Revenue Planning
Here's a habit I picked up that completely changed how I think about crypto positions: I figure out my exit before I figure out my entry.
Most people do it the other way. They see a coin that looks interesting, they put money in, and then they think about targets later — or they don't set targets at all and just "see how it goes." I used to do this too. The problem is that by the time you're thinking about selling, you're either up 400% and too greedy to sell, or down 60% and too scared to sell. Neither version of you is making a good decision.
The version of me that sets targets clearly is the one who just did the research, who isn't emotionally attached to the outcome yet, and who can think mathematically about what actually needs to happen for this trade to be worth doing. That version of me makes better calls. So I try to make him do the work, not present-me.
The single biggest upgrade in how I think about crypto projections was switching from price targets to market cap targets. Price is almost meaningless without context. A coin at $0.01 is not cheap. A coin at $50,000 is not expensive. What matters is the market cap — the total value of all the coins in circulation.
Market cap = price × circulating supply.
When I'm evaluating a coin, I ask: what market cap would this project need to reach for my target price to make sense? And then I ask: is that realistic given what comparable projects are trading at right now?
This forces you to think about the trade in terms that are grounded in the actual market, not just "I want a 5x." A 5x on a $5B project means it needs to reach $25B. Whether that's realistic depends entirely on the sector, the competition, and the macro environment. Sometimes it's a reasonable target. Sometimes it's a moon shot. You should know which one you're betting on before you put money in.
Once I have a sense of the realistic market cap targets, I plan my tranches. I almost never plan a single exit. I plan three or four, each taking a piece of the position off the table at different levels.
Here's a real example of how I'd model this out:
Now I can see the shape of the trade. I can also see that I get my original investment back at target 1 and I'm fully in profit from target 2 onward. That changes how I feel about holding through volatility. When I know I've already pulled out my principal, the rest feels a lot easier to hold.
This whole calculation used to live in a spreadsheet. It worked okay but the spreadsheet didn't alert me when targets were hit, didn't update my remaining position after each sale, and couldn't show me my realized P&L relative to my original cost basis.
Now I add the asset to ExitLedger and enter each target directly — price threshold, quantity to sell, and whether the trigger is price-based or market cap-based. The system watches the price 24 hours a day and emails me the moment a target fires. When I acknowledge the alert and log the sale, it automatically updates my average cost basis and remaining position, and calculates the realized profit from that specific sell.
What I love about the market cap trigger option is that it keeps me from getting confused by token supply changes or different ways of expressing value. I set "alert me when this coin's market cap hits $25B" and I don't have to calculate what price that corresponds to. ExitLedger does the math.
Setting targets based on market cap is more reliable than price alone because it accounts for the actual size and scale of the project — not just the number next to the ticker symbol.
The last thing I do before entering a position is figure out what happens if I'm completely wrong. What if the coin drops 70%? What's my actual dollar loss? Is that an amount I can afford to be wrong about? If losing this entire position would hurt my life, I need to size down before I buy — not after.
Position sizing is the thing most people skip. They buy however much feels right in the moment, and it's always too much when things go wrong and too little when things go right. Setting the position size as part of your pre-trade research removes at least one big source of bad decisions.
The reason this process helps is not because it makes you smarter or more accurate. You're still going to be wrong about some of these trades. The reason it works is that it forces every single decision into a calm, analytical moment — before the trade, before the emotion, before the FOMO or the panic.
Your targets are set. Your quantities are set. Your system knows what to do. When the market moves, you're not deciding anything in real time. You're just confirming what you already decided when you were thinking clearly. That's as close to a structural edge as most retail investors are going to get.
Add your assets, set market cap or price targets, and get alerted the moment they fire.
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