My first trade was in April 2023.

At the time, I had just over ten thousand dollars, and I threw it all into buying some altcoin, because the community was yelling about it so loudly, saying, “It will definitely go up 10x.”

I figured that I didn’t need 10x—if I could just double my money, I could buy a better camera. Isn’t that tempting?

As a result, two weeks later, the coin’s price dropped 60%.

I didn’t run.

Why?

Because I wasn’t willing to give up. I kept thinking, “I’ve already lost so much—if I wait a bit longer, maybe I’ll get back to even.” This is probably a common problem with all retail investors.

Then it kept dropping. 80%. 90%.

In the end, I just took it as paying tuition fees.

Where exactly did this experience truly change my way of thinking—

I realized I wasn’t actually “investing,” but “gambling.”

What’s the difference?

Gamblers don’t look at probabilities; they only look at the odds. Investors first ask about the win rate, then calculate their position size.

After that, I set rules for myself:

All stop-losses are 20%. When it hits, I leave—never clinging to it.

Later, I started seriously studying on-chain data, market maker flows, and the distribution of holder addresses.

These things can’t help you find a 100x coin, but they can help you avoid most tokens that go to zero.

So that “trade that changed my mindset” isn’t necessarily about a deal that makes you a lot of money.

Sometimes, the trade that makes you lose money is the real turning point.
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