The 80,000 yuan I saved up over two years was originally meant for the down payment on a marital home. But when I saw the digital asset market skyrocketing, I got impulsive and put it all in.

Looking back now, that wasn’t investing at all. It was just youthful recklessness, gambling with money I shouldn't have touched. At the peak, while I was vacationing in Phuket, lying on a beach chair scrolling on my phone, my balance suddenly jumped to 2.3 million. I was on cloud nine, even telling my family over the phone, “Next year we’ll get a bigger house, Mom, you can quit your job.”

The bear market hit fast.

In less than two weeks, the number dropped to 220,000. I remember it so clearly—squatting on the hotel balcony doing the math, hesitating for ages just to buy a bottle of cold Coke. The waves outside kept crashing one after another, making me anxious—worse than seeing the loss in my account.

Over the past ten years, I’ve survived the nights after liquidating everything, and fallen into the traps set by so-called “mentors.” I started out completely clueless, and bit by bit, became who I am now. Today, I’m not going to sugarcoat anything—here are a few hard-earned lessons I’ve paid for with real money. If beginners follow this advice, at least they can avoid most of the pitfalls.

**Rule #1: Don’t touch projects you don’t understand**

When NFTs were at their peak, people in the community would post screenshots of their profits every day. Honestly, I hadn’t even finished reading the project’s whitepaper before jumping in. Three days later, 250,000 was gone.

Later, I realized a simple truth: the fairest thing about this market is that your returns always match your understanding. If you don’t even know how a project makes money or what its underlying logic is, why do you think you can make money from it?

Now I have a strict rule—