10. Dying Rich

“Buy the dip”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  buy-the-dip dip

Define — Buying the dip means buying after a fall, on the view that the fall is temporary.

Decode — The album's most repeated instruction, used here as a refrain rather than a bar. Track 1 made the same joke about hors d'oeuvres; by track 10 it has become a discipline.

Danger — Some falls are the market repricing something permanently. Averaging into those, without a limit set in advance, is how a small loss becomes the whole position. "Buy the dip" is a slogan, and slogans have no exit condition.

See also — buy-the-dip, dip, retrace, bear-market.

“Don’t quit when it’s ugly”

Decode · Danger  |  bear-market diamond-hands

Decode — Endurance as the closing theme. After the villain act, the record's answer is patience rather than cleverness.

Danger — There is a real distinction between not panicking and not thinking. Bear markets run for years, and "don't quit" is only survivable if the position was sized so that waiting is possible. Conviction does not pay rent.

See also — bear-market, diamond-hands, paper-hands.

“Dying rich is on my checklist”

Decode

Decode — The title, and it is deliberately ambiguous for the whole track. It reads as a boast about money until the last line of verse 2 redefines it. The album's final move is to change what this sentence means.

See also — dying-rich-a27, track 4.

“All in. FOMO. They’ll regret it”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  fomo

Define — FOMO — fear of missing out, the pressure to act because others appear to be profiting.

Decode — Two of the album's own tracks named in four words. It is a summary of the record's second act, delivered from the far side of it.

Danger — "They'll regret it" cuts both ways and the bar does not say which. Peak attention and peak price arrive together, so acting on FOMO reliably means arriving after the people you are copying.

See also — fomo, track 7, moon.

“Robbers & thieves. Hackers I’ve had to handle”

Decode · Danger · Do  |  phishing coercion

Decode — Past tense, and stated as routine. The resolution track treats attack as an ordinary condition of participating rather than a dramatic event.

Danger — That framing is correct. Attempts are constant and automated — phishing messages, fake support, drainer sites — and treating them as exceptional is what makes people careless by their fiftieth transaction.

Do — Build the routine that survives boredom: bookmarks not links, verify addresses, small test transfers, read what you sign, revoke old approvals.

See also — phishing, wallet-drainer, contract-approval, Manual Part Four.

“Saw it coming. Lost that bet quick”

Decode · Danger

Decode — Being right about the direction and losing anyway. It is the most sophisticated admission on the album.

Danger — This is genuinely common and rarely discussed. Correct thesis, wrong timing or wrong size, same outcome. It is why position sizing matters more than analysis, and why "I was right eventually" is not a result.

See also — retrace, take-profits, Manual Part Four §7.

“Buy Bitcoin. It’s the future”

Decode · Danger  |  bitcoin

Decode — The album's plainest statement of belief, in its plainest words.

Danger — This annotation does not endorse it. Nothing in this book recommends buying any asset, and "it's the future" is a claim about the world, not a mechanic that can be checked. The songs are art and art is allowed opinions; the annotations are not.

See also — bitcoin, the standing disclaimer.

“Wealthy and generous. I’m Mansa Musa”

Decode

Decode — Mansa Musa, the fourteenth-century ruler of Mali, is often described as the wealthiest individual in recorded history, and is remembered as much for giving wealth away. Choosing him over any modern billionaire is the track's thesis in one reference: the measure is what was distributed, not what was accumulated.

See also — dying-rich-a27.

“Some become moochers. Some learn to maneuver”

Decode · Danger

Decode — The two responses to a downturn, set against each other.

Danger — There is a third the bar omits, and it is the most common: people who quietly stop looking. Disengaging after a loss leaves funds on exchanges, approvals unrevoked, and seed phrases unchecked for years. Walking away from the screen is fine; walking away from the custody is not.

See also — contract-approval, seed-phrase-loss, hold-your-own-keys.

“Doxxed so I do not hide behind computers”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  doxxing opsec

Define — To be doxxed is to have your real identity published. Here it is voluntary — the artist is publicly identifiable.

Decode — A deliberate contrast with track 8's anonymous operator. Being nameable is offered as a form of accountability.

Danger — It is also the exposure track 9 is entirely about. Being publicly identifiable as a holder is the selection criterion for coercion, and this is a genuine trade-off the album makes visible rather than resolving.

Do — If you choose to be public, separate the identity from the holdings: never publish an address beside your name, and keep savings behind multisig or cold storage.

See also — doxxing, opsec, multisig, track 9.

“GM GM to my gang gang”

Define · Decode  |  gm

Define — GM — "good morning", the standard greeting across crypto communities.

