Winners and prisoners: They want to turn the tables with Bitcoin

Since then, Bitcoin, which was in a remote and marginal area when it was born, has created a series of fiery wealth myths in the bull markets in 2013, 2017, and the bull market that began in 2020 but has not yet ended.

Today, April 13, 2021, Bitcoin once again reached a new high of 63,153 USD (CoinMarketCap data). With the help of the bull market, it has long gone beyond the initial geek circle, making millions of network addresses and the owners behind them crazy every day.

For young people who feel powerless in reality and eager to turn things around, Bitcoin in the bull market is like the New World whose existence was confirmed by Columbus. It looks like the promised land of God, flowing with milk and honey.

Young retail investors rushed in one after another with borrowed chips. In the dopamine game, they made mistakes because of greed and fell into traps blindly. Only then did they realize that honey is wrapped in danger. They were ecstatic with huge returns in the last moment, but in the next moment they might despair because they lost all their principal and were in huge debt.

If you want to survive in a world full of dangers, you must always be alert and keep learning. Just like the fisherman and his big marlin, different fishermen use different strategies to fight the same desires and dangers. Some people get rich overnight, some lose everything and leave, some people bring trouble to their families, and some people fail themselves.

But as long as the world remains in turmoil, new people will continue to enter, because for those who have nothing, turmoil means opportunity and hope.

Winners and Prisoners

At the age of 28, Shu Gong decided to "retire on an island". To this end, he prepared two passports, Malta and St. Lucia. The latter is a beautiful island in the Caribbean Sea with an area of ​​only 616 square kilometers, belonging to the Commonwealth. In the immigration agency, St. Lucia's main selling point is "no diplomatic relations with China, safe and low-sensitivity", and you can become a citizen by buying $250,000 in St. Lucia bonds or donating $100,000.

What else can he do if he doesn't "retire"? He traded in bitcoins, and entered the market when the price of a bitcoin was more than $9,000. On the day when the price of bitcoin rose to $40,000, he "attained great harmony in life in an instant." In three months, his personal assets went from 50,000 yuan to "close to eight figures" in US dollars. Now that money is pouring in, he has "earned another 150,000 yuan" in the time it takes to talk for a while. Because of the leverage, the price of the currency has risen, not only the bitcoins held have appreciated, but also the bitcoins in the account will continue to grow. In a week, the number of bitcoins in one account increased from 26 to 34. At first, it was exciting, but after a long time, whether it was a loss or a profit, it was essentially just a game score. He is still in Chicago, but whether he can study for a doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago - something he thought was a big deal in the past - suddenly it is not important. He has really fallen into the emptiness that he imagined is unique to retired cadres - the kind that takes an hour to deal with a pot of flowers.

When chatting with his undergraduate classmates, Shu Gong started with "Wait until I buy a farm in Canada." He bought 1 kilogram of gold and hid it under the bed, only to find out that 100 grams of gold is actually the size of a USB flash drive, but it is 10 times heavier and feels heavy in his hands. He can't drive, but on the day Musk changed his Twitter signature to #bitcoin, he "bought a Model S in excitement" to "support Musk's support for Bitcoin." He collects gold rings inlaid with various gemstones, purple, orange, green, and black, and wears them all over his left hand - two on his ring finger - and takes a photo, joking that he is "gangster Xiao Shu."

"Having money is better than having no money, but it's limited, and the main thing is that I have no place to spend it." It's not that he's showing off, but he reveals a kind of artificial but real confusion about how to use money. He is a poor international student who used to save money by buying groceries and cooking for himself. He has simple interpersonal relationships. His roommates have all returned to China to find jobs. He is only surrounded by girls with whom he has a casual relationship, but no matter how hard he tries to please them, the money he can spend is limited. His best friend is still working as a lawyer in China, so he just gives her cash. He specially added a friend he had offended in the past on WeChat and asked her if she wanted to buy a car so that he could buy her a car to "make amends." The other party was surprised, and he explained: "Life is about to change stages, and I should make up for what I needed to make up for in the previous stage."

