From 30% Profit to Losing It All: Beware of the "Greed Trap" in the Crypto Bear Market

By: blockbeats|2025/04/07 17:00:03
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Original Article Title: How to survive a bear market in DeFi market neutral
Original Article Author: Santisa, Crypto KOL
Original Article Translation: Felix, PANews

Before delving into the content of this article, let's first consider the following story (or perhaps reality).

An "endless" tariff list is announced. Subsequently, the market crashes, and meme coins collapse.

Your original low-risk "mining farm" yield drops from 30% to nearly Treasury bill levels.

This is unacceptable to you. You had planned to retire with $300,000, earning $90,000 annually from "mining." Therefore, the yield had to be high.

So, you start exploring down the risk curve, chasing an imagined level of yield as if the market would favor you.

You swapped blue-chip projects for unknown new projects; you increased your yield by deploying assets to high-risk new fixed-term protocols or AMMs. You started feeling smug.

Weeks later, you begin to question why you had been so risk-averse in the first place. It was clearly a "safe and reliable" way to make money.

Then, a surprise comes.

From 30% Profit to Losing It All: Beware of the

The ultra-liquid infrastructure trading project you entrusted your life savings to, custody, leverage, L2-wrapped, collapses, and now your PT-shitUSD-27AUG2025 has lost 70%. You received some airdropped governance tokens, only for the project to be abandoned months later.

While this story is exaggerated, it reflects the reality that unfolds repeatedly during a bear market when yields are compressed. Based on this, this article will attempt to provide a survival manual for the yield bear market.

People strive to adapt to the new reality, facing market crashes, they increase risk to compensate for the yield shortfall while ignoring the potential costs of these decisions.

Market-neutral investors are also speculators, with their advantage lying in finding unadjusted rates. Unlike their directional trading counterparts, these speculators face only two outcomes: either making a little profit every day or losing a substantial amount in one go.

Personally, I believe that crypto market-neutral rates become severely mismatched during an uptrend, offering alpha higher than their true risk, but conversely during a downtrend, they provide returns lower than the risk-free rate (RFR) while taking on a significant amount of risk.

Clearly, sometimes you need to take risks, and sometimes you need to mitigate risks. Those who fail to see this will become someone else's "Thanksgiving dinner".

For example, at the time of writing this article, AAVE's USDC yield is 2.7%, and sUSD's yield is 4.5%.

· AAVE USDC bears 60% of the RFR while also bearing smart contract, oracle, custody, and financial risks.

· Maker, while bearing smart contract and custody risks and actively investing in higher-risk projects, bears a fee of 25 basis points above the RFR.

When analyzing the interest rate of a neutral investment in the DeFi market, you need to consider:

· Custodial risk

· Financial risk

· Smart contract risk

· Risk-free rate

You can assign an annual risk percentage to each type of risk, then add the RFR to determine the "risk-adjusted return" required for each investment opportunity. Anything above this rate is considered alpha, while anything below is not alpha.

A recent calculation found that Maker's risk-adjusted required return is 9.56% for a fair compensation.

Maker's current rate is approximately 4.5%.

Both AAVE and Maker hold Tier 2 capital (about 1% of total deposits), but even with substantial insurance, depositors should not accept yields below the RFR.

In the era of Blackroll T-bills and regulated on-chain issuers, this is the consequence of lethargy, key loss, and foolish capital.

So what should you do? It depends on your scale.

If your portfolio scale is small (less than $5 million), there are still attractive options. Check out protocols that are more secure in all chain deployments; they often provide incentives on some lesser-known chains with lower TVL or engage in basic trading on high-yield, low-liquidity perpetuals.

If you have a large amount of capital (over $20 million):

Buy short-term Treasury bills and wait for things to evolve. The favorable market conditions will eventually return. You can also look into OTC trading; many projects are still looking for TVL and are willing to significantly dilute their holders.

If you have LP, let them know, even let them exit. The on-chain treasury bond is still below the real trade. Don't let the untuned risk-return ratio cloud your judgment. Good opportunities are obvious. Keep it simple, avoid greed. You should stay here for the long term, manage your risk-return properly; if not, the market will take care of it for you.

Related Reading: Comprehensive Data Analysis: Where Did the Funds Flow Behind the $100 Billion Growth of Stablecoins? Shitcoins didn't rise, where did the money go?

Original Article Link

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On March 16, 2026, in Dallas, Texas, USA, CanGu Company (New York Stock Exchange code: CANG, hereinafter referred to as "CanGu" or the "Company") today announced its unaudited financial performance for the fourth quarter and full year ended December 31, 2025. As a btc-42">bitcoin mining enterprise relying on a globally operated layout and dedicated to building an integrated energy and AI computing power platform, CanGu is actively advancing its business transformation and infrastructure development.


2025 Full Year and Fourth Quarter Financial and Operational Highlights


• Financial Performance:

Total revenue for the full year 2025 was $688.1 million, with $179.5 million in the fourth quarter.

Bitcoin mining business revenue for the full year was $675.5 million, with $172.4 million in the fourth quarter.

Full-year adjusted EBITDA was $24.5 million, while the fourth quarter was -$156.3 million.


