Encryption gambler portrait: bait of luck, prisoner of Candlestick

Original author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

“You think you’re trading, but you’re just pulling the lever on a slot machine.”

The cryptocurrency market, especially futures trading, operates 24 hours a day without breaks, with leverage up to 100 times, liquidation can happen without warning, and there’s no need to wear a suit, place bets, or sign contracts. Even emotions can be expressed through memes, making it one of the most covert yet effective addiction machines in the crypto world.

Cultural anthropologist Natasha Dow Schüll wrote the book “Addiction by Design” based on her long-term fieldwork with Las Vegas slot machine players. In the book, she presents a panorama of the gambling industry, individual gamblers, and the fundamental ideas of modern society, while also revealing a harsh reality.

The most dangerous thing is not losing money, but the “machine maze” itself—a mental state where you know you are sinking, yet still cannot stop.

On this seemingly technology-driven, free-playing land, we see more and more gamblers falling into the abyss. Their identities, experiences, and intellects vary, but their fates are remarkably consistent: in front of the gigantic slot machine of contract trading, they are repeatedly fed and devoured by themselves.

Their story is the story of how we are designed to be addicted.

The Overthrow of the Deputy Factory Director - From a Well-off Family to Being Deep in Debt

Recently, the well-known Bilibili content creator “Feng Ge Wang Ming Tian Ya” (Feng Ge) released a self-narrated video under the username “Zhe Li Chong Sheng”, which quickly sparked heated discussions.

According to the autobiography of “Zheli Chongsheng”, he was the deputy director of a large state-owned coal washing plant in Handan, Hebei, a deputy-level official, with a post-tax monthly salary of nine thousand. He had a house and a car, and his life was comfortable and stable. After getting married in 2018, he and his wife had a daughter, and their family atmosphere was harmonious.

He said that his life at that time was “better than some, but not as good as others,” and he was seen as a winner in life by others.

But now, everything has changed. His life has been shattered by contract trading.

Before Rebirth Brother got involved in the cryptocurrency world, he had briefly participated in postal currency trading, and he did not incur losses; in fact, he even made a profit of about ten to twenty thousand. This experience did not make him aware of the risks of speculation; on the contrary, it planted a sense of luck in him. He became obsessed with the idea that making money could be done without going to work.

He officially entered the circle in 2020. At first, it was spot trading, just dabbling with a few hundred bucks to test the waters. But soon, the initial few “successes” completely shattered his perspective on money, with returns of 40%, 50% in a short period, and even “earning 40,000 to 50,000 in a day.” The enormous positive feedback destroyed his confidence in traditional work.

After losing all the principal for the first time, the Rebirth Brother did not retreat but instead went down a more aggressive path: borrowing money to trade contracts. Trying leverage of 10 times, 50 times, and even 100 times in succession; borrowing money, taking out online loans, and using credit cards, each time was to “fight once more,” not even for the sake of becoming rich, but to “break even.”

At first, the reborn brother convinced himself to set stop-losses, but every time it was actually triggered, he would always cancel it.

“Afraid of missing the rebound.”

He described his condition in the video as “like a dull knife cutting flesh”; today he lost 20,000 after adding another 20,000; it started with mainstream coins, then moved to altcoins and scam coins, investing in increasingly niche options and becoming more desperate with each gamble.

Later on, he couldn’t even borrow from online loans. He had to turn to friends and family, fabricating all sorts of excuses to borrow money. Time and again he thought, “I’ll dive in and gamble one more time,” only to face repeated liquidations. Four times he faced crises, and four times he had to patch the holes.

• The first time he lost 220,000, his parents and friends helped him pay it off;
• Lost 300,000 for the second time, and relied on relatives to bail out;
• Lost 650,000 for the third time, he sold the house that his sister had prepared for her marriage for 500,000, barely filling the hole;
• The fourth complete collapse, with total debt exceeding one million, unable to repay.

In the end, he resigned from his state-owned enterprise position, his wife submitted the divorce agreement, and his father sent a resolute text message saying “This family doesn’t have you,” while his five-year-old daughter only knew that “Daddy went to work in another place.”

To avoid debt collection, he rented a single room in the suburbs for a monthly rent of 600 yuan, driving for ride-hailing for 13 to 14 hours a day, making a daily revenue of 300 yuan. After deducting car rental and meal expenses, he was left with less than a hundred yuan. The smartwatch kept vibrating with collection calls and messages, including threats to mass-send to his contacts.

In front of the camera, the Rebirth Brother admits that he has “long been numb to digital currency,” and the gains and losses in online loans and contracts feel like a void button. The biggest regret is not losing money, but rather “having destroyed a good home with my own hands.”

The real challenge lies in the fact that relying on driving and frugality makes it almost impossible to repay the million-dollar debt that accumulates interest, and once the market rebounds, the “impulse to recoup losses” may reignite at any moment.

