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There's no such thing as a clean exit. Not in markets, not in culture, not in relationships. Every departure has an invisible invoice attached to it. Traders call this exit liquidity - the person left holding the bag after someone else has already cashed out. But the phrase works just as well outside of the context of financial markets. On the internet, in social settings, in relationships. Someone always stays behind, someone always pays.

The question is whether the game we're playing is zero-sum or not. In zero-sum systems, one person's win is literally another's loss. In non-zero-sum systems, everyone wins. Most of life pretends to be the latter. But when someone exits, it reveals what the system really was all along.

In financial markets, exit liquidity logic is merciless. When a whale sells, the only way they can realize profit is if someone else is willing to take the other side of the trade. To buy at the top. Robust liquidity is a core component of well-established and respected markets such as those for Bitcoin or blue-chip growth stocks, but liquidity more or less comes from belief. Belief that there is enough demand for a particular asset to take the opposite side of any trade at any given time. A key concept of financial markets is that buyers become "exit liquidity" for others when they buy assets at inflated prices, unknowingly providing an opportunity for earlier buyers to offload holdings at a profit. Late buyers facilitate the exits of early sellers, even if buyers are still directionally bullish. Exit liquidity is the cost of optimism.

Crypto makes this dynamic painfully visible. Insiders win, retail bleeds, and no one admits they were the fool at the table until it's too late. The dream of non-zero-sum - that we're all early, that we're all "going to make it" - collapses into the reality of redistribution. The wealth doesn't vanish, it just changes hands.

But this isn't just a crypto problem. Wall Street has been running the same play for decades, just with better suits. An IPO is, in many ways, the most respectable form of exit liquidity. Founders, venture capitalists and early employees spend years accumulating common and preferred equity, talking about building a "non-zero-sum pie" that grows for everyone. Then the company goes public, and suddenly the wide-eyed retail investors are the ones footing the bill.

The pitch from investment bankers marketing an IPO is always the same: this is just the beginning, the story is still being written, there is massive value creation potential ahead. In many cases, that's true. Most of the value creation for iconic companies (think Apple, Nvidia, Amazon, etc.) actually happened after they went public. But that doesn't erase the underlying dynamic: IPOs are still a structured transfer, a chance for insiders and early investors to realize gains while shifting public market risk to, well the public. For every Amazon that compounds post-IPO, there are dozens of offerings that mark a local top, timed less around long-term growth and more around liquidity needs. The public isn't always buying the future. Often, they're subsidizing the exits of those who got there first.

The asymmetry of exit liquidity is identical across all financial markets. One side walks away with realized gains, the other is left holding onto belief. And this is why the zero-sum/non-zero-sum distinction matters so much more in markets. We talk about capitalism as if it's generative, a system where wealth is created and shared equally. But look closer and it often resolves around timed transfers. Value accrues for some only because others arrive late.

Internet culture isn't much different. Memes, apps, viral moments - each one has an invisible curve. Early adopters mine status and clout by being there first. The masses arrive later, pouring energy into a system that has already peaked. By the time something hits the mainstream, the "alpha" has already been extracted. What's left is an experience stripped of edge, sustained only by the latecomers' belief. Virality sells itself as non-zero-sum: everyone's included, everyone can share in this cultural moment. But in practice, it's zero-sum attention arbitrage. Early movers extract the upside, and again, the latecomers overpay in time, money, and emotion, often without realizing they've been cast as exit liquidity. If you've ever joined a Discord too late, bought an NFT at the top, or downloaded an app just as the crowd was moving on, you've felt it: you weren't contributing, you were subsidizing someone else's exit.

Both finance and culture depend on shared belief systems - money only works because we agree it has value; memes only spread because we agree they're funny. Once the crowd moves on, the "price" of both collapses.

Relationships are often sold as non-zero-sum too. Love multiplies when it's shared, and vulnerability compounds. Time together builds equity. But when someone leaves, the math hardens. Suddenly the partnership looks more like a corporate balance sheet. One person walks away lighter, the other carries the debt. Exit liquidity in this frame isn't just financial or social, but personal. The one who leaves gets the illusion of a clean slate, forward motion, new possibility. The one who stays pays in rumination, in what-ifs, in the slow grind of remembering. And maybe this is the hardest truth: departures reveal how zero-sum even our most hopeful systems can be. To leave is to offload cost. To stay is to absorb it. It's not symmetrical. It never is.

What I'm arguing is this: exit liquidity is a universal condition not confined to financial markets. It appears wherever systems rely on belief, participation, or trust. Sometimes we trick ourselves into thinking we're in a non-zero-sum world, where everyone can win. But exits clarify the rules, and force us to reckon with who actually bears the cost when belief breaks. Sometimes that cost is money. Sometimes it's attention. Sometimes it's heartbreak. But no matter what the cost is, someone always has to pay it.