After 7 years of struggling in the crypto market, I have learned to be wary of the saying 'money falls from the sky', but I also stumbled hard when I first entered the industry: 15,000 stablecoins were stuck in two seemingly 'reliable' projects, and in the end, I only got back a small portion. Later, I reviewed and found that 90% of newcomers lose money, and cannot escape these two traps — especially when the current market software is filled with 'low-price potential targets' and 'old track leaders', in fact, most are just rebranded scams.
Let's break the illusion of the current market: how many shells are hidden behind the buzzwords?
Open the market page, terms like 'metaverse ecosystem' and 'DePIN storage' are everywhere, and newcomers can easily be overwhelmed by phrases like 'track windfall' and 'low-price bottoming'. But I want to pour cold water on this: projects that dare to shout 'low-price potential' are 80% either old scams with a new name or inflation projects harvested by 'unlocking sell orders'. You think you are picking up 'low-price chips', but in fact, you are falling into a 'stop-loss trap' that others have drawn in advance.
The first pitfall: zombie copycat projects — they seem to have concepts, but in reality, they have already stalled;
I remember a game project I invested in years ago, its promotion at that time was: 'New map goes live, connecting the metaverse game ecosystem'. But after investing real money, I realized it was all just empty promises:
The official website's updates stopped two months after investment, and there has been no substantial progress since (not even perfunctory updates like 'interface optimization');
Check the submission records on the code platform, with no technical maintenance in the past six months (equivalent to the project team abandoning the code);
The community is even more outrageous, turning from an active group of 500 people into an ad group, with daily spam being third-party lending links, and the project team's customer service has long disappeared.
When this project was delisted by the trading platform, I didn't even have the chance to stop-loss and exit — it directly turned into invalid code upon opening. Here’s a hard rule for beginners: check the project against these four criteria, if it fails any, quickly stay away;
The official website has had no product progress in the past 3 months (do not trust vague statements like 'in development', there should be specific functional updates);
The code platform (like GitHub) has had no submission records in the past 6 months (a sign that the technical team has withdrawn);
The proportion of active users in the community is less than 5% (after removing ads and bots, there are very few people actually discussing the project);
The top 10 addresses hold more than 70% of the tokens (with concentrated holdings, a crash can happen at any time).
The second pitfall: inflation harvesting projects — wearing the title of 'leading project', specifically targeting latecomers;
Another project that caused me significant losses was a certain old leading storage project (once touted as the 'benchmark for decentralized storage'). At that time, I thought 'established projects have foundations', but ended up stepping on the landmine of 'unlimited unlocking': the project team had already agreed on 'batch unlocking', with 8% of the circulation being unlocked each quarter. Early investors exited in bulk after making enough profit, leaving us retail investors stuck at high prices.
Like OMG falling from $20 to $0.2 in its early days, a certain old storage leading project (formerly known as FIL) always drops sharply after each unlocking — the inflation rate of such projects is harsher than fiat currency, and what you see as 'low prices' is actually just the 'halfway up the mountain' where selling pressure hasn't fully released. The logic for avoiding pitfalls is simpler: as long as you see these two points in the project's 'unlock plan', just walk away;
The unlocking frequency is higher than quarterly (for example, monthly unlocking), and the single unlocking volume exceeds 5% of the circulating supply;
There are 'early institutions' and 'team holdings' in the unlocking objects, with no mechanism to extend the lock-up period (essentially allowing institutions to run at any time).
Lastly, let me say something from the heart: there is no 'bargain hunting' in the crypto market, only 'avoiding pitfalls';
I only got back a little over 2000 from my 15000 stablecoins, not because I had bad luck, but because I didn't understand one principle early on: in this market, 90% of the 'opportunities' are carefully packaged traps. Here are three principles I still use now, beginners remember these to avoid losing 80%;
Do not be greedy for 'low prices': truly valuable projects will not maintain 'low prices' for long, as low prices often signal the potential for value to drop to zero;
Do not cling to 'old projects': even if they were once leading projects in their field, if there are no new moves (technical updates, ecological expansions) in 6 months, they are essentially shells;
Do not engage in 'high-frequency unlocking': retail investors have no bargaining power, and in the face of continuous selling pressure, you will never be able to outrun institutions and the project team.
If you are now looking at your holdings in a panic, unsure if the projects you hold are genuinely promising or just a scam, or if you want reliable track analysis and on-chain data tools, follow me, at least I can help you avoid turning your real money into invalid code in this market.