The Metagame

Most people think the "meta" in crypto is whatever everyone is talking about and that it's still early.

That's already wrong.

The moment a meta becomes common knowledge, it stops being the game. It becomes zero sum game and the PVP arena. Once X agrees on it, the game has already ended.

The real game is not playing the meta. (like you)

The real game is anticipating where the meta is going next.

Understanding the Metagame

The metagame is how you avoid competing directly with other market participants by doing something still early and uncomfortable to learn. Once you establish yourself with something unique beyond common knowledge like the metagame, you win without making fewer mistakes than other participants like in the zero sum game.

The meta is visible:

• Narratives everyone agrees on (e.g., prediction markets, neobanks)
• Strategies explained in X threads
• The same playbook everyone follows (e.g., x402 token mints)

The metagame is invisible:

• Information asymmetry
• Liquidity and timing advantages
• Emotion of other participants
• Technical challenges

Why most people lose?

Most participants react instead of positioning early.

They wait for:

• Community confirmation
• Community validation
• KOLs talking about it and flexing profits
• Tutorials

By then, the risk-reward ratio has already inverted.

Crypto punishes latecomers. When you arrive late to the party, you get drunk early participants vomit on your cake.

Metagame in practice

The metagame in practice looks like:

• Tracking early adopters and developers of a successful meta, as they may hint the next one
• Watching smart money onchain behavior instead of chart patterns (E.g using defillama and nansen)
• Understanding the incentives building around the meta
• Building early projects tracking tools instead of waiting for your friends alpha
• Acting when information is incomplete and hard to understand, but directionally correct for the long term

You're not trying to be right publicly.

You're trying to be early privately. (If you are early and you are wrong, you are not wrong.)

Speed beats intelligence

In crypto, speed compounds more than intelligence.

You don't need to be the smartest person in the room. You need:

• Faster technology to snipe contracts and track early signals
• Mental models for getting in early and correctly
• Less emotional attachment to losing money
• Less talk, more execution

The metagame rewards people who act first.

The Silent Rotation

Every cycle follows the same pattern:

1. A potential next meta emerges, ready to go mainstream
2. Smart money enters
3. Smart retail notices
4. Influencers talk about it for engagement
5. Liquidity peaks (like we see with ASTER)
6. Meta rotates to the next one

Most people join at step 4.

Metagame players exit around step 5 and are already researching step 1 of the next cycle.

Final Thoughts

If you feel "late but safe", you are already wrong.

By the time the meta is obvious = the opportunity is gone, it's already a PVP arena.

The only question is:

Are you playing the game everyone sees (Zero sum game), or the game that actually matters when you are early (The metagame)?

Remember from our previous post: crypto trading is a zero-sum game. That doesn't mean no one makes money, but the question is whether the money is made by YOU?