After eight years in the crypto world, I've bought three life-saving lessons with real money.

The story starts in 2018. In that cramped rental room in Shenzhen, I stared at the numbers flashing on the screen—my initial 300,000 yuan riding Bitcoin’s wild surge, almost hitting 3 million. Back then, I thought I was chosen by fate and my turnaround was just around the corner.

But what happened? Three days. In just three days, the market taught me a lesson. That Christmas Eve, my account balance froze at just under 600,000. I naively thought, "Just wait a bit and I'll break even," but the losses just kept piling up.

After being battered around for eight years, I’ve summed up three survival rules:

**Rule One: The less you touch leverage, the better.**
I’ve experienced the thrill of making 400,000 in a day with 20x leverage. But during the "519" crash, I also felt the pain of losing 600,000 in just two hours. Now, I’ve set a rule for myself—never more than 3x leverage, and each coin position stays under 5% of my portfolio. It’s okay to earn slower, at least I can sleep at night.

**Rule Two: Don’t sell dreams based on thin air.**
Back then, I went all-in on a so-called "Chinese Ethereum" project. My 250,000 principal shot up to 1.5 million. But greed got the best of me—I didn’t cash out, and watched it crash to nearly zero. Now, 85% of my money is in mainstream coins like Bitcoin and Ethereum, and only 15% goes into altcoins, just for fun.

**Rule Three: A stop-loss is the last shred of dignity you have.**
Every trade I make has an 8% stop-loss, and if it hits, I exit immediately—no hesitation. Want to double your money? First ask yourself if you can calmly eat hotpot after your account hits zero. There are endless opportunities in crypto, but you have to keep your capital to wait for them.

I crawled out from the wreckage of the crypto world—these lessons were paid for with hard cash. The market shows no mercy to anyone, but at least we can get a little smarter.