Shu Gong is from Henan. In his hometown, to describe a person who is inflated, one would say that he "takes up space." Today, Shu Gong's wealth allows him to "take up space" naturally and reasonably in a generous and decent way. He wanted to donate a scholarship named after Hu Shi to his alma mater. After the money was donated, the naming plan failed as expected. He did not struggle too much and agreed to a compromise solution, only posting a circle of friends afterwards. He asked whether "LatePost" needed investment, "RMB 1 million. If the boss is willing, can you roughly talk about the profit model."

On March 13 this year, the price of Bitcoin hit a record high of $61,795.8 per coin, and the cryptocurrency market was filled with a dramatic and ridiculous revenge atmosphere. A year ago, on March 13, the price of Bitcoin dropped by half within 24 hours from more than $7,900 to a record low of $3,869.5 (the last time it fell below $4,000 was in 2018). On March 13, history turned 180 degrees. In a whole year, the value of Bitcoin soared nearly 16 times.

In a bull market, the more power Bitcoin can give to one person, the more freedom it can take away from others. Chen Min is one of these unlucky people.

In the early morning of February 22, when I found Chen Min on Weibo, the price of the currency had risen above $58,000 for the first time. From the outside, the currency circle was jubilant. But the news pop-up window told me that within 24 hours, more than 180,000 people had their positions liquidated, losing $1.774 billion in chips and becoming "cannon fodder" in the feast of wealth. Unfortunately, Chen Min was one of the 180,000. An hour ago, the price of the currency was soaring, and he also posted a Weibo that seemed full of confidence: "Everyone wants to see me short Bitcoin and get liquidated, how is that possible?"

In order to arrange an interview with Chen Min, I prepared a formal and polite message, with a bit of awe in my tone. After all, just looking at his Weibo, you would believe that Chen Min is the kind of ruthless person who specializes in "bull market short selling", with a ruthless spirit of licking honey on the edge of a knife -

3 hours ago: "A newborn calf is not afraid of a tiger. You guys go all in. If you don't lose all your money, I will lose."

The accompanying picture shows a puppy with a peaceful smile.

February 18, 20:06: "If you follow Bitcoin, you will make money, but if you send Bitcoin, you will go to the west."

The accompanying picture shows the 132.84% return from short selling.

February 18, 16:42: "Bitcoin's trend in the next year will send the bulls to hang and force Kangri to close."

In the accompanying picture, he added a red tail to the rising green K-line, symbolizing a sharp drop. The tail was so long that it almost overflowed the screen.

February 18, 12:39: "Send Bitcoin to zero."

The accompanying picture reads "Hold on against the trend and create new glories."

"Is there any fee (for the interview)? I've lost all my money. Give me some funds to short sell so that I can continue to gamble." A few dozen seconds after the interview request message was sent, Chen Min shattered the illusion he had created on Weibo for someone unclear.

He is 27 years old, living in Chengdu, from a working-class family, and has no chance to go to college. He lost millions of dollars by short selling online. After I told him that I can’t do paid news, but I can personally buy you a cup of coffee, he replied half-truthfully: “You made me want to jump off a building. I hope there will be no news interviews and no short selling in heaven.”

The panic and helplessness are real. When I mentioned the short-selling experience of an investor in the secondary market, he immediately asked the other party "how much did you lose" and asked me to share an article that recorded how investors survived the pressure of short-selling.

Chen Min considers himself a gambler. Nine days later, he told me that he no longer gambled, "I lost all my money and had to work to pay off my debts." He went to work as a miner in a mine in Wuhan, and in order to pay off his online loans, he was "busy and had a headache" all day long.

"You should not get involved in pornography, gambling or drugs in your life. Once you get involved, it is basically difficult to quit." On the phone, his Sichuan and Chongqing accent did not sound as aggressive and angry as usual, but only depressed and broken. "What can I say about the rest of this industry?" He paused. "Anyway, they are all a bunch of living dead. They survived, but their hearts are dead." His tone was like that of a middle-aged man who had been truly hurt.

Like a bloodstain

Shu Gong had already experienced minor losses in the cryptocurrency market, but when he experienced a "huge loss" for the first time, he was stunned.

