A special thanks to good friend and frequent guest poster smugdog for today’s post. It’s an interesting thought exercise for whales, minnows, and everyone in between – and a fresh perspective on the never-ending debate about sharing vs. gatekeeping.
The K Shaped Churn: Why the Whales Are Diving Deeper and the Minnows Are Drying Up
You might remember me from my last post about why turning an interested friend into a churning buddy often becomes more work than expected.
Lately, I have been thinking about the other side. Maybe new people are not difficult to teach. Maybe this hobby has become difficult to learn.
In economics, a K shaped recovery describes one group rising while another falls. That increasingly feels like modern churning. Established players are moving into private networks, while newer hobbyists face a wall of information that still does not contain the answers they need.
The Easy Ramp Up Is Disappearing
For a while, certain apps and low friction manufactured spend methods made the hobby accessible. A newer player could generate volume from home, learn the mechanics, and make mistakes without risking a frozen bank account or thousands of dollars in float.
As those opportunities disappear, the beginner friendly middle is vanishing too.
What remains is often traditional MS, with store visits, inconsistent cashiers, and uncertain liquidation. The alternative is complicated fintech and resale plays requiring capital, specialized knowledge, and a high tolerance for shutdowns.
Neither is a welcoming place to start.
The Upper Arm of the K
The established heavy hitters are adapting.
They push larger volumes through flexible products, payment portals, resale networks, and low margin opportunities. They have capital, trusted buyers, years of data, and enough experience to tell an inconvenience from a disaster.
When one path closes, they usually have another.
The Lower Arm of the K
Then there is everyone else.
It is easy to dismiss newer players as lazy, but many are doing what communities tell them to do. They pay for memberships, search chat logs, read old posts, and reconstruct methods from scattered hints.
Then they ask a question and receive the hobby’s favorite response:
“Do your own research.”
“Search. 🥄”
Sometimes that is fair. Nobody wants to explain basic bank rules every day.
But that response can imply the necessary information is public when it often is not.
Much of the hobby’s content is outdated, incomplete, deliberately vague, or written for people who already understand the context. A veteran reads three cryptic messages and identifies the product, risk, and likely exit.
A newer player learns only that someone, somewhere, is making money.
That is not a learning curve. It is an archaeological dig.
The Gatekeeping Catch 22
The obvious answer is that experienced players should share more.
Unfortunately, public sharing often kills fragile opportunities. Profitable plays can survive quietly for months, then collapse within days of a detailed guide spreading widely.
Veterans learned that public instructions create volume, volume attracts attention, and attention ends the play.
So valuable information moves into small groups built on trust. From the inside, that is rational. From the outside, it feels impossible.
There is also little incentive to share in many large communities. A genuinely useful discovery might earn a few stars, some internet hugs, and a brief roar of approval before disappearing into the chat history.
Newer players are told to contribute value before gaining access to valuable information. But without useful information, it is hard to learn enough to contribute.
You need trust to get information, but you need information to prove you can be trusted.
A Better Middle Ground
The answer is not to publish every sensitive play step by step.
Communities can teach durable skills without exposing fragile methods. We can explain transaction coding, float, shutdown risk, recordkeeping, counterparty risk, and cautious testing. We can show what a useful data point looks like and keep beginner resources current.
Smaller groups may also have more room to reward useful contributions instead of simply rewarding whoever makes the most noise. That model is not perfect, but giving contributors a share of the value they create is a better incentive than asking them to do the research for free and survive on applause.
Most importantly, we can be honest.
Sometimes the answer is not, “Research harder.”
Sometimes it is, “The information is intentionally private because sharing it would probably kill the opportunity.”
That may disappoint someone, but it is kinder than making them believe they failed to find a guide that never existed.
Where do we go from here?
The hobby is not dead, but it is becoming more unequal.
The whales have capital, experience, trusted networks, and backup plans. The minnows are caught between public noise and a private world where useful details are withheld.
Nobody is entitled to another person’s research or hard earned play. But a healthy hobby still needs an on ramp.
The best communities may be the ones that protect fragile information, reward the people who uncover it, and still leave enough tracks for the next pride to follow.
We do not have to hand every newcomer the keys to the boat. We can at least teach them how to swim, explain where the currents are dangerous, and stop pretending that “do your own research” is always a complete set of directions.
-smugdog