Honestly, I feel that an unrealized loss is more tormenting than an unrealized gain. It’s really not a question of psychological resilience. When your position drops 5%, your mind is like it’s been scratched by a cat—you instinctively want to flip your phone, check the charts, and look for good news everywhere to comfort yourself. But when you’re up? A 20% gain and you only glance at it, thinking, “It’s fine, no need to sell yet.” When it climbs to 50%, though, you start wondering whether you should run.

Put simply, loss aversion is a built-in “bug” in the system. When I was writing a cross-chain router, I suffered from it too. For example, MEV ordering games—retail users always think “fairness” is something hidden behind a black box, but in reality, every step on-chain comes with timestamps. My little tool later added monitoring, and then I found out I was also being led around by my emotions.

Newcomers often say, “Cross-chain routing can do frictionless arbitrage.” Now I understand: in the on-chain microstructure, there are slippages and timing games everywhere, and the gas fees you save really are the difference that matters.