When the funding rate is extreme, my first reaction isn't "This wave needs to push," but rather to ask myself: Am I using my principal as collateral to gamble on sentiment, or am I making a transaction that can be clearly calculated? Taking the other side of the trade is of course tempting, but honestly, behind extreme rates, it's often unilateral crowding + the risk of a sudden spike causing a blow-up. Earning from the rate doesn't mean you can withstand the volatility; most of the time, I prefer to hide and wait until the rate returns to a normal range before slowly looking for opportunities. The kind of inflation + studio wash + coin price spiral in chain games is actually the same flavor: once cash flow relies on "new money" to survive, no matter how good the data looks, it still feels unsettling.