The whole world is hitting new highs, and the crypto circle has become that "Lightning Poor Person."

By David, Deep Tide TechFlow

There’s a kind of poverty that isn’t your fault at all. Then you wake up one morning and find that you’re poorer than everyone around you.

Koreans have a term for this kind of poverty: 벼락거지. A literal translation would be something like “lightning-poor.” Struck by a bolt of lightning from the sky, you instantly go from an ordinary person to a poor one.

The word caught on once before, during Korea’s housing price surge in 2020. It referred to people who didn’t buy a home. Their income didn’t drop by a single cent—yet compared with the skyrocketing houses, it was as if they had become poor for no reason at all.

Recently, it has become popular again. Because the Korean stock market is now mass-producing lightning-poor people.

Over the past six months, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) surged from around 4,000 to above 8,000. Today, the Korean stock market also rose for a time and triggered a circuit breaker. Two AI memory-chip stocks—Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix—lifted the entire national stock market.

And so on Seoul’s online forums, everywhere you look there are people joking at their own expense: the same company—someone sitting across from me earned ten years’ worth of salary from semiconductors, and I did nothing. Somehow, I became a lightning-poor person.

What stings the most, though, is actually people in the crypto world.

The disappointment of “everything around me is up, but I’m stuck in place” hits coin holders—the weeds—especially hard, earlier, and with even more reluctance to admit it. The best asset BTC that people kept repeating a few years ago has been going nowhere since the big crash last October.

Now, if you’re still staying in the crypto world waiting for opportunities, it feels more like comfort for someone who isn’t good at trading stocks—adding yet another layer of torment for lightning-poor people.

Structural missed opportunities, lightning-poor people

Missing out actually comes in two types, and the level of suffering is wildly different.

The first is missing out collectively in a bear market. Everyone loses together. Your account is green; your friends’ accounts are even greener. There isn’t a single person in the whole market making money. This kind of missed opportunity isn’t that painful, because there’s no reference point.

If you didn’t get on the train, missing it can feel like you dodged a disaster. That’s how everyone in crypto’s bear markets over the past few years has gotten through it—they’re used to it.

But this year is different. The whole crypto market is stuck in an awkward situation of structural missed opportunities.

The money didn’t disappear—it just moved. Gold moved in. US stocks moved in. Even an old Korean man’s retirement money has moved into semiconductors. Global liquidity is like a high-powered pump running at full throttle, pulling money from all directions and sending it into one new all-time high asset after another.

Except crypto.

This is not the same as “everyone has no money.” Everyone else found an exit—while you stand there in place, watching money flow past the door in front of you, with not a cent entering. This kind of missed opportunity is more agonizing than in a bear market.

BTC can’t have the “safe haven” luck of gold. Tech stocks have been setting new highs all the way, and it didn’t keep up. When the market panics, it’s the first to get thrown out along with risk assets. When prices rise, it doesn’t participate; when prices fall, it doesn’t hold back. It gains nothing from either side.

People holding coins want to hedge risk—it doesn’t hedge. People want to bet on optionality—it doesn’t move. The two reasons people bought it in the first place are security and upside potential—this year, neither one was delivered.

Losing money, at least, comes with a kind of clear hatred: you misjudged the direction. But missing out is different. You did nothing wrong. The money just detours around you, and you can’t even find a specific target to blame.

So the entire crypto world has basically become Korea’s popular term: lightning-poor people.

It’s just that people in crypto are born with a certain sharp sense and the energy to tinker. More often than not, the true reaction of lightning-poor people isn’t lying flat—it’s migrating with the flow.

In crypto communities and on social media, what people used to talk about was which altcoin could double. Now even though crypto tickers are still listed in bios, the discussion has already shifted to Nvidia’s earnings reports and Tesla’s support levels.

