Max out you're tax-advantaged retirement accounts.
If you're young, invest a non-small portion into high-growth, "risk-on" assets, preferably in an industry you know a little bit about and can imagine where the trajectory of growth will lead to.
If you're staying put for the foreseeable future and don't mind limiting your optionality, consider buying a home (basically a 5x leveraged bet).
Gas costs in ETH have been at historical highs, making it uneconomical for players under 5-6 figures of capital to do basic transactions, let alone yield-farm / manage positions, so various DeFi dApps have moved over to less congested chains like BSC and Solana.
Sure, lots of scam projects due to cheaper deployment costs (again low gas fees vs Eth), but legitimate projects too: see PancakeSwap, which started out as a Uni clone, but has arguable expanded to offer more / different set of features.
Speaking more broadly, yes, we're in a crazy bubble, but that's really the case across all asset classes at the moment due to rampant central bank printing. Scams are proliferating in equities too, see SPACS.
Not to trot out the "this time is different" meme, but unlike the '17/'18 cycle, you have far fewer whitepaper copy-pasta scam ICOs and way more legitimate projects; with real teams, real users, real use-cases. Plus, institutions are actually ape-ing in, so take that for what you will.
IMO pace of development and adoption will only accelerate from here on the back of an already "mature" internet and mobile ecosystem + generational familiarity/acceptance of digital value in the youth.
As someone who grew up during the transition from analog-digital, crypto gives me mega 90s/00s internet vibes, especially the feeling of inevitability around the DeFi space.
It's getting harder and harder these days to get a good meal in the US for under $10 all-in w/ tax outside of rural super low COL areas.
In any of the major urban areas in the states, a $5 budget would limit you to various street foods (a couple of tacos, a banh mi, maybe a slice of pizza) or a couple of items from the dollar menu at the various fast food chains. Frankly, your typical airline meal is more filling and nutritious (but not as tasty, unless you're flying a middle eastern or flagship asian airline, of course).
A decent McDonald's meal for example, would blow up your $5 budget pretty easily.
Because it’s a ridiculous rant that stereotypes an entire country and people based on one anecdote.
Plenty of entrepreneurs have been cheated / outplayed in the west in the same exact way. See the recent controversy about Amazon meeting with / investing in, startup companies for the purposes of stealing and cheating.
On a sidenote, wumao exists in the west too. And it’s just as sloppy.
Max out you're tax-advantaged retirement accounts.
If you're young, invest a non-small portion into high-growth, "risk-on" assets, preferably in an industry you know a little bit about and can imagine where the trajectory of growth will lead to.
If you're staying put for the foreseeable future and don't mind limiting your optionality, consider buying a home (basically a 5x leveraged bet).