Japan is very likely to raise interest rates in December. Coupled with the market hype around the "Greenspan 2.0" expectation, will these two factors together knock the market down again?

My judgment is: a rate hike is inevitable. Based on this premise, I went through a bunch of macro data and looked at the historical volatility of the crypto market and came to a conclusion—even if there really is a rate hike in December, the damage will be nowhere near as severe as what happened on August 5th.

Why do I say this?

Let’s recall August 5th. The Bank of Japan suddenly raised rates, and on the US side, the Fed saw such poor employment data that it triggered the Sahm Rule, causing rate cut expectations to soar instantly. Both sides had issues at the same time, liquidity panic reached a peak, and it’s no wonder the market flash crashed.

But this time, things are different.

**First, the market is mentally prepared.** Last year was a surprise attack, but this year everyone is watching the December date. Shocks that are expected tend to be milder than those that aren’t.

**Second, the scale of yen carry trades has already shrunk significantly.** Last year’s flash crash was essentially a collective unwinding of yen carry trades—the core logic of unwinding was shorting the yen and going long the dollar in reverse. But now? USD/JPY has fallen from above 155 to around 154.56 (Tokyo session on December 5), with the yen appreciating about 0.3%, indicating that a large number of short yen positions have already been closed. More importantly, the current scale of yen carry trades is estimated at around $1.7 trillion, basically cut in half compared to last year. The risk has already been released in advance—there just aren’t that many positions left to blow up.

**Third, the proportion of Japanese carry trades in US stocks isn’t as high anymore.** Last year’s US stock crash was partly due to Japanese funds pulling out, but now that proportion is much lower.

Now, about recent market sentiment. This week, the market has been crazily hyping up Hasset’s (the shadow Fed chair) dovish comments, and there are even rumors that Powell will resign on Monday, pushing the Greenspan 2.0 trade expectation to the max. I thought this was way too optimistic, so I opened a BTC short around 93203—both short-term and long-term positions. The short-term one was a 10 BTC order that I originally planned to close at 89200, but due to an API setting error, I got completely liquidated.

Nothing to brag about—you know how it feels to get liquidated. I wasn’t in the mood to reopen positions either.

The lesson for me is: **every trade requires independent thinking—don’t just apply the last experience blindly to the next situation.** The market environment is changing, and your logic has to change with it.

If you really don’t know how to analyze, honestly, asking an AI tool might be more reliable than chasing other people for answers. After all, the data is there—if you can understand it yourself, that’s true understanding.