A co-CEO of a leading exchange recently gave an interview and made some surprisingly candid statements.

Exchanges need to make money too. She openly admitted that while the platform knows some meme coins are bound to go to zero eventually, they can’t resist listing them because users want to play. If they don’t list them, they’ll lose market share to competitors. So exchanges are constantly balancing between “getting users to trade more” and “not taking the blame themselves.” Every meme coin you ape into might just be their traffic goldmine.

She also clarified rumors about listing fees. Outrageous listing fees? Not true. The real requirement is that project teams have to airdrop tokens or offer cheap allocations to users—which then gets them called “vampires.” It’s a real contradiction: exchanges want to get cheap tokens for retail users, but project teams aren’t willing to give up profits. So next time you see a project launch with an airdrop, maybe that’s actually a good sign?

The game in the market has changed. Still hoping you can blindly ape into meme coins and get rich? Wake up. The data is clear: money is flowing out of these speculative coins and into mainstream assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, or sectors with real use cases like AI. The current market is a parallel universe—institutions are buying the dip during panic, then selling once the mood turns bullish. Your competition is no longer just other retail traders like you.

What to do? A few suggestions:

Treat meme coins like lottery tickets. Play with money you can afford to lose. Don’t expect to get rich. The ones that 10x are always the minority; most have already been halved and halved again.

Put your main capital in core assets. Bitcoin, Ethereum—those that have stood the test of time—or look for opportunities in top-tier ecosystems. Don’t go all in on meme coins.

Learn to buy the dip. Those assets that have crashed hard, still have an active community, and are telling new stories might see a small rebound in December. But that could just be your last chance to exit—don’t get greedy.

Even this executive said she’s now afraid to even post memes, becoming extra cautious. When the meme creators themselves start being careful, maybe it’s time for you to calm down and stop chasing tops blindly?

The underlying logic of the market has changed, and your strategy needs to change too. If you want to survive (and maybe even make some money) this cycle, start by understanding the new game rules.