That year, I failed to replicate any get-rich-quick myths, and instead became the most real "counterexample"in the crypto.
Written by: Ruibao, Foresight News
One summer evening two years ago, a friend parked a brand-new Tesla downstairs and honked the horn in a showy manner.
Like me, he hadn't been in the crypto for long, but he was full of enthusiasm, with a "I'm in my own hands, not in the heavens" kind of attitude. I hurried downstairs, and when he saw me, he didn't say much, just casually handed me the keys: "Want to give it a try?"
I circled the car, my heart itching with envy, but I kept my composure, saying, "Where did you get this huge sum of money? Are you trying to scam yourself?"
He glanced at me, gestured for me to get in the car, and after circling the river a few times, he started talking: "Finally won! I made a little bit of money last month from the Meme contest, I have to reward myself."
Looking at that brand-new Tesla, at that moment, the flame of getting rich in my heart was completely ignited.
At that time, the Meme coin craze on the Solana chain was at its peak. Every day, you could see new stories of getting rich quick by scrolling through Twitter: some people poured in thousands of dollars and came out with more than one zero at the end of their account; some people stayed up all night watching the market and earned several years' worth of wages in a week.
As a member of Generation Z, I've only been working for a short time, and I have tens of thousands of yuan in savings in my bank account. Looking at these stories, I have only one thought in my mind: what others can do, I can do too.
So, with that money in hand, I plunged headlong into this tempting hunting ground. From Meme coins to BTC dollar-cost averaging, from high-leverage contracts to Altcoin, I tried every mainstream strategy on the market.
By the Spring Festival of 2026, I was curled up on the sofa refreshing the market page: BTC price was $69,912, a 33% loss from a year of fixed-amount investment.
That year, I failed to replicate any get-rich-quick myths; instead, I became the most real "counterexample"in the crypto.
If getting rich quick requires seizing the right opportunity, then "not getting rich quick" is a more profound skill—you need to precisely skip every opportunity.
The following are examples of "easy targets" I've encountered throughout the year. They are for reference only; please do not attempt to imitate them.
By chasing Meme coin, I precisely hit all the tricks of the trade.
When I first entered the crypto, I scoffed at the concept of the "attention economy." I always felt that any asset should be backed by real value—this was my most basic understanding of "money" as an ordinary person.
But when my friend's new car, earned from playing memes, was actually parked in front of me, I wavered.
I began to convince myself: in the face of trends, personal obsessions are worthless. Some things, even if you don't understand the logic behind them, can still make others money; and if you don't participate, you can only become a bystander. Rather than standing on the sidelines as a critic, it's better to enter the game and become a participant.
To replicate my friend's "luck," I spent two whole days researching various "buy" tools: how to set up alerts on GMGN... I even created an Excel spreadsheet to record the contract address, Twitter followers, and number of holding addresses for each new meme...
I thought I was ready.
Then came my "opening bad luck"—Trump.
That was a classic example of irrational speculation. I stared at the candlestick chart, my heart pounding with the price: I entered the market with a market capitalization of $1.3 billion, panicked when it rose to $1.5 billion, and hastily sold; I chased it at $1.7 billion, and sold it again at $1.8 billion, consuming my principal in the repeated back-and-forth; finally, I went cross margin in at the peak of $7.8 billion—and then I never came out again.
Looking back, I only learned how to "buy," but never thought about when to "sell." I was like a cat chasing its own tail, thinking that as long as I ran fast enough, I could catch that tail called "wealth."
Later I realized that this kind of haphazard participation was essentially just providing liquidity to the market—to put it nicely, it was a unique contribution to the industry.
The most agonizing night: with 15x leverage, I stayed up until dawn.
After being educated by the meme market, I turned my attention to contracts.
Actually, I've heard the phrase "contracts are the devil" at least twenty times. Experienced investors in the group earnestly warn: never touch contracts, they're a "shortcut" to zero.
But greed will find its own reasons. My thinking is: volatility brings profits, and profits come with risks. Those who get wiped out simply didn't know how to manage their positions. I'm definitely more rational than them.
So I focused on Altcoin contracts, leveraging them to 15 to 20 times. My mindset was complicated: if I opened with a low leverage, I felt the profits would be too slow; if I opened with a high leverage, I was afraid of being liquidated. In the end, I chose a middle value, comforting myself that this was called "balancing risk."
It wasn't until that one all-nighter that I truly woke up.
Around 10 PM, I casually opened a long position in an Altcoin with 15x leverage. The price rose slightly for the first half hour, and I lay in bed, happily calculating: another 5% increase and I could buy a new phone.
The next second, the price of the coin began to plummet.
The red loss figures kept jumping, and the margin call price was getting closer and closer. I stared at the ceiling, unable to sleep. My phone screen lit up and dimmed, lit up and dimmed again; I refreshed the market every 30 seconds. But the candlestick chart never changed according to my subjective will; it just coldly and indifferently approached my margin call line, centimeter by centimeter.
