Seeing profit screenshots constantly popping up in the chat group, a sudden sense of unease washed over me—I might be becoming the next victim of a 'pig-butchering' scam.
A few days ago, seven industry associations including the China Internet Finance Association jointly issued a risk warning, directly naming 'air coins' and other new types of assets as high-risk areas for illegal fundraising and pyramid schemes. This has made many in the cryptocurrency community feel uneasy.
Around the time of the risk warning, a real investor's experience spread within the community: he was led from a seemingly legitimate 'US stock exchange group' into cryptocurrency options. Lured by small profits, he invested thousands of dollars, only to later realize he had fallen into a scam.
Such scams often use rhetoric like "high returns" and "insider information" to ultimately turn investors' real money into a string of virtual numbers that cannot be withdrawn.
01 Risk Zone
The hot digital asset market has led to numerous wealth creation myths, but it has also made the traps of "air coins" omnipresent.
Just like the movie (All In) becoming a hit, the fictitious "Keta Coin" in the film was unexpectedly issued and speculated in reality, with its price soaring a thousandfold and then quickly plummeting, leaving a mess behind.
These tokens, issued to ride the hype, have no intrinsic value; their essence is just a game of "passing the parcel", where the final buyer often faces the risk of total loss of principal.
The risk warning jointly issued by the Seven Associations also clearly points out that such projects have serious issues like fraud and market manipulation.
An investor reflecting on his experience found that the domain name of the platform that the scammers guided him to operate was very new and had been marked as high risk in official channels. This is almost a common feature of "air coin" scams: carefully packaged and quickly harvested.
02 Rational Comparison Under the Fever
Recently, the BRC-20 track has seen a resurgence, with two star assets, ORDI and SATS, often compared.
From the perspective of basic minting costs and market value: the total cost of ORDI is about $21,000, while its current market value is about $100 million; the total minting cost of SATS is as high as $21 million, while its current market value is about $410 million (Note: The market value data here may vary based on search results; CoinMarketCap shows about $40.45 million, while another source shows about $564 million).
Looking solely at "cost-performance ratio", it seems that the lower minting cost of ORDI gives it an advantage. But the problem is that tokens based on ordinal protocols have their value consensus entirely built on community narratives and speculative sentiments, leading to extreme volatility.
This raises a more fundamental question: What is the value of "air coins" that have no actual costs and rely solely on marketing and hype? When the hype subsides, projects without real application scenarios will ultimately "reveal their true nature".
In recent years, various virtual currency scams have emerged endlessly, from "π coin" to various projects claiming to be "environmentally friendly" or "AI". They often lack substantial technological innovation and clear business applications, ultimately becoming tools for pyramid schemes and fraud.
03 Returning to Value: Sustainable Income Strategies
Unlike the speculation of chasing high risk and high volatility "air coins", smart funds have begun to seek more robust and sustainable strategies. This is why projects like Lista DAO are receiving increasing attention in the current DeFi space.
Lista DAO is not a "Meme coin" or speculative target seeking a short-term price surge. It is a foundational infrastructure protocol focused on liquid staking and decentralized stablecoin lending.
Its core logic is very clear: it allows users to deposit mainstream crypto assets like BNB and ETH as collateral, lend out its native stablecoin lisUSD, or perform liquid staking of assets to earn interest-bearing assets slisBNB, thus obtaining stable additional income while retaining potential appreciation space for the assets.
This model is fundamentally different from the speculative behavior of simply betting on the rise and fall of a token. It does not rely on market sentiment or hype narratives but is based on real asset collateral and borrowing needs, providing predictable cash flow.
04 Ecological Value and Governance
The value support of Lista DAO comes from its continuously growing ecosystem and actual business needs. As more and more users use it as a tool for collateral lending or earning strategies, its locked value (TVL) and protocol income also constitute the cornerstone of its long-term value.
Holding $LISTA tokens means that you are not only a user but also a participant in the protocol. By staking $LISTA to obtain veLISTA, users can participate in governance voting, decide key parameters of the protocol, and share part of the income generated by the protocol.
This model, which deeply binds user interests with protocol development, encourages long-term building rather than short-term speculation. It addresses a real pain point: the demand of crypto asset holders for improved capital efficiency and stable returns.
05 Conclusion
In the world of investment, there is always a choice between the temptation of high risk and high return and the wisdom of steady appreciation.
"Air coins" may be enticing in their wealth creation myths, but behind them lies a high risk of total loss and fraud traps. The risk warning from the Seven Associations is like a wake-up call, urging us to examine the essence of each project.
Projects like Lista DAO represent another approach: not pursuing overnight wealth but building a sustainable and stable income system through financial Lego blocks. Staying calm during market euphoria and patiently laying out in value gaps may be a wiser choice for navigating bull and bear markets.
When the market uproar subsided, the investor who almost fell victim closed the chat group filled with profit screenshots. He realized that the real crypto world is not a casino, but a value internet being rebuilt, where solid protocols are more worthy of trust than extravagant stories.