I just saw an on-chain data point saying that a certain whale is accumulating the token of a particular project. In the comments, a bunch of people are shouting to follow the trade. But when I checked his position structure, that same address opened a large number of short positions at the same time. It looks more like borrowing spot assets to hedge and set up a risk offset, not like building a bullish position.

A lot of people see a whale “buy” and rush in. Then they end up stuck somewhere around mid-slope. I’ve been burned myself. Earlier, when LINK pushed up to a certain level, the whale was buying while also shorting in derivatives. After the slippage ran its course, the spot dumped, and everyone who followed got buried.

Now it’s airdrop season, and the task platforms have been turned into chaos by anti-sybil measures. The point-based system has turned the “farming” crowd into a 996 schedule. Anyway, I’m not touching those projects that are explicitly “easy-mode” to farm. Instead, it’s better to look more at on-chain wallets with large balances—figure out whether they’re truly building positions or setting up a hedging layout. It’s more reliable than anything else. Even if gas fees are low, charging in blindly still loses money.