I've been thinking about a question lately: in the crypto market, should we only go long, or should we also learn how to short? A lot of people think that shorting lets you profit when prices fall, and that logic seems to make sense. But the deeper I research, the more I realize that going long and shorting aren’t really equal choices.

First, let’s talk about the reasons why shorting seems reasonable. It’s true that the market moves up and down. If you only go long, then you can only profit during upward moves. Shorting gives you the opportunity to profit even when prices are falling. And shorting is usually done with contracts, which means you can use leverage, and the cost of transferring skills is low—you can do technical analysis to predict a rise, and logically you can also predict a fall. From this perspective, shorting seems like a complete trading tool.

But there’s a fatal problem here. I looked up Bitcoin’s historical data: from 2013 to 2021, in those years, the number of days of rises and falls was almost split evenly, yet in the end Bitcoin increased by 350 times. What does that show? The upside far exceeds the downside. When you go long, you can make big gains when it rises, and you lose only a small amount when it falls. But with shorting, it’s the opposite: when you profit, you can only make small gains, and when you lose, you lose big. This huge disparity in the profit-and-loss ratio is the advantage of going long—forever.

Even more, shorting is a revenue contraction model. If you go long with 100, and the price goes from 1 up to 50, you end up with 5000. But if you go short with 100 using 1x leverage, and the price goes from 50 down to 1, you end up with only 198. How big is the difference? Even if you add leverage, shorting still can’t change this fundamental nature.

Also, one more point: crypto is still in its early stage, and the long-term trend is upward. Going long means you’re riding the major trend, while shorting means you’re going with the minor trend against the major trend. No matter how much you make in the short term, it’s like picking up coins in front of a bulldozer.

Some people say, “Okay, then I’ll go long in a bull market and short in a bear market—that’s it, right?” Wrong. The problems with shorting don’t disappear just because you only use it in bear markets. The low profit-and-loss ratio, revenue contraction, and going against the trend—those traits hold in bear markets too. Shorting is a poison: drinking half of it is still poison.

So what if you’re truly sure that the outlook is bearish? You don’t necessarily have to short. The reasonable approach is to adjust your position size. If you’re sure it will rise, hold 70% to 80% of your position; if you’re sure it will fall, hold 30% of your position; if you’re uncertain, hold 50% of your position. This way, you can make money when it rises, and when it falls, you can earn coins—you can attack when conditions are favorable and defend when they aren’t.

My logic is actually very simple: since the profit-and-loss ratio of going long is better, and since the long-term trend is upward, why would you go anywhere near something like shorting—a revenue contraction model? Going long forever is the truly rational choice.