You ask me who, in options, is actually getting gnawed by time value—I feel like most of the time it starts with the buyer, then slowly eats its way until you start doubting your life. You buy a call/put, your direction is right but you don’t move fast enough, and theta is like rent, getting deducted every day. The seller is the opposite: they just sit there collecting that “rent,” only worried that a black swan might pop through with a single needle.

Put plainly, what the buyer is buying is “volatility + speed,” while what the seller is selling is “time + faith in mean reversion.” Recently, when I look at on-chain pending tx, gas gets pulled up sharply, and MEV runs wild—validators/miners over there are eating pretty well, while retail traders complain that the ordering is unfair… and I actually feel like this mood is very similar to options: you think you’re betting on direction, but you’re really fighting for position against time and the queue. Anyway, what I’m more afraid of now is “being wrong doesn’t matter if you’re right but you still lose,” so the buyer should stay as short as possible, the seller as small as possible—don’t pretend you can handle tail risk.