On June 27, 2019, at 7 a.m. in Chicago, hearing the chirping of birds outside the apartment window, Shu Gong found that he could not hold on and fell asleep with a leverage of 15 times.

Three days ago, seeing the price of Bitcoin rising to $10,500 per coin, he once again opened a long position with 0.1 Bitcoin on PrimeXBT, a Bitcoin trading platform established in Seychelles in 2018. On PrimeXBT, the leverage can be opened to 1,000 times (the maximum leverage for contract trading on Binance Exchange is 125). Obviously, this platform ranked high on Google is more gambling. When he went long, he tried to open the leverage to 100 times with a principal of $3,600, and the balance returned to zero in a few minutes.

The reason for not choosing another platform that has a higher search ranking and looks more formal is quite simple - "the UI design is too rustic."

Moreover, he needed to get rich quickly.

This time, the rules have been set: "Only open" 10x leverage; for every $500 increase in price, add 0.1 bitcoins, and for every $1,000 increase in price, sell 0.1 to cash out.

In 2 days, the price of the currency rose to 13,000. There should have been 0.2 bitcoins in the account, and another 4,000 US dollars in the pocket. But in fact, when the price rose to that point, people inexplicably had a belief that "it will rise again". The gamble was over, and the rules were useless. I was reluctant to sell it, so I increased the leverage to 15 times, invested all the living expenses of 20,000 US dollars, and all the money I earned must be added. With the continuous increase and additional investment, 20,000 US dollars of Bitcoin has generated 100,000 US dollars. If it continues to rise, I can earn 1 million RMB tomorrow. Calculate the average purchase price of the currency, 12,200 US dollars per coin. "Exciting". Shu Gong dared not sleep.

The price of the coin hit $14,000. He had been watching the market for 17 hours and had 12 bitcoins rolled out of his account - all earned through leverage - "I have to wait for it to rise to $20,000." He thought. He had no other feelings, "I just felt super happy."

It was just a moment of pleasure.

At 2 p.m. on the 26th, the green K-line that was climbing up suddenly turned red and turned downward. In just one hour, the price of the currency fell by 10%. In the ups and downs of the currency market, a 10% drop is not much - according to statistics from LatePost, from 2016 to the end of 2020, Bitcoin experienced 10 20% drops, 4 of which were nearly 50% drops - but if you open a 10x leverage, a 10% pullback is enough to be considered a plunge.

12 bitcoins quickly became 8, and the mouse cursor was placed on the close position button. If the unearned profits are also regarded as one's own property, then closing the position at this time is both a stop loss and an admission of loss. But no matter what time point, the mouse can't be clicked. Shu Gong doesn't want to admit the loss, and no one wants to admit the loss. As a result, in the next hour, it fell another 10%.

One bitcoin, which had just increased by 1.5 times, could drop to less than 0.4 in the blink of an eye. For two whole hours, Shu Gong felt like he was "frozen."

During those two hours, Shu Gong realized that the price of a currency always rises in a similar way, but it can fall in a variety of ways. For example, a sharp drop suddenly turns into a slow drop. Or, after a sharp drop of one or two minutes, a green bar suddenly appears. As a cryptocurrency trader who is not in the circle, Shu Gong did not know that the cryptocurrency circle calls that kind of situation "pin insertion". In short, when the price of a currency falls, there are always various signals that make you willing to believe that it will rise in the next second, and you will turn defeat into victory.

He was unwilling to give up. At 5 pm, the rebound finally came. The price of the currency once again climbed from $12,500 to $13,000. He had to seize the good opportunity to turn the loss around. Without hesitation, Shu Gong transferred the only remaining 1 Bitcoin in his spot wallet to the contract account.

After losing the bet, the gambler borrowed more chips, hoping that the luck from the sky would help him make back the lost wealth. A rational person would not rely on uncertainty to turn things around, nor would he use the result of the previous bet as a basis for predicting the next bet. But there is no way, the gambler will be trapped by his own despair, which has long been proven by behavioral economics experiments, and it has been verified again in Shu Gong.

