On my desk in the early hours, the coffee had long since gone cold, and the chair creaked beneath me. The song looping in my headphones had numbed my senses, my eyes fixed on the screen—when that candlestick suddenly flipped green to red, as if someone had hit the pause button, the color stinging my eyes.

In my account, that string of numbers dropped to zero. 12,000 stablecoins, just gone, not even a trace left. The forced liquidation notice from the system was more brutal than anything else.

I was furious, ranting to anyone who would listen for days, saying the market was manipulated, that retail investors were just being harvested like chives. But by the fifth time my account hit zero, staring at that 0.00 balance, I suddenly realized a harsh truth—it wasn’t market volatility that killed me, but the deeply rooted misconceptions in my own mind.

To be honest, the vast majority of retail investors get liquidated because they misunderstand leverage. I used to naively think that using 10x leverage meant I could make 10 times the profit, and at most lose 10% of my principal. It wasn’t until my margin was automatically taken by the system that I finally understood: the essence of leverage is as a risk amplifier. The actual risk equals your position size multiplied by the leverage, and the liquidation line is your principal divided by the leverage ratio.

Those risk warnings on the platforms are really well hidden. 10x leverage never means “taking on 10% risk”—it means you’re betting your entire principal on a single direction. It’s like walking barefoot on a scorching iron plate—one misstep and you’re done for.

I’ve printed out the transaction records for every time I got liquidated, and now they’re posted right in front of my desk.