After April 14th, I hadn't checked the market for two days and felt disheartened. Then I thought to myself, I've already lost so much, if I don't open it, how can I recover the losses? I still have to continue. I looked at the Ethereum price at that time, which was 3020, not too high. It seemed like Sun also bought Ethereum, so I decided to follow suit. After buying in, I didn't look at it again and purchased 40,000 in spot.
A few days later, it started to rise, reaching over 3300 at its peak, with floating profits already in the thousands. I didn't sell, thinking it could go higher, so I decided to hold it for now and continued to look for various materials and trading books to find the 'holy grail.'
After a few days, I looked back and found that the profits had almost all retreated, feeling it was too hard to hold, so I sold at 3080. After selling, it shot back up, so I 'turned back' to buy at market price 3150, then changed positions, and ended up with a higher price. I could only hope it wouldn't drop, thinking positively, but within a few days, it dropped to 3050. I was really uncomfortable, feeling like I couldn't cut losses or leave, so I started averaging down at 2990, raising my holding cost to 3050, but the price kept dropping. I've already chosen to lie flat and let it go.
During this time, my mom suddenly vomited one night. We had all eaten the same food, and I felt it shouldn’t be food-related. I measured her blood pressure, and it was abnormally high. I always felt uneasy, so the next day I went to the nearest Fifth Hospital for examination. When I went for the check, they did a CT and MRI, and nothing seemed abnormal, but the reason for the high blood pressure couldn't be explained. Then they started doing enhanced CT and MRI, and upon further testing, there were signs of a slight enhancement, but they couldn’t confirm the cause, only saying it was suspected glioma. This made me very uncomfortable; I couldn't do a biopsy, so I scheduled a PET CT and MRI at Qianfoshan. After a whole set of appointments and checks, the results were already bad, showing significant enhancements in both the pancreas and brain, perhaps due to pancreatic adhesion or other hyperplasia, but the enhancement in the brain was basically diagnosed as glioma. I couldn't tell my mom, so I took the films to the provincial hospital to make an appointment with an expert, and I nearly got into a fight with that expert in the hospital.
Expert: This is very bad, extremely bad (looking at the ordinary MRI report). We don't recognize your PET MRI...
I: What should we do then?
Expert: I recommend immediate hospitalization and urgent surgery and radiotherapy intervention.
I: The patient still has no symptoms now; if they undergo surgery and then radiotherapy, they won't have a good day to live.
Expert: Looking at you, anyway, at this position, the hope of doing it is not great, but not doing it will definitely be worse.
I: Do you have any other suggestions?
Expert: If you don’t have surgery, I have no other suggestions.
I: $#%^%$%^&!!
My wife: Sorry, Director, we will discuss it ourselves.
This expert's 500 is just like a gust of wind blowing in. My wife went downstairs and told me I shouldn't have argued with that doctor. I knew in my heart that I shouldn't have had a bad attitude towards him, but I really couldn't accept it at that time. I was already very upset, spending 500 to register was not to hear him say these things.
After leaving the provincial hospital, I sat in that small park and started wiping my tears, feeling that my mom had never hurt anyone in her life and had never harmed anyone. How could such a good little old lady get such a disease? At least let it be something treatable; what do I choose? Any choice feels wrong.
Now for treatment, most likely it will be on a hospital bed until death, without a good day to live, and I can't go home anymore. Now, not treating, maybe enjoying each day before the first illness is a better choice, but there’s a fear of delaying the condition.
My wife suggested asking someone in Beijing, and then I started coordinating relationships, finding an old expert over at the Temple of Heaven, sending over all the digital versions of the films. They asked if there were any symptoms; I said I vomited once, no other signs. The old expert said it was not advisable to operate, as the location was bad. Conservative treatment would be better since there are no early cases, and it cannot be confirmed how long it has been. If it has been many years, it might not grow again, but blood pressure medication still needs to be taken.
I bought some blood pressure medication back home, keeping it from my mom, telling her that her blood pressure was high and she had to pay attention to taking her medicine. Although she promised to take it on time, she still didn't take it, complaining it made her mouth bitter after eating.
But then there were no more signs, so I didn't continue to check on her. I just couldn't sleep well every night, always worrying about this, which tortured me to the point of staying up late. During that time, I completely lost direction in quantification. I just read books, reviewed, then looked again, and reviewed again. Every weekend, I would take my mom and my in-laws for outings nearby because I didn't know when she would fall ill again. I hoped she could walk more and have fun while she was still in good health. Ethereum took me on a rollercoaster ride again at that time, but because of my mom's check-up, I had no mood to care if it rose or fell.
