I almost just crashed into it... When copying the address, my finger slipped and I missed two letters. I only realized after I clicked send, and I froze completely. Luckily, during those few seconds of queuing in the mempool, I quickly sent a “a bit more expensive” replacement transaction using the same nonce, pushing the previous one out—otherwise, it would really have been tuition.

When it’s congested, your transaction is basically competing for a seat among a bunch of people: miners/validators generally pick the ones that pay more first, while the ones that pay less get stuck, repeatedly cut in line by others. The longer it goes on, the easier it is for your mindset to break—you start randomly adding fees, randomly clicking confirmations. To put it simply, the hotter the mempool is, the less you should rush to chase that kind of attention whiplash from “Meme/celebrity” shout-outs. The old hands say don’t take the last handoff—not because they’re trying to act high and mighty, but because they’re afraid you’ll panic in congestion, leading to a three-in-a-row combo of high fees + slippage + mistaken operations. Anyway, I do a small test run with a small amount before sending a large one—I’d rather move slower.