A new round of plunge soon occurred and lasted until 1 a.m. on the 27th. The price of the currency was only $11,500 - the liquidation line was $11,250 - it was very close. But he had been tense for three days, and anxiety was also a kind of excitement. In order to maintain balance, he drank some wine.

The next time he opened his eyes, it was the morning of birdsong. He was startled. He woke up very early. But it was useless. When he rushed to the computer, the area that originally displayed the Position disappeared, and the numbers that kept jumping and flying in the account a few days ago seemed to have never existed. It took him a while to finally confirm that he had indeed lost $20,000 in living expenses. "It felt like an electric shock all over my body."

"When have I ever spent so much money all at once in my life? More than 100,000 RMB all at once?" He asked himself after he was stunned.

On the exchange page, the colored fill bar underneath the market price jumps every second, reminiscent of the ever-changing light effects of slot machines in Las Vegas. When the market goes up, the jumping rectangle is green; when the market goes down, the jumping rectangle is red. You can smell the atmosphere of the casino, and even feel that you are one of the people surrounding the gambling table. The jumping rectangle has stimulated your nerves countless times. The slightest changes are magnified, and you can feel the ever-changing power calling to you.

Now, the red frame was still flashing. Everything was still running vigorously. But it had nothing to do with him. For the first time, he understood what "soul out of body" meant. All that was left on the screen was a K-line with a long red tail (the real version of Chen Mi's crude sketch), which looked like a bloodstain.

On the morning of the liquidation, he went downstairs and calmed himself down.

In the past, in order to save money, Shu Gong had to cook dinner for three people every day. After class, he took a 20-minute bus ride to the supermarket, where he could choose two out of three: pork, beef, and chicken, and buy some potatoes or vegetables. He could make four dishes in half an hour. He and his two roommates each contributed one-third of the material cost, which was at least half the price of eating out. In a month, in addition to the $900 rent, the living expenses were $1,000.

He lost $20,000, couldn't eat out, couldn't buy beef like before, chicken was "super cheap", so he switched to chicken. To "fill the hole", life could only be tighter, and he made up his mind to save more money.

The decline predicted by “Zen Theory” did not happen

In the bull market, programmer Li Meng believed in a "Zen theory" that gave investment advice by predicting K-line, tried short selling, and lost his family savings of 850,000 yuan in a week, experiencing another kind of horror in life.

It’s not that I haven’t paid tuition.

Like most retail investors absorbed by the bull market, Li Meng bought Bitcoin for the first time at the end of 2017 when the price of Bitcoin broke through $19,000 for the first time. "How is the market? How much did you make?" In that bull market, when he joined the Internet startup company, his colleagues always talked about Bitcoin during meals. Some of the colleagues who entered the market a few years earlier have already achieved financial freedom. Those who entered the market a few months earlier have doubled their earnings. Even the poorest ones have made more than 50%.

Listening to it makes me feel "exciting". After working for less than a year, Li Meng saved 100,000 yuan. He wanted to buy a house in Beijing with his salary, "but it's almost impossible." He had to think of other ways to earn some extra income. In late December, the price of the currency had begun to fall, but he was unaware and still invested 30,000 yuan, buying about 0.3 coins.

I have no investment experience and know very little about funds and stocks. It is hard to relax after investing money. I have to check the market every 20 minutes and browse the community to learn some common sense.

Soon, people fell into greater confusion. The information was too complicated. People who seemed to be very authoritative analyzed that "Bitcoin will fall tonight", while various "messy" platforms would recommend equally "messy" tokens, with "hundreds and hundreds" of types. I don't remember anyone popularizing the concept of rational, restrained and relatively safe investment. On the contrary, the loudest people were shouting at you to buy various coins. "I was very confused." Li Meng didn't know what to do.

On one hand, the price of Bitcoin continued to fall, and on the other hand, the value of newly issued altcoins doubled on the same day and increased fivefold the next day. Li Meng couldn't help but start selling some of his Bitcoins in exchange for altcoins.