People have taken the same set of skills they developed from trading coins—reading charts, chasing hot narratives, riding volatility—and moved them over. Only the targets changed from altcoins to US stock tickers. Some people even took the scripts they were used to writing while trading crypto, modified them, and used “vibe coding” to build a little monitoring tool for US stocks—watching the market, sending alerts, and placing automated orders, end to end.

Skills weren’t wasted. They were just used elsewhere.

On the other side, crypto exchanges are also actively self-rescuing and adjusting. They’ve followed the trend and rolled out various on-chain US stock trading products—after all, Hyperliquid has already set an example for the entire crypto market.

So when exchanges sell stocks, it’s a quiet act of retention. Users want assets that hit new highs—then invite those new-high assets in and keep the users. From retail traders watching charts to exchanges listing on-chain assets, the whole industry is doing the same thing:

Trying every way to latch onto the wave they missed—ultimately, it’s still trend-following FOMO.

Whether proactive or passive, everyone knows one fact deep down: if they don’t adjust their mindset, the assets that are truly rising will never end up in their hands.

Don’t let missing out force you onto the last train

If you don’t want to leave, you may still have ammunition—whether that’s DCA BTC or finding some local narrative to latch onto. If the coin isn’t going up, it’s fine. My U hasn’t decreased. Sitting tight in a bear market, doing nothing, waiting for the next wave.

As long as the principal is still there, does missing out just count as if it never happened?

In early 2025, the RMB to US dollar exchange rate was still around 7.2 to 7.3. Entering 2026, it has been strengthening all the way; in May, both onshore and offshore rates broke above 6.8, moving into the 6.7 range and hitting a three-year high.

What does that mean? Suppose you stay put—disciplined, not chasing highs, not cutting losses. The result is still that holding USDT is losing money. Missing out, at least, means other people profited while you didn’t. You’re just standing still. But now you’re standing still, and the ground under your feet is sinking.

Waiting isn’t cost-free. Waiting is burning money.

So a very natural thought comes up: if crypto isn’t working, why not clear the position and FOMO into those that are rising? But that idea may be even more dangerous than missing out itself.

The feeling of missing out can be relieved—but probably not by rushing in.

Let’s be honest: this round of crypto really isn’t working, and you can’t soothe yourself with “it will come back someday.” The old logic was a four-year cycle—halving, bull market, new highs. If you missed, you waited for the next cycle.

But the game has changed. ETFs have turned Bitcoin into a position on institutional balance sheets. On-chain money is busy buying US stocks. Even exchanges have switched to selling stocks... This round of crypto is no longer the same thing as the crypto you remember that could do ten times in one night.

Expecting it to give you another chance according to the old script is like trying to carve a boat with a broken sword. But admitting that crypto is going downhill doesn’t mean the stock market over there is a safe haven.

If you charge into gold, chase US stocks, or chase Korean chips, the money you’re making isn’t really your judgment. It’s the rising tide. Now global liquidity is lifting all the ships together; with the water level high, everyone looks like they know how to swim. The problem is, the tide always recedes.

The real test isn’t whether you got on the train back then. It’s whether you have the ability to shift your chips back to shore before the water level drops.

And that’s precisely what ordinary people are worst at. Years ago, with NFTs and altcoins, we proved again and again that we can catch the rise. But successful profit-taking is rare. Most people always feel there’s still another leg up—until everything goes to zero.

In other markets, these weaknesses don’t automatically disappear. Transplanting the same trading playbook from crypto to US stocks will most likely carry over that “reluctant to sell” mindset as well.

So whether you miss out or not might be a false question. Taking profits and cutting losses at the right time is the ultimate key.

The Korean term “lightning-poor people” was originally created for self-deprecating humor—mocking those who missed the train. The English “FOMO” probably has a similar meaning too. But if you force yourself to measure your own situation using someone else’s balance sheet, and then force yourself to jump into a pool at the highest water level—one you also can’t handle—that’s truly dangerous.

The real “lightning” has never been about missing the last train.

It’s about finally squeezing onto the next one—only to forget again which station you’re supposed to get off at.