This year's crypto world has an unavoidable keyword - 'meme coins'.

In the past week, $RAVE once surged nearly 40 times in extreme market conditions, from $SIREN, $STO, to the earlier $PIPPIN, $RIVER, $BEAT, these types of assets can almost 'take off against the trend' in any market environment.

Even when the overall market is sluggish, there are still people addicted to it, trying to find opportunities from extreme fluctuations, even gradually forming a so-called 'meme coin logic'.

But the essence is actually very simple: this is not normal trading, but a direct game between retail investors and institutional investors.

The so-called 'meme coins' are not just about rising sharply; the key is the high level of control.

Most of these coins have a very high concentration of spot chips, often over 95%, and combined with the contract market, they create liquidity and opposing positions through repeated rises and crashes. Many think they can make money on the rise, so they chase longs; others feel it will eventually fall and rush to short. The result is — regardless of long or short, in the end, they all become the ones being harvested.

Especially regarding the funding rate, this is extremely unfriendly to retail investors. The big players control the spot price while continuously charging funding fees through contracts, so even in sideways markets, they can keep 'bleeding' funds. The larger your position and the longer you hold, the higher your cost will be; in the end, it's not about being wrong in direction but being worn down by time and fees.

More critically, this kind of market has almost no 'fairness'. Do you think going long with the big players is safe? A single extreme fluctuation can take both longs and shorts away; do you want to hold spot? The chips are concentrated in the hands of the big players, and when they go to zero is completely uncontrollable. Many people don't lose due to judgment but enter an unequal game from the very beginning.

So, can we identify 'meme coins' in advance? It's difficult. They don't start because they meet certain conditions, but because they are inherently controlled, which is why they exhibit those characteristics. It fundamentally depends on one thing: whether there is a big player.

As for when a collapse might happen, there are some reference signals in the market, such as price rising but the open contract volume decreasing, or a large-scale liquidation and a sudden decrease in positions at a certain point, which often indicates that the big player is starting to retreat. Once the opposing party disappears, the price loses support, and the decline can be very rapid.

But one must understand one thing: these methods are essentially just 'escape guides', not 'profit strategies'. In this game of extreme information asymmetry, what retail investors can do is not to defeat the big players, but to try to avoid becoming the ones being harvested.

The crypto market is highly volatile, and one should be cautious when entering. This is a personal opinion, not advice, and is for sharing purposes only.