There is no trick. There are too many newly issued currencies, and dozens of new ones are launched every day. They are all "make money and run". Just exclude those that have increased by 5 times or 10 times, and buy the rest "page by page". Buy 30 or 40 of each, and the total cost will not be more than a few thousand yuan.

Before she knew it, she had sold out Bitcoin. She had invested all her 100,000 yuan savings in it. After four months of hard work, in 2018, she was getting married and had a lot of expenses. When she needed money, the balance in her cryptocurrency account was only 20,000 yuan. Li Meng finally realized that "all my operations were losing money."

In 2020, it is the end of the year and the bull market is coming. The price of Bitcoin has exceeded 20,000 US dollars, but Li Meng, who is responsible for the financial management of his small family, has no intention of buying Bitcoin. It was his wife who knew nothing about Bitcoin who encouraged him: the family has saved 1 million yuan and they hope to buy a house in the second half of 2021.

Three years later, the cryptocurrency market is different. At a glance, there are more things going on, but everything is more organized and structured.

What remains unchanged is the confusion that belongs to novices.

I will never buy altcoins again. The tuition fees should not be paid in vain. This time, Li Meng only bought the three most mainstream coins: Bitcoin, Ethereum, and EOS. The position must also be controlled: ⅓ of the family assets are used for regular savings; ⅓ are used for buying funds with lower risks; and at most ⅓ are used for cryptocurrency trading.

I was buying coins and learning at the same time, and everything was going well with spot trading until I encountered short selling.

The confidence to short sell comes from a UP host with less than 3,000 fans on Bilibili. The video only has K-line and voiceover. Afterwards, Li Meng realized that he might have heard the UP host's accent in a telecom fraud call. But at this moment, facing the unfathomable K-line, the UP host can easily intercept and mark a section with a red line, and make an equally unfathomable analysis in a very confident tone - "Don't chase long at this position", "The current weekly level is an engulfing bearish pattern" - and the UP host's previous prediction that the coin price would rise based on the K-line was also correct.

On March 6, the price of the coin rose to $47,000. The UP host predicted that the price of the coin would fall in the next two weeks. Li Meng had never shorted or tried contracts, but for short-term speculation, there seemed to be no difference between shorting and longing. He invested tens of thousands of yuan, opened a short order, and added 3 times leverage.

In fact, if you search Weibo, you will find that the UP host and his accomplices with northern accents completely rely on a set of "Zen theory" to predict the future and harvest members. Perhaps because he has tasted a little sweetness and made a little money by following the analysis of transactions, Li Meng can't explain why he didn't do it. "It's exactly the same as the first time. I don't know why you will make a profit when you first start." You can hear that when he reviewed the situation, his tone was filled with the most sincere confusion.

The decline predicted by the UP did not happen. The price of the coin rose from 47,000 USD to 48,000 USD. The margin in the account kept decreasing. I could not close the position, because closing the position would mean accepting the loss. So, I added positions when the price was 48,000, and I also added positions when the price was 49,000. When the price broke 50,000, I still added positions, and raised the leverage from 3x to 5x, and then continued to pull it up little by little, constantly testing the limit, "until you think your principal matches the leverage."

The first time he increased his position and leverage, Li Meng told himself that as long as the price of the currency starts to fall from here, the money lost in the short position opened at 47,000 can be earned back. "As long as, I can." "As long as, I can." The lost money can be earned back by increasing the bet. You have to believe this even if you don't believe it.

Each time you add to your position, you are only reinforcing your unfounded belief. But belief will not reduce the fear of losing control. In the darkness, you can feel it gnawing at your rationality and calmness.

Li Meng suddenly switched from Bitcoin spot trading to contracts. He had no concept of "stop loss". He believed that if he wanted to turn the tables, he must not blow up his position. In order to fill the pit margin, by March 8, he invested more than 300,000 yuan from buying funds, and soon lost it all. Two days later, he invested more than 300,000 yuan from regular savings, and lost it all again. In less than a week, 850,000 yuan, the crazy rise of the currency market almost absorbed all the savings of the family.

