These past couple of days I’ve been drifting around a few obscure pools in some old NFT collections. The floor still looks like it’s there, but the liquidity is as thin as an ice sheet—step on it and it cracks. The same goes for royalties, too: when it’s hot, everyone shouts “support creators,” but once things cool down, they start taking detours to trade; once the community narrative loses heat, royalties freeze right along with it. Put simply, emotions are harder than rules.

In the group, they’re still keep reposting and passing around that stuff about stablecoin regulation and reserve audits, and they casually slip in, “Looks like we’re about to de-anchor again.” Honestly, it makes me pretty speechless: when rumors start running hot, everyone just wants to swap whatever they hold for something “more stable,” but there isn’t enough on-chain depth—so the more they swap, the more panicked they get. Anyway, when I see the floor price now, my first reaction isn’t “it got cheaper,” it’s “is there water under this floor?”

What I’ve learned isn’t techniques—it’s this: when things are lively, don’t trust the stories too much; and once things cool off, don’t rush to invent reasons for the liquidity.