Forward the Original Title‘$2M Vanished in 45 Days: A Crypto OG’s Darkest Hour and Declaration of Rebirth’

1. Contract on Hype

I lost more than 2,000 Ethereum and 100 BTC when doing contracts in 2018. That painful experience made me secretly vow to myself: aside from hedging, I would never touch contracts again.

By the end of the year, Hyperliquid was booming. I entered at 5wu, made 10wu, and became convinced that Hype was one of the few true innovations in this cycle. I believed it would continue eating away at CEX market share, so I made the bold decision to go heavy on Hype at around $20.

However, since Hype itself is a contract platform, investing in it violated my personal rule of not touching contracts. Still, I wanted to experience more of Hype’s features, so I decided to use 3x leverage while setting unlimited margin. In the end, I put $1M in margin on the contract platform—unknowingly planting the seeds for a massive future loss.

Back in 2018, when I swore to “never touch contracts again,” I never could have imagined that in 2025, I would personally break that promise on Hyperliquid.

A sweet start turning $50K into $100K. A crazy high-conviction decision to go all-in at $20. A fatal move of $1M in margin with 3x leverage… Behind these numbers whispered the devil’s voice: “This time, it’s really different.”

2. AI Agent

Yes, I missed out on the AI agent rally—and ended up buying the top.

I didn’t go all-in, but as I mentioned earlier, I had $1M locked in Hype contracts. I decided to chase AI agent with $200K in a leveraged position. Compared to my Hype position, it felt relatively small—but I still underestimated the power of leverage.

Eventually, I FOMO’d into Virtual and AI6Z at their peak. At first, the price drop didn’t bother me much—after all, market sentiment and narratives were still strong. But then, things took a turn for the worse. Trump’s market impact started sucking liquidity away, and Deepseek’s surge in U.S. AI stocks further disrupted the crypto AI agent sector. Faith in AI agents within the crypto space collapsed. I cut my losses, but with less than $200K margin left, I still ended up losing over $800K.

When I spent $200,000 chasing the AI ​​agent, I made the worst mistake a veteran should make:Use the lever as a magnifying glass, but forget that it is also a distorting mirror.When Deepseek raided the U.S. stock market, my position collapsed in the distortion, and $800,000 evaporated faster than the bearish news spread.

Seven years later, I tripped over contracts once again.

3. Meme

I realized early on how crucial meme coins would be in this cycle, so I worked hard to build my own toolkit—on-chain monitoring, smart money tracking, and rapid buy execution. But in the end, things didn’t turn out as expected. All my efforts seemed like a cruel joke.

I’ll just highlight a few key moments:

1）Pnut

I closely followed and heavily invested in Pnut, which at its peak made me $1M. But it was also from Pnut that things started to spiral. The quick profits made me more aggressive, increasing my risk appetite. In the past, I would never allocate such a large portion of my capital to altcoins.

In a way, Pnut’s success played a huge role in my overall massive drawdown this cycle.

“$1M in profits was just sugar-coated poison—it made me forget the golden rule of altcoins: always size lightly.”

2）Trump

We built custom monitoring tools, tracked whales and influencers, and stayed ahead of smart money moves. But none of that could stop me from sleeping at 3 AM in the European time zone.

Given how aggressively I was investing at the time, 90% of the wallets I tracked ended up hitting big. If I had followed through, throwing in a few hundred K could have easily turned into $10M.

But being in Europe meant that I was among those who monitored the markets 20 hours a day but fell asleep right before Trump pumped. With my risk-taking mindset and my suite of monitoring tools, I can confidently say: I missed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

The next morning, besides waking up full of regret, something even more significant happened in real life—I was in the delivery room, welcoming my child into the world.

Then disaster struck. While I was overwhelmed in the hospital, I checked my phone in the restroom and saw that Trump’s wife launched a token, causing Trump to flash crash. Since the inauguration hadn’t happened yet, I saw the 40% drop as a buying opportunity. I immediately sold a bunch of altcoins and aped into Trump at $50 with $400K.

Then, with my newborn arriving, I barely had 2-3 days to think about or manage my positions - including my leveraged AI agent tokens and my high-entry Trump tokens.

The result? A devastating loss.

When my child’s first cry collided with a 40% Trump token crash, for the first time in my life, I truly understood what it meant to be “double-killed by fate.”

3) Argentine President

After the massive drawdown from Trump, I was already filled with regret. Theoretically, I had missed out on $10M, only to follow it up with devastating losses in altcoins. I finally made up my mind to cut my losses and exit the market, planning to take a break and reset my mental state.

But fate had other plans. Just as I was about to step away, the Argentine president launched a token—and I spotted it immediately.

This time, I was awake. This time, I got in within 10 minutes of launch. “This is my moment,” I told myself.

I didn’t have enough funds in my wallet, so I withdrew from CEX, which took another 10 minutes. After a few additional buys, I aped in with 200K USDT at an average price of $3.

Feeling confident, I even called my trading friends in Europe, the U.S., and China to let them in on the play. (What a clown move.)

While keeping an eye on news updates, I double-checked the token’s legitimacy. I thought, “Trump’s token only has a $20B market cap, so this one might not have outsized returns… but at least I got in early.”

Profits quickly hit +50%. My finger hovered over the sell 75% button, ready to secure a win. But then—I noticed the 10% transaction tax. By the time I triple-checked everything, the price had already started falling.

The selling window was too short. At $2, I saw reports that the dev was adding liquidity while dumping. But I convinced myself that as long as the president actually launched the token, there would eventually be a bounce, and I could exit with smaller losses.

Then came the freefall—and the inevitable rug pull. We all know what happened next. By the time it was over, I had lost 80% of my position. Exhausted, I collapsed into bed at 5 AM, completely drained. If I didn’t sleep, I was going to drop dead.

That $200K bet on the Argentine president’s token became the most expensive alarm clock of my life—It taught me that the 5 AM sun never shines on a rug pull’s aftermath.

Final Words

“Every ‘get-rich-quick secret’ is secretly marked with a time zone—and you will always be in the wrong one.”

No matter how much preparation you do, making big money still requires a little bit of luck.

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