The tragedy of the Rebirth Brother is a perfect sample for the “machine maze” revealed in the book “The Bait of Luck”, a carefully designed space by technology aimed at immersing people, causing them to lose control, and ultimately retreating backwards into addiction. Traditional gambling has intervals, while the cryptocurrency market operates 24/7, combined with high leverage instant feedback, compressing the cycle of risk and reward to the extreme. This perfectly replicates the core addictive mechanism of slot machines: “quick operation, immediate feedback.”

The concept of flow proposed by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is often used to describe a positive immersive experience. However, Schuur sharply points out that machine gambling provides a kind of “backward escape” pseudo-flow, which does not bring any self-actualization but rather means losing oneself in repetitive behavior.

The Reborn Brother is undoubtedly a typical example of “escaping backwards.” He is not creating value but is trying to combat the helplessness of reality with a sense of virtual control in a consumptive system. From initially aiming to “get rich” to later recklessly trying to “recoup losses,” his goals have long since become distorted. Selling his sister’s wedding house and betraying everyone’s trust, these actions indicate that he has sacrificed everything in reality to that virtual “maze.”

Liangxi —— Emotion Explosion Machine for Traffic Monetization

If the deputy factory director of the state-owned enterprise is a victim of the contract casino, then Liang Xi is the reveler in the casino. Unlike the slow decline of the deputy factory director, Liang Xi’s “gambling dog life” resembles a grand theater centered around digital profits and losses and social performances. He does not quietly sink, but rather uses traffic and emotions to place himself repeatedly in the spotlight of public attention.

Liangxi first rose to fame during the 519 crash in 2021. On that day, Bitcoin recorded a 33% intraday drop, and the entire market collapsed like the end of the world. At just 19 years old, Liangxi made nearly 40 million RMB from a 1000 yuan short position, earning the title of “genius trader in the cryptocurrency circle.”

This is a genuine “Hero’s Birth” climax: low cost, high return, independent judgment, and market resistance.

But all of this is just the most dangerous beginning, the bait of luck has appeared.

A successful large bet is enough to create the illusion of continuous betting, and the obsession of being able to do it again will make people constantly try to replicate that moment of luck. Liang Xi has never truly moved on from that day’s “big win”; he spent four years trying to recreate it while completely getting lost.

According to the words in the book, machine gambling simplifies risk into a repetitive on/off, yes/no, lose/win, start/end, have/not have… Every time you take a risk, you can immediately see the result through simple operations. Quick operations and immediate feedback are demands that only high-speed machines can satisfy.

In subsequent trades, Liangxi continuously engaged in high-leverage operations, often missing the mark, with profits and losses fluctuating like the tides, ultimately accumulating debts exceeding 200 million yuan. He once publicly disclosed that he “had no source of income,” relying on borrowing to maintain trading, while claiming to have experienced emotional betrayal, a rift with his parents, and a mental breakdown, attempting self-harm several times.

But at the same time, he maintains a very high level of activity on social media. He shares real trading screenshots to show the ups and downs of profits and losses; every time he makes a comeback, he “throws red envelopes” on social platforms to create attention-grabbing moments; he constantly engages in public disputes and challenges with other crypto KOLs to generate buzz; he reveals personal life disputes, emotional breakdowns, and mental health issues to construct a “real yet extreme” persona.

His social media is no longer an information publishing platform, but a “second exchange” for emotional gambling. Liquidations, reversals, crying out, throwing money, revenge—every wave of emotion fluctuates in sync with market trends, and every crash or rebound is part of the storyline. Liangxi is not just a participant; he is more like a self-directed playwright, leveraging the continuous and intense emotional fluctuations to secure his position on the attention leaderboard in the crypto space.

This aligns with the description of the “Machine Maze” in “The Bait of Luck.” Addicted players tightly bind their emotions to betting; once they sink into the maze, time, space, and sense of self will disappear, leaving only one thing: to continue betting.

The reason Liangxi can maintain traffic for a long time is that he has made himself an unceasing emotional betting machine. Market fluctuations are his plot structure, and the numbers of gains and losses are his emotional drivers.

In the machine maze, individuals gradually become numb to winning and losing, with the goal shifting from “winning and leaving” to “sustaining existence.” Liangxi no longer pursues a one-time profit exit, but instead leverages the extreme volatility of crypto contracts to continuously provide topics and emotional anchors for her Liang family army.

Ironically, amidst repeated failures and crashes, he still has followers, and many are even willing to transfer money to the accounts he publicly discloses, voluntarily becoming his creditors. This is a perfect reflection of the social addiction structure in the cryptocurrency scene, where individuals are not only addicted to the system but also bound by group recognition, creating a tolerance space for “failure is also worthy of appreciation.”

What makes Liang Xi special is not because he is crazy, but because he precisely interprets the “algorithmic value of a madman.”

James Wynn —— The “Number One Gambler” on the Blockchain

If we set aside conspiracy theories and unproven speculation, James Wynn is more like the ultimate example of a tech-savvy gambler in the crypto space. His rise to fame is due to a staggering number: in just 70 days, he turned a contract account profit from 0 to 87 million dollars.

