The crypto world is brutal, but the truth is even more brutal.

Every year, tens of thousands of people rush into the market, dreaming of achieving financial freedom through trading. But the reality is that only one in a hundred can survive more than three years in this industry. Why do most people see their accounts wiped out within half a year and end up sheepishly going back to work?

The answer is very painful: they haven't even passed the basic three hurdles and have hastily quit.

**First hurdle: Establishing a stable profit model**

Many believe that full-time trading means watching candlestick charts every day, buying and selling. This idea is completely wrong. Those who truly work in this field, fundamentally, are no different from entrepreneurs. You need a trading system that has been tested by the market and can generate consistent profits.

What is a system? It means that whether you use trend following, swing trading, or value investing, this logic must be self-consistent. Every opening and closing of a position should have a clear reason, and over the long term, it should outperform the market benchmark.

I've asked many novice traders: "What is your trading system?" The basic answer is: "Buy when the trend looks good, sell when there are signals of decline," or "Follow a big influencer's operations." That’s not a system; that’s gambling. The difference between gambling and trading is that the former relies on probability betting, while the latter relies on a systematic approach.

A trading model capable of supporting full-time work must meet at least two points:

**Experience through a complete market cycle** — not just making money in this round of the market, but surviving the previous downturn as well. Everyone can make money in a bull market; even pigs can fly. The real skill is controlling losses during a bear market and maintaining the effectiveness of your system.

**Reproducible and backtestable** — your method must be written into specific rules, capable of being backtested against historical data, and allow others to replicate step-by-step. If it’s just "feelings" and "intuition," then it’s not a reliable system.

**Second hurdle: Capital management and psychological resilience**

No matter how good your trading system is, if you don’t understand capital allocation and risk control, you will eventually fail. Full-time trading involves daily volatility and account drawdowns, which create psychological pressure beyond what most people can imagine.

Many people have made money but collapse after a big loss, gambling everything and ending up back at square one overnight. This isn’t because the system is bad; it’s because their mindset exploded.

**Third hurdle: Continuous learning and strategy iteration**

Markets are changing, and trends are evolving. If your trading system remains unchanged for five years, you are destined to be eliminated by the market. Full-time traders must constantly optimize their methods, study new market structures, and stay competitive.

These three hurdles sound simple, but in reality, only a tiny fraction of people can truly achieve them.