Watching a certain cryptocurrency surge by 51% in one day and double in 30 days, many people want to jump on this bandwagon. But I want to pour some cold water—this market movement that seems like an opportunity is actually a classic market manipulation tactic to harvest retail investors.

First, let's look at on-chain data. By tracking the core holdings addresses of this coin, it’s found that the top addresses hold 78.65% of the chips. Adding up the top ten holdings, the total share skyrockets to 84.34%. What does this mean? Over 80% of the chips are in the hands of a few large funds, and the small retail holdings are really insignificant.

Even more heartbreaking is the price movement trajectory. This coin first dropped from 0.28661 to 0.24886, a nearly 14% decline, causing many retail investors to panic and sell. What happened next? After the chips were mostly cleared out, the big players reversed their position and pushed the price up to 0.26352, a 51.86% increase in one day. Who sells at a loss, who chases and gets trapped—that’s the real market truth.

Why is this kind of operation so effective? Because it plays with psychology. First, it dumps to scare you out, then it pulls up to lure you into chasing high—whether you are long or short, in the end, you’re wrong. Over a cycle, funds flow from retail investors to big players.

To judge whether a coin is being manipulated, the key indicators are: chip concentration and the relationship between circulating supply and actual control. When these two data points are seriously unbalanced, the market pricing power is in the hands of a few, and the rest are basically gambling.