Recently, the crypto world has erupted again—Bitcoin has been on a roller coaster ride, just yesterday it was soaring, making people want to shout 'the bull market is here', and today it has dropped, causing heart attacks; Ethereum followed suit, jumping up and down, along with a bunch of altcoins bouncing around, the whole circle felt like it was thrown into a tumble dryer. Some people made quick cash from a surge to buy a house, while others bought at the bottom only to find themselves halfway up the mountain, losing so much principal that they didn't dare to open their accounts.
At this time, someone always couldn't help but ask: 'How much money have you made in the crypto world?' This question is like throwing a handful of pepper into a hot pot, burning the mouth and piercing the heart. Everyone who has struggled in the candlestick charts hides a painful account in their heart.
An afternoon when I first fell into the 'digital trap'
My tangled fate with the crypto world began five years ago on that sun-drenched afternoon. At a reunion with old classmates, a guy who used to sit behind me copying my homework suddenly waved his car keys: 'Last month I earned a Tesla with Dogecoin, isn’t that exciting?' The numbers bouncing on his phone felt like a needle poking at my anxiety of earning a dead salary—every day while squeezing onto the subway, I would stare at my reflection in the glass, feeling life shouldn't be confined to a cubicle with a 'monthly salary of 5,000'.
After returning home, I felt like I was possessed, staying up late to finish the Bitcoin white paper, and staring blankly at the introduction to Ethereum's smart contracts. The more I looked, the more I felt that the 'blockchain revolution' could actually happen. The next day, I transferred 30,000 yuan from my savings and tremblingly downloaded the exchange app. At that time, looking at the string of code representing 'Bitcoin' in my account, I felt like I wasn't buying coins, but a ticket to 'financial freedom', completely oblivious to the hidden reefs below the ship.
The 'intelligence tax' paid in candlestick charts
When I first entered the market, I felt like a blind fly, chasing after whichever coin was rising sharply. The first time I bought Bitcoin, the price had just jumped from $30,000 to $35,000, and the big shots in the group were shouting 'the start of a bull market'. I gritted my teeth and invested half of my principal. As a result, within 72 hours of buying, a huge bearish candlestick crashed down, causing my account value to shrink by 20%, scaring me to wake up in the middle of the night to check the market, my palms sweating.
Later, I heard that Ethereum was going to implement a '2.0 upgrade'. I studied the white paper all night and felt that 'smart contracts + sharding technology' was reliable, so I decisively invested all the remaining money. Fortunately, that wave of upgrade expectations made Ethereum rise from $800 to $1,500. I cashed out a portion and tasted the flavor of 'making money' for the first time, feeling on top of the world—I thought I was the 'Warren Buffett of the crypto world', and began to look for 'hundredfold coins'.
As a result, in a community, someone was hyping a newly launched DeFi coin, saying 'the team has a Silicon Valley background, and the application scenario is way better than Ethereum'. Without even carefully looking at the project’s official website, I threw all my profits and principal into it. Three days later, the coin rose by 50%, but I couldn't bear to sell, thinking 'at least ten times return'. As a result, it started to plummet on the fourth day, and a week later it was taken off the shelves. I couldn't even squeeze into the exchange's rights protection group. Watching the zeros in my account, I finally understood: in the crypto world, greed is like handing a knife to the reaper.
Now, looking back at those candlestick charts of soaring and plummeting prices, my heart is no longer as turbulent as before. The money lost can be considered tuition fees, at least it made me understand: in this circle where even a single word from Musk can stir up the market, those who come out alive are never relying on luck, but on understanding the respect for the market. As for how much I made? I can only say: as long as I didn’t lose my underpants, that would be fortunate.
