4. Buy Ethereum (ETH)

“Thinkin' ’bout ETH cost price”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  ethereum cost-basis

Define — Cost basis is what you originally paid, used to work out gain or loss when you dispose of something.

Decode — The track opens on accounting rather than excitement. For a song called Buy Ethereum, starting at "what did I pay" is a deliberate choice.

Danger — Most countries treat crypto disposals as taxable events, including swapping one token for another. People trade for a year, then find they cannot prove what anything cost and are taxed on the full proceeds.

Do — Record the date, amount, and value in your own currency for every purchase, from the first one. Retrofitting this later is far harder than doing it as you go.

See also — cost-basis, ethereum, Manual Part Three §6.

“IP got banned, proxies tonight”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  proxy vpn

Define — A proxy here is the network sense — routing traffic through another server. The word has a second, unrelated meaning in smart contracts, annotated below.

Decode — Ordinary internet friction, dropped in as a detail of the working life around this stuff.

Danger — Routing around a platform's access restrictions usually breaches its terms, and accounts get frozen with funds inside them. The block is rarely the real problem; the frozen balance is.

See also — proxy, vpn, cex.

“Rearrange the nodes, test code twice”

Define · Decode · Do  |  node code-audit

Define — A node is a computer running the chain's software, keeping a full copy of the ledger and checking every rule.

Decode — "Test code twice" is the most sensible engineering advice on the album, delivered in passing.

Do — Apply the same rule to yourself: send a small test amount before sending a large one, every time, to a new address. It costs a fee and prevents the single most expensive irreversible mistake there is.

See also — node, code-audit, immutable.

“Contract was sharp, code with a knife”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  smart-contract code-audit

Define — A smart contract is a program stored on the chain that runs exactly as written when called.

Decode — The knife makes the point the word "contract" obscures: this is a blade, and it cuts in whichever direction it was written to cut.

Danger — "Contract" implies legal protection. There is none. Nobody enforces it on your behalf, and if the code permits your funds to be taken, they are taken and the contract worked as designed.

Do — Before interacting with anything, check on a block explorer whether the code is verified, and look for a published audit naming who reviewed it, when, and which version.

See also — smart-contract, code-audit, backdoor, Manual Part Four §3.

“It got graphic. Called some image sprites”

Decode  |  smart-contract

Decode — Sprites are the small images games draw on screen. The bar keeps the programmable-money theme concrete: a chain that runs code can render things, not only move balances.

See also — smart-contract, mint.

“FUD they wanna do?”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  fud

Define — FUD — fear, uncertainty and doubt. In practice it labels negative claims the speaker rejects.

Decode — Thrown out as a challenge, which is how the word is normally used: as a move rather than an argument.

Danger — The label is applied to genuine manipulation and to entirely legitimate criticism, indistinguishably. If someone names a specific, checkable problem, check it. "That's FUD" is not a rebuttal, and treating it as one is how people stay in things they should have questioned.

See also — fud, dyor, maxi.

“DeFi til we d-i-e!”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  defi

Define — DeFi — decentralised finance. Lending, trading, and earning run by smart contracts instead of institutions.

Decode — The spelling-out is the joke and the warning in one gesture.

Danger — No accounts and no approval also means no refunds, no complaints process, and no one to call. Advertised yields come from somewhere — usually other users' fees or newly issued tokens — and stop when that source does.

See also — defi, liquidity-pool, staking, Manual Part Five §2.

“Watch these whales, dive right in”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  whale

Define — A whale holds enough to move the price by transacting.

Decode — Watching them is presented as the strategy. Their wallets genuinely are public, so the watching part is real.

Danger — Watching is not copying. You see one transaction without the cost basis, the timeframe, the hedges, or the reason. Following a whale into a position and not out of it is a common and expensive pattern.

See also — whale, block-explorer, dyor.

“Gassed on ETH. I’m driving”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  gas gwei

Define — Gas is the fee paid to have a transaction processed. On Ethereum it is quoted in gwei, one billionth of one ETH.

Decode — The fuel pun is exact rather than decorative: ETH is literally what pays for movement on the network.

