At three in the morning, the ashtray is full again. Five years of watching K-line charts day and night has trained my nerves to be as sensitive as the volatility graph. This is not a story; it’s just the routine repetition of the same thing.

1. That night of all-in

I still remember when my account hit 800,000. I truly thought I had figured it out. Relying on a bit of luck and staying up late every night watching the charts, I believed the market would just keep going up during bullish runs and I would decisively reverse during bearish ones. But what happened? A message in the group said "The trend is about to be decisively broken," and I impulsively went all-in on ETH. It dropped from 18,000 to 15,000 in just half an hour. When the margin call popped up, I only realized it after my cigarette tip burned my finger—there was no pain, just a dazed feeling.

The following month, I flipped the account like crazy. Chasing highs and selling lows, constantly using leverage, making dozens of trades every day, paying more in fees than I earned. The 800,000 was gone just like that. At my craziest, I wouldn’t even buy a pancake at the neighborhood entrance that only cost a yuan more, but I could throw half a year's salary into a single market fluctuation. I laughed at the empty account—this isn’t trading, it’s gambling disguised as market charts.

2. The three ironclad rules for survival

After deleting all those "get-rich-quick" groups, I printed out three years of K-line charts and pasted them all over the wall. I distilled this set of rules from blood and tears. When I restarted my account, I only had 1,200 yuan left, but thanks to these rules, I’ve survived until now:

First: controlling your hands is more valuable than understanding K-line charts.

In the past, I made dozens of trades a day; now, I limit myself to no more than two trades daily. Crossing that line is gambling. The groups are always showing screenshots of hundredfold gains, and I just sit there waiting for my own trading signals. The crypto world is not afraid of your poor skills; it’s afraid of you losing control of your fingers. Once your hand slips, your account is just giving money away on the exchange.

Psychological control always comes before technical analysis. This is a cognition built from money.