#数字资产市场动态 Eight years in the crypto world, three survival rules learned at the cost of 3 million yuan in tuition fees

In 2018 in Shenzhen, holding 300,000 yuan in a rented apartment, watching the market. During Bitcoin's rise, my account balance kept climbing, reaching nearly 3 million — I truly thought I had understood the market.

But it only took three days for reality to hit. By Christmas, my account shrank to less than 600,000. At that moment, I realized that the idea of "wait a bit, it will rebound and break even" was more dangerous than a margin call.

After eight years of ups and downs, I’ve come to these three survival principles:

**First: Leverage is a knife, not wings.**

Once, I traded Ethereum with 20x leverage, earning 400,000 yuan in a day and feeling like I had cracked the code. During the 519 rally in 2021, my account was wiped out of 600,000 in just two hours, returning me to zero overnight.

My current strict rule is: leverage no more than 3x, and no more than 5% of the portfolio in a single coin. It sounds slow, but in reality, it’s faster.

**Second: Don’t look for inheritance on the gambling table.**

Once heavily invested in a "domestic Ethereum" concept coin, with 250,000 yuan in, and when it rose to 1.5 million, I still fantasized that it could change my life. Later, it fell almost to negligible levels.

This taught me what survival bias is. Now, 85% of my money is tightly bound to Bitcoin and Ethereum, and the remaining 15% is real "play money" — that’s not investing, that’s pocket change.

**Third: Stop-loss is your last integrity.**

Every trade has a strict 8% stop-loss. When it hits, I walk away — no stories, no questions.

Before that, I ask myself: if my account goes to zero tomorrow, can I still calmly go have a skewer?

The crypto world is never short of opportunities; what’s missing is the capital to survive until the next one. I crawled out of the ruins of the crypto bubble, holding not a mirage of wealth but a faint light that keeps me breathing.

That light is always on.