In the early morning of September 2025, I was awakened by a liquidation notification on my phone—my 5x leveraged ETH long position was wiped out after a 12% crash within four hours. With 32k yuan in capital, I was left with less than $1,000. The last thing I did before falling asleep was to confirm that the liquidation line was at 3,300, telling myself "It will never reach that."

The average entry price was 3,650, and I spent three days doing "research" before entering: on-chain data, capital flows, technical patterns—all signals pointed to an upward trend. What convinced me even more was that several friends around me were in cars, some with unrealized gains over 50%. That anxiety of "Everyone's making money, if I don't act now, it'll be too late" completely swallowed my last shred of rationality. I not only held a full position but also added margin when the price dropped to 3,480, lowering the liquidation line from 3,500 to 3,300. As a result, the market directly broke through my "psychological defense"—3,150.

After the liquidation, I felt like a different person. The next day, I used the remaining funds to go all-in short, hoping to "recover" losses. A small rebound triggered my stop-loss, and I was out. Unwilling to accept defeat, I chased longs again, only to get caught. Within a week, I made 31 trades, with a win rate below 30%, paying over 1,000 in fees, and ending up with less than 300 yuan in my account. Looking back, I was no longer trading; I was arguing with the market. Every order carried emotions like "I don't believe it can fall further" or "I refuse to believe it won't rebound this time," completely losing objectivity.

After calming down from the halt, I exported all my trading records for review and discovered a brutal truth: before the liquidation, I had not set any stop-loss orders; during the frequent trading after the liquidation, I never conducted any risk assessments. From start to finish, I only cared about "how much I could make," never thinking about "what if I lose."

Since then, I forced myself to rebuild discipline: limit each loss to 2% of total capital, reduce leverage to below 2x, open only one trade per day, and before opening a position, write down three reasons for the trade and corresponding stop-loss levels on a sticky note—if I can't clarify them, I don't trade. These rules were painful at first because each trade didn't feel "good enough," but they helped me withstand the big drop of ETH from 3,500 to 2,800 later on. Because of lighter positions and early stop-losses, losses stayed within manageable limits.

I re-understood long-termism—it’s not about holding onto a position and stubbornly riding it out, but about trading with a discipline that keeps you always able to stay at the table. The market never lacks opportunities; what’s missing is having enough capital to stand there when opportunity arrives. One liquidation is enough because it taught me not just about techniques, but about respect. #我的Gate交易时刻