At three in the morning in Hangzhou, the notification of a deposit on my phone woke me up. My digital asset account suddenly had 320,000 more. Staring at the screen in a daze for half a minute, I didn't jump up to order takeout like three years ago; instead, I deleted the trading app and went back to sleep.
As an experienced player in the crypto space for eight years, my hair volume is even less stable than my account balance, and my eye bags could serve as storage bags. Even the aunt selling breakfast downstairs knows: 'That guy who stares at the K-line and sighs every day, lost money again?' No one knows that when I barged in back in 2016 with 5000 digital asset units, I could even mix up my wallet address and email.
In four years, I didn’t rely on so-called 'inside information', nor did I gamble on 'hundredfold coin myths'. I managed to roll my principal up to 1,200,000 units using the simplest methods. Looking back now, those days were no different from battling a boss: crying while clutching the keyboard during liquidation, daring to treat the whole dormitory to barbecue after making a little profit, until the market pressed me down for the third time, finally grinding away the impatience within me.
I sit in front of the computer, meticulously analyzing transaction records, breaking down each operation to the second. The hardest part is not analyzing the market, but suppressing that eager hand wanting to follow the trend during a market surge. The pits I've fallen into and the tears I've shed over the years have accumulated into six 'life-saving rules'—newbie brothers, remember them; they’re more useful than copying a hundred so-called 'expert combinations':
1. The trading volume is the heartbeat of the market; don’t let the price play tricks on you. When prices rise, it feels like riding a rocket, and when they fall, it’s like bungee jumping. If you only follow the red and green bars, you will eventually be left with nothing but your underwear. I have summarized: a sudden spike followed by a slow decline is likely the main force drawing people in; if the top suddenly collapses with a large volume drop, don’t hesitate, run quickly, because the scythe is already raised.
2. A flash crash is not a welfare package; it's a death knell. I have seen too many people staring at a plummeting market yelling 'buy the dip', only to get buried as soon as they enter. Remember, a sharp drop followed by a slow rebound is not a sign of market recovery; it’s the main force retreating while selling. There is no 'floor price' in this industry; there's a basement below the floor, and beneath that basement might be eighteen levels of hell.
3. The quiet at high positions is scarier than a crash. A large trading volume doesn’t necessarily indicate a peak, but if there’s suddenly no activity at a high position, you must be alert. It’s like a noisy night market suddenly going silent; the next second could be chaos. I once stumbled on a popular asset; it was rising well but suddenly saw a volume drop. I didn’t take it seriously, and three days later, it was directly halved.
4. Bottoms test endurance; a single large volume is 'fishing'. Occasional large volumes at the bottom shouldn't cause excitement; it may be the main force trying to lure in buyers. The real bottom signal is sustained low volume followed by several consecutive days of increasing volume—this indicates that the main force has truly started entering the market, rather than playing a 'one-day tour' trick.
5. Candlestick charts are masks; trading volume is the true face. Those red and green lines can only tell you the results of ups and downs, but they can’t hide the madness and panic behind them. A sudden increase in trading volume followed by a rapid decrease indicates that someone is pushing prices up to sell; a steady increase in trading volume and slow price rise indicates the real market trend, not 'acting'.
6. Eliminate emotions to survive and make money. In this field, those who can make money long-term are never the 'prediction experts', but rather the 'action takers'. Don’t hesitate when it’s time to enter the market, and don’t feel bad when it’s time to cut losses. The most common tragedy I’ve seen is people panicking to sell after making a little profit and stubbornly holding on after losing money—emotions can destroy your account more than market fluctuations.
Looking at the extra 320,000 in my account, I finally realized: wealth has always been a byproduct of cognition. The youth I lost, the body I ruined, and the experience I gained, along with the mindset I developed over these eight years, cannot be measured by numbers.
Many people wander in this circle, not because they are not working hard enough, but because they haven’t found the right direction. The market is always there, and opportunities never wait for anyone, but reliable experiences and ideas are not something you can just pick up casually.
