After I muted the group chat, everything suddenly felt a lot quieter near my ears. Before, the moment someone shouted, “That stablecoin is about to depeg again,” my hand would automatically go click on the candlestick chart, and my heartbeat would follow along with the chat history… to put it simply, a bank run/withdrawal run is just emotional contagion— the less transparent it is, the easier it is to get herded and thrown off by the rhythm others set. No matter how thick the reserve report looks, I still worry that when it really matters, they won’t make good on the redemption you’re asking for. That kind of anxiety—“what if I end up being last in line”—is the worst.

On-chain, watching whales move money back and forth, it’s not all “smart money”; a lot of it is just fear.

By the way, the fight around NFT royalties has gotten even more heated: creators want stable income, buyers worry that liquidity will be locked up, and in the end, everyone is betting that the other side will loosen their grip first. Anyway, I’m going to post a cat picture first to calm down, so I don’t get chased along and run away just because I got stepped on by the keyboard.