At 3 a.m., I received a frantic call from a friend in Jiangsu, sobbing as she said her account was gone—全部6000 stablecoins wiped out. After asking, I found out she used 5x leverage to go long on a certain asset, and when the market moved 3 points in the opposite direction, she was immediately liquidated. Looking at her trading records, she had a full position with 5800 in principal, no stop-loss set, and no risk control alerts activated. This isn’t trading; it’s basically throwing money into the exchange.

Having been in the crypto market for many years, I’ve heard too many stories of "zeroing out overnight." Most beginners fall into the same trap: believing that full position + high leverage equals quick wealth. Wrong. This logic is fundamentally flawed. Full position + high leverage isn’t about making money; it’s about paying fees to the exchange. To be blunt: those who survive in the market are never relying on massive leverage; they succeed because of precise control over position size.

Let’s do some numbers. With the same 5x leverage, suppose the account has a principal of 750 stablecoins. If you open a full position, a 6% market move in the opposite direction triggers forced liquidation. But if you only use 75 stablecoins with the same 5x leverage, it takes an 86.7% adverse move to wipe out the principal. The risk resistance between these two approaches differs by nearly 12 times. My friend’s situation was even more extreme—96.7% of her principal was in the position, so just a 1-point move could make her heart race; she was basically dancing on the edge of a cliff.

I’ve also fallen into this trap myself. Early on, a 10,000 yuan account was wiped out in three days. That painful lesson taught me deeply what it means to "stay alive is more important than anything."