Everything happens on Hyperliquid, with full-chain transparency. Every contract opening and closing, his profit records and position fluctuations are being watched by the community in real-time. He also frequently tweets, stating that “I have never traded contracts before,” and that he simply “improvised from being a Meme coin trader,” accidentally achieving success.

This epic rollercoaster ride quickly attracted thousands of followers. Within just a few weeks, James’s social media fans exceeded 380,000. His account status once became a barometer for the market, even influencing market sentiment.

At the end of May 2025, after experiencing consecutive profits, James Wynn’s position saw a sharp pullback.

70 days, 87 million dollars in profit, almost completely depleted in just 5 days.

He also admitted on social media: “I just want to recover my lost profits, and I don’t want to look like an idiot who made 100 million and lost it all. I became greedy, and I didn’t take the numbers on the screen seriously.”

From this point on, James’s tweeting style became aggressive and dramatic. He changed his social media avatar to “McDonald’s Wojak”, self-deprecatingly claiming he had “fallen back to the bottom” and mocking himself for having to go work.

But he did not stop operating. At the beginning of June, he announced a suspension of trading while also posting a position chart of newly opened long positions just hours later, claiming it was to “combat corrupt market makers.” He specifically named Wintermute, accusing it of “targeting individual positions.”

The most controversial operation occurred at the edge of liquidation. James Wynn published an on-chain address, publicly fundraising USDC, claiming that these funds would be used to maintain positions and reduce liquidation risk. He promised “if the transaction is successful, it will be returned at a 1:1 ratio.” In the end, he raised about 39,000 USDC through that address and indeed used it to enhance margin and maintain position safety.

This move has been ridiculed by many as “high-end begging.” As a result of this operation, his Bitcoin position indeed turned from being on the verge of liquidation to profitability, with the position once turning a loss of hundreds of thousands of dollars into a gain. However, the good fortune did not last long. With the market’s violent fluctuations, James Wynn’s account ultimately faced significant losses again. On-chain data shows that his principal loss has approached 22 million dollars.

The controversy surrounding James Wynn has not ended with his losses. Some community users call him a script-based traffic expert, believing that while he is making significant fluctuations in public accounts, he may be holding hedging addresses for reverse trading in the shadows. Others speculate that he has a marketing interest relationship with the Hyperliquid official.

In mid-June, on-chain detective @dethective published a lengthy article analyzing James’s on-chain invitation rebate data, transaction timestamps, and token overlap, speculating that he might be conducting hedging trades through hidden addresses. The blogger believes that James’s public account often sits on the “loss” side, while another high-frequency trading address makes trades in the opposite direction and has never faced liquidation, maintaining stable profits. Currently, this hidden address has made over $4 million in profit.

However, as of now, this statement has not been responded to by the person himself or verified by on-chain signatures, and remains speculation within the community, with no conclusion yet.

But in any case, a clear trading clue with a loss of over 100 million dollars is enough to illustrate that James Wynn’s on-chain volatility is actually a digital representation of “The Bait of Luck” in the crypto world.

Summary

In the high-leverage contract market, what is known as investment often quickly degenerates into behavioral addiction. The principal is no longer capital for appreciation, but rather chips to keep the game running. The random fluctuations of the market, the high-speed UI/UX of exchanges, and the emotional amplification of social media together build a closed system.

There are no dealers here, no chips, only a continuous refresh, encouragement to reinvest, and a series of exhilarating operations that can lead to instant liquidation. These platforms capture traders’ attention with an almost perfect human-machine loop logic. The feedback from operations is instantaneous, the gain and loss figures are stimulating, and the next order is always waiting for that moment to be placed.

The core of gambling addiction does not lie in the win or loss of money; it is merely an immersion state designed with precision. This is a gray area between numbness and flow, where a person temporarily forgets their identity, money, and the existence of time, synchronizing only with the rhythm of the machine in front of them, treating each action as an end in itself rather than a means to some outcome.

It precisely leverages humanity’s craving for pleasure and certainty, trapping traders in a cycle where the more they lose, the more they gamble, and the more they want to gamble. This explains why many traders irrationally engage in revenge trading after a loss; their goal is no longer to rationally make money, but to immediately eliminate the pain caused by the loss and return to the illusion of “I am still in control of everything.”

More deceptively, “failure” is often packaged as the illusion of “almost winning.” This is similar to the illusion experienced by cryptocurrency traders when their unrealized gains are wiped out. If I just hold on for ten more seconds, add margin once more, or bet on a direction again, perhaps I can “break even.” Schüll calls this phenomenon the “near-miss effect,” one of the most common psychological weapons used in casinos. It does not crush your confidence but makes you mistakenly believe that success is within reach.

“What players pursue is not winning money, but maintaining the state of betting itself.” When we turn our attention to the cryptocurrency market, this sentence seems to be a footnote specifically written for those high-frequency traders and crypto gamblers who are glued to their screens at four in the morning.