“Liquidity is dried up” used to be four characters I took as a value-buy signal when I was a beginner. Now I know it’s the market telling you: “Don’t move yet—breathe for a moment before you get buried.” Plainly put, I used to think “if it drops, it’s cheap.” Now I understand that when there’s no liquidity, trying to bottom-fish is basically handing your head to the market—you won’t even make a splash.

Recently, watching the petty back-and-forth over NFT royalties is genuinely hilarious. On one side, they’re shouting that creators need to eat; on the other, liquidity in the secondary market is almost frozen, trading prices are crashing to the point of being humiliating. So what royalties are we even talking about? Survive first. Don’t bottom-fish until you end up being the bagholder. Later you’ll still have to check whether code has been merged and the records to find out if this project is still alive.