By the end of 2016, I only had 50,000 yuan left. I was glued to the exchange interface every day back then, smoked almost three packs in a week, and was even more anxious than waiting for my college entrance exam results—because this was all the money I could actually use. In the end, I went all in and bought 8 bitcoins at a cost of just over 6,000 each.

The following year, the market suddenly took off. Bitcoin rose seventeenfold over the year, and when my account balance shot up to 800,000, I was so excited I couldn’t sleep for days. I’d stare at the candlestick charts in the middle of the night, grinning like an idiot, even starting to plan which seaside city to retire in. At that time, I really thought financial freedom was within reach.

But in 2018, the market cooled. My account lost 70% on paper, dropping to 180,000. That night, I just stared at my computer’s black screen, feeling like someone had poured a bucket of cold water over me—unrealized profits mean nothing; what’s in your pocket is what counts. That was the toughest lesson the market ever taught me.

Starting in 2020, I ditched that buy-high-sell-low strategy and switched to studying mining and the DeFi ecosystem, diving into it for three years. Now, my account steadily sits at 3 million. Even if major assets drop from 120,000 to 90,000, and altcoins get slashed in half, I never lose my cool—because the principles I’ve summed up from eight years of ups and downs have already built me a safety net.

Today I want to share something real—lessons learned in blood and tears that can help you avoid a lot of pitfalls:

Rule #1: Your principal is more important than anything. As long as you still have money in hand, you’ll never run out of opportunities.

I’ve always believed in “staying alive”