After a 92% Drawdown, How Did He Achieve 13x Returns?

Original Article Title: Lessons From a Crypto Trader Who Lost It All
Original Article Author: hitesh.eth, Founder of the data analytics platform DYθR
Original Article Translation: DeepSeek

Editor's Note: The article tells the story of a cryptocurrency trader's experience and journey through volatile market conditions. He experienced multiple losses, liquidations, and wrong trading decisions, even having to sell personal items to make ends meet. Through continuous failures, the author gradually recognized the importance of skill and risk management. However, market manipulation and the COVID crash once again put him in a difficult situation. Despite eventually achieving his financial goals, he deeply realized that the market not only changed his financial situation but also completely reshaped his mindset and soul.

Below is the original content (slightly edited for readability):

That year, I checked my phone and found the media everywhere reporting the end of Bitcoin mining. The Bitcoin price, after holding strong for eight months, finally broke below the $6,000 support level. The price plummeted to below $5,000, and with each drop, my fear intensified. That once reassuring strong support level—now just an illusion—finally began to crumble.

I opened my altcoin investment portfolio—it had dropped about 92% from its January high. I stared at the screen, feeling a tightness in my chest. What was once a sea of green in my portfolio was now a sea of blood red. My stomach twisted with fear.

A few months ago, I bought a house, and with each market drop, the heavy burden of those monthly payments made it harder for me to breathe. I had sold at a loss to meet these payments and convinced myself it was okay because the bull market would return.

That was my plan—to weather this storm, make enough money, and buy more houses when the market turned around. But things didn't go according to plan. The plan seemed to fail. The storm didn't pass—it was engulfing me. That's when I realized, the market won't care about your plan. It won't care if you have bills to pay or dreams to chase. It operates in its own way, and the more you try to force it, the more it will make you yield.

I was driving back home, an eight-hour journey, but my mind wasn't there. My body was driving, but my thoughts were trapped in the cryptocurrency market, unable to detach.

The road ahead blurred in my mind, thoughts spiraling incessantly. Every few minutes, I would check the price, hoping to see some upward movement—any sign that could calm the storm within me. But the numbers just kept falling. My throat was parched, uncertainty gnawing at me.

What if this is the ending?

What if I can't salvage it?

What if I can't pay the bill?

The future suddenly became a huge question mark, and I have no answers. That car ride made me realize that fear can cloud your judgment. The longer you sit in uncertainty, the more you become a prisoner of your own anxiety. And when you transact out of fear, you're no longer transacting — you're just reacting.

My mind, desperate to escape this suffocating uncertainty, began to play tricks on me. It gave me a plan — irrational though persuasive. A voice in my head whispered: sell all your altcoins, buy HOT (Holochain). It's defying the trend, getting more and more popular.

Despite the overall weak price action, HOT is showing strong growth. It's a cheap low-cap coin, everyone on Twitter is talking about it. Coins like this are the path to 100x gains — I've seen it before.

My heart raced with hope. Maybe this is the opportunity. Maybe I can turn things around. I allowed myself to believe this was the answer. I envisioned HOT going parabolic, my portfolio flipping 5x from the bottom, and me getting back in the game. It was enough to hold me tight. The hope of a dopamine-fueled future made me feel alive again. But in reality, hope is not a strategy.

It's a drug that blinds you to reality. I bought HOT because I wanted to believe, not because it was a rational trade. What I sought was redemption, not returns.

