Recently I’ve seen a bunch of people fixate on “what whale addresses bought” and want to follow along. To put it bluntly, you can’t even tell whether they’re building a position or hedging.

What big players love to do is pile up spot holdings while keeping perpetuals short on the books. Their net exposure isn’t that big, but on-chain it looks absolutely massive—just the kind of thing that can fuel your imagination.

First, check the source of funds: whether they were withdrawn from exchanges. At the same time, see whether they also deposited margin into the derivatives platform. Then look at the order book—do you see a “wash trading” flavor like market makers doing round-trip trades?

The turning point is this: it’s not that there’s no chance to follow if they’re truly building a position, but I only trust the exit path—the lock and unlock times, the liquidity depth, and whether you can exit before them when they want to leave.

Right now Layer 2 is still arguing about TPS and subsidies, so I’m even more cautious. Subsidies can create hype, but they can also create a pile of exit liquidity that you can’t get out of in the end.

Anyway, don’t treat that last bit of “liquidity” as something reliable.