At that time, I was already using the plaza more, mostly to see what others were posting, to see if there were any strategies I didn't know about, hoping to get some guidance from the big shots. But going back and forth, besides family members, it was just some who followed me to take the big profits. Just my family members, the rebates tied me up with discounts. Otherwise, it was just cursing about some tokens dropping hard, with no valuable content. After seeing so much, I also joined in the complaints; it was quite interesting, but I had lost hope in the plaza.
By the end of April, I wanted to take my mom to Beijing to watch the flag-raising and also to let her have more fun in Beijing, so I asked the child for two days off, leaving a day earlier and returning a day later, missing the peak period of May 1.
On May 1st, the market started to recover, and I was in a good mood seeing my losses reducing, gradually floating in profit. But on May 2nd, it started dropping again. On May 3rd, I was at Universal Studios with my child on the Transformers ride; when I went up, I was still up 2300, but when I came down, it turned into a loss of 4500. By 7 PM that evening, I was close to a 6000 loss. While eating grilled skewers at the guesthouse, I was watching the market. If I had followed the strategy I learned later, I would have seen the 2890 as the bottom, and my spot positions were already full; I should have gone directly to coin-based, taking positions first before anything else, and then opened 1/3 of the Ethereum-based and Bitcoin-based positions.
Later on, I was wandering around Beijing, visiting the Forbidden City, the Old Summer Palace, and Tsinghua University. It was interesting; when I used to do business, I came to Beijing for meetings more than 50 times, but I had never walked through the streets and alleys like this, always coming and going in a hurry.
Later on the way back, I was still thinking that in the summer, I would take my mom to Jiangsu, Shanghai, and Zhejiang for a trip.
Time quickly reached mid-May, and at that time, the news about ETF was already being hyped. Whether to trade or not was set aside; Ethereum's pattern had already sustained a high for four hours, but due to the previous month’s downward trend, the plaza had grown used to shorting Ethereum on every rebound. Moreover, it seemed there were messages saying Ethereum's 194b would be delayed, which made people even less optimistic about it. But that pattern indeed did not support continuing to short, so I started posting in the plaza, saying that if you really didn't want to go long, you could skip it, but best not to short in these two days, and the same for Bitcoin, it would be best not to short.
As a result, I received a lot of curses, the two most memorable were: 'I got liquidated at over 3700, if he can rise 700 points in one night, let me see.' And another: 'Bitcoin, if you can rise 6000 points tonight, let me see.'
Because these two were prophetic in their words, I remember them very clearly. As for those curses, I can't recall, but they were basically along the lines of: 'This is the fantasy of a long position trapped in a loss just before death; only idiots go long on Ethereum,' and similar sentiments, but I’ve long since forgotten the specifics.
That night, or maybe it was the next morning, I can't remember; I woke up around 9 AM, opened my phone, and I was shocked to see I had 'broken even.' Overnight, my principal from just over 50,000 had returned to 63,000. I was simply incredulous. I thought Binance had frozen, refreshing several times. Then I looked at the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum and was stunned... it really shot up...
First ecstatic, then worried that he would follow the old path of the Bitcoin ETF and drop down. He lingered around 3700-3800 all day, and by the evening opening, continued to push up, directly reaching over 3800. I wanted to set a stop-loss, but I set it wrong, changing the market price in the limit order, and because the price was below the current price, my position was closed immediately after I set it... I asked around in the plaza about why it triggered a market closure (don't laugh, I usually didn't set stop-losses in my trades). But when the position is gone, it's gone, I can only comfort myself that securing profits is also good... After a while, I saw a huge spike, directly from around 3900 down to over 3500, which made me very happy. I thought this could be a 'blessing in disguise.' Just when I was happy, I saw the price rapidly rebound and even exceeded my closing price, and at that moment I regretted not having taken that spike at over 3500, my good mood turned sour like eating a fly.
Trading is always like this; it’s hard not to feel anxious and excited, so it's inherently counterintuitive.
After this period of early prediction of Ethereum's unilateral rise, it greatly boosted my trading confidence. It might also be said that during my frantic search for strategies and attempts at various combinations, I was growing up without realizing it.