• Mining Operations and Costs:

A total of 6,594.6 bitcoins were mined throughout the year, averaging 18.07 bitcoins per day; of which 1,718.3 bitcoins were mined in the fourth quarter, averaging 18.68 bitcoins per day.

The average mining cost for the full year (excluding miner depreciation) was $79,707 per bitcoin, and for the fourth quarter, it was $84,552;

The all-in sustaining costs were $97,272 and $106,251 per bitcoin, respectively.

As of the end of December 2025, the company has cumulatively produced 7,528.4 bitcoins since entering the bitcoin mining business.


• Strategic Progress:

The company has completed the termination of the American Depositary Receipt (ADR) program and transitioned to a direct listing on the NYSE to enhance information transparency and align with its strategic direction, with a long-term goal of expanding its investor base.


CEO Paul Yu stated: "2025 marked the company's first full year as a bitcoin mining enterprise, characterized by rapid execution and structural reshaping. We completed a comprehensive adjustment of our asset system and established a globally distributed mining network. Additionally, the company introduced a new management team, further strengthening our capabilities and competitive advantage in the digital asset and energy infrastructure space. The completion of the NYSE direct listing and USD pricing also signifies our transformation into a global AI infrastructure company."


"As we enter 2026, the company will continue to optimize its balance sheet structure and enhance operational efficiency and cost resilience through adjustments to the miner portfolio. At the same time, we are advancing our strategic transformation into an AI infrastructure provider. Leveraging EcoHash, we will utilize our capabilities in scalable computing power and energy networks to provide cost-effective AI inference solutions. The relevant site transformations and product development are progressing simultaneously, and the company is well-positioned to sustain its execution in the new phase."


The company's Chief Financial Officer, Michael Zhang, stated: "By 2025, the company is expected to achieve significant revenue growth through its scaled mining operations. Despite recording a net loss of $452.8 million from ongoing operations, mainly due to one-time transformation costs and market-driven fair value adjustments, the company, from a financial perspective, will reduce its leverage, optimize its Bitcoin reserve strategy and liquidity management, introduce new capital to strengthen its financial position, and seize investment opportunities in high-potential areas such as AI infrastructure while navigating market volatility."


Fourth Quarter 2025 Ongoing Operations Financial Performance


Revenue


The total revenue for the fourth quarter was $1.795 billion. Of this, the Bitcoin mining business contributed $1.724 billion in revenue, generating 1,718.3 Bitcoins during the quarter. Revenue from the international automobile trading business was $4.8 million.


Operating Costs and Expenses


The total operating costs and expenses for the fourth quarter amounted to $4.56 billion, primarily attributed to expenses related to the Bitcoin mining business, as well as impairment of mining machines and fair value losses on Bitcoin collateral receivables.


This includes:

· Cost of Revenue (excluding depreciation): $1.553 billion

· Cost of Revenue (depreciation): $38.1 million

· Operating Expenses: $9.9 million (including related-party expenses of $1.1 million)

· Mining Machine Impairment Loss: $81.4 million

· Fair Value Loss on Bitcoin Collateral Receivables: $171.4 million


Profit Situation


The operating loss for the fourth quarter was $276.6 million, a significant increase from a loss of $0.7 million in the same period of 2024, primarily due to the downward trend in Bitcoin prices.


The net loss from ongoing operations was $285 million, compared to a net profit of $2.4 million in the same period last year.


The adjusted EBITDA was -$156.3 million, compared to $2.4 million in the same period last year.


Full Year 2025 Ongoing Operations Financial Performance


Revenue

The total revenue for the full year was $6.881 billion. Of this, the revenue from the Bitcoin mining business was $6.755 billion, with a total output of 6,594.6 Bitcoins for the year. Revenue from the international automobile trading business was $9.8 million.


Operating Costs and Expenses


The total annual operating costs and expenses amount to $1.1 billion.


Specifically, they include:

· Revenue Cost (excluding depreciation): $543.3 million

· Revenue Cost (depreciation): $116.6 million

· Operating Expenses: $28.9 million (including related-party expenses of $1.1 million)

· Miner Impairment Loss: $338.3 million

· Bitcoin Collateral Receivable Fair Value Change Loss: $96.5 million


Profitability


The full-year operating loss is $437.1 million. The continuing operations net loss is $452.8 million, while in 2024, there was a net profit of $4.8 million.


The 2025 non-GAAP adjusted net profit is $24.5 million (compared to $5.7 million in 2024). This measure does not include share-based compensation expenses; refer to "Use of Non-GAAP Financial Measures" for details.


Financial Position


As of December 31, 2025, the company's key assets and liabilities are as follows:


· Cash and Cash Equivalents: $41.2 million

· Bitcoin Collateral Receivable (Non-current, related party): $663.0 million

· Miner Net Value: $248.7 million

· Long-Term Debt (related party): $557.6 million


In February 2026, the company sold 4,451 bitcoins and repaid a portion of related-party long-term debt to reduce financial leverage and optimize the asset-liability structure.


Stock Repurchase


As per the stock repurchase plan disclosed on March 13, 2025, as of December 31, 2025, the company had repurchased a total of 890,155 shares of Class A common stock for approximately $1.2 million.


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