Have you ever had this feeling—despite correctly judging the market direction, your account still ends up in the red? Don’t rush to doubt your analytical skills; the real situation might be that you haven’t fully understood the psychological tactics of the big players. Behind the market movements in the crypto world, there are often carefully designed "hunter and prey" games. Today, we’ll break down some of the most common harvesting tricks to help you avoid detours.

**First Trick: Shrinking Volume Sudden Drop to Shake Out Chips**

It looks like a healthy upward trend, but suddenly a large bearish candle appears, accompanied by overwhelming negative news and panic. Retail investors are most likely to panic at this point—"It's over, a crash is coming"—and hurriedly cut losses. But turn around and see, the big players quickly pull the price up again, and your chips have long been sold cheaply to them.

Here’s a key way to identify this: genuine shakeouts show a significant decrease in trading volume during the decline; if it’s a real crash, there will definitely be high volume smashing through support. Keep a steady mindset and don’t be scared by short-term fluctuations.

**Second Trick: Pumping Up to Sell and Harvest Greed**

First, push the coin price from the bottom to an eye-catching high, creating an illusion of "getting rich overnight." Retail investors see others’ profit screenshots, their eyes turn red, and they can’t help but chase the high. Meanwhile, the big players continue to pump the price to stimulate more entries, while secretly offloading their holdings behind the scenes. When the market sentiment becomes completely crazy, they’ve already exited mostly unscathed, leaving the bagholders trapped at high levels.

Pay attention to a detail: when high levels show increased volume but the price stagnates, it’s usually a sign of distribution. Never think about "eating the last piece of meat" at this point, because that meat is often the hottest and most dangerous.

**Third Trick: Fake Breakout with Both Bulls and Bears Exploding**

Create a false impression of a volume breakout at a key resistance level, attracting a batch of technical traders to enter. When you happily go all-in, the big players immediately reverse and dump the price, instantly harvesting both long and short positions. This is what’s called a "double explosion" of bulls and bears.

The way to defend against this trick is simple: a genuine breakout will find support on a pullback and continue upward; a fake breakout will quickly reveal its true nature, sometimes even falling below the pre-breakout level. Don’t rush to chase with heavy positions—give yourself some time to observe and confirm.

The most testing aspect in the crypto world isn’t actually your coin selection ability, but your mindset and self-discipline. Understanding these tricks is important, but more so is truly practicing the difficult part—avoiding cuts in panic and not chasing highs in frenzy.