First year in crypto: I paid three tuition fees

When I first entered, my understanding of futures was "high leverage = quick doubling". As a result, on the third day after opening an account, 50% of my principal was gone$AIN
Now looking back, losing money was not because of bad luck, but because I had no risk control awareness at all.
1. Position sizing issues
I had a habit of repeatedly opening positions at full size, always thinking "this time the direction is right, put more on it". Later I forced myself to split my available funds into 10 parts, using only one for each trade$ETH
The actual effect was: the cost of a single wrong judgment went from "crippling" to "acceptable". After my mindset stabilized, the quality of decisions also improved significantly — I no longer rushed to "get it back"
2. Take-profit and stop-loss execution issues
My biggest problem before was "reluctant to stop loss, can't wait to take profit". When in floating loss, I'd hold stubbornly; when in floating profit, I'd jump out early instead
Later I set a simple rule: force close position when the rebound exceeds 5%, no excuses, no waiting for "let's see after a bounce". The first three times executing this rule were painful, but it saved me from several major crashes that came later
3. The lesson from altcoins
I paid the highest tuition on altcoins. Seeing a coin rise 50% in one day, I jumped in, only to become the exit liquidity
Later I basically only trade BTC and ETH for a simple reason: good liquidity, relatively transparent information, and less prone to single-sided manipulation during extreme market conditions. Altcoins are not entirely untradeable
In the futures market, far more people lose money than make money
My current goal is not to "get rich quick", but to first make risk control precise, and keep the loss from each wrong judgment within an acceptable range$BTC