At 5 AM, my phone vibrated continuously, waking me up.

Upon opening it, I saw that Bitcoin had dropped below 105,000, and ETH below 3,600, the entire screen was blood red.

I silently closed the trading software—my account was down another 800,000. But did you know? This has already been the seventh time in ten years of trading that I've experienced an 'epic crash'.

In that crazy summer of 2017, I clearly remember trading 3 BTC for altcoins that increased 120 times within a week, my account balance skyrocketing from 60,000 to 7,200,000.

At that time, I thought I was a genius and posted in my circle, 'One day in the crypto world is a year in the human world.' Looking back now, that was just foolish talk induced by the bull market.

The experience gained from ten years of pitfalls is actually quite simple:

First, never go all in. At my peak, I held 97% of my portfolio in LUNA, and that wave last May took away 3 million directly. Now my iron rule is to not exceed 20% in a single cryptocurrency.

Second, setting stop losses should be as natural as breathing. Before last night's crash, I had a stop loss order set at BTC 110,000. Although I still lost, it was less painful than holding on stubbornly.

Third, don’t believe the nonsense that 'holding will turn things around'. The EOS I stubbornly held onto in 2018 didn’t even break even at the peak of the bull market in 2021. Timely cutting losses and switching tracks is the survival rule.

Looking at all the messages in the group this morning about 'buying the dip' and 'leveraging', I suddenly remembered the days ten years ago when I first entered the space, eating instant noodles in a rented room while analyzing candlestick charts.

Back then, losing 5,000 felt painful enough to keep me awake at night; now, with account fluctuations of hundreds of thousands, I’ve grown numb.

The cruelest part of the crypto world isn’t losing money but rather the dreams it builds for you first. I remember in November 2021, my account net worth once exceeded 20 million, and I felt financial freedom was within reach.

Now, there’s still a printed screenshot of that account on the wall of my study, next to a note I wrote after the liquidation last year: 'The market is always smarter than you.'

If you are also looking through a broken account today, remember this: the ones who get rich trading cryptocurrencies are always a survivor bias, and the survivors who last have all learned to be fearful when others are greedy and to survive when others are fearful.