Late at night while checking on-chain data, I almost spilled my coffee—the drama around stablecoins is even more intense than a mainnet coin contract liquidation. If you were also caught up in that high annualized yield wave, you probably woke up startled by a pop-up last night. Opening your account, the promised 20% annualized return had dropped to zero, going from profit to nothing in an instant, not even giving a moment of buffer time.

Here's the background: Recently, arbitrage opportunities in the stablecoin sector have attracted a lot of retail investors, especially the 20% high annualized yield on USD1, which is incredibly tempting. As a result, yesterday suddenly saw a "price plunge," smashing all those promises. On-chain data is clear—large fund accounts collectively sold off USD1, causing panic, while retail investors who entered within the past 24 hours watched their positions get trapped and started cutting losses and fleeing without hesitation. The scene was like a race—if you run a second too slow, you'll be left behind forever.

Here's some real talk: Any stablecoin offering "high certainty high annualized yield" is essentially a game of capital manipulation. The true value of a stablecoin is in its "stability"—a normal annualized return of 3%-5% is already quite good. A sudden appearance of 20% annualized yield? Unless the project team is using it as a short-term gimmick to attract new users, it's probably a Ponzi scheme where "new money funds old money."

The USD1 move is a textbook example. The big players used concentrated selling to push down the price, creating panic on one hand, while on the other hand, they took the opportunity to buy back at lower prices as retail investors cut losses. Plus, with the promised returns failing to materialize, the entire scheme collapsed. Meanwhile, large funds had already moved their capital to mainstream stablecoins like USDC, and capital flow is always the most honest signal.

Here's a key insight: If a stablecoin's yield comes from the project team burning money to subsidize returns, then when that subsidy stops, investors are out. There are no forever high yields—only different stages of pulling the rug. Next time you see similar opportunities, remember— the higher the annualized yield, the closer the risk.