Today, Hyperliquid staged a real-life version of "The Gambler's Self-Cultivation"—a certain ZEC super short position directly cut off a position worth 1.01 million USD, unrealized losses? 18.45 million USD.

Opening price 360 USD, liquidation line 973 USD, 5x leverage. This data makes my heart race. To be honest, this is not trading, it’s clearly ballet dancing on the edge of a knife.

Many people might think that those who can open such large short positions are all "tough characters," right? Wrong. The market never cares how many zeros are in your account, it only looks at whether you have left yourself an escape route. ZEC has already dropped 70% this year, and logically, short positions should be making a fortune by now—but in extreme market conditions, even the largest accounts can't withstand the wrong direction.

Do you remember the time when LUNA crashed last year? How many people confidently said, "It's stable at this point," and what happened? Those that were supposed to explode still exploded, and those that were supposed to go to zero still went to zero. The market doesn't show mercy just because you are a big player.

How can retail investors survive? I have summarized a few hard-earned lessons for myself:

Leverage is a tricky thing; if you use it lightly, you won't make any money, and if you use it heavily, you might lose even your principal. Five times doesn't sound like much, but when the volatility is magnified by five times, can your heart handle it?

Don't get excited when you see big players cutting their positions. They might be stopping their losses because they've sensed a bigger storm, not because they are sending you a "buy signal."

Always, always keep something in reserve. Don't fire all your bullets at one price point; the market can drop indefinitely.

This time, the short positions liquidation was not an accident; it was the bill for greed coming due. The people who can truly survive in the market have one thing in common: when others are panicking, they are calculating; when others are impulsive, they are observing.

If you are currently holding a contract and can't sleep well at night, drop a 1 in the comments? Next time, I will specifically talk about the practical strategies for "how to survive during a crash."

To put it simply, if you always feel like you're half a step behind the market—buying when it drops and selling when it rises—then the problem may not be with your analysis, but rather that you lack someone who can wake you up at the critical moment.