Decode — The small daily ritual that is, genuinely, most of what is said in some channels. Placed here it reads as community rather than noise, which is the resolution track's whole disposition.

See also — gm, wagmi.

“These racist meme coins are so lame”

Decode · Danger

Decode — A direct rejection, unhedged, in a genre that usually treats every token as fair game for a joke.

Danger — Worth stating plainly: tokens using racist imagery are a real and recurring category, frequently launched to farm outrage attention before a rug pull. The offensiveness is the marketing, and the exit is the plan.

See also — rug-pull, pump-and-dump.

“Is crypto to blame? nothing has changed”

Decode

Decode — The album asking whether the technology caused any of this. The answer it gives — nothing has changed — is that the behaviour predates the tools. It is the same position the manual takes: the ledger is honest, the people are not, and that was always true.

See also — blockchain, Manual Part Four §1.

“Got your wallet drained. I feel your pain”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  wallet-drainer

Define — A wallet drainer is malicious code that, once you approve its request, empties the wallet you connected.

Decode — Sympathy rather than mockery. After two tracks in the attacker's voice, the record returns to the victim's side deliberately.

Danger — The request looks like an ordinary pop-up, and approving it can grant blanket permission to move your tokens. Nothing was broken — you authorised it, which is also why nothing can be reversed.

Do — Reach sites from bookmarks, read what you are signing, keep a separate wallet for connecting to sites, and revoke old approvals periodically.

See also — wallet-drainer, contract-approval, phishing, Manual Part Four §2 and §3.

“Maintain. lose before we show gains”

Decode

Decode — Loss placed before gain, in the sentence and in the sequence. It is the closing statement of the album's pedagogy: you learn how to lose money before you learn how to move it, which is also why this book's safety chapter comes before its tutorial.

See also — Manual Part Four, Manual Part Five.

“Need promo? Send ETH to show your logos”

Decode · Danger · Do  |  pump-and-dump

Decode — Paid promotion again, now from the selling side. Track 2 paid for it; here it is being offered.

Danger — Much of what reads as organic enthusiasm is purchased placement. Trending is a product with a price list, and undisclosed paid promotion is the engine of most coordinated buying.

Do — If you cannot tell why something is in front of you, assume someone paid for it to be. Check whether promotion is disclosed as paid.

See also — pump-and-dump, fake-guru, track 2.

“Hold your own keys! Either crashin or landin’”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  hold-your-own-keys self-custody

Define — Holding your own keys means keeping funds in a wallet you control rather than on a company's platform.

Decode — The album's central instruction, shouted, in its closing track. Everything from track 2's "you need a wallet" arrives here.

Danger — Self-custody transfers the risk rather than removing it. Nobody can freeze your funds, and nobody can recover them either. The failure mode changes from counterparty collapse to seed phrase loss, and the second is at least as common.

Do — Move a small amount to your own wallet and practise restoring it from the written phrase. Doing that once, while the amount is trivial, is what makes self-custody safe rather than merely principled.

See also — hold-your-own-keys, self-custody, seed-phrase-loss, Manual Part Two.

“Hold on for dear life. Who’s the last man standing?”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  hodl

Define — HODL began as a misspelling of "hold" in a 2013 forum post and was later backfitted to "hold on for dear life".

Decode — The backronym spelled out in full, then immediately questioned. "Who's the last man standing?" is not a confident line.

Danger — Survivorship is the trap in the question. The people still standing are the ones who write the history, which makes holding look more reliable than the full record supports.

See also — hodl, diamond-hands, rekt.

“Hackers access a backdoor,”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  backdoor

Define — A backdoor is a hidden route into a system or contract that bypasses the normal rules. In a smart contract it can let one address mint, freeze, or withdraw at will.

Decode — Named as an attack from outside, though the more common version is built in from the start by whoever wrote the contract.

Danger — Published code is not necessarily the code that is running, and it need not stay the same. Behind an upgradeable proxy, whoever holds the upgrade key can change what the contract does after you have committed funds.

Do — Prefer contracts that are verified on a block explorer, audited, and either not upgradeable or upgradeable only by a multisig with a time delay. Check who holds the admin keys.

See also — backdoor, proxy, code-audit, smart-contract.

“Firewalls block every ping”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  firewall

Define — A firewall controls what may reach your device over a network.

Decode — Ordinary computer security, named among the crypto-specific defences. It belongs there.

Danger — Most crypto losses begin with an ordinary compromised device — an unpatched browser, a malicious download, a reused password — not with anything exotic.

Do — Update your operating system and browser. It is dull, and it prevents more losses than any clever measure in this book.

