The Shitcoin Legend
At 3:30 a.m., Chen Hao’s phone screen lit up in the darkness.
He rubbed his bloodshot eyes and, out of habit, opened Binance for a quick look. MAGIC: $0.1251, up 93% in 24 hours. His heart gave a sudden jolt—not from fear, but from a kind of almost absurd euphoria.
Three days ago, MAGIC had been hovering around $0.0647. Back then, everyone in crypto was saying the bear market wasn’t over and small-cap coins were going to zero. Someone in Chen Hao’s WeChat group had laughed at him for spending 2,000 yuan on MAGIC, calling him a sucker handing money to the market makers. He remembered exactly who it was: Liu. Just last month, Liu had sold all his ETH at a loss, saying he’d wait for it to drop to $800 before buying back in.
Chen Hao didn’t explain himself. He was just an ordinary office worker, earning 8,000 yuan a month, paying 3,500 in rent, and throwing whatever was left into crypto. He didn’t understand candlestick patterns or MACD golden and death crosses. He just thought there was something interesting about the MAGIC project. The TreasureDAO ecosystem was slowly building on-chain games, and though its community was small, it was active. So he placed a limit order at $0.065 and bought 30,000 tokens.
For the next two days, MAGIC barely moved. Chen Hao even forgot he still held it. He was working overtime, eating instant noodles, and getting nagged by his landlord about the rent. To him, the crypto market was like a lottery ticket: you bought one, tossed it in a drawer, and occasionally remembered to check on it.
Until tonight.
He refreshed the page. MAGIC had already hit a high of $0.1263. At the current price, his 30,000 tokens were worth more than $3,700. His original investment was 2,000 yuan, or less than $300. Ten times his money. No—more precisely, twelve times.
Chen Hao’s hands started to tremble. He opened the calculator and punched in the numbers three times, making sure he hadn’t made a mistake. Then he did what every retail investor does: he started dreaming. What if it reached a dollar? What if it reached ten? His 30,000 tokens would be worth $30,000. Then $300,000. He could almost see himself slapping his resignation letter down in front of his boss. He could see the beaches of Sanya. He could see freedom.
But he didn’t sell.
He placed his phone face down on the desk and took a deep breath. The last time he sold too early was last year. He’d bought KAIA, then sold after it went up 40%—only for it to go on to five times its price. He didn’t want to go through that gut-wrenching regret again. This time, he decided to hold on to at least half.
The sky outside grew brighter, and Chen Hao hadn’t slept a wink. He watched MAGIC’s price action fluctuate around $0.12. Trading volume had reached $2.8 billion, ten times what it was when he bought in. People in the group started asking how he’d known the coin would go up. He replied with four words: “Just got lucky.”
The truth was, he knew luck was only part of it. What had really helped him hold on was the two weeks he’d spent reading the project’s white paper before buying, his growing understanding of the TreasureDAO ecosystem, and his willingness to trust his own judgment when nobody else believed in it.
Of course, he also knew MAGIC could fall right back down tomorrow. With degen shitcoins in crypto, a spectacular pump followed by a crash was the norm. But he had no regrets. What he learned that night wasn’t how to make money, but how to find a place where he could feel at peace between fear and greed.
His phone lit up again. Liu messaged him, asking if it was still worth buying MAGIC.
Chen Hao smiled and didn’t reply.
#MAGIC #TreasureDAO #Cryptocurrency