I just realized I was being stupid again: I placed a trade that I initially thought would be a quick in-and-out, but the slippage hit me hard. Basically, I was only watching the price and didn’t pay attention to the pool depth, set a tolerance I thought was safe, and when the market moved, I got matched all the way through, with the average transaction price looking ridiculously ugly.

Looking back, it’s not that “the market was targeting me,” but that my order timing was too rushed: when I should have split the orders, I went all in; when I should have waited, I got impatient and confirmed too early. Don’t trust on-chain data tools and tagging systems too much either—yesterday they showed “smart money,” and today they got proven wrong. The lag and potential for misguidance are real, and it’s not just conspiracy theories.

I turned off auto-accelerate/one-click trading to force myself to slow down a bit. Losing a little less isn’t shameful; pretending to understand everything is.