You’re Not Early, You’re in the Middle — and That’s Where Leverage Lives

25 days ago

Everyone wants to be early. That’s the dream, right? You get in before the crowd, make asymmetric bets, ride the wave, and exit with just enough grace to look like a genius. “Early” gets romanticized. It makes you feel chosen. Special. Like you saw something others didn’t.

But the thing is, being early isn’t what most people think it is. Most people who were early… didn’t win. They hesitated. They held too long. They believed too much. They stayed loyal to dead protocols and rugged founders. Being early isn’t just about timing—it’s about detachment. And that’s rare.

Most of us? We’re in the middle. We showed up after the ICO era, after DeFi Summer, after the NFT peak, after the merge. We didn’t mint ETH at $2, or buy SHIB before TikTok. But we’re still here, and the middle is misunderstood. Because the middle doesn’t feel special. It doesn’t feel “chosen.” It just feels... noisy.

But here’s the thing: the middle is where leverage lives. Not margin leverage—narrative leverage. This is the part of the curve where small moves echo. Where positioning matters more than prophecy. Where how you think matters more than when you showed up.

And if you get that, you stop trying to be early. You start trying to be effective.

Let’s define the middle clearly.

The middle of a crypto narrative is that zone after the builders and insiders have placed their bets, but before the general public has figured out how to talk about it. It’s where frameworks start to clash. Where protocols are functional, but unsexy. Where attention is inconsistent, liquidity is jumpy, and token prices feel weirdly stable.

Right now, that’s where we are in a lot of ecosystems. L2s aren’t novel anymore, but most people still don’t understand sequencers. Stablecoins are everywhere, but nobody agrees what “decentralized” means. ETH is the backbone of everything, but ETH staking is still dominated by a few liquid staking entities. The middle is messy.

But messy means in play.

If you’re in the middle, and you know it, you can use it. You don’t have to defend your bags. You don’t have to predict the future. You just have to pay attention to what’s changing underneath the noise. That’s the game now.

Here’s how leverage works in the middle:

You see narratives form before they crystallize.
Most people react to consensus. You can front-run consensus just by watching the cracks form. When people start arguing about whether EigenLayer is good or evil, or whether PayPal stablecoins are threats or toys, that’s not noise—that’s compression. Pressure building around a new consensus. That’s where you move.
You can enter positions before liquidity ossifies.
Early stages have too little liquidity. Late stages have too much dumb money. The middle? That’s where smart LPs start testing yield, where protocols are incentivizing behavior, where composability isn’t locked yet. That’s where you stake, farm, or migrate—quietly.
You can still leave without panic.
Middle means you’re not trapped. You can exit without triggering cascading fear. You can rotate. Early believers are too emotionally tied. Late players are too exposed. You? You’re still nimble.

Most people on Hive and LeoFinance are in the middle, too.

You’re not building the chains. You’re not just arriving. You’re watching, writing, speculating, surviving. That’s a powerful position—if you stop pretending you’re still early, and start embracing the advantage of now.

The systems are visible now. Lido controls ETH staking. USDT controls dollar liquidity. Coinbase controls onboarding. CZ, despite everything, still controls attention. These aren’t theories anymore. They’re facts. And that clarity is leverage. You don’t need to wonder what decentralization might look like. You can look at how it actually functions, and act accordingly.

Being early is mostly about belief. Being in the middle is about pattern recognition. And pattern recognition pays better, more consistently, over time.

Here’s a truth most people won’t say out loud: nobody cares that you “got in before the airdrop.” That’s not skill. That’s luck, or reflex, or pure obsession. What matters is what you do with the position you have now.

So here’s what I’m doing:

I’m watching ETH restaking narratives compress.
I’m watching stablecoin UX compete across chains.
I’m watching Solana’s alignment shift from memecoin casino to speed-first settlement.
I’m watching the builders get tired, and the marketers get loud. That’s usually a signal.

I’m not betting everything on one thesis. I’m not chasing dopamine through thirty telegram groups. I’m paying attention. I’m sitting inside the curve, where movement still matters, and signal can still be heard before it turns to noise.

You’re not early. You’re in the middle. And if you understand that, you can stop mourning the past and start wielding the present.

Stop trying to predict.
Start trying to position.

This is where leverage lives. Don’t waste it.