I did a month of Perptual Futures trading, from fantasizing about getting rich to waking up to reality.

Being around people who know how to trade keeps you awake. Article by Rhys, collated, compiled and contributed by Luffy, Foresight News. (Synopsis: Legislator Luo Mingcai bitterly criticized: The central bank's governor shouted that “bitcoin is a fraud”, so that young people missed 18 times the opportunity to get rich) (Background supplement: When the crypto plunged, who made hundreds of millions in “licking blood at the knife's edge”? Do you really have a chance to get rich? As the title says, I tried perpetual contract trading for a month. As someone who has been exposed to cryptocurrencies for five years and has never touched a perpetual contract, I would like to share this experience in this article. I hope that both novice traders and industry veterans can get some fresh perspective from my story. You may laugh at my recklessness, be embarrassed by my operation, or empathize with certain experiences. Why did it start? To be honest, half out of boredom, half out of wanting to follow the current craze. Like many people now, I want to jump on the “decentralized perpetual contract exchange craze”, which simply means trading on a specific platform to accumulate points. When we started, there were four main platforms to choose from: Hyperliquid, Lighter, Aster, and Apex. Looking back now, I probably should have chosen Lighter, which hasn't been issued yet, and the points campaign is still ongoing. But I ended up choosing Hyperliquid because it seemed like the safest choice. Lucky Start My first few trades were focused on XPL tokens and only went long. This quickly became my fixed trading pattern. The first transaction doubled my account, and for five minutes I really felt like a genius, even though it was pure luck. I opened a long order with the highest leverage, slept without a stop loss, and woke up with a doubling of my account. Even if it is newbie luck, it may just be a stupid operation that happens to work. Since then I have been trading XPL in the same way: look at 5-minute candlesticks, short-term operation, full leverage, no stop loss. I don't recommend this way of playing, it's the fastest way to lose all your money. But the newbie's luck continues, and my account keeps going up. For a little background, in the community I frequent, the nickname is followed by “Caroline Ellison Arc” – a nod to her famous quote to the effect that “stop loss is not considered a good risk management tool”. Now that I think about it, it's probably not a wise move to use her as a role model for trading strategies. Find my “winning formula” The next key turning point was when I discovered the Hyperliquid liquidation alert bot on Telegram. I didn't realize at the time that this robot basically defined my entire “trading strategy”. Since then, my Telegram has become a hybrid of news bots and liquidation alerts. I naively thought that trading would be smarter if I knew why liquidation arose (spoiler: it doesn't work at all). My strategy is simple: if the robot pops up a bunch of alerts in a row, I open the candlestick chart and open long positions like crazy. Surprisingly, this trick actually worked. Most of the time, I make a profit as soon as I enter the market; If it's not profitable, I'll quickly stop loss and wait for the next wave of alerts. It's not a smart way to trade, but it's addictive enough. The Temptation to Position Size Later I started trading tokens outside of XPL, mainly because Hyperliquid offers ridiculously high leverage to mainstream coins. I realized that theoretically I could open a multimillion-dollar position. Pretty tempting, right? Very tempting indeed. But I also know how quickly these numbers can ruin me. I tried a few times and found that the position size rose too fast. Reducing the size of my position was the wisest decision I made that week. Bad day Then, I suffered my first real loss. By then I was already addicted: I woke up looking at candlesticks, looking for trading opportunities that didn't exist, chasing every candlestick as if they owed me money. As you can imagine, I lost a third of my account in one day. That feeling sucks. I closed all positions, cancelled all pending orders, and decided to stop for now. Although the account as a whole is still profitable, the excitement of making money has disappeared. I realized that I wasn't trading at all, I was gambling. 10/10 Day: A wake-up call Guess when my loss happened? That's right, October 10 – the day the market crashed. But I didn't lose money at the time of the crash, I had already lost money earlier in the day. That night, my liquidation bot popped up so many alerts that I thought someone was spamming me on Telegram. The sirens are endless, hundreds or even thousands, and it sounds like machine guns are strafing. Then suddenly it was quiet — Telegram automatically deleted the bot because it was too spam. By that time, I had reopened the candlestick chart and used all the remaining funds to open long positions. Somehow, I grabbed a few perfect entry points and actually earned back one-third of the account funds I had lost. It was a mess, a complete massacre. Some of the best traders have been completely liquidated. It's the loudest wake-up call I've had since I got into perpetual contracts, and it's a reminder that the market doesn't care who you are, and sooner or later it will eat everyone up. Reflections after 10/10 After that, I slowed down the pace of trading significantly. Maybe he was frightened, maybe he was glad that he didn't lose money. To be honest, I am very satisfied to be able to earn back one-third of the lost account funds and share this experience alive. Without the Telegram bot, I felt like a newbie with the auxiliary wheel removed. I started with a strict stop loss and also tried a time-weighted average price order. So, what exactly have I learned? This month has helped me define my trading style: I am a short-term trader. The chaos of that day on 10/10, and the constant reminder to “make money and run”, shaped me now. Jim Talbot's video clip about “profit-taking” is still playing in my head more than I want to admit. I don't look for trading opportunities anymore. Now it may only be traded once a few days, or even once a week. If you had to give you one piece of advice, it would be: find a group of people who do the same thing as you, preferably smarter than you. is the kind of person who is really trading, not posting candlestick charts for the sake of blogging; It's the kind of person who accuses you when you're acting recklessly and reminds you to take profit when you're carried away by greed. With such people around, it will be easier to survive the days of light markets, and the joy of making money will be stronger. Being around knowledgeable people keeps you awake. Trading alone can easily fall into a narrow perspective, and that's when you start looking for trading opportunities that don't exist. My account is indeed profitable, but that's not the point, the real win is not losing all the money. I learned when to stop, when to reduce my position, and when to turn off candlesticks before the market dragged me down. I'm still insisting, I'm still learning, I'm still clicking the “buy” button, and I'm still sharing my story here. Related reports “Binance Life” has increased a thousand times in three days, have you really become rich? Why do retail investors always fall into a “short and loss-making life”? Attention all P-minions: creator tokens may become a gathering place for new myths of sudden wealth Bull market thinks…