In the post-pandemic era, businesses across the board have fallen on hard times, and competition is fierce in every industry. Traditional industries are struggling to stay afloat. Only a few people can break through barriers and stand out through innovation in technology and marketing. Those who make it can become industry oligarchs, while those who don’t will eventually be eliminated by the market, leading to increasing polarization.

Compared with traditional industries, investing in cryptocurrency and U.S. stocks remains an important option for ordinary people looking to break through and change their lives. Although the window of opportunity in cryptocurrency is narrowing, it still offers investors some of the highest returns available. People who have worked in traditional industries are delighted with annual returns of over 50%. In the cryptocurrency and U.S. stock markets, however, it’s often possible to achieve that in a month, a week, or even a day. So if you approach investing in cryptocurrency and U.S. stocks with the same attitude as you would a traditional business—and devote yourself to it wholeheartedly—you’re more likely to succeed.

The only difference is that investing in crypto and U.S. stocks doesn’t reward you for simply putting in more effort—the harder you trade, the faster you may get wiped out. We can only survive by adapting to the natural rhythms of market cycles. When should you be active? Only when the market is moving decisively in one direction. That’s why over the past two years, I’ve rarely watched the charts. When volatility is too low, I have little motivation to monitor the market and trade. So this year, I’ve stayed up late to watch the markets only a handful of times, because there hasn’t been much point. When there’s no real action, I’d rather play Texas Hold’em. So when the market is quiet, reduce your trading frequency and patiently wait for the ideal, steady opportunities. During a sideways market, if you make 25–30% or more in a day or a week, you can rest for the remaining 29 days or three weeks. Put “handcuffs” on yourself, learn to stay out of the market, and keep your hands off the keyboard—that’s wisdom. The higher your trading frequency, the greater your losses to friction and costs; that’s inevitable. It’s just like the “house edge” in a casino. For example, if there are 40 hands in a poker session and you play one-on-one against the dealer, suppose you’ve won a few full houses, straights, flushes, or straight flushes in the first 20 hands and are up 100,000. If you keep playing the last 20 hands, you could easily give back all that profit—or even end up in the red. Once you’re up 50–100%, you have to walk away. Greed will get you killed. The house edge is always there: if you win early but don’t leave in time, you’ll eventually give it back to the table. That’s why casinos are never afraid of customers winning; they’re only afraid that you’ll stop playing. This is the logic behind sayings like “early winnings are just paper profits,” “win first, lose later,” and “nine out of ten gamblers lose.” The same goes for investing: knowing when to step away while you’re ahead and never trying to earn the very last penny is crucial.

I spent 2013–2022 building my career and gaining experience. It wasn’t until the 2022 bear market that I seriously got into crypto, and by December 2023 I had risen rapidly to a peak. I spent nine years sharpening my sword; only in the tenth year did I swing it. I lived abroad for ten years. In fact, many of my colleagues started getting into crypto as early as 2014. Back then, my monthly salary could have bought more than 8 BTC (at $700 per coin), but I didn’t download an exchange app and start researching until 2019. I’ve never regretted not getting into crypto in 2014. There are no “what ifs” in life, and I never speculate about them. Every period of time we experience in life has its own unique value and meaning. You may spend nine years crawling before you start running in the tenth, but that doesn’t mean those first nine years of crawling were meaningless.

In 2026, I’ll forge my second sword. I’ll tread carefully, stay vigilant, and put stability first. I’m making myself slow down and stop chasing a fast pace. I just want this journey to take me farther than the last one did. This is the worst of times, and also the best of times. I’ll make it steadily through the fourth quarter, ready at any moment to pursue the second peak of my life in 2027–2028. Opportunity always favors those who are prepared. If you’re afraid to lose, you’ll never win. But most ordinary people can’t afford to lose, so winning just once is enough. As Warren Buffett, the Oracle of Omaha, has said, you only need to get rich once in life. Once you’ve made more than ten million in the market, even if you go through further ups and downs, a skinny camel is still bigger than a horse. You’ll still have the confidence to keep challenging new highs, and you’ll find it easier to rise again, because your perspective, strategic vision, risk awareness, and ability to make money will all have improved substantially.

My portfolio allocation for each major market cycle: 80% of capital in spot assets and 20% in derivatives (15% coin-margined and 5% USDT-margined). We try to pursue upside using only that 20% of our capital, and we mustn’t casually alter our spot holdings. Spot assets are the foundation of success in every major market cycle. Even if circumstances beyond our control wipe out the entire 20% allocated to derivatives, the 80% in spot assets can still support the bulk of our overall returns over one to two years. Always use a fixed amount of capital for derivatives trading, and promptly withdraw every profit from the derivatives account. Stay consistent, whether the market is good or bad, and leave yourself a way out. That’s how you survive in the long run.

During the major cycle from 2022 to 2025, BTC kept moving back and forth within a 6,000-point range between 25,000 and 31,000 from March to August 2023—a full six months. Many KOLs at the time called it a nightmarish level of difficulty. But I traded every day without taking a single day off: I went short on the way up and long on the way down. I kept doing that with BTC coin-margined contracts for six months and accumulated more than a dozen BTC. Then, on October 16, a sudden 8,000-point surge overnight liquidated my 16.8 BTC coin-margined short position, cutting my capital in half. Why was I still able to reach a peak from late 2023 to early 2024? Because I had held on to the ETH, SOL, DOGE, and other spot assets I’d bought cheaply during the 2022 bear market, and I’d also kept a few BTC in spot. Those holdings became the foundation for my comeback after the 16.8 BTC position was liquidated (worth more than RMB 3.8 million at the time, and RMB 15 million in 2025). That’s what allowed me to catch a major one-way rally from October 2023 to March 2024 and make a big profit. For six months, my balance grew by hundreds of thousands of yuan a day on average, sometimes by tens of thousands. So in March 2024, I immediately withdrew a large amount of money. I’ve been away from the workforce for two years and haven’t worked a single day since; I support my family entirely with money withdrawn from the platform. Before 2024, I had only a few dozen followers on X, so I made money before I gained followers. In this market, you don’t have to win every day, and nobody can win all the time. But catching one powerful one-way move can quickly turn everything around. In July this year, when Sandisk had a major weekly-chart pullback, I caught a one-way move too (though it wasn’t a purely one-way decline—there were several single-day surges of 200–400 points, which I anticipated and locked in profits on). I traded it aggressively, and that was when I started trading U.S. stocks.

At the end of September, I injured my head, so I started reducing and closing positions and taking a break. I played Texas Hold’em several times more often than I traded, but that also helped me avoid giving back a large portion of my profits during the October volatility and pullbacks in U.S. stocks and crypto. So I suppose every cloud has a silver lining. My last long positions were opened on the evening of October 21, when BTC rebounded to 84,850 and ETH to 2,526. I closed BTC at breakeven and took profit on ETH at its peak of 2,516. It was pretty much a perfect exit near the top.

My experience has taught me that no matter how wealthy you are—even if you’re a hedge fund—you’re doomed to lose everything if you hold no spot assets and put 100% of your capital into derivatives or futures trading. The market is always right, and it will always be the winner. No person or institution is. We are the only ones who can be wrong or weak. Acknowledging and accepting this is what it means to love and respect the market.