When the price rose to 53,000 USD, the leverage of the short position was increased by 10 times, but the price still showed no signs of a sharp decline. In panic, Li Meng thought of using his remaining savings to open a long position for hedging. The principal was limited, and the leverage of the long position had to be increased by 100 times to just balance the short position. He didn't know that the life-saving straw he grabbed in a hurry was the "hedging" commonly used in the contract market, and the only 150,000 yuan left in his family was saved.

After nine days of carrying the order, Li Meng worked during the day and had a hard time falling asleep at night. Even if he fell asleep, he would wake up every two hours to check if his position had been liquidated. When he was single, his money was gone, but now, he was dragged down by others. He dared not think about it anymore.

An ordinary person, just because of a little ordinary greed and a moment of recklessness, was punished most severely, entangled by bad luck, struggled desperately, and finally had to give up everything. Li Meng could not find a way out except self-blame. Everything happened too fast. Everything was too long.

The yield stopped at -2044.95%. After hedging, he could have waited a little longer. But the expectation of waiting was too painful. On March 13, the price of the coin reached $61,000. There seemed to be no upper limit to the rise of the price of the coin. The loss from short selling was like a black hole. He gritted his teeth and closed his position.

On March 14, the day after the liquidation, the price of the currency fell from US$61,000 to US$53,000.

Targeted. Tricked. It was as if the person standing opposite was not Bitcoin, but a person with great malice. "So, it's... it's... what feeling, can you understand?" On the phone, Li Meng, who had been speaking calmly, suddenly began to stutter, "The moment I closed my position, it immediately fell. It was this behavior of it that made me feel even more..."

“If you don’t gamble, you have no chance”

Chen Mian, who was heavily in debt due to short selling in the bull market, bought coins for the first time to gamble.

In 2015, Chen Min came across MMM, a Bitcoin fundraising scheme that promised a round of returns every 15 days with a 100% return rate.

He had just graduated and his base salary was only 2,000 yuan. He invested all the more than 10,000 yuan he earned from a midnight hot pot when he was in school, together with the cash he withdrew from his credit card, and bought nearly 20 bitcoins when the price was 2,000 yuan and gave them to MMM.

After playing the game for two months, Chen Min thought he would stop playing after one more month and added nearly 20 bitcoins. He didn’t win the bet, MMM ran away, and he lost all his money.

He never knew that he was involved in perhaps the largest Ponzi scheme in history. MMM's founder, Sergey Mavrodi, was imprisoned for organizing a pyramid scheme in the 1990s. After being released from prison, he made a comeback with the Bitcoin version of MMM in 2011. When he died in March 2018, Mavrodi left behind 140,000 bitcoins, which are worth $8.82 billion at today's high price.

"My parents' generation had a hard life." "I'm afraid of being poor." "If you want to make a lot of money, you have to take shortcuts." "Even if I really lose money and there's no way out, at least my generation has worked hard, and at least I want to make a difference."

These are the reasons for joining the game.

But as people keep gambling, they become addicted to the dopamine game that they imagine is "more pleasurable than taking drugs" and completely forget why they started. Lose 1 million, make 1 million, and lose 1 million again. All the madness is just to stay, to continue to stay in this "industry that only has pleasure".

What is Bitcoin to your life? — “An opportunity to turn things around.” Lin Lei answered without hesitation.

It was still a gamble, but he gradually moved from being cautious to being radical.

Lin Lei is 25 years old and works in sales at a chemical company in Yibin. Sitting in a small cubicle in a large open space, he also studies crude oil prices, trade wars, and the Yangtze River Conservation Area - you can think of this as being the "eyes and ears" for his boss, and of course it is also convenient for him to brag to clients.

The house price is 6,000 yuan, he earns 4,000 yuan a month, the company provides accommodation, and he spends 1,000 yuan a month on necessary expenses, and tries to save the rest. Future? Don't be ridiculous, work may have "social significance" and more of an expectation from parents, but in essence it is just a "stable cash flow".

After working for a year, he saved 8,000 yuan and tried to buy funds and also bought Bitcoin spot. But the principal was too small. How much money could he make just by buying spot?

