At the end of August, there was a lot of hype around Robinhood Chain.
Quotrons.
I watched the floor price go from $70 to $6,000 with my own eyes.
The top sale reportedly went for over 50 ETH.
Foreigners on CT spammed the feed all night.
I wrote a long post breaking down ERC-404, Hardwire, and the fee flywheel.
When I was done, my account balance was still the same.
I couldn't afford it.
I slapped my thigh in regret.
I couldn't sleep that night.
It wasn't because I'd missed a name.
I'd already figured out the mechanics, but my wallet couldn't cough up the ticket price.
The money was still there the next day.
I couldn't just leave even a hundred bucks sitting idle anymore.
A few friends in overseas circles were still talking about RH.
Someone shoved RobinWifHat right in my face.
I bought #1914.
About three hundred bucks.
Mint had already gone up tenfold, and I still chased it.
That night, it floated up to a little over four hundred.
My hands were hot as I refreshed the positions page.
It wasn’t excitement.
It was fear that the next second’s pullback would take back the little gain I’d just built up.
I’d also picked apart Outlaws’ Agent, ERC-6551, and Launchpad fee model.
Understanding it didn’t mean I dared to hold on for dear life.
In early September, the secondary market had a brief stretch of life.
I listed #1914 and sold it for a little over two thousand.
Three hundred became two thousand.
The first decent sale in my ledger.
I still felt uneasy: I should’ve bought at fifty bucks.
After selling, I still felt uneasy: had I sold too early?
Around the same time, I also picked up some cheap on-chain plays.
Not a leader.
More like native on-chain beta.
Small positions, sell in batches, and get out when someone’s buying.
Sometimes there was no one to buy after a pump, and I burned a few dozen bucks as tuition.
It doesn’t have to go in the highlight reel.
The ledger should be honest: some people made money off me.
Free and low-cost windows kept coming, too.
Some were free; some were publicly available for a few dimes.
Some names I couldn’t even remember three days later.
What I do remember is the OpenSea refresh sound at three in the morning.
On August 31, I posted something pretty blunt:
The people most likely to make money this cycle aren’t the ones who mint the most.
In September and October, I kept hitting those cheap windows.
I hadn’t taken back what I said.
I’d just changed “the most” to “cheap, and easy to exit.”
By mid-September, I’d turned over my RH cash once.
The principal was still in rotation.
I withdrew some profits to a wallet to sleep on; the rest stayed in play as ammo.
The day MutualFun postponed, RH was so dead it made you wonder if there’d even be another wave.
Around October 15, people in the group started talking about Ink.
At the same time, the public feeds were buzzing.
Some said that after it went free, the floor rose from a few dozen to over two hundred.
Some posted screenshots of 0.0-something ETH.
Some were flipping a single one for a few hundred bucks.
Wallet videos showed a whole row of new names.
RH was still dead.
The two timelines overlapped, like one person playing at two tables at once.
The first taste of success I got on Ink wasn’t much.
I minted two for free; someone bought them the next day, and I sold for a hundred or two each.
Gas was a few bucks.
Not much.
But that night, you could hear a certain kind of sound:
Ink was really moving product, not just making noise.
The real grind was the Punk stockpile.
Eventually, I had thirty-eight in my wallet.
Not one all-in bet on a god-tier mint.
It was the accumulation of several free mints, a few cheap secondary buys, and nights spent checking the lists.
Some cost less than a dollar.
Some were bargains at a dozen bucks or so.
The average cost of building the stack came to a few hundred bucks, plus gas here and there.
In the latter half of October, there were a few windows when buyers were willing to pay more for the floor.
I didn’t dare wait for the “perfect top.”
I sold in four batches.
First wave: eight, listed overnight, at an average of a little over four hundred.
After listing them, I couldn’t bring myself to close the page, afraid the floor would tank the next minute.
Second wave: ten, sold at noon two days later, averaging about five hundred.
Third wave: seven, during two hotter days. People in the group were posting sale screenshots, and buyers were sweeping up Punks too. Average price: a little over six hundred.
Fourth wave: five, sold during a pullback. I held firm when someone made a counteroffer, and they eventually went for about four hundred and eighty on average.
Thirty sold.
Eight still in my hands.
Paper gains aren’t money in hand.
Thirty-eight looks like a lot.
In reality, I was more like a warehouse manager:
Buying at night, counting inventory by day, and checking every couple of days to see if anyone would take it.
Some people post a rare one and play the hero.
I post the sales records.
I also dabbled in some other Ink names along the way.
I listed one during a hype wave; another free mint sold for over a hundred, just to confirm the secondary market was still alive.
One night, my computer fan was roaring:
I was worried a free-mint window would expire on one chain, while paying on another chain and worrying gas would spike.
My fingers kept switching between two sets of tabs.
After selling, I refreshed; the position changed, and my heart jumped with it.
I also used profits withdrawn from RH to buy into a dip.
The night I bought, I refreshed the sales list more than twenty times.
Later, someone offered more, so I sold.
The instant the sale was confirmed, it felt like electricity buzzing in my ears.
The position wasn’t big.
My heartbeat was bigger than the position.
The shame of not catching Quotrons still lingered.
So did the unease of chasing #1914 at ten times the price.
The day I got to thirty-eight Punks, it took ages for the wallet page to finish loading.
The day MutualFun postponed, RH was so dead it made you wonder if the wind had already shifted.
Some people only want to hear the multiples.
Standing next to those multiples are:
Missing the leader, chasing the runner-up, sleeping through a free-mint window, getting pulled back in by FOMO on the secondary market, selling in waves, and the fact that paper gains aren’t money in hand.
The next cycle might not be called Robinhood or Ink.
Next time, you might spell out the mechanics again, still be unable to afford the leader, and end up buying a token with a number that’s already pumped.
Or your alarm might go off and you’ll finally sleep through it, waking up to nothing but other people’s sale screenshots.
This is personal experience, not financial advice or a token recommendation.
Do your own research; bear your own risk.
RH first taught me who was paying.
Then Ink taught me that the wind moves on.
So many alarms in between.
And that night I kicked myself, too.
#RobinhoodChain #Ink #NFT #二级市场 #CryptoBLACK