At three in the morning, the mobile phone screen shone dazzlingly, and Brother Li stared at that string of numbers for half a minute—three extra zeros appeared after the account balance.
Half a year ago, he rushed into the cryptocurrency market with his year-end bonus and went all in on a little-known altcoin. Back then, everyone in the community laughed at him for 'picking up trash,' and he only thought of it as a gamble, checking the market every night before bed, comforting himself when it dipped, 'Anyway, the principal isn't much.' Until last week, when this coin suddenly caught the attention of a major institution, skyrocketing from $0.03 to $2.8 in one week. When the profit alert he set popped up, his fingers trembled.
On the day of the transfer, the bank's customer service called three times to verify. Holding his ID to record a video, sweat soaked through his T-shirt. That evening, while treating friends to dinner, his buddy, who usually laughed at him for 'speculating in coins', raised his glass: 'What you’re doing isn’t investing, it’s like unboxing a blind box and finding a gold bar.' He chuckled, not mentioning that he had secretly deleted the trading app when his investment fell by 80%, only to download it again one early morning, unable to resist.
Now, the numbers in his account are enough to buy an apartment in the city center, but he still has the habit of checking the market every day. He no longer stares at the K-line chart with an accelerated heartbeat like before; occasionally, when he sees newcomers anxiously asking in the group, 'Should I cut my losses?', he remembers that late-night version of himself smoking in front of a green screen—wealth in the cryptocurrency world is never a fairy tale; it’s just that some people waited for one more dawn when others couldn’t hold on.
