think ahead.
The 2023 Playbook
Trading altcoins in 2023, when I had just started out, was fairly easy. There wasn’t such a high degree of sophisticated market participants like there is today. There were some incredibly straightforward strategies that worked consistently on altcoins.
The easiest and most reliable was the sell-the-news trade. The strategy is incredibly simple. You would short a coin right as some anticipated positive catalyst happened, like a product launch, exchange listing, etc. The logic is easy, price had already run up in anticipation and everyone already knew about the event and had already bought, expecting, for some reason, for more people to buy right as the event finally happened. They buy and when the event happens, they wait in anticipation for a pump which never comes because everyone has already bought. As they realize nothing is happening, they start to sell, resulting in a dump.
Another edge that worked just as well was fading tweet pumps that added no real value. A good example was Elon posting about Dogecoin for the 20th time. Doge would pump on the tweet, but since the tweet didn’t change anything about the coin anymore, it would always revert. You could reliably short these pumps.
Both of these edges worked incredibly well throughout most of 2023.
The Edges Follow Their Natural Lifecycles
Edges never last forever. By late 2023, these patterns started breaking down. Markets (or the average dollar-weighted market participant) had gotten smarter. Increasingly more traders started front-running. Then front-running the front-runners, until the edge completely ceased to exist. For tweet pumps, coins just would not pump at all anymore. By 2024, both strategies were basically dead.
The Trenches
During mid to late 2024, while the main crypto market was evolving and participants were getting more sophisticated and aware of traps such as sell-the-news, an entirely new ecosystem was emerging: The ‘Trenches’. Perpetuated by apps like pump.fun. Ultra low-cap memecoins, almost entirely traded on-chain through terminals. The majority of people trading these coins were completely different participants from the general perpetual market. They weren’t people who had been trading perps since 2021 and had seen all the patterns and knew all the old playbooks, they were mostly newer entrants who hadn’t been trading before. They had a habit of not thinking many steps ahead (because it wasn’t needed in the trenches).
The Return of the Edge
A few of these trench coins actually ended up getting listed as perpetuals on exchanges, I will be focusing on $MUBARAK (a BSC memecoin shitter) and $VINE (a SOL memecoin shitter). The old 2023 playbook started working again, but only on coins from the trenches. Both sell-the-news and fading meaningless tweet pumps became viable strategies again.
This is because participant base mattered and these coins were dominated by trenchers, people who had never experienced or learned about sell-the-news dynamics or tweet-pump traps. They were used to the fast-paced, 1 to 2 steps ahead thinking from the trenches. They didn’t think far ahead and they weren’t used to shorting. They fell for the same traps that 2023 retail fell for. The edges reappeared because you were trading against a different, less experienced counterparty.
The exact same trade setups that would get you burned on $AVAX or $PEPE would print on $MUBARAK and $VINE, purely because of who was on the other side.
Let this observation be proof of the importance of assessing your counterparty. The strategy didn't change. The basics of the coins didn’t change. Only the counterparty changed, and that made all the difference. Correctly understanding who you’re trading against is an incredibly important skillset, perhaps the most important.
If you have or have had an edge in markets and it stops working, don’t forget about it. Keep it in the back of your mind and it might start appearing again in new market segments with less sophisticated participants.
The Trades
Here are the three trades (1 on $VINE and 2 on $MUBARAK) that I took in 2025 that illustrate this concept.
Re-Launch of Vine
$VINE is the perfect example of a text-book sell-the-news pattern.
$VINE is a memecoin about the platform ‘Vine’. The coin was endorsed by a Vine Co-Founder. The pattern started when Elon Musk tweeted “We’re bringing back Vine, but in AI form”. (See first timestamp on chart)
Vine pumped strongly on the tweet and gave traders a future positive catalyst (the re-launch of vine). Traders bought Vine in expectation of more details surrounding Vine coming back.
The sell-the-news trade was when details were announced & Elon’s version of Vine went live. (See second timestamp on chart) Elon posted “Grok Imagine is AI Vine!”. With this, all details about Vine coming back were released. Vine pumped hard on the tweet, fueled by news traders, but now, there was no one left to buy and nothing left to look forward to. Vine crashed over 40% in the span of 2 hours.
Eid Mubarak
$MUBARAK is a muslim BSC memecoin connected to Ramadan and pushed by CZ. On $MUBARAK, there were two easy trades, both showing that these trench coins are just “easier” to trade.
The first one was front-running the end of Ramadan. Since Mubarak is connected to Ramadan, and CZ was posting a lot of muslim content with a muslim profile picture at the time, once Ramadan ended he would post less muslim content and likely change his profile picture, causing the coin to get much less attention. Incredibly simple, brain-dead trade.
Ramadan End (Timestamp on chart)
Trade 2 was fading CZs tweet ‘Eid Mubarak’. One concern about Trade 1 (front-running Ramadan end) was if CZ tweeted Eid Mubarak (what muslims say to each other at the end of Ramadan). Since ‘Mubarak’ would be in the tweet, traders might long Mubarak on it. However, I was convinced that a pump on such a tweet would be an even easier short than front-running the end of Ramadan. CZs ‘Eid Mubarak’ tweet would simply be the last bullet in the chamber for Mubarak.
Timestamp = CZ tweet
Shoutout to my friend for waking me up at 6am so I could take the trade like planned!