It's 3 a.m. and I'm still scrolling through it.
At 5 a.m., as dawn approached, I stared at the remaining 30% margin on the screen and finally realized something: rather than watching my principal shrink, it's better to cut my losses and leave. At least I'll have something left and be able to sleep soundly.
The moment I clicked "close position," nearly half the money in my account disappeared. But strangely, I felt inexplicably relieved. That night, I finally slept soundly.
After that, I started teaching myself technical analysis. I looked at candlestick patterns, studied MACD and RSI indicators, watched tutorials, and asked friends, trying to find patterns in the market. Progress was indeed made: even with dramatic price fluctuations, I was no longer swayed by small swings as I had been before.
More importantly, I learned to reduce leverage. By using 3 to 5 times leverage to cover volatility and weather market manipulation. That's when I truly understood: contracts are never the devil; the real devil is the squeeze on tolerable volatility caused by high leverage.
Tools themselves are neither good nor bad. But if you lack self-control and blindly pursue high returns, even the best tool can become a knife that cuts your flesh.
It turns out that Altcoin really can go to zero.
If Meme coin made me lose money and futures contracts kept me up all night, then Altcoin showed me the cruelest side of the crypto.
A few days ago, I saw a data report from 2025: of the tokens issued that year, more than 85% ultimately ended up with negative returns, and a significant portion of them went completely to zero. This figure immediately brought me back to more than half a year ago.
At that time, I had a coin called Frag—not from a big project, just one I bought casually. Initially, I watched it steadily decline, dropping 20%, 30%, then 50% from my purchase price. Logically, I should have cut my losses, but a voice inside me kept saying, "Let's wait and see, what if it rebounds?"
When it dropped to 60%, I couldn't be bothered to look at it anymore. I thought: just consider it a lottery ticket, leave it as is, I only have 100 USDT left anyway, it doesn't matter if it goes to zero. Even on the day it plummeted 42% in a single day, I joked with my friend: "It's okay, if it goes to zero, consider it a treat for me to bubble tea."
I genuinely believed back then that "Altcoin going to zero" was just a joke in the crypto—even the worst coins have some residual value, right? They can't be completely worthless, can they?
Until one day I opened my wallet and found that the coin had been completely wiped out.
The project team absconded, and the liquidity disappeared. I stared at my wallet page for half a minute, refreshing it repeatedly, but all that remained was "zero".
Although the amount of money was small, it taught me one thing: to maintain a deep-seated awe for the market.
When market sentiment fades and major players exit, those Altcoin that have no real value and rely solely on hype will ultimately fall to their lowest point. What you perceive as the "bottom line" may just be a thin piece of ice on the edge of a cliff.
A year in the crypto, I didn't get rich overnight, but I did accumulate a few stepping stones.
In the summer of 2024, a friend's new car ignited my fantasies about the crypto. I entered the market with high expectations, always feeling that I could be one of the lucky ones.
During the Spring Festival of 2026, I nestled on the sofa, staring at the screen full of red loss figures, and finally realized my ordinariness: getting rich quick is not so easy.
But this year wasn't all losses. If we had to pinpoint what we gained, it would probably be these few "stepping stones":
First, always respect the market and never challenge it with your own understanding.
I rashly entered the Meme coin market out of envy for my friend's new car, and blindly followed the "dollar-cost averaging" strategy, only to be severely punished by the market. The market doesn't care about your reasons; it only tells you the answer with the numbers.
Second, for any investment, you must think clearly about "when to sell".
Buying is just the beginning of investing; selling is the key to determining profit or loss. All the losses this year were essentially due to my failure to establish my own profit-taking and stop-loss rules. Buying based on following trends, selling based on emotions, and operating on gut feeling will ultimately only lead to more losses than gains.
Third, tools are neither good nor bad; it is human nature that is greedy. Learning to restrain oneself is the key to winning.
Contracts aren't the devil; the greed of high leverage is. Dollar-cost averaging isn't a get-rich-quick strategy; the obsession with sticking to the rules is. Tools are just tools; the person using them determines the outcome.
Fourth, cherish your cash flow and your resources.
Stories of overnight riches in the crypto are always a minority. No matter how much the numbers on the exchange fluctuate, they will eventually return to real life—that bowl of rice, that bottle of water, that pack of tissues are all real things in life.
Yesterday afternoon, I was curled up on the sofa with my phone screen still lit up with market information.
My mom poked her head out from the kitchen: "We're having dumplings tonight, with chives and eggs."
I paused for a moment, almost reflexively replying with "leeks"—that's a sensitive word for me now.
But I didn't say it. I just turned off the stock trading app, got up, and went into the kitchen.
The numbers on the exchange were still fluctuating. But at this moment, all I wanted was to help my mom make some dumplings.
