The entire world is hitting new highs, while the cryptocurrency community has become the “thunderstruck poor.”
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The entire world is hitting new highs, while the cryptocurrency community has become the “thunderstruck poor.”
While South Korean stocks, U.S. stocks, and gold all hit record highs, crypto remained the only uninvited guest at the celebration.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsAuthor: David, TechFlow
There’s a kind of poverty where you’ve done nothing wrong—yet you wake up one morning to find yourself poorer than everyone around you.
Koreans coined a term for this phenomenon: Byeolak-geoji. A literal translation would be “Lightning-struck pauper”—someone struck by a bolt from the blue, instantly transformed from an ordinary person into a pauper.
The term surged in popularity back in 2020 during Korea’s housing price boom, describing those who hadn’t bought property. Their incomes hadn’t dropped—but compared to skyrocketing home values, they’d effectively become poorer overnight.
Now, it’s trending again—because Korea’s stock market is churning out lightning-struck paupers en masse.
Over the past six months, Korea’s benchmark KOSPI index has surged from near 4,000 points to over 8,000. Today, Korea’s stock market even briefly triggered a circuit breaker due to sharp gains. Two AI memory chip stocks—Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix—have lifted the entire national market to dizzying heights.
So on Seoul’s online forums, self-deprecating posts abound: “At the same company, the colleague sitting across from me just earned ten years’ worth of salary from semiconductors—while I did absolutely nothing and became a lightning-struck pauper.”
What stings most about this statement, however, are crypto natives.
The despair of “everything around me is rising—except me” hits crypto holders harder, earlier, and more reluctantly than anyone else. Bitcoin—the asset once hailed as the ultimate store of value—has remained listless since its steep crash last October.
Sticking with crypto now, waiting for another opportunity, feels less like strategic patience and more like a consolation prize for those who don’t know how to trade stocks—a uniquely agonizing form of lightning-struck poverty.
Structural Missed Opportunity: The Lightning-Struck Pauper
Missed opportunities come in two flavors—and their emotional tolls couldn’t be more different.
The first is collective bear-market FOMO: everyone loses together. Your portfolio turns green (i.e., red in Western markets), your friend’s turns greener—no one profits. This kind of missed opportunity doesn’t hurt much, because there’s no reference point.
You didn’t get on board—so you dodged a bullet instead. That’s how the crypto community weathered recent bear markets: by enduring, and eventually adapting.
This year is different. The crypto space finds itself trapped in an awkward state of structural FOMO.
Money hasn’t vanished—it’s relocated. Gold has drawn inflows. U.S. equities have drawn inflows. Even Korean retirees’ pension funds have poured into semiconductors. Global liquidity resembles a high-powered pump, siphoning capital from every corner of the world and channeling it into one record-breaking asset after another.
Crypto alone has been bypassed.
This isn’t the same as “everyone’s broke.” Everyone else found an exit—while you stand frozen, watching money flow right past your doorstep without a single cent entering. This kind of FOMO cuts far deeper than any bear market.
BTC wants to serve as a safe haven—but lacks gold’s pedigree. Tech stocks keep hitting new highs—yet BTC fails to ride that wave. When markets panic, BTC gets dumped alongside risk assets. It’s left out on the upside—and never spared on the downside. It delivers neither safety nor upside.
Holders want protection? BTC offers none. They want optionality? BTC provides little. The two core promises that drew people in—haven and leverage—have gone unfulfilled this year.
Losing money at least gives you a clear target for blame—you misread the market. But FOMO is different: you did nothing wrong, yet money simply flows around you, leaving no tangible culprit to hold accountable.
So the entire crypto industry has become Korea’s viral phrase: lightning-struck paupers.
Yet crypto natives possess an innate sensitivity and restless energy. So rather than lying flat, most real lightning-struck paupers respond with adaptive migration.
Where communities and social media used to buzz about which altcoin might 10x, today’s crypto-native KOLs—who still list crypto tickers in their bios—are now debating NVIDIA’s earnings reports and Tesla’s support levels.
