Editor's Note: The article describes the experiences and thought processes of a cryptocurrency trader during a period of extreme market volatility. He went through multiple losses, margin calls, and poor trading decisions, even having to sell personal items to make ends meet. Through repeated failures, the author gradually recognized the importance of skills and risk management. However, market manipulation and the COVID crash plunged him into crisis once again. Although he ultimately achieved his financial goals, he deeply felt that the market not only changed his financial situation, but also completely reshaped his mentality and soul.
The following is the original content (edited for easier reading):
That year, I checked my phone to find the media reporting the demise of Bit mining. After holding firm for eight months, the price of Bit finally broke below the $6,000 support level. The price slid below $5,000, and with each drop, my fear began to intensify. The once-reassuring strong support level - now just an illusion - was finally starting to crumble.
I opened my Altcoin portfolio - it had already fallen about 92% from its January high. I stared at the screen, feeling a tightness in my chest. The once-green portfolio was now a sea of red. My stomach twisted with fear.
A few months earlier, I had bought a house, and with each market downturn, the heavy mortgage payments made it harder for me to breathe. I had already been selling positions at a loss to cover these payments, convincing myself it was okay because the bull market would return.
That was the plan - to weather the storm, make enough money, and then buy more houses when the market turned around. But things didn't go as planned. The plan seemed to have failed. The storm wasn't passing - it was consuming me. That's when I realized the market doesn't care about your plans. It doesn't care if you have bills to pay or dreams to chase. It operates on its own terms, and the more you try to force it, the more it will make you submit.
I was driving back to my hometown, an eight-hour journey, but my mind was not there. My body was driving, but my thoughts were trapped in the cryptocurrency market, unable to break free.
The road ahead became blurred in my mind, my thoughts swirling. Every few minutes, I would check the prices, hoping to see some upward movement - any sign that could calm the storm within me. But the numbers just kept falling. My throat was dry, and the uncertainty was gnawing at me.
What if this is the end?
What if I can't recover?
What if I can't pay the bills?
The future suddenly became a giant question mark, and I had no answers. That drive made me realize that fear can cloud your judgment. The longer you sit in uncertainty, the more you become a prisoner of your own anxiety. And when you trade out of fear, you're no longer trading - you're just reacting.
My brain, desperate to escape this suffocating uncertainty, began to play tricks on me. It gave me a plan - irrational, but compelling. A voice in my head whispered: Sell all your Altcoins and buy Holo (HOT). It's bucking the trend and gaining popularity.
Despite the overall price weakness, HOT was showing strong growth momentum. It was a cheap, low-market-cap coin, and everyone on Twitter was talking about it. Such coins are the path to 100x gains - I had seen it before.
My heart raced with hope. Maybe this was the opportunity. Maybe I could still turn things around. I convinced myself this was the answer. I fantasized about HOT skyrocketing, my portfolio multiplying 5x from the lows, and me being back in the game. This was enough to make me cling to it. The hope of a dopamine rush for the future made me feel alive again. But hope is not a strategy.
It's a drug that blinds you to reality. I bought HOT because I wanted to believe, not because it was a rational trade. What I wanted was redemption, not returns.
But my brain didn't fully believe in this decision - I just hadn't realized it yet. It wasn't until I found myself selling the position less than six hours later that I understood. Bit dropped again, and fear made me weak. I sold HOT, losing even more money. A few days later, HOT surged as I had hoped - reaching 5x. But by then, I had already converted everything to BTC and transferred it to Nexo.
I was desperate. I used my held BTC to borrow more money and tried to buy the dips on BitMEX futures. This operation made me realize that changing plans mid-trade is just disguised panic. You convince yourself you're being flexible, but you're just spinning in fear.
At the time, Bit was hovering around $4,000. Everyone started shouting "the bottom is in." Twitter was flooded with "generational buy" tweets. I clung to this hope. But the bottom didn't come. The price slid towards $3,000. My long position was liquidated, and suddenly, the fear was no longer distant - it was at my throat.
I felt the color drain from my face. My BTC collateral on Nexo was in jeopardy. Thinking about potentially losing the collateral, my hands turned cold. I couldn't lose everything. So, I used the remaining BTC to pay off the loan, licking my wounds. I was now BTC-deficient, and the market had stripped me of all rationality. My brain didn't tell me to leave, but instead told me to double down. Revenge trading became my new religion.
