That green candlestick was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen
At 3:17 a.m., my phone vibrated and jolted me awake.
Groggy, I opened the Binance app and saw GTC’s price had shot from 0.27690 all the way up to 0.38380—a gain of more than 26%. My heart clenched. My fingers trembling, I tapped open my futures position.
Short. 20x leverage. Average entry price: 0.29000.
Liquidation price: 0.30500.
And right then, GTC was trading at 0.35798.
Before I could even react, a line of cold red text popped up on the screen: “Your position has been liquidated. Account balance: 12.7 USDT.”
Twelve dollars and seventy cents.
Just three days earlier, I’d had 83,000 USDT in my account.
It all started three days ago. GTC had been trading sideways around 0.30 for a whole week, and volume was drying up. Looking at all the indicators, I was convinced it was about to drop. The MACD had formed a death cross, the overbought RSI was turning down, and the upper Bollinger Band was clearly acting as resistance. Every bit of technical analysis was telling me one thing: short.
I posted in the group chat, “GTC’s about to pull back. Getting ready to short,” and attached a trend chart I’d drawn myself. A few people in the group gave it a thumbs-up and said my analysis looked professional. In that moment, I felt like a genius.
I opened my first short at 0.30500 with 10x leverage and made 800 USDT. I thought I’d cracked the code to getting rich. I bumped the leverage up to 15x on my second trade and made another 1,200. I got bolder and bolder, until I went all in with 20x leverage on my third trade.
I watched my unrealized profits keep ticking up, already calculating what I could do with the money. Get a new car? Put a down payment on a house? It felt as if the money was already mine, just temporarily sitting on the exchange.
Then a huge green candle shot straight up.
0.31, 0.32, 0.33—the price surged upward like it had gone crazy. I frantically tried to close my position manually, but my internet froze. By the time I refreshed the page, all I saw was the liquidation notice.
I sat frozen on the bed, the glow of my phone lighting up my face, my eyes so dry they hurt. Eighty-three thousand USDT, gone in three days.
I remembered my wife asking me last month how much I’d made trading crypto lately. I told her it was going okay, that I’d made a little profit. She smiled and said that once I’d made enough, I should quit and start an education fund for our baby. I’d brushed it off and said, “Don’t worry. It’s guaranteed money.”
How was I supposed to tell her now?
Dawn was breaking. The first bird called from outside. I placed my phone face down on the bedside table and stared blankly at the ceiling. There was only 12.7 USDT left in my account—not even enough for a meal.
People in the group chat had already started celebrating, saying GTC’s rally was insane and that the people who went long were making a fortune. I stared at their messages, unable to type a single word.
Only later did I find out that GTC had surged because the project team had announced a major partnership. My so-called “technical analysis” was worthless in the face of fundamentals.
That morning, I deleted the Binance app. A week later, I installed it again.
Because I couldn’t let it go.
But this time, I set my leverage to 3x.
At 3:17 a.m., my phone vibrated and jolted me awake.
Groggy, I opened the Binance app and saw GTC’s price had shot from 0.27690 all the way up to 0.38380—a gain of more than 26%. My heart clenched. My fingers trembling, I tapped open my futures position.
Short. 20x leverage. Average entry price: 0.29000.
Liquidation price: 0.30500.
And right then, GTC was trading at 0.35798.
Before I could even react, a line of cold red text popped up on the screen: “Your position has been liquidated. Account balance: 12.7 USDT.”
Twelve dollars and seventy cents.
Just three days earlier, I’d had 83,000 USDT in my account.
It all started three days ago. GTC had been trading sideways around 0.30 for a whole week, and volume was drying up. Looking at all the indicators, I was convinced it was about to drop. The MACD had formed a death cross, the overbought RSI was turning down, and the upper Bollinger Band was clearly acting as resistance. Every bit of technical analysis was telling me one thing: short.
I posted in the group chat, “GTC’s about to pull back. Getting ready to short,” and attached a trend chart I’d drawn myself. A few people in the group gave it a thumbs-up and said my analysis looked professional. In that moment, I felt like a genius.
I opened my first short at 0.30500 with 10x leverage and made 800 USDT. I thought I’d cracked the code to getting rich. I bumped the leverage up to 15x on my second trade and made another 1,200. I got bolder and bolder, until I went all in with 20x leverage on my third trade.
I watched my unrealized profits keep ticking up, already calculating what I could do with the money. Get a new car? Put a down payment on a house? It felt as if the money was already mine, just temporarily sitting on the exchange.
Then a huge green candle shot straight up.
0.31, 0.32, 0.33—the price surged upward like it had gone crazy. I frantically tried to close my position manually, but my internet froze. By the time I refreshed the page, all I saw was the liquidation notice.
I sat frozen on the bed, the glow of my phone lighting up my face, my eyes so dry they hurt. Eighty-three thousand USDT, gone in three days.
I remembered my wife asking me last month how much I’d made trading crypto lately. I told her it was going okay, that I’d made a little profit. She smiled and said that once I’d made enough, I should quit and start an education fund for our baby. I’d brushed it off and said, “Don’t worry. It’s guaranteed money.”
How was I supposed to tell her now?
Dawn was breaking. The first bird called from outside. I placed my phone face down on the bedside table and stared blankly at the ceiling. There was only 12.7 USDT left in my account—not even enough for a meal.
People in the group chat had already started celebrating, saying GTC’s rally was insane and that the people who went long were making a fortune. I stared at their messages, unable to type a single word.
Only later did I find out that GTC had surged because the project team had announced a major partnership. My so-called “technical analysis” was worthless in the face of fundamentals.
That morning, I deleted the Binance app. A week later, I installed it again.
Because I couldn’t let it go.
But this time, I set my leverage to 3x.