There is never a shortage of talent in the market; what’s lacking are those who can survive until the end.

Every time I dig up my trading records in the middle of the night, I can’t help but laugh—how arrogant I once was, and how much I now feel. When I first entered this industry, I truly thought I had found a shortcut to get rich. Watching every jump on the candlestick chart, my fingers itched, eager to seize every fluctuation.

After a few short-term trades made some money, I started to get cocky. I thought the market was just like that, impossible to turn into something else. And then? The market gave me a loud slap. A turn in direction, and in a few hours, I wiped out half a year’s gains. The more I refused to accept it, the more I wanted to increase my position and fight back, but the final result was—liquidation.

This kind of drama plays out every day in the cryptocurrency trading circle. The 2025 market cycle is crazy enough, right? After Bitcoin hit a new high of $120,000, it fell back to around $80,000 within a few months, with a rise and fall of over 35% in a short period. How many people were thrown out alive in this turbulence? Just because they didn’t understand the most basic lesson of trading—losing money is as normal as paying tuition when going to school, and it’s unavoidable.

**Losses are not failures; they are tuition**

I’ve seen too many traders (including myself back then) become anxious and self-denying whenever they face losses. But honestly, there are no invincible champions in this industry. Those who have won awards in competitions have all experienced devastating losses behind the scenes.

A trader who once won an award told me that his worst drawdown came from “bottom-fishing halfway up the mountain.” But the key is, he didn’t avoid it; he always reviewed his problems carefully. Later, he realized that he was most relaxed when making money, so he set strict emotional management rules for himself.

This is the real difference between experts and rookies—not whether they lose money, but what they do after losing.