While the whole world is hitting new highs, crypto has become that "disadvantaged poor person."

Original Author: David, Deep Tide TechFlow

There is a kind of poverty where you haven't done anything wrong; yet you wake up one day to find yourself poorer than everyone around you.

Koreans have coined a term for this kind of poverty: 벼락거지. A rough literal translation would be "lightning pauper." Struck by a bolt from the blue, instantly transformed from an ordinary person into a pauper.

This term gained traction once before in 2020 when South Korean housing prices skyrocketed. It referred to those who hadn't bought a house; their income hadn't decreased a cent, but compared to the surging property values, they had effectively become poorer for nothing.

Recently, the term has made a comeback. That's because the South Korean stock market is now mass-producing "lightning paupers."

Over the past six months, the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) has surged from around 4,000 points to over 8,000 points. Today, the South Korean stock market even triggered a circuit breaker after rising sharply. Semiconductor giants Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, driven by AI memory chip demand, have lifted the entire nation's stock market to new heights.

Consequently, on Seoul's online forums, people are everywhere engaging in self-deprecating remarks: "Same company, the person sitting opposite me made ten years' worth of salary from semiconductors, while I did nothing and became a lightning pauper."

This sentiment stings the most for those in the crypto community.

The feeling of "everything around me is rising, but I'm standing still" is felt more deeply, earlier, and more reluctantly by crypto investors holding their bags. The supposedly best asset, Bitcoin, which was chanted about for years, has languished since the major crash in October last year.

Now, remaining in the crypto space waiting for an opportunity feels more like a consolation prize for those not adept at stock trading, adding another layer of torment for the "lightning paupers."

Structural Underperformance, the Lightning Pauper

Missing out on a rally, or "underperformance," actually comes in two forms, with vastly different levels of psychological pain.

The first is collective underperformance during a bear market. Everyone loses together; your portfolio is in the red, your friend's is even redder, and no one in the entire market is making money. This kind of underperformance doesn't hurt much because there's no reference point.

If you didn't get in, missing out actually feels like dodging a bullet. The crypto bear market in recent years was exactly this; everyone just endured it, got used to it.

This year's situation is different. The entire crypto space is stuck in an awkward state of structural underperformance.

The money hasn't disappeared; it has simply moved house. It moved into gold, into US stocks, and even into South Korean retirees' pension funds, now parked in semiconductors. Global liquidity is like a pump running at full throttle, sucking money from all directions and injecting it into one new high-flying asset after another.

Only crypto has been bypassed.

This is completely different from "everyone having no money." Everyone else has found a way out, while you stand there, watching the money flow past your door without a single cent coming in. This kind of underperformance is far more crushing than a bear market.

Bitcoin lacks the safe-haven status of gold. While tech stocks have been hitting new highs, Bitcoin hasn't kept pace. When the market panics, it's the first to be dumped alongside risk assets. It doesn't participate in the rallies but doesn't miss the downturns, getting the worst of both worlds.

Those holding Bitcoin wanted a safe haven; it didn't provide one. They wanted upside potential; it didn't deliver. Neither of the two things people bought it for has materialized this year.

Losing money allows for a clear reason to hate—you bet on the wrong direction. But underperformance is different; you haven't done anything wrong, the money just bypasses you, and you can't even find a specific target to blame.

Hence, the entire crypto space has become that popular Korean term: the lightning pauper.

However, crypto natives inherently possess a keen sense of smell and a restless drive. The real reaction of most lightning paupers isn't to lie flat, but to migrate with the trend.

In communities and on social media, the past talk was about which altcoin could double. Now, KOLs whose bios still display crypto tickers are discussing Nvidia's earnings reports and Tesla's support levels.

They have simply transferred the skills honed from trading crypto—reading charts, chasing narrative hotspots, enduring volatility—to stocks, replacing altcoin symbols with US stock tickers. Some have even adapted scripts they wrote for crypto trading, vibecoding small monitoring tools for US stocks, handling chart watching, alerts, and automatic order placement in one go.

The skills weren't wasted, just applied elsewhere.

On the other side, crypto exchanges are also actively trying to rescue and adjust themselves, launching various on-chain US stock trading products by following the trend. After all, Hyperliquid has already set an example for the entire crypto market.

So, exchanges selling stocks is a quiet act of retention. Users want assets hitting new highs, so they bring in those new high-flying assets to keep the users. From the retail trader glued to their screens to the exchange listing new products, the entire industry is doing the same thing:

Finding ways to ride the wave they missed, which ultimately is just FOMO driven by the trend.

Willingly or unwillingly, everyone understands a clear fact: if they don't adjust their thinking, the assets that are truly rising will never be the ones in their own hands.

Don't Let FOMO Push You onto the Last Train

Those who don't want to leave might still have ammunition left, whether it's dollar-cost averaging into Bitcoin or searching for local narratives. Even if their coins haven't risen, their USDT holdings haven't decreased. They squat through the bear market, waiting for the next wave to rise.

As long as the principal is intact, can they just pretend the underperformance didn't happen?

At the beginning of 2025, the RMB to USD exchange rate was around 7.2 to 7.3. Entering 2026, it strengthened steadily. In May, both onshore and offshore rates broke above 6.8, entering the 6.7 range, hitting a three-year high.

What does this mean? Suppose you sat tight, disciplined, didn't chase highs or cut losses. Holding USDT would still result in a loss. Underperformance means others made money while you didn't; you stayed put. Now, you stay put, but the ground beneath your feet is sinking.

Waiting is not a zero-cost exercise; waiting itself burns money.

Thus, a natural thought arises: since crypto isn't working, why not clear out and FOMO into those assets that are rising? This thought might be far more dangerous than the underperformance itself.

The feeling of missing out needs to be resolved, but perhaps not by chasing in.

Let's be honest first: this crypto cycle is indeed lackluster, and you can't comfort yourself with "it will come back." The past logic was a four-year cycle: halving, bull run, new highs. Miss it? Wait for the next one.

The game has changed now. ETFs have turned Bitcoin into a position on institutional balance sheets. On-chain money is busy buying US stocks. Even exchanges are pivoting to selling stocks... This cycle's crypto is not the same thing as the crypto from your memory that could 10x overnight.

Expecting it to gift you another chance according to the old script is like looking for a sword by marking the boat's side after it has moved (a Chinese idiom for being inflexible). But acknowledging crypto's downturn doesn't mean the stock market is a safe haven.

If you rush in to chase gold, US stocks, or Korean chips, you're not profiting from your insight, but from the rising tide of money. Currently, global liquidity is lifting all boats together. When the water level is high, everyone looks like they can swim. The problem is, the tide will always recede.

The real test isn't whether you initially got on board. It's whether you have the skill to convert your chips back to the shore before the water recedes.

And this is precisely what ordinary people are worst at. As proven time and again with NFTs and altcoins, we could catch the rise, but those who successfully took profits were rare as hen's teeth, always thinking it could go up one more wave until it went to zero.

Switching markets won't automatically erase these weaknesses. Moving the crypto trading playbook to US stocks will likely bring along that "unwillingness to sell" mentality as well.

So, "underperformance" might be a false dilemma. Taking profits and getting off the table is the ultimate principle.

Koreans coined the term "lightning pauper" to laugh at themselves for missing out. FOMO in English probably conveys a similar sentiment. But if you let others' balance sheets measure yourself, forcing you to jump into a pool at its highest water level where you are equally unskilled, it's actually quite perilous.

The real thunderbolt is never the one you missed.

It's that, after you struggle to get on the next train, you once again forget at which station you should get off.