After that, I kept doing manual trading. Within a week, my capital returned to 68,000, but the market was stuck in a boring trend, not moving... At that time, the plaza actually had over 500 fans, and someone suggested we create a QQ group. Since I was also quite bored, I went ahead and created it. About thirty to forty people joined the group over time.
At that time, I only traded the four giants with small positions for some short-term intraday trades, waiting for the next big market opportunity. But after nearly a week of sideways movement, I really couldn’t find any trading opportunities. The group frequently asked about various altcoins, and since I hadn’t done much research, I helped them look at the positions. Unexpectedly, the positions I saw often turned out to be effective, and those I thought had valid patterns quickly rose. During that time, I met @楓葉之道 in the group, and we started helping group friends look at positions, and I followed suit.
That month was a very happy time, every altcoin I found rose, and we enjoyed large gains across many altcoins, basically buying in and seeing around 10-15% rises in about a day. The most was People, which rose over 50% in two days, and the quickest was LUNC, which at around 5 PM was in a state about to launch, and by 7 PM, it shot up (one candle nearly 35%). At that time, no one in the group was losing money; everyone was filled with joy.
At that time, there was a group friend in the group, to protect the privacy of the parties involved, let's call him Lao Fang. He had seen a big V (with over 140,000 followers) on Zhihu showing off various trading skills and high profits, thinking that trading coins would be very profitable. He took out his hard-earned savings to partner with that big V to 'trade coins.' The strategy of that big V was quite interesting; profits were split 60/40, he took 60, and the investor took 40. In case of losses, he would cover 50%, but required you to recharge the same amount you lost; for example, if you invested 30,000 and lost 15,000, you would have to recharge 15,000, and he would also add 15,000 into your account to settle after each trade. At a glance, this seemed quite reasonable and had no issues. It's also rare to have a 50% coverage on losses, which seemed more reliable than signal teachers and trading instructors. He didn’t think too much and invested 300,000 (RMB) to try out, but unexpectedly, within a week, he lost it all... Then he recharged another 150,000 (RMB), and that big V indeed fulfilled his promise, recharging another 150,000 (RMB), which only increased Lao Fang's trust. Thus, he continued like this. In just a month, he experienced bottomless losses. By the time Lao Fang realized something was wrong, he had already lost 750,000. At this point, he asked that big V to cover the last loss of 150,000. He was done, which meant admitting a loss of 600,000. But that big V flatly rejected Lao Fang's request and inexplicably started mocking Lao Fang as 'brainless' and 'idiotic' for playing with coins. Then he blocked Lao Fang, and that made us feel something was definitely wrong, but at that time, we only felt awkward and didn’t understand where the problem lay.
Later, Lao Fang contacted that big V multiple times, but the big V refused to respond. He left messages on Zhihu and was immediately blocked. Private messages sank into silence, and phone calls went unanswered.
Logically, if we lost money, that big V lost money too; there’s really no reason to do this. It was my first time seeing such a situation, so I could only tell Lao Fang to try reporting it. After Lao Fang reported, unsurprisingly, they didn’t file a case, just understood the situation and left it at that. However, from the jurisdiction of that big V, we received some interesting information. This big V has reported 17 times over the past two years from other places, all the same situation as Lao Fang.
I have this feeling of suffering a silent loss, it's really frustrating and the more I think about it, the angrier I get.
Later, we thought of a bad idea. I said, if we go all out, you can directly contact 1818 Golden Eye. At first, Lao Fang hesitated because such things are embarrassing if they spread, but he was really unwilling to let that big V go free. At that time, he no longer hoped to recover any money, just wanted to see that big V receive some education.
I made an appointment with 1818 Golden Eye. Initially, they wouldn’t arrange for a recording of the program, but later devised a way to schedule it. On the day of the program broadcast, I told Lao Fang to buy advertising flow to hit the hot search, which would be more effective. Later, Lao Fang bought 4,000 in advertising flow, and I invested 300 in flow, choosing a weekend evening time for the push. It proved to be extremely effective.
Within a few days, the police station and the court contacted Lao Fang. After a few months of hearings, Lao Fang won the case...
During the court hearing, that big V had already lost the former glory, and the Zhihu account was directly banned for life. The verified real identity: a farmer. This farming is not in the broad sense of rural household registration but literally farming.
