Eight years ago, the moment my account turned blood red, I realized a fundamental truth—crypto circles won't make you get rich overnight, but they can definitely make you go bankrupt quickly. From that day on, I exchanged real losses for a survival manual, and every current view I hold is heavy with experience.

**The three most common pitfalls for beginners**

Contract leverage looks incredibly tempting. In the countless screenshots of successful trades, some use hundredfold leverage to amplify returns by dozens of times, making your heart race. But the reality is brutal—data shows that the average duration before a beginner's contract gets liquidated is only 37 days. Your losses are magnified infinitely by leverage, and the market shows no mercy to greed. I've seen too many people celebrating doubled accounts during the day, only to be wiped out in a flash crash at night. True veterans who survive long-term treat leverage as a seasoning—useful but never rely on it.

Small-cap coins are like carefully set traps by the market makers. Those flashy names and aggressive promotions have no real backing. Prices are entirely controlled by the market makers—when they pump, when they dump, all depends on their mood. Once the hype fades, a crash to zero or near-zero is the normal script. The simple logic is: if you can't tell who the chives are, chances are it's yourself.

"Insider information" and "ten-thousand-people building positions" in communities are essentially ways to find someone to take the fall. Twitter, WeChat groups are full of information, but truly valuable insights are never spread en masse in noisy environments. Information asymmetry exists naturally, and retail investors are the easiest to manipulate.

**The core rule for survival**

My "3-3-3" position management system has helped me survive several bull and bear cycles:

30% of my main holdings are in Bitcoin and Ethereum—mainstream coins with real scarcity and practical support, giving me confidence for long-term holding. 50% is allocated to projects with solid fundamentals, allowing me to seize opportunities while diversifying risk. The remaining 20% is an experimental field, used to try new narratives and hot topics, but mentally prepared that this part could go to zero entirely.

The key is strict execution—don't frequently rebalance just because a coin rises. Market temptations are everywhere, but controlling your hands is the beginning of making money.