Eight years of sharpening the sword, every wound has turned into experience.

In the winter of 2017, I sat in front of an old computer in a rented room, holding the 2000 yuan I had just saved up, and made my first transaction in life. The K-line on the screen fluctuated, and my hand holding the mouse was trembling — who would have thought that this 2000 yuan would eventually turn into 36 million? Of course, the hell I went through in between was the real cost.

Now someone calls me "brother", but they don't know what I looked like after the liquidation in 2018. At three in the morning, I sat in the dark staring at my zeroed-out account, cigarette butts piled up like a small mountain, family messages flashing on my phone, yet I didn't even have the strength to reply. During the week when Bitcoin plunged 40% in 2020, I watched helplessly as 8 million evaporated in an instant, not sleeping for three days and nights.

Three liquidations, emptying my savings twice, during the toughest days I even had to break down the money for instant noodles. But the pitfalls and tuition paid eventually condensed into six rules. Each rule is filled with blood and tears; mastering one can save you a hundred thousand, and understanding three can help you avoid 90% of the traps in the crypto world.

First of all: **A rapid rise followed by a slow decline is often not a peak**

I remember the Ethereum market in 2019 very clearly. It rose for three consecutive days, with a daily increase of 20%. On the fourth day, it suddenly pulled back by 5%. The group was full of voices saying, "It has peaked, hurry and run!" I was holding 100 ETH in my hands, and I felt really uncomfortable. But then I remembered the lesson from before when I was washed out, so I stubbornly held on.

Later I understood that this slow decline after a rapid rise is 99% not the real top. What the big players fear the most is that retail investors remain calm, so they deliberately create slight fluctuations to harvest the mentality.