Yes, you read that right; he is indeed a farmer, with a few acres of tea trees. This guy is idle, has no skills, and wants to make quick money, so he got into this tricky game. The essence of this game is to rob Peter to pay Paul; he operates multiple accounts, opening longs on one side and shorts on the other. If correct, he takes 60%, and if lost, he covers 50%. In a 1:1 position, he always earns that 10%. As long as there are always new people coming in or the old ones don’t leave, the total funds can align, and this game can continue indefinitely. However, when losses occur, the losing side can only be topped up halfway, so a losing outcome is inevitable.
The process of him 'starting an account' is even more interesting; he copied all others' charts. Why didn't he edit the charts? Because he couldn't...
And those trading insights were also copied from others' content with some embellishments, relying on continuously posting this information to become a 'quality creator' on Zhihu and a trading big V.
Last year was just a civil economic dispute; this year, I don’t know if it’s because of the ongoing fallout from 1818, but that big V has been criminally charged. It seems that there were other people he deceived who found the Hangzhou police through this incident, and the amount is even larger...
So, dear friends, we are truly in a 'dark forest' where no one can be trusted, whether in trading or quantifying. This experience over the past few years has told me that unless there is a special reason, if someone knows just a little more than you, or has a slight edge in information, they will find ways to 'cut' you. If you don't want to be cut, we can only learn to do it ourselves. Relying on mountains will collapse and relying on water will flow away; only by growing ourselves can we survive in this circle in the long run.
Later, NOT went online, and I bought NOT at around 0.005, initially buying 2000 in spot. But it didn’t rise, so I reduced my position to half around 0.0051. After seeing it start to drop slowly, I further reduced my position by 500. Then it kept dropping, and I thought 500 was too much, so I reduced it to 250. Now looking back, it was indeed just 250. It quickly rose to 0.021, leaving me stunned. A few bullish candles shot up, the good news was that I bought in, but the bad news was that I could have made over 6,000, but because I reduced my position, I only made a few hundred. My mood was instantly like eating fly droppings.
But all positions have been closed, so I didn't look at it anymore.
By 8 PM, Lao Fang came to call me and said, 'Old Wang, look quickly, NOT has surged!' I said I know, but I already sold too early, what should I do? After a while, Lao Fang came again, saying 'Old Wang, look, it's still rising.' I checked, and it had already reached over 0.022 with a strong bullish candle; I thought it should be able to reach 0.025, so I told Lao Fang, how about we chase some? Let's buy less. I bought 5000, Lao Fang bought 2000, and we made money right away. In less than 3 minutes, we sold at 0.025 for profits. After taking profits, I found it was still rapidly pushing up, breaking through resistance again, and I sold too early. I was so unwilling that I made the same mistake as back then with NFTs and jumped back in. This time I bought at around 0.0281, Lao Fang at around 0.0279; I bought 10,000, Lao Fang bought 5,000. We made money again, and soon the price reached 0.03, quickly heading toward 0.04. Just when Lao Fang and I were happy, I saw NOT suddenly drop with a massive bearish candle, instantly breaking through 0.03 and plunging to 0.022. My account was instantly down by over 3,000. Lao Fang kept messaging me, saying, 'Old Wang, what to do? Should I cut losses?' I said wait a moment, maybe it can bounce back? At that moment, NOT was spiking all over the place. A few minutes later, the price bounced back to around 0.024, and I was still down about 2,000, while Lao Fang was down over 800. Neither of us wanted to leave, and after a moment of hesitation, the price dropped straight to 0.02. We couldn't leave even if we wanted to. We could only comfort each other, thinking maybe it will go up, just wait a little longer.
After a night, in the morning I checked, that 10,000 had only 4,900 left, painful, like a mushroom...
Since it was in spot, I thought I'd hold on, it would eventually come back, so I continued trading other coins. During this time, I also traded some others; without adding NOT, my capital returned to 69,000, everything was developing in a good direction.
Actually, before June 7, I had a premonition that it would drop, as the pattern had started to show a reversal signal. However, everyone had been making money for so long that they were used to it. They were still thinking of going long on dips. On June 5, we even discussed in the group that if the June 7 daily line started dropping, we would sell all our coins. Come night time, suddenly there was a spike upward; Bitcoin shot up over 2000 points, Ethereum nearly 200 points, and altcoins followed. There were quite a few complaints in the group, meaning they felt they had sold too early, and the daily line price now looked like they had sold at the lowest point. After midnight, it started dropping again. I had no trading plans at that moment, just chatting in the group.