"It's already amazing for ordinary people to have tens of thousands of dollars to buy spot goods. I invested 50,000 yuan. Even if it doubles, it will only become 100,000 yuan. So what? Can a few extra tens of thousands buy a house?" Lin Lei denied it angrily.

Fat House Bitcoin, Bit King, Ouyang Zhuaibai, Banmuxia, Master Li, Bit King, desires are suddenly opened up by the possibilities revealed by these names.

Lin Lei read the Weibo posts of these cryptocurrency speculators “from beginning to end”. From a debt of hundreds of thousands to tens of millions, the story of the Bitcoin King inspired him the most.

"When buying a house in Beijing, he paid the full amount! He took his parents from the countryside to see the house, and his parents asked him where the money came from? Was it illicit money?" Lin Lei felt "blood boiling".

"This circle is so magical that it can turn a commoner from a chicken into a phoenix!" This is Lin Lei's ultimate understanding of the cryptocurrency circle. "The cryptocurrency circle is gambling. If you don't gamble, you have no chance." He is determined to regard cryptocurrency speculation as "entrepreneurship." "Taking shortcuts" is not very glorious, but in the cryptocurrency circle, no one needs to hide their desire to "take shortcuts."

In the shared apartments in Chicago, the excitement is always boiling.

Every night, after eating the dinner prepared by Shu Gong, the roommate who graduated from Yuanpei University of Peking University crossed his legs, the Chengdu boy who graduated from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics took out his notebook, and Shu Gong opened a can of $1.5 beer. The three of them drank and chatted around the round table by the window under the warm light of the simple IKEA floor lamp. In a week, 20% to 30% of the time was spent talking about the situation in the Taiwan Strait, 10% about "American imperial politics", and the remaining 3 or 4 days were spent talking about how to make money. Everyone had all kinds of "crazy" ideas, even including "how to start a business and cheat money with PPT."

It can be understood as finding joy in suffering.

In the same small corner of the Chicago University Library, Shu Gong encountered three different people squatting there sobbing, and you can immediately imagine 100 possible reasons. A cartoon describing the teaching styles of several famous universities circulated among classmates: Penn is a nanny-style, Harvard is a teaching style, MIT is a free play style, and at the University of Chicago - the mother eagle stuffed a lot of reading into the eagle's arms, and then kicked it off the cliff - the legendary "suicidal style".

Introduction to social scientific methodologies (equivalent to "Social Science Methodology"), a public course, plus optional readings, about 150 pages a week. History class, reading stories, is relatively easy, but it is still 200 pages a week. The weather is "very cold" and there are "very few" social activities. Almost all the free time in the week is used for reading, and I have to read until 10:30 or 11 o'clock every night.

What’s even more difficult is that when a person’s intelligence level exceeds that threshold, the test of everything lies in his or her thoroughness - how to effectively arrange time to deal with numerous tasks; how to arrange meetings with teachers in order to evaluate one’s classroom strategies and performance and win the teacher’s favor.

The time available for adaptation is too short. So short that you don't have time to understand the system. How hard should you work? How can you become one of the 30% of students who get A's? Is what you learn on paper solid enough? How can you apply for a PhD? There are so many uncertainties that no one can give you the answers.

The city of Chicago is located next to Lake Michigan. It is cool and rainy in the summer. On rainy nights, the raindrops seem to hit you from 360 degrees. At those times, you always feel like a lonely boat.

The possibility of transferring from a master's degree to a doctorate degree becomes slim. If you can earn 1 million, you don't have to worry about whether you can transfer to a doctorate degree. All problems will be solved. Getting rich quickly can buy 3 to 5 years of freedom. With freedom, you can slowly think clearly about what you want to do in the future. This is why people want to get rich quickly by speculating in cryptocurrencies.

The foreshadowing of my sudden wealth was also buried in those night talks with my roommates who majored in finance and economics. Most of the conversations have become the embers of time, but the part that makes the world more real remains:

"The larger your fund size, the higher the corresponding risk-free rate. Ordinary people can get a risk-free rate of 4% to 5% per year through a zero-threshold money market fund. If you have a principal of more than 500,000 yuan, you can find a relatively good trust in China and get a stable return of 8% to 10% per year. If the principal exceeds 10 million yuan, you can invest in large-scale private equity, which can guarantee a return of more than 10%."

