These days, someone is again watching large on-chain transfers and hot and cold wallets on exchanges, interpreting it all as "smart money coming in," which makes me a bit amused.

Honestly, when you click swap in the pool and see an "opportunity," it’s very likely just someone else splitting the slippage and priority fee to take it all: sandwich attacks, arbitrage, MEV—just a different shell for fee redistribution.
Later, I realized the most stable winners aren’t those who predict the right direction, but those who stand on the side collecting fees—if the protocol doesn’t open a fee switch, even hot tokens are like working for miners and bots.
Anyway, whenever I see "guaranteed profit," I first ask: who ultimately takes the cash flow from this transaction?
Is it me, or someone else?