Being short is an obviously easy way to lose money when going up. HFT market making in basically all reasonable forms doesn’t have large delta exposure, I.e. y

Being short is an obviously easy way to lose money when going up. HFT market making in basically all reasonable forms doesn’t have large delta exposure, I.e. you aren’t taking position risk. In early and bull (crypto) markets, being an mm tends to be much easier as flow is much less toxic. Less hft competition since it’s early and more speculators during a bull run. It’s somewhat opposite to traditional markets, which tend to be boring for an mm when it’s up, and very interesting when it’s down (high volatility, higher trading activity from non-hft firms)