It is easier to make money with large funds, and Shu Gong has glimpsed the law of money making money.

Poor man's rice

The total market value has reached 1.17 trillion US dollars, second only to Google's parent company Alphabet, ranking sixth among global listed companies. In the 12 years since its birth, the price of a single coin has climbed from 0 to 63,153 US dollars. Bitcoin has created too many wealth stories, and it itself is a wealth wonder.

Bitcoin price chart, CoinMarketCap

Like the topographic profile from the Yellow Sea to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the latest bull market that began in 2020 and the previous bull market that began in 2017 have flattened the peaks of the earlier bull market in 2013. The amazing flat land and tall buildings at that time are now nothing more than basins.

There are very few individuals who become truly wealthy overnight. In the tide of wealth, prominent riders also rise and fall.

Li Xiaolai, once known as China's richest Bitcoin investor, has now become low-key and silent. Xu Xiaoping, a famous angel investor who excitedly called on invested companies to consider all-in blockchain in 2017, has returned to a field he is more familiar with. Zhan Ketuan and Wu Jihan, who once staged a drama of grabbing the official seal, have reached a settlement, and the latter has left Bitmain.

The new story is the entry of institutions.

Established financial institutions such as Fidelity, JPMorgan Chase and BlackRock have already entered the market or are eager to try. Among the companies, Microstrategy has increased its investment in Bitcoin several times last year, and Tesla announced in February this year that it had spent $1.5 billion to buy Bitcoin.

For individuals who hope to make a small investment for a big return, the entry of institutions creates opportunities, but it also increases the difficulty of the entire game.

Completely different from retail investors, professional institutions have better trading skills, are more able to abide by trading disciplines, and use the most advanced machines and tools.

They are also the representatives of wealth in the "classical world".

Grayscale Investments, a digital currency investment fund and trust company founded in 2013, has a minimum purchase amount of $50,000 and a minimum lock-up period of six months.

People with strong financial resources can more easily make money in the cryptocurrency market. They are less tempted by leverage and altcoins because they can buy much more Bitcoin spot than the average person by spending only 1% of their assets.

If you have a large capital, you don’t have to take so many risks.

Shugong's risk management has become easier. Three quarters of his bitcoins are placed in hardware wallets. At least half of the bitcoins used for transactions are placed in accounts without leverage. The leverage does not exceed 5 times. "There is room for maneuver if problems arise."

In the days when he was on the edge of a knife, he spent half of his time every day learning financial knowledge, and the other half was spent "sweating profusely while looking at his phone." He was in a trance, sweating profusely, and had to stare at his phone two or three thousand times a day, "as if it would disappear if I stopped looking at it."

I never had a good night's sleep. One morning when I was washing my face, I touched my head and suddenly found a bald spot the size of a coin at my temples. It was very smooth and had no hair at all.

Shu Gong believes that before the big bull market came, he bought back the skills with the tuition fees he paid.

Lin Lei, who is eager to make a comeback through Bitcoin, is still optimistic. With the principal of 1,500 yuan, Lin Lei also divided it into two positions, opened different leverages, and bought and sold at different points. It sounds quite sad. "The rice of the poor is limited, one grain at a time." Lin Lei said, "In fact, I am honing my trading system with the minimum cost."

There is no need to distinguish. You can easily be infected by his optimistic mood that good things will happen tomorrow. Lin Lei has made up his mind to polish himself like polishing a rough stone. It’s okay to know that he is not doing well, "There is no shortage of opportunities in the cryptocurrency circle. As long as there is progress, it’s fine."

It is true that for Lin Lei, the wealth in his account has not increased. But it is also true that with Bitcoin, good things will happen tomorrow. What is important is that desire and hope resonate. As long as the currency market continues to rise and fall 24 hours a day, countless Lin Leis will roll and roll with it, waiting for their big opportunity to come.

(At the request of the interviewees, Shu Gong, Chen Mi, Li Meng, and Lin Lei are all pseudonyms)