The Power of Embracing Market Making: Turning –64K Into +78K Instead

February 2026 turned out to be one of the toughest months: over the month BTC dropped by almost 15% and closed the fifth red candle in a row, major alts fell by 20–30%, volatility returned, and liquidity disappeared. TradingView source: WhiteBIT chart BTC/USDT (1D) To make the economics easier to see against this backdrop, let’s take a realistic hypothetical example of an active trader starting with around 5 million USDT. In this setup, about 3 million USDT is allocated to BTC/USDT (part in long spot, part covered by a short in futures), around 1.2 million to ETH/USDT for range trading, and another ~800k to liquid top-20 alts and stables for margin and cash. Direction-wise, the setup itself is not the problem: shorts on bitcoin work out, alts are partially hedged, and spot rebalances add delta. The higher turnover that appears later is not the starting balance itself - it comes from the same capital being actively recycled through spot, futures, hedging and rebalancing throughout the m