Outsiders always say that his calmness when facing wild fluctuations is due to a naturally good mindset. But only I know the tuition fees he has paid, stacked up, are enough to exchange for two apartments in the core area of a first-tier city. Today, rewriting his story is not just for you in front of the screen, but also a reminder for myself.
— Beyond the K-line.
First, write 'survive' into the code.
That winter of 2018 was especially cold. He put all the money he saved for marriage, his parents' retirement fund, and even secretly mortgaged the loan on his family home, betting it all on a new project claiming to be the 'Ethereum killer.' The vision in the white paper was more touching than a novel, and the big shots in the community were shouting daily that 'surpassing ETH is just around the corner.' Until the announcement popped up that the project had run away with the funds, the numbers on the screen turned into glaring zeros, and he slumped in his chair as if his bones had been pulled out.
That night, when I found him on the rooftop, he was staring blankly at the moon, cigarette butts piled up at his feet like a small mountain. 'So the market really can kill,' his voice was hoarse like it had been rubbed with sandpaper. Later, when he wrote the first line of code for the trading system, his fingers were still trembling: single-coin position ≤ 15%, total position ≤ 70%, never fully invested. 'It's not cowardice,' he later told me, 'the market never lacks opportunities; what it lacks are people with capital to seize those opportunities.'
Emotion is the biggest indicator.
I've seen him at his craziest, cursing at people in the community at 3 AM, just because someone said the coin he heavily invested in 'was about to crash'; I've also seen him tear up, staring at the screen when Bitcoin fell below $6,000, muttering 'it's all over.' Later, he had his assistant do something strange: create a word cloud of historical headlines saying 'Bitcoin is dead,' with red words like 'crash' and 'zeroing' covering half the wall; he also printed out screenshots of the screams in the WeChat group for 'hundredfold coins' and 'get rich quick,' circled those excited exclamation marks with a blue marker, and stuck them on the right side of the monitor.
'When the left side is cold enough to freeze, buy in batches; when the right side is noisy enough to cause tinnitus, sell in batches.' He pointed at two charts explaining to me that K-lines can draw fake breakouts, and trading volumes can create fake data, but retail investors' emotions cannot be fooled. Last May, when Bitcoin surged to $40,000, the newcomers in the office were all shouting 'aiming for $60,000,' but he silently placed sell orders for 30% of his position looking at the densely packed screenshots on the right side.
Cut out 90% of the noise.
In the year DeFi exploded, he chased hot topics as if possessed, mining this today, jumping into that liquidity pool tomorrow, switching tracks five times in a week, racking up a thick stack of transaction fees, and in the end, all profits went to working for the exchange. One time at 2 AM, I went to his office and found him staring blankly at the screen full of new concepts; terms like 'metaverse,' 'chain games,' and 'Web 3.0' exploded like fireworks and then extinguished.
'It's like looking for water in the desert,' he later told me when he deleted his watchlist down to just two ecosystems, 'Sampling in ten places is not as good as digging down by a river.' Now his interface is as clean as a blank sheet of paper, with only the relevant assets of BTC and ETH fluctuating, yet he earns more steadily than when chasing ten hot topics before.
Stop-loss is not admitting defeat, it's locking the door.
On the day of his third liquidation, he watched helplessly as his account went from a profit of 200,000 to a loss of 500,000, just because he couldn't bear to cut his positions, always thinking 'if I wait a bit longer, it will rebound.' Until the forced liquidation prompt popped up, he suddenly understood: arguing with the market is like using an egg to hit a stone.
Now, in his trading system, the 15% mechanical stop-loss line is more sacred than the constitution. No matter how the K-line moves, no matter how many 'positive' messages there are in the community, as long as the stop-loss is triggered, he clicks the mouse without hesitation. 'This is not admitting defeat,' he said, patting my shoulder, 'Do you lock your door when you go out? A stop-loss order is like a lock on the account, ensuring that no thief enters the house before thinking about where to make money tomorrow.'
Kick 'luck' out of the system.
In his current trading notes, there are no words like 'secret,' 'insider,' or 'divine prediction,' only four sentences circled repeatedly with a red pen:
Don't invest in what you don't understand — even if the neighbor Wang makes a fortune, money you don't understand is not your money.
Every Wednesday at 8 PM, he reviews his trades on time; any sudden 'inspiration' is thrown into the wastebasket.
Withdraw the principal when profits reach 50%, use profits to take risks, and losing won't hurt.
Core positions are like the stabilizing needle, short positions are just seasoning for life, don't consider them the main dish.
There are no earth-shattering techniques, just discipline forged from blood and tears.
He always says that the light in the crypto world never rests in others' hands. During the worst of the bear market in 2022, the lights in his office stayed on until dawn every day, not for watching the market but for writing new trading strategies. Later, as the market warmed up, while others were busy celebrating, he was still modifying the code.
Actually, the light is also in your hands. I won't advise you to copy his path, after all, everyone's river is different. But I want to say: when the next wave of bear market strikes in the middle of the night, may you also have a beam of your own light, illuminating not only the numbers in your account but also the humanity hidden behind the K-lines.
