Is profit in a popular exchange even possible?

I'm curious and would love to hear your experiences.

If you have made profit on any crypto project would you mind sharing your story, redact the names of the crypto to avoid being labelled a shill if necessary, im more interested to know:

where you first bought the project

how long you held it for

where you then sold it.

Most of the profit makers seem to my inexperienced eye to be early in on a project, before it even reaches a popular exchange.

I'm really curious if people that only use crypto.com or binnace or one of the other few widely known, user friendly exchanges have managed to make profit.

My latest example is that pepe token, everyone that bought it before it reached mainstream exchanges had a good opportunity to sell the moment it did reach them before it plummeted back down.

Is this the usual? Is buying anything other than the top 5/10 through a popular exchange a foolish mistake or can they be lucrative?

You would have thought that getting to mainstream exchange would be the start of a run rather than the death of a run, it seems counter intuitive.

Am I a fool for disliking the less user friendly exchanges like MEXC, am I missing the entry point for all projects that could moon during the next bull?

No shade on MEXC, I'm just not experienced enough with crypto to cancel out the 'noise'.