I was organizing my computer the other day and found a screenshot from a long time ago.

The time shown on it is 2:17 a.m.
There’s only a string of numbers in the screenshot.

Unrealized loss on the account: -$318k.

When I saw this picture, I suddenly thought of someone. His name was A-lin—of course, that’s a pseudonym. The first time I met him, he had only just entered the crypto industry for less than a year. Every day he was excited. The first thing he did after waking up in the morning was check the market. The last thing he did before going to sleep at night was also check the market. He once said, “As long as Bitcoin keeps moving, I have a chance to make money.”

Later, during that period, the market really was doing well. His account kept going up. In just a few months, it tripled. He started trusting his own judgment more and more.

One day, he sent me that screenshot of his profits. After it, he only added one sentence: “From now on, you won’t need to go to work.”

I didn’t reply. Not because I wasn’t happy for him. But because I was worried. Because when the real danger comes, it’s often not losing money—it’s believing that you’ll never lose money again.

Before long, the market started to turn. On the first drop, he said it was just a pullback. On the second drop, he began topping up his position. On the third drop, he already didn’t want to open his account.

After that, the profit screenshot never appeared again. In its place was the screenshot showing an unrealized loss of $318k. He said he originally planned to delete it, but in the end he left it there. Because that wasn’t a loss. It was tuition.

Later, he restarted trading. The first thing he did wasn’t to study new indicators. Instead, he stuck a piece of paper next to his computer. On it, there were only six characters: “Stay alive first, then make money.”

To this day, every time I see that screenshot, I think of a line: the market won’t remember how much you once made. But it will keep testing whether you remember the mistakes you once made.