Danger — Fees are an auction and spike precisely when everyone wants to act — during crashes and launches. People routinely pay a fee larger than the amount they are moving, and small transfers can cost more than they are worth.

Do — Check the fee in your own currency before confirming, every time. If it is a meaningful fraction of the amount, wait or use a Layer 2.

See also — gas, gwei, gas-price, network-congestion, layer-2.

“Salty cuz they left a trail of rugs”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  rug-pull liquidity-locked

Define — A rug pull is when a project's operators withdraw the funds backing a token and disappear. It is taught in full at track 8; here it is the aftermath being described.

Decode — "A trail of rugs" is a serial record, not one incident. The same people do this repeatedly, launch after launch, which is exactly track 8's premise.

Danger — After the pool is drained the token remains in your wallet showing a balance. There is simply nothing left to sell it against. The number is visible and unreachable.

Do — Check whether liquidity is locked and read the unlock date before buying. It is public, it is free to check, and it is the single most predictive thing you can look at.

See also — rug-pull, liquidity-locked, liquidity-pool, track 8.

“Connect with the wrong plug and that’s just how they’ll show love”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  wallet-drainer phishing

Define — Connecting a wallet grants a site the ability to request signatures from it. A wallet drainer is malicious code that uses that access to empty it.

Decode — "Connect with the wrong plug" is the attack named precisely, in street language, one track before the villain arrives.

Danger — The request looks like an ordinary pop-up. Approving it can hand over blanket permission to move your tokens, and no blockchain was broken — you authorised it.

Do — Reach sites from your own bookmarks, never from links or search adverts. Read what you are signing. Keep a separate wallet for connecting to sites, holding only what you can afford to lose.

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

“Diamond hands froze (let’s moon)”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  diamond-hands moon

Define — Diamond hands means holding through severe falls without selling.

Decode — "Froze" is doing double duty — diamond-cold, and unable to act. The second reading is the honest one.

Danger — Frozen is what it usually is. An identity that forbids selling is not conviction; it is a decision made once, then defended rather than reviewed.

See also — diamond-hands, paper-hands, take-profits.

“Roadmap explain the goals”

Define · Decode · Danger · Do  |  roadmap

Define — A roadmap is a project's published plan of what it will deliver and when.

Decode — Presented as the thing that makes a project legible. Often it is the only thing a project has.

Danger — Roadmaps are free to write and quietly rewritten. Valuing a project on its roadmap is valuing an intention.

Do — Compare the roadmap against what the same team has already shipped, and when. Delivery history is the only part of this that is evidence.

See also — roadmap, vesting, dyor.

“Anonymous behind the camera (Say Cheese)”

Define · Decode · Danger  |  anon

Define — Anon — taking part under a pseudonym rather than a real name.

Decode — Behind the camera rather than in front of it. Pseudonymity is normal here and not in itself suspicious; Bitcoin's author was anonymous.

Danger — Anonymity is not the risk factor people think it is, in either direction. A named team can vanish too. What matters is whether the code and the funds are verifiable, not whether faces are shown.

See also — anon, doxxing, code-audit.

“Imma die rich. I won’t go broke (fix it bro)”

Decode

Decode — The album's title track announced eight tracks early. Track 10 answers this line and changes what "dying rich" means — the claim here is about money, and the closer is not.

See also — track 10.

“Maintain, stay on chain”

Define · Decode · Do  |  on-chain hold-your-own-keys

Define — On-chain means recorded on the public ledger rather than in a company's database.

Decode — The verse's closing instruction, and the plainest advice in the track: stay in the system where you can verify things yourself.

Do — Practise moving a small amount from an exchange to a wallet you control, and back. Doing it once while nothing is at stake is worth more than reading about it.

See also — on-chain, hold-your-own-keys, exchange, Manual Part Three §6.

“Pain, pain, no gains”

Decode · Danger  |  bear-market

Decode — The gym cliché inverted. Sometimes the pain simply does not produce the gain, which is a rare admission inside a song built on confidence.

Danger — Bear markets last years, not weeks, and newcomers consistently underestimate this. Position size is what determines whether you can sit through one — not conviction, and not the label you have adopted.

See also — bear-market, rekt, Manual Part Four §7.