There are basically 3 categories of actors in this market: traders, investors and lucky bastards, sometimes all 3 converge in one individual but that's rare.

Let's try to understand how each of these fare in the raging bull market of cryptocurrencies.

Traders

Trading is a remarkably strenuous and stressful way to earn a minimum wage.

When you look closely at why do people choose to trade, jumping in and out of coins, it becomes obvious there's a combination of popular misconceptions and fallacies that are transplanted straight from dot com trading scene and are guaranteed to keep most of available profits out of reach of traders.

Performance benchmarks

Returns are routinely compared with benchmark performance of traditional instruments: stock market, bonds, options. The truth is, cryptocurrencies are supply and demand game in it's most pure form one can find anywhere nowadays. There are many, many more moving and complex parts that drive stock prices, or bond prices, or options. Therefore, comparing crypto markets at this stage to anything else doesn't make any sense.

Technical analysis

For similar reasons, technical analysis/charting is mostly useless in crypto space these days. Charts can be useful in markets where demand is relatively limited - you can measure extremes based on normalized patterns. In current crypto expansion phase which is truly exponential in nature, there's no clear limit to demand. A lot of people will leave a lot of money on the table playing support/resistance and momentum strategies. And those who have no strategy at all will lose their shirt.

Immediate gratification

It's so human to avoid risk and maximize reward, but traders often tend to get confused with risk and reward equation. The dominant reward system they use is immediate gratification. The faster the trade is profitable, the more urgency is there to sell, locking in whatever gain there is. There's no problem with taking profits, it's only a problem when those are consistently taken too soon. Another common misconception about rewards is "it's up enough for me": sure if one position grows to half of your total net worth, you trim it and shift some gains elsewhere. The sad truth is, most traders never let any of their profits run that far.

Attempting to smooth portfolio volatility

Another fallacy is that by trading the risk is reduced. In fact it's often the opposite, but the false sense of security and control is so sweet and soothing that it's hard to resist. Crypto markets these days are insanely volatile, trying to tame volatility of your crypto portfolio by trading around it is akin to locking the wild animal in a little cramped zoo cage: it's painful to watch and the animal is likely to die.

Adrenalin junky paradise

Some traders are in it just for the thrills. It's incredibly rewarding for adrenalin junkie when a bet goes all over the place, up or down. Unfortunately, this also happens to be the least profitable application of the capital.

Trading fatigue

You can make a lot of money trading in this volatility, there's no doubt about it. But for absolute majority of people this is an extremely emotional rollercoaster which will cause enormous stress and will result in a sort of fatigue that no amount of alcohol or any other substance can help dissipate. It also is eating agressively in those folks' time, leaving little or none of life to enjoy outside of the trading.

Investors

Now, what about investors, those whales you say? These are rare but will end up making the most of the fortunes throughout the multy-year bull market. They pick their bets conciously and rationally on the merits of potential value in the longer term, avoiding all the hustle and sweat of hard labor that is trading, and they are sure to get way ahead of any active trader.

Lucky bastards

Perhaps the easiest way to make a killing without stressing over it at all is by being lucky. Those proverbial early adopters who bought Bitcoin at $0.10, carried on with their life and never bothered to read the news are the blessed ones who skipped all the negative emotions associated with knowledge and now hold the ticket to jack pot. The only problem is the chances of being the one are similar to being the winner in a lottery: not improbable, but statistically unlikely.

Make your choice folks, it's going to be fun to revisit this subject in 3-5 years. Good luck!