Entering the market with full confidence, various positive news flooded in. To be honest, during that time, everyone was excited when opening the exchange. But now? I’ve almost lost the courage to look at the K-line.

Looking back and sorting out why I was heavily invested might help friends who are also trapped.

The most confidence-inspiring points were: multiple buy signals and add-on suggestions from top exchanges, KOLs frequently sharing profit screenshots in communities, project teams continuously releasing and repurchasing tokens to stabilize prices, and the entire narrative pointing towards "the next BNB." These four factors combined made the FOMO effect explode.

Thinking about it now, it was precisely these "positive signals" that triggered our investment desires one after another. The influence of exchanges, the demonstration effect of KOLs, the proactive actions of project teams—each one seemed to imply, "If you don’t get in now, you’ll miss out." Coupled with a grand enough comparative story, heavy positioning seemed like a rational choice.

But in the end, the market gave us a slap in the face.

This is probably the most common script in the cryptocurrency world—believing every time that this time is truly different, every time trying to catch the next 100x coin, only to realize that it’s never the token that gets trapped, but our own greed and fear.