Looking at this analysis, if you're still willing to short at this position, then you're truly asking for trouble.

Do you remember when the price was at 0.1? At that time, it was already clear that there were no other tricks left in this manipulation; they could only forcibly push the price up again to attract retail investors to buy in. The logic is very simple.

Let's assume a scenario: the market maker currently holds 5 million long positions and 5 million short positions. At 0.13, they dump the shorts onto retail investors and then start to smash the market. Question—how does the market maker make money? Whose pocket does it come from? Can smashing the market turn into a retail investor’s ATM? Clearly not.

But here’s a key point. Every time the price surges sharply, retail investors react very uniformly—about 80% of people will open short positions without hesitation. Only a few will choose to watch, and even fewer dare to chase the high. That’s where the problem lies.

Opening a short at such a position? It’s essentially giving the market maker free liquidity. What the market maker cares about isn’t whether the price goes up or down; it’s your liquidity. With a continuous flow of retail liquidity, the price movement becomes irrelevant—there are many ways to make money.

If at a certain high point, the number of retail investors opening shorts isn’t enough and liquidity input is insufficient, the market maker will choose to sideways trade. They wait patiently at that position to see the market reaction. If it’s still not ideal, they continue to push. Repeatedly manipulating until the retail investors’ desire to buy in is stimulated.

There’s also a cost issue that most people overlook. Holding large positions itself incurs costs, and generating trading volume also costs money—sometimes tens of thousands of USDT in a single day. That’s why some manipulations ultimately fail: huge investments but not enough retail liquidity gained.

The current problem is that the entire market’s new retail investors are rapidly decreasing. The subsequent market will become increasingly difficult to play. Unless mainstream coins can continuously attract new liquidity, the days of altcoins will only get tougher. This is not a prediction; it’s a reality.