Water extractors
Rebate traders: Those large-scale bookmakers on platforms like YouTube and Weibo who promote exchange invitation links can earn high commissions. A top trader can earn up to a million RMB in commissions in a month. Leading YouTubers like MoonCarl can even make tens of millions of dollars a year. Moreover, professional SEO teams optimize search engine keywords to prioritize their invitation links, allowing these top teams to earn hundreds of thousands to millions a month during bull markets.
Paid community creators and information intermediaries: Some influential figures in the cryptocurrency circle open paid communities after accumulating enough followers, earning over a million RMB just from annual fees. Additionally, if they know about relevant exchange activities and promote them in groups, members who register through their links can earn referral fees, which can be quite considerable.
Smart traders
Computer factions:
On-chain wool pulling: Mostly early career wool pullers who utilized tools like Fiddler to exploit rewards. They develop programs to participate in digital currency airdrops, events, fair launches, and whitelists in bulk. As long as they confirm that someone will take over and profit later, they will operate to earn returns.
On-chain MEV: Profiting by capturing the slippage price difference generated by retail traders during transactions. Although competition is fierce, top MEV bots can earn over a million dollars a month, showing that there is indeed profit to be made.
On-chain - CEX arbitrage: When speculative funds and market makers trigger significant price differences on centralized exchanges (CEX), arbitrageurs buy chips on-chain and then hedge on CEX contracts. Once the price returns, they slowly sell off to achieve risk-free arbitrage.
Statistical arbitrageurs: They utilize the correlations that exist between different digital currencies in the market, writing sophisticated programs to calculate their historical correlations. When the price deviations between coins reach a certain level, they execute arbitrage, uncovering profit opportunities from the psychology and price movements of market participants.
Market makers: Their main job is to earn the spread price difference, but they also wear multiple hats, participating in statistical arbitrage, latency arbitrage, and even venture capital (VC) activities, using various methods to increase their investment returns.
News trading: Traders rooted in this field profit by taking advantage of the time lag in information acquisition by retail investors and the inefficiencies in market makers' order cancellation. They quickly trade before retail investors react to the news, thereby securing profits.
Comprehensive data stream factions: By closely monitoring market IO positions, large order transaction data, and movements of major addresses, they grasp the flow of funds faster than ordinary investors, essentially profiting from information lags.
Rule-breakers
Market manipulators (secondary market market makers): They accumulate a large number of low market cap altcoin spot chips in advance, then drive up the market to attract retail investors to buy at high prices due to 'fear of missing out' (FOMO), and then gradually sell off. Even if the coin price drops by 50%, they can still profit from the advantage of holding low-priced stocks, manipulating price trends using capital and information advantages.
Token issuance MCNs (primary market market makers): They rapidly issue tokens based on hot events, using fully automated deployment systems to add liquidity, distribute mouse warehouse addresses, and create false trading prosperity with numerous addresses, while bribing related KOLs for promotion. After attracting retail investors, they either slowly offload or directly dump a large amount at once, deceiving retail investors to obtain profits. However, although such market manipulation is relatively rampant in some non-European and American countries due to the lack of legislative constraints on 'market manipulation' as cryptocurrencies are viewed as commodities, it fundamentally undermines market fairness and normal order.
Overall, these groups in the cryptocurrency circle that seem to be continuously making money often engage in high-risk profit-making methods. Especially, the actions of rule-breakers may cause serious harm to the entire market ecology and ordinary investors, and they may face uncertainties brought about by tightening regulations at any time.