They’ve ported their crypto-trading toolkit wholesale: chart analysis, narrative-chasing, volatility tolerance—only swapping altcoins for U.S. equity tickers. Some have even repurposed their crypto trading scripts, tweaking them into simple tools for monitoring U.S. equities—complete with alerts and auto-execution.
The skills weren’t wasted—just redeployed.
Meanwhile, crypto exchanges are also adapting, launching on-chain U.S. equity trading products. After all, Hyperliquid has already set the precedent for the broader crypto ecosystem.
So when exchanges start selling stocks, it’s a quiet act of retention. Users want assets hitting new highs—so bring those assets in and keep users engaged. From retail traders glued to their screens to exchanges listing new assets, the entire industry is doing one thing:
Finding ways—intentionally or not—to latch onto the rally they missed. At its core, it’s just trend-aligned FOMO.
Whether proactive or reactive, everyone grasps one truth: unless strategies shift, the assets actually rising won’t be the ones in your portfolio.
Don’t Let FOMO Push You Onto the Last Train
Those unwilling to leave may still hold dry powder—dollar-cost averaging into BTC, hunting micro-narratives, etc. “BTC hasn’t risen? No problem—I still hold stablecoins. I’ll just wait out the bear market and ride the next bull run.”
But does holding steady mean FOMO hasn’t occurred?
In early 2025, the RMB/USD exchange rate hovered between 7.2 and 7.3. By May 2026, both onshore and offshore rates had broken above 6.8—and entered the 6.7 range, hitting a three-year high.
What does that mean? Suppose you stayed disciplined—no chasing highs, no panic selling. Yet holding stablecoins still means losing purchasing power. FOMO implies others profited while you stood still. Now, you’re standing still—while the ground beneath you sinks.
Waiting isn’t cost-free. Waiting burns money.
So a natural thought arises: “If crypto isn’t working, why not liquidate and chase what’s rising?” That impulse may be far more dangerous than FOMO itself.
Yes, FOMO needs resolution—but not necessarily by jumping in.
Let’s be blunt: this crypto cycle truly isn’t working—and “it’ll bounce back” is no longer a credible comfort. The old logic ran on four-year cycles: halving → bull market → new highs → wait for the next cycle.
That playbook has changed. Bitcoin ETFs have turned BTC into just another line item on institutional balance sheets. On-chain capital is rushing into U.S. equities. Even exchanges have pivoted to selling stocks… This crypto cycle bears little resemblance to the “10x overnight” version etched in memory.
Expecting it to follow the old script is pure “marking the boat to find the lost sword.” But acknowledging crypto’s downward trajectory doesn’t make equities a safe harbor.
If you rush into gold, U.S. equities, or Korean chips, your gains won’t reflect superior insight—they’ll reflect rising tides. Right now, global liquidity is lifting all boats; high water makes everyone look like a strong swimmer. The real question is: what happens when the tide recedes?
The true test isn’t whether you boarded early. It’s whether you can convert your holdings back to dry land before the water level drops.
And that’s precisely what ordinary investors struggle with most. We’ve proven it repeatedly—in NFTs, in altcoins: we spot rallies well, but few lock in profits. We always think “just one more leg up”—until it goes to zero.
Switching markets won’t magically erase those flaws. Transplanting crypto trading habits into U.S. equities will likely transplant “can’t sell” habits too.
So perhaps FOMO vs. no-FOMO is a false dichotomy. The ultimate goal isn’t catching the wave—it’s knowing when to step off the table.
Koreans invented “lightning-struck pauper” as self-deprecating humor for missing out. English’s “FOMO” carries similar weight. But if you measure your life against someone else’s balance sheet—and force yourself to jump into an unfamiliar pool at peak water level—that’s perilous.
The real lightning strike isn’t the train you missed.
It’s the one you finally squeeze onto—only to forget, once again, where to get off.
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