While waiting in line to buy coffee, it suddenly struck me that those “cutting in line” on-chain are actually pretty much like us—they all want to get their results one step faster than everyone else. The only difference is that they pay with gas wars, while we pay with the drowsiness of early mornings.

Lately, I keep seeing people link ETF fund flows with US stock market sentiment to talk about crypto’s ups and downs. To be honest, this kind of explanation sounds convincing, but if you actually follow this logic to place orders, you often end up being the exit liquidity instead. The market’s favorite trick is to make you think you’ve found cause and effect.

About MEV—at first, I thought it was just small retail getting squeezed like a sandwich. But looking at it now, the protocols themselves, and even LPs, are quietly bearing the loss from slippage too—it's just that no one tallies it as precisely. Fair? There isn’t a queue-and-number machine on-chain in the first place; “first come, first served” is just an illusion.

Anyway, I’ve gotten into the habit of breaking my trades into smaller parts and setting tighter slippage. As for the rest… I’ll leave it to luck. That’s it for now.