Honestly, playing options these past few years, my deepest takeaway is: don’t always try to be the “smart money” when you’re the buyer.

I used to get badly taught in NFT secondary markets. After moving into DeFi, I started thinking about options. At first, I always felt like I could precisely set up traps, capture the time value—until I realized… time only eats you, no matter which way you’re looking.

Recently, with those large on-chain transfers, a lot of people are watching for “smart money.” But I feel that in situations like this, the more you focus on other people’s pockets, the more easily you get eaten by time.

Later, I started tracking the “time cost” in each of my options trades—not my profit or loss, but exactly which time point I bought what kind of assumption. The more I recorded, the more I found out: the money you lose isn’t because the direction is wrong—it’s because you never even noticed whether you’re the seller or the buyer.

Anyway, I’m more pragmatic now. First look at your exit path, then look at the narrative. Time won’t lie—it only grinds you down.