The era of "picking up money" is over, and it will become increasingly difficult for retail investors to make money through crypto assets such as Bitcoin

Written by Terry

In the past year, have you encountered any Rug Pull projects? Have you encountered the "buy-to-peak" due to the advocacy of KOLs? Or suffered losses due to increasingly rampant phishing attacks? Or have you bought newly launched tokens on the top platforms and then kept falling?

It is estimated that many users can relate to this and have been affected by at least one of these scenarios. It can be said that this should be a reflection of the investment experience and true state of mind of most ordinary investors in the past period of time:

Whether on-chainSafetyThe problem is still the shrinking of assets, which is hard for users to guard against. Many pitfalls that were common in the past have even begun to be industrialized. To put it bluntly, almost even the "roots of leeks" are being uprooted.

This article will review the increasingly numerous pitfalls in the crypto world in recent times, and whether the crypto industry still has room for improvement for ordinary users.make moneyBonus opportunity?

Ordinary users’ “fancy ways to lose money”

1) Industrialization trend of Rug Pull

First of all, the schemes of Rug Pull to abscond with the funds are becoming more and more sophisticated., the most outrageous thing is the ZKasino incident:

On April 20,CommunityAccording to the comparison of the historical pages of Wayback Machine, users found that ZKasino deleted the sentence "Ethereum will be returned and can be bridged back at this point." from the Bridge funds interface of its official website.

at the same timeCommunityUsers are also unable to withdraw funds, the official ZKasino Telegram account has been banned by administrators, and social media has stopped updating. The total amount of funds abducted is over 20 million US dollars.

But what’s interesting is that just one month ago in March, ZKasino just announced that it had completed its Series A financing with a valuation of US$350 million. The specific amount was not disclosed, but several trading platforms and VCs participated in the investment…

In addition, zkSync, which is jokingly called the "Rug Chain", not only frequently hosts ecological projectsSafetyEvents, and the industrial trend of riding on hot topics and quickly completing the harvest is becoming more and more obvious, just like the zkSync ecosystem DEX Merlin, which has the same name as Merlin, had a Rug Pull not long ago, affecting millions of US dollars in funds.

I can only emphasize again that the many projects in the current zkSync ecosystem are indeed uneven. While participating in and experiencing the zkSync ecosystem, everyone must remain vigilant and guard against risks at all levels.

2) Increasingly rampant hacker/phishing attacks

Recently on the chainSafetyThe most eye-catching case in the field is undoubtedly the "Phishing attack with the same first and last number:

A certain whale address was attacked by a phishing attack with the same address at the beginning and end, resulting in a loss of 1,155 WBTC, amounting to more than 400 million yuan! Although the hacker chose to return the funds due to various reasons,However, it still reveals the extremely high risk-return ratio of this kind of fishing behavior: "If you don't open for business in three years, you can make a living once you open it."

Moreover, similar phishing attacks have become industrialized in the past six months. Hackers often generate a large number of on-chain addresses with different first and last numbers as a reserve seed library.Once a fund transfer occurs between an address and the outside world, the address with the same first and last numbers will be found in the seed library immediately, and then thecontractMake a linked transfer, cast a wide net and wait for the harvest.

Because some users sometimes directly copy the target address in the transaction record and only check the first and last few digits, they fall into the trap. According to Yu Xian, the founder of SlowMist, phishing attacks targeting the first and last digits are "like a net attack by hackers, and those who are willing to take the bait will take the bait. It's a probability game."

This is just a microcosm of the increasingly rampant hacker attacks. For ordinary users, in the colorful world of on-chain, tangible and intangible risks are increasing almost exponentially, while personal risk prevention awareness is difficult to keep up.

In general, the current chainwallet、DeFi 等攻击形式层出不穷，甚至社会工程学攻击也大行其道，使得 DeFi 安全风险就像是一场不对称的单向猎杀：对技术天才而言无疑是取之不尽的免费提款机，而对绝大部分普通用户而言，更像是一把不知何时会落下的达摩克里斯之剑，保持警惕不随便参与授权之余，更多的也是运气。

And so far, C-end risks such as phishing and social engineering attacks are the most common ways for ordinary users to lose money in Web3, and due to smartcontractThe problem is becoming more serious as a result of the additional risk points.

