A novice entered the crypto world under the guidance of an expert, and after a year, ended up with a debt of 1 million, a broken family, and life plunged into darkness.
The story goes like this:
This novice, whom I will temporarily call the retail investor, is a good husband with a stable government job.
Although his job is stable, his income is not high, and his relationship with his wife has passed the honeymoon phase, beginning to fall into the death spiral of daily necessities.
In his wife's eyes, he is a useless person. Other husbands in the neighborhood earn over 10,000 a month, while he can only take home less than 7,000 in a dead-end salary.
Especially with the birth of a child, coupled with mortgages and car loans, he felt suffocated by life.
He has been thinking about doing something to improve the family situation in his spare time, as he sees no hope for life if things continue to develop in the current state.
In his spare time, he worked as a Didi driver, set up a street stall, and even planned to sell drinks at KTV at night, but these small incomes were hardly enough to alleviate the heavy burden on the family.
By chance, he learned about Bitcoin for the first time on Zhihu, right when Bitcoin was in a bull market, skyrocketing from 15,000 to 40,000 USD.
Unable to resist the temptation of making money, he entered the market.
In the beginning, he was very cautious, only daring to use his spare money of 20,000 to buy a little Bitcoin to test the waters. At that time, Bitcoin was skyrocketing to 68,000 USD.
His 20,000 also turned into over 30,000, and this happened in just a matter of days.
He felt that making money in the crypto world was too easy, even as if he saw hope for solving his family's financial difficulties. Later, he continuously researched various crypto knowledge, transforming from a complete novice into a fluent 'expert' in some communities, easily discussing topics like the metaverse, decentralization, and web 3.0.
The retail investor felt that he had mastered the code to wealth in life. During that time, he was full of fighting spirit and was proud at home.
It's just that the good times don't last long. Later, Bitcoin started to pull back after reaching its peak, especially the 519 in 2021, which was a direct cut in half. The retail investors did not escape at the peak because they were still hoping to make more profit.
This wave of decline made him lose more than 6,000 in an instant from over 10,000 in profits.
Over 6,000 was his monthly salary, and having never had any investment experience, he was sleepless that night.
Looking at his wife and child beside him, he felt an immense sense of guilt, thinking he was very sorry for them.
When he felt his life was dark, a 'contract' expert in the crypto world brought him a ray of light. Tempted by the group members, he added this expert as a friend.
In the circle of friends and communities, he saw this expert's brilliant achievements, with a success rate of over 90% in contracts.
The expert promised, if you follow me to trade, you can earn back your losses in a day, but the fee for following is 10,000. Considering your situation, I will only charge you 8,888 for good luck; don't tell others.
Feeling grateful, the retail investor unhesitatingly joined the expert's circle. At first, he followed the expert to make a few trades and felt the benefits were decent, with both profits and losses, but overall he started to recover.
Later, under the expert's strong confidence, he went all-in on one trade, unexpectedly getting liquidated in the middle of the night, losing both capital and interest. At that moment, he was very calm, even though he had lost everything.
Because it's easy to recover losses from contracts, especially seeing other friends in the circle earning tens of thousands in a single trade, he felt unbalanced in his heart and thus began his borrowing journey.
At first, it was only tens of thousands in borrowing, but as he lost more and more and wanted to recover his losses, his borrowing across various platforms had reached a million.
And the so-called expert's magic seems to have disappeared.
With the arrival of the bear market, sudden fluctuations became frequent, and soon this 1 million was completely liquidated.
At this time, facing debt collection calls from various platforms every day, he had thoughts of ending his life.
Later, the paper couldn't cover the fire; the family found out about this matter, but none had the ability to help pay off the debts. The wife completely lost confidence in continuing life and eventually divorced, with the child following the wife.
In the end, he had no choice but to face a debt of up to a million alone.
The poison of contracts is worse than that of snakes. This is heartfelt advice for everyone; never believe anyone's statements about how contracts lead to financial freedom.
They are just like people addicted to drugs and gambling, deeply trapped and unable to extricate themselves. They truly believe that making money from contracts is real, but they are just deceiving themselves, and they actually believe it, so you shouldn't believe it.
Trading contracts is actually a dead end from the start. What does it matter if you win 100 times? As long as you lose once, you will be ruined.
The market makers are not afraid of these retail investors making money from contracts; they only fear that you won't come. As long as you come, they can slaughter you.
Everyone knows there is a big V called Liangxi on Weibo who operates contracts daily. It's thrilling, going from financial freedom to debts of tens of millions, yet remains so casual.
This old Wang believes everyone should be rational, just enjoy the show and not take it too seriously; if you take it seriously, you will lose.
Old Wang believes he is an IP pushed out by the market makers, equivalent to brand advertising for contracts, enticing more people to enter the door of contracts for that illusory wealth dream (just a guess, don't take it too seriously).
Some may think losing in contracts is due to bad luck, but it's not that you have bad luck; it's that contracts are not a fair game at all.
Let's put it this way: our assets in the exchange are like putting our coins in someone else's hands; the exchange can use these coins to manipulate the market.
This is also why the market often prefers sudden fluctuations; they use your coins to liquidate you while they profit immensely.
This is a very cruel thing and also a fact.
Therefore, the typical ending for general investors in contracts is definitely liquidation.
The poison of contracts is profound.