My name is Li Wenbin. In 2017, I worked as a production line supervisor at an electronics factory in Suzhou, earning just over six thousand yuan a month. That was my fifth year working in the factory, standing twelve hours a day, returning to my rented room with swollen legs that shone brightly, needing half an hour of hot water soaking to recover.

That winter, I was scrolling through my phone and saw a notification that Bitcoin had broken through twenty thousand dollars. I clicked in and looked for a while but didn’t understand much, but I remembered one sentence—up twenty times in a year. Twenty times. At that time, I had 80,000 yuan in my account, saved over five years. I calculated over and over in my mind: if I had invested a year earlier, it would have been 1.6 million. 1.6 million yuan could buy a house in my hometown’s county seat, with some money left for renovation. That night, I tossed and turned, unable to sleep, my mind full of that number.

Later, I often thought, if only I hadn’t clicked that notification that day.

In early 2019, under a colleague’s guidance, I downloaded an exchange and bought 3,000 yuan worth of Bitcoin. After buying, I even took a screenshot and sent it to him, asking if this was enough. He said yes, hold on and wait for the price to rise. I didn’t sell, and in three months, 3,000 yuan turned into 2,200. Two thousand two hundred was enough for me to eat for half a month. I couldn’t sit still anymore and started looking for various articles online. The more I read, the more I felt stupid—just holding and not acting, how could I make money? The real earners were all doing contracts.

The word “contract” was something I learned from a blogger. He posted screenshots of his trades every day, each showing hundreds of percent returns, and the comment section was full of “Followed” and “Made money.” I studied for a whole week—leverage multiples, margin, liquidation prices—learning it all in a rush. I thought I was ready, and opened my first order—ten times leverage, long Ethereum.

That order was placed at 11 p.m. I watched until 2 a.m., with the highest floating profit over 300 yuan, and I didn’t close it. The next morning, when my alarm rang, I looked at my phone and saw my position was gone. I was stunned for a while before realizing—this was a liquidation. My first liquidation, losing less than 2,000 yuan. Not much, but I didn’t feel pain—just thought I was unlucky. Should I hold on? Set a bigger stop-loss? I attributed this loss to operational mistakes, not the wrong direction.

The next two months, I was like possessed. I joined over a dozen groups, followed dozens of bloggers, and filled my phone with technical analysis charts. Head and shoulders, double bottoms, Fibonacci retracements—talking about them in groups, sometimes called “Big Brother” by others. No one in the assembly line ever called me “Big Brother,” but that title made me feel special.

But the account doesn’t lie. In two months, 80,000 yuan became 30,000.

I started to panic. It was a very specific kind of panic—next month’s rent was due, and I still needed some money to bring home for the New Year. I was unwilling—I felt I had paid so much tuition, learned so many skills, just needed one chance, one big market move to turn things around.

That turnaround order was placed in March. Bitcoin hovered around $9,000 for half a month, and I judged it was going up, so I went long with twenty times leverage. I bet almost all my remaining money. The first two days, it did rise, with floating profit exceeding 20,000 yuan at one point, and I was trembling. But I didn’t close it. I calculated that this amount wasn’t enough to recover my losses—I needed to double it.

On the third morning, a fifteen-minute big bearish candle directly hit my liquidation price.

I stared at the “Liquidated” notice, saw my phone screen go black, and on the black screen, my face appeared. That night, I didn’t sleep, sitting on the bed smoking a whole pack of cigarettes, with only one thought in my mind—gone, all gone.

If I had stopped here, I might have later gone back to an honest job, slowly saved up again, and after a few years, told this as a foolish story. But at that moment, someone added me.

His name was Ah Hao, from a group, previously a big shot in my eyes. He looked at my loss screenshot and said a sentence that left a deep impression: “Contracts aren’t played like that, brother. Contracts are a gamble against the exchange—you’ll never win. If you really want to turn things around, trade spot, find a hundredfold coin.”

At that time, I was like a drowning man. The contract wiped out my savings, and I desperately needed a straw. The straw Ah Hao handed me was a hundredfold coin.

He recommended Luna Classic. That was March 2022, more than a month before the crash, and I knew nothing about what was to come. The logic he gave me sounded flawless: the ecosystem was booming, the stablecoin UST was growing daily, Luna’s destruction mechanism would keep pushing up the price, this was a chance to change my fate.

I believed him. But I had no capital left.

A 25-year-old in Suzhou, with no house or car, but credit card limits approved quickly. I used three credit cards, borrowed from two online lending platforms, totaling 120,000 yuan, plus the last bit of my leftover money, all converted into U, and blindly jumped in.

The first few days, the market really rose, and my account was increasing daily. Looking at those numbers, I thought all the losses before were necessary costs—God was testing me, and now the test was over, it was time for a reward.

And then came May.

Everyone knows what happened next, no need to go into detail. I only remember those days I didn’t eat or sleep, constantly refreshing the K-line, watching the price drop from dozens of dollars to a few dollars, then to a few cents, then to fractions of a cent. Every time I wanted to sell, but every time I thought it had fallen enough and should rebound. Finally, it dropped to a price that no exchange could display.

Liquidity was zero.

My Luna still in my wallet, the quantity unchanged, but they were worthless. Not worth a penny. 120,000 yuan plus the 80,000 yuan lost earlier, totaling 200,000 yuan—gone.

That afternoon, I sat in my rented room, with my phone on the bed, the screen still lit, showing my wallet page, total assets at zero point zero zero. I heard the scrap collector downstairs shouting, collecting old refrigerators, old TVs, old computers. Sunlight streamed through the window onto my face. At that moment, I thought I wouldn’t be able to pay the credit card bill next month, couldn’t even cover the minimum repayment.

Ah Hao never responded to me again. Someone in the group asked about Luna, and the admin kicked him out.

The following days are the worst memories of my life. Collection calls from morning till night, first to me, then to my contacts. My mom called asking if I was okay, if something happened outside—I couldn’t say a word, holding the phone. I changed jobs, from electronics factory to delivery driver, working day and night. At most, I earned over 12,000 yuan a month, but that wasn’t enough to even cover the interest.

At night, I often couldn’t sleep, tossing and turning, thinking about those “what ifs.” What if I hadn’t opened that twentyfold order in March? What if I had stopped at the first liquidation? What if I hadn’t clicked that notification at all—I might still be working in the factory, earning 6,000 yuan a month, with money in my account, and no panic in my heart.

But those “what ifs” are useless. Once the money is gone, it’s gone. The road was one I walked step by step. No one forced me to open the trades, no one held my hand to click confirm. Every decision was mine—even Ah Hao wasn’t a scammer; he just showed me a path, and I was the one desperately running upward.

Since then, I’ve never touched contracts again, nor bought any coins. I deleted the exchange app from my phone, but I didn’t delete the wallet. Inside, there are still tens of thousands of Luna Classic, their value forever shown as zero.

Sometimes, passing a cybercafe while delivering, I see young people playing games inside, and I think of myself two years ago. I want to walk over and say something, but I don’t know what. Maybe it’s useless—some roads you have to walk yourself to see where they end.

The end of that road is zero. #分享美股交易贏輝達股票