See also — firewall, encryption, dark-web, Manual Part Four §2.

“51% attacking”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  51-percent-attack

Define — A 51% attack is when one party controls the majority of a network's mining or staking power and can reorder or reverse recent transactions.

Decode — The most technical term on the album, dropped in without explanation. It is the theoretical worst case for a chain itself.

Danger — It is not a realistic threat to large chains, where the cost is prohibitive, but small chains have genuinely suffered it. The practical relevance is that a chain's security is proportional to how much work or stake defends it — a new chain with few participants is not the same asset class as an old one.

See also — 51-percent-attack, node, decentralized.

“Coin got no action, their taxing”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  token-tax

Define — A token tax is a fee written into a token's own code that takes a cut of every buy or sell.

Decode — No trading volume, and a tax on what little there is. It is a description of a token in its final state.

Danger — The rate can often be changed after launch. A token can be built so the sell tax is raised to near-total once enough people are in, which is a honeypot arrived at gradually rather than at the outset.

Do — Read the contract's buy and sell tax, and check whether the rate can be modified, before buying.

See also — token-tax, honeypot, rug-pull.

“Pool your money. They start skimming”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  pooled-funds

Define — Pooled funds — several people's money combined, with one party controlling the wallet.

Decode — Cause and effect in five words. Pooling, then skimming, presented as the natural sequence.

Danger — Whoever holds the keys can leave with everything, whatever was agreed, and group buys run from one personal wallet on trust are a standard loss pattern. Track 8 said the same thing from the other side.

Do — If funds must be pooled, use a multisig with genuinely independent signers so no one person can move the money alone. Otherwise hold your own share.

See also — pooled-funds, multisig, ponzi, track 8.

““It’s probably nothing”, we…grinning”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  probably-nothing

Define — Probably nothing is sarcasm — used when posting something the speaker considers highly significant.

Decode — The grin is the giveaway. The phrase is a hype device dressed as understatement, and the bar shows it being deployed knowingly.

Danger — React to the underlying fact rather than the framing. Usually there is no verifiable claim attached at all — just a screenshot and an implication.

See also — probably-nothing, fud, dyor.

“Tokens will burn. Yeah, we know the speech”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  token-burn

Define — A token burn permanently destroys tokens by sending them to an address nobody holds the keys to, reducing supply.

Decode — "We know the speech" is the weariness of someone who has heard the promise many times. Burns are announced far more often than they are performed.

Danger — A burn announcement is not a burn. And a burn that reduces supply by a fraction of a per cent is a press release, not a mechanic.

Do — Look up the burn transaction on a block explorer. It is public, and either it exists with an amount attached or it does not.

See also — token-burn, block-explorer, roadmap.

“Need help? Lost your seed phrase? You got me”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  seed-phrase-loss fake-guru phishing

Define — A seed phrase is the set of words that restores a wallet. Lose it and the funds are unreachable permanently.

Decode — Offered here as friendship — the narrator as the person you can call. Read as a lyric, it is warmth.

Danger — Read as a message from a stranger, this exact sentence is the recovery scam, and it is one of the most common frauds in this space. It targets people who have already been robbed once. Nobody can recover a lost seed phrase — not a company, not a service, not a specialist. Anyone who says they can will ask for a fee, or for the phrase itself, and take what is left.

Do — Treat any unsolicited offer to recover lost crypto as a second attack. No legitimate service asks for a recovery phrase, and no one who contacts you first can return your funds.

See also — seed-phrase-loss, fake-guru, phishing, Manual Part Four §5.

“My Degen! We made a plan!”

Decode · Danger · Do  |  take-profits

Decode — A plan existed, and it was made together. Two bars later it is broken. This is the album's last piece of teaching, and it is about process rather than assets.

Danger — The failure described is not selling — it is abandoning an agreed plan mid-position. Whichever way you deviate, the deviation is the error, because a plan changed under pressure was never a plan.

Do — Write down what you hold, why, what would make you sell, and what you could lose entirely. One page, on paper, before it is needed. That page is the manual's closing exercise.

See also — take-profits, paper-hands, Manual Part Five.

“I’m living proof, money don’t make the man!”

Decode

Decode — The last line of the verse, and the point of the whole record. "Dying rich" has been running as a boast about money since track 4's "Imma die rich. I won't go broke" — and it is redefined here, at the end, as being about something other than the balance.

It is the only line on the album that lands on a value rather than a trade, which is why this track closes both the record and the book. Everything before it teaches you how to hold an asset. This teaches you what holding it is for.

See also — dying-rich-a03, dying-rich-a08, track 4, Manual Part Five.