We talked until late at night, and Lao Ye said, 'FET, I feel the position is right' (the price was around 2.4 in my impression), '2.2 is support, 2 is strong support. Let's see if we can take a position.' Lao Fang said, 'ETHFI has also reached a position; it dropped from over 7.' Isn't that a familiar recipe, a familiar taste? Three people feed off each other's FOMO, and soon everyone in the group opened positions, not just these two; group friends also mentioned other altcoins like PEPE. In short, I filled my position all at once, 30,000 of 3600 Ethereum, and other altcoins in spot. Before dawn, the account went from 69,000 to 62,300, but since I had often been trapped before, I didn't think much of it, always believing it would go up over the weekend...
As a result, there was no increase over the weekend... Monday started dropping again...
After that, it just kept dropping slowly, rising a little, and dropping a lot...
About a week later, the atmosphere in the group shifted from cheerful to everyone collectively cursing, to everyone falling silent. After a period of suppression, complaints started to emerge, and the number of complainants grew, leading to a collective attack on me and Lao Ye.
In summary, the basic viewpoints are as follows:
I used to be a bear; it was because you were doing more that we were doing more, but now we’re all losing heavily.
I have a very impressive friend who said it would drop a long time ago; it was you and the group who went long, and I followed along, and now I’m losing blood.
If I had known, I would have shorted all the way. Going long is like being a dog; now I'm completely trapped and can't move.
There were also many sarcastic remarks, but I can't remember them clearly. I only remember that I was directly hit with 'penetrating armor' + 'breaking resistance' + 'psychological attack.' With multiple buffs stacked, I said in the group, 'I'm sorry to everyone, I deserve to die, I shouldn't have led everyone to go long' (even though my position was the heaviest in the group at that time, and I bought those altcoins they mentioned). I delayed everyone's chance to make money; you all play by yourselves. Then I transferred the group ownership to Lao Ye and directly left the group.
After leaving the group, 'Guangxi cousin' (this guy is the most hardcore with FOMO, truly exceptional) pulled me back twice, but I refused to rejoin the group. The feeling of being 'whipped by the group' is really terrible. I can't understand why, after creating this group without ever collecting a penny or asking for anything, just to chat and trade, I ended up being the one burned. If losses are to be counted, I have lost as well; when I left the group, I had already lost down to just over 55,000.
After that, I occasionally posted articles in the plaza, seeing how others viewed this market situation. In the meantime, Powell had hinted at interest rate cuts several times, but the market seemed unresponsive, and only I was looking forward to and fantasizing about rate cuts in Q2.
On July 1st, I went to my father-in-law's place to deliver something and stayed there for a day. At noon on July 2nd, my grandma called, saying no one answered when she called my mom, asking if everything was okay. Looking back, this truly is a mother-daughter telepathic connection; when I called my mom, she also didn't answer. But at that time, I really didn't think much, just wanted to return home early. After lunch, I hurried back, and when I got home around 4 PM, I found my mom was already unconscious. I hurriedly called 120, sending her to the nearest hospital. Upon arriving at the Fifth Hospital, they checked and found it serious, recommending she be transferred, so I coordinated and directly transferred her to Qilu Hospital. Within two hours at Qilu Hospital, I received a critical condition notice.
When I signed the critical condition notice, my hands were shaking.
I guarded in the hospital for a day and night, and when I called my old buddies, they rushed over the next day from Langfang, saying many comforting words to me, but I was still in a state of chaos.
After passing the highest risk 48 hours on July 3rd, I was still in ICU, but I was no longer in critical danger, so I went home to take a shower and sleep.
On the morning of July 5th, I went to the hospital to send money. The daily cost of ICU is 18,000-23,000 (RMB). The 50,000 I deposited on the 2nd is already gone. Because it was hard to park at Qilu Hospital, I didn’t drive and rode an electric bicycle. Just after leaving home, it started pouring rain, and by the time I got to the hospital, I was soaked through. When I took out my phone at the hospital, I found that my account with 69,000 had only 29,500 left. I really felt like the sky was falling on me, both anxious and angry, feeling dizzy. I sold all my non-coin-based spots, going directly to coin-based with 5x leverage, and then sold all my altcoins at market price for sol, wif, and sats with 10x leverage, not even setting stop-loss, just thinking whatever happens, happens. If it blows up, I’ll exit the circle, I’m really exhausted...
I went to bed too late last night and woke up too early today. I don’t want to stay up late tonight; I’ll update it tomorrow...