Behind every successful scam, there will be a user who stops using Web3, and the Web3 ecosystem will have nowhere to go without any new users, which is also one of the biggest damages to the crypto industry.

3) KOL’s fancy calls

For most ordinary users, paying attention to the social media calls of various crypto KOLs is an important source of obtaining Alpha passwords.

This also gave rise to the so-called "KOL Round" -As a role with greater influence on secondary market investors, KOLs can even obtain shorter unlocking periods and lower valuation discounts than institutional VCs:

For example, Monad Labs recently completed a new round of financing with a large valuation of $3 billion.According to people familiar with the matter, some industry KOLs were allowed to invest at a cap of one-fifth of Paradigm's valuation.

Then follow the KOL's orders,Xiaobai NavigationCan you guarantee a steady profit? According to a study conducted by Harvard University and other researchers on the performance of crypto-related returns mentioned in about 36,000 tweets posted by 180 of the most famous crypto social media influencers (KOLs), covering more than 1,600 tokens, the conclusion was not satisfactory:

When a KOL posts a tweet to call for a certain token, the average one-day (two-day) return rate is 1.83% (1.57%). For crypto projects outside the top 100 in terms of market value, the return rate after one day is 3.86%. The earliest time when the return starts to drop sharply is five days after the tweet is released. The average return rate from the second to the fifth day is -1.02%.This suggests that more than half of the initial gains were erased within five trading sessions.

4) VC Token continues to fall after listing

A VC Token with high FDV (fully diluted valuation) and low circulation, or a Memecoin that is completely a "dog" and responsible for its own profits and losses. Which one would you choose?

The market trend has begun to change recently, and the Meme trend has emerged, boosting the extreme prosperity of Solana and Base chain transactions., just like PEPE, which has firmly established itself as the leader of the new Memecoin, has even set a new historical high. In fact, in today's market environment, apart from short-term speculation, the general public's call for fairness represented by Meme has gradually become a trend, and funds are voting with their feet.

Corresponding to this are the VCs with extremely high FDV and falling trends after a series of listings on the head platforms recently. Typical representatives include AEVO, REZ and even BN Megadrop's first project BounceBit's Token BB, etc. Since their listing, they have ended with negative lines almost every day, and all users who entered the market have been deeply trapped.

两相对比之下，关于 Memecoin 和 VC 的讨论与质疑就难免再度成为社区主流，Meme 至少还有用户流带来持续的增量资金与关注热度，而近期动辄数十亿美元估值的新项目却都是套皮宏大叙事或老玩法的陈旧概念产品，必然会遭社区嫌弃，这也为习惯了路径依赖的 VC 与项目方们敲响了警钟。

Where do ordinary players go?

Previously inWeb3 is sleepless. Will the "blooming era" of the crypto world never end?” It is mentioned in the article “What we love is not “Fanghua”, but the era full of opportunities.”

I believe that many friends in the crypto industry have thought about this: if we had the opportunity to go back to 10 years ago, how would we participate in this wave of the times?

Hoard BTC? Become a miner? Found another Bitmain? Or become an early employee of BN? The best options seem to be countless. The past ten years of the crypto world were truly a golden age that broke through the limits of imagination and gave birth to waves of industry legends and bigwigs.

Anyway,make moneyThis question is an eternal topic in the Web3 world and the lifeline of Web3 development.

When trading platforms, market makers, VCs, project owners, and KOLs all startmake money, but only when most ordinary users continue to lose money, it shows that the deep-seated structural problems of the entire market have been deformed to a certain extent and are destined not to last long.

Again, behind every "fancy way of losing money", there may be a group of users who stop using Web3 products, stay away from VC Tokens, and choose to embrace Memecoins that are more fair and grassroots. This in itself is a form of resistance by funds voting with their feet.

Before some Web3 ecosystem applications truly run through the value closed loop, ordinary users will have "nowhere to go". Of course, this may be the "twists and turns" that are necessary for the development of Web3, and the crypto industry is still moving forward by trial and error.

The article comes from the Internet:The era of "picking up money" is over, and it will become increasingly difficult for retail investors to make money through crypto assets such as Bitcoin

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