Back in 2018, I did something that made my parents so angry they lost sleep—I put the entire 80,000 yuan I had saved up for two years as a down payment for a wedding apartment straight into Bitcoin, which was $450 per coin at the time.

All I had in mind was one thought: if I don’t get on this train now, I won’t even see its taillights in the future. Then a year later, in a damp little guesthouse in Chiang Mai, when my phone suddenly flashed a balance of 2.3 million, I was completely stunned—it felt like winning the lottery.

But the good times didn’t last long. The bear market hit even harder than Thailand's torrential rain. By the end of 2018, my account balance deflated like a punctured ball, shrinking from 2.3 million down to 220,000 right before my eyes. I sat at a rickety little table in that guesthouse, counting on my fingers to see if I could make next month’s rent, with cicadas screaming outside the window—every call sounded like they were mocking me. Turns out, falling from the top really does hurt.

After blowing up my account and getting rekt countless times, I finally figured out four survival rules:

First, never touch things you don’t understand. Back then, I heard people hyping up metaverse land, jumped in without even knowing what it was for, and lost 220,000 in a week. That’s when I truly understood “you can’t make money outside your circle of competence.”

Second, always manage your portfolio well. Now I put half my funds in mainstream coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum, thirty percent into cross-platform arbitrage for stable returns, and keep the remaining twenty percent as emergency funds. When Ethereum dropped to $1,200 last year, I used that emergency fund to buy the dip and didn’t miss the rebound.

Third, never touch leverage. I used to go all-in on contracts and got liquidated overnight—since then, I’ve turned off the contract feature on a certain exchange. Leverage isn’t a profit booster; it’s just a meat grinder that eats your principal.

Fourth, always verify information yourself. Those signal groups and influencer shills—nine out of ten are traps. I only look at on-chain data and project whitepapers. Before a major exchange blew up in 2022, I checked their reserves, noticed something was off, and moved my assets in advance—dodging a bullet.

Now I’ve long given up on the dream of getting rich overnight. I just aim for a steady 20% annual return, and I’ve hit 18% so far this year. After so many years in this space, just surviving already means you’ve won more than half the battle.

A lot of people aren’t lacking effort—they just lack a bit of clear-headed awareness. Opportunities are always there in the market—the key is not to let greed blind you.