So, I borrowed a $10,000 instant loan and bought in at the absolute bottom of $3,300. This was my last chance. The plan was clear: hold the BTC for 12 months. Just hold. I was convinced it would reach $10,000, giving me a 3x return. But in less than a few hours, I abandoned this plan. I couldn't sit still. The desperation to quickly recoup my losses overwhelmed the patience I needed.
I put all 3 of my BTC into BitMEX, opening a 10x leveraged long position at $3,500. The market didn't care about my hopes. The price fell again. I lost everything. That's when I realized you can't take shortcuts to recover losses. No amount of leverage or doubling down can make up for your mistakes. It only makes you fall faster.
My brain refused to accept the losses. It kept pushing me to trade. You can still make it back. This was the voice in my head. During that time, every trade I made on BitMEX was with 10x leverage. I thought this was low - because Twitter had reshaped my perception.
People were posting screenshots of 50-100x leverage trades, making 10x look like a "safe bet." I painfully realized that perception is a dangerous illusion. Just because 10x is lower than 50x doesn't mean it's safe - it just slows down the bleeding.
When I switched to cross margin leverage, I had no idea how to mitigate the risks. I put 100% of my funds into every trade. Each time, I was liquidated. Each time, I cursed that cross margin leverage was a scam. Later, I realized that it was just my lack of knowledge - I didn't know how to manage the risks. That's when I understood that ignorance was the real scam, not the platform - it was my recklessness.
I was losing money every day. I started selling personal items just to get through the next few weeks. My life was being consumed by the losses. Then one day, when I was empty-handed and hope was fading, I made a decision - I needed to seriously learn technical analysis (TA). I spent several nights studying charts, patterns, and indicators.
I barely slept. But knowledge alone was not enough - I needed capital to trade. So, I joined the global trading competition hosted by Blockchain Whispers. The top trader with the highest ROI within a month would win 1 BTC. Although it was mainly simulated trading, I treated it as a matter of life and death.
My mind was razor-sharp. I executed each trade with sniper-like precision. Within a month, I turned the starting capital into 13 times, winning the 1 BTC prize. Skills are the only thing that can truly give you an advantage. Luck runs out, but skills don't.
That 1 BTC gave me a sigh of relief. I could finally breathe. A few weeks later, I needed to pay around $30,000 for my house, and that gave me a chance to fight. I used that 1 BTC to make a lot of trades.
The market started to trend upwards again. I traded EOSBTC and made several BTC during its rally. I used those profits to pay off the remaining house payments. By early 2019, I was back in the game.
I felt invincible. The winning streak gave me an intangible confidence. I convinced myself that I was now an excellent futures trader. The losses that had once haunted me gradually faded into the background. I had paid off those seemingly impossible debts.
Then, Bitcoin surged 40% in two days. My heart raced - I thought the ATH was inevitable. But it was all a trap. The market crashed back to $6,000. Manipulation reached its peak. BitMEX was liquidating users daily through "system errors" - I probably lost at least 20 BTC due to those "errors" that froze the platform during high volatility, preventing me from closing my positions.
BitMEX was manipulating the market. We all knew it, but we tolerated it - we had no choice. Binance Futures wasn't there yet. When Binance finally launched futures, we all migrated there. The user experience was better, but manipulation still existed. Trading volume declined, and the timeline became blurry. The market entered a dormant period.
Then came the epic crash, where BTC lost 40% of its value overnight. It destroyed countless Altcoin traders. Most never came back.
I also planned to leave. I even left for a while. I spent a few months as a filmmaker. I made a documentary that won acclaim, and I also wrote a film script. I wanted to direct it, but no one was willing to fund a newcomer.
So, I returned to the Altcoin market. Not for the thrill, but for the money. To make my film. I had no choice. It took me four years to finally earn enough to realize my dream. Four years of market cycles, endless patience, and the experiences that had tormented me, reshaped me, and tested every ounce of my resilience.
I succeeded. But I'm no longer the same trader I used to be.
The market not only took my money, but it also reshaped my soul.
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