At 3 a.m., I was repeatedly awakened by my phone vibrating. Several crypto communities were completely blown up, screens filled with red—MANTA, a project that was just praised highly a few days ago, plummeted below 90% in just one hour.

Watching the screenshots sent by my friends, I couldn’t help but take a deep breath. His leveraged long position was liquidated in a matter of minutes, his account dropping from six figures to just a few hundred dollars. What’s even more heartbreaking is that liquidity vanished instantly, and the stop-loss orders didn’t even execute; they were simply forced liquidated at the market bottom.

"Like suddenly losing both the steering wheel and brakes while driving at high speed," he later said with a bitter smile.

Doesn’t that sound all too familiar? From Bitcoin’s early days of doubling in a single day and then halving, to the current "second collapse" of various altcoins, extreme volatility has become part of this market’s DNA. But as "flash crashes" become more frequent, what can we do besides praying we’re not on that vehicle?

**Volatility itself is not risk; unpreparedness is**

It’s important to recognize one thing: the violent swings in cryptocurrencies won’t disappear in the short term. The larger Bitcoin’s market cap, the lower its volatility, but most altcoins still act as "emotion amplifiers" and "liquidity testing grounds."

What does an event like MANTA signify? It’s not just a problem with the project itself, but a reflection of how fragile the entire DeFi and trading ecosystem is. Usually, the order book looks deep enough, but in moments of panic, liquidity can evaporate instantly. A major position gets liquidated, the price plunges, and then a chain of liquidations begins, creating a death spiral—more leveraged positions are forced to close, liquidity continues to dry up, and prices keep sinking.