Only after being in the crypto world for a long time will you understand that what truly drives people crazy is often not the market crash or losing everything, but when you finally make some money and want to cash out safely, you end up in a gray area due to improper actions.
At that moment, I realized that no matter how much money you make in crypto trading, if you make a mistake when cashing out, you could end up back at square one overnight, and may even lose your principal.
In 2020, I personally experienced a 'cash-out incident' that completely changed my understanding. At that time, I withdrew coins from a mainstream exchange, converted USDT to RMB, transferred it to my bank card, and then split it to WeChat and Alipay for daily expenses. On the surface, this seemed like a very ordinary operation, but a few days later, I woke up to find my bank card frozen, and all my WeChat and Alipay accounts were disabled, with even customer service unreachable.
When I finally managed to contact the relevant authorities, I was informed that my account was 'suspected of being linked to funds involved in a case' and was frozen for investigation by the police in a certain area of Anhui. This came too suddenly; I immediately organized all transaction records, chat screenshots, trading flows, and even salary income in an attempt to prove my innocence. However, the police's response was cold and brief, stating that virtual currency transactions are not protected, and if I wanted to unfreeze my account, I could negotiate privately with the other party to compensate the victim's losses.
To quickly lift the restrictions, I had to pay tens of thousands. This money wasn't lost in the exchange, nor due to margin calls, but was lost at the cash-out step.
From that moment on, I gained a completely new understanding of the phrase 'cash-out safety.' The crypto world is never short of money-making opportunities, but those who truly make money are the ones who can safely withdraw their profits. No matter how much USDT or high returns you have in your account, if you can't convert it into cash, it's all empty.
Cash-out is far more complex than most people imagine. What you see is the momentary calm of the platform receiving the funds and the bank card receiving payments, but behind the scenes, there may be risks of being 'swept' or frozen, or even getting involved in legal disputes. Over the years, I have continuously tried and made mistakes, iterating on my cash-out path, moving from direct transfers to splitting across multiple platforms and converting multiple currencies, gradually discovering a relatively safe method.
Walking this path reveals that in the crypto world, true victory is not about having a few times more on paper, but about the day you can smoothly, safely, and legally withdraw your money for daily use, without any surprises or aftereffects.
Safety always outweighs profit. This is the one thing I want to share with everyone after ten years in the crypto world.
If you really made money, the next step is to consider how to safely cash out the profits. This is not a technical detail, but a way of survival. If you are interested, I can write a follow-up article to share with you all the cash-out methods I have tried over the past ten years — including the pitfalls I encountered, the experiences I had, and which methods I ultimately verified to be relatively feasible. This will help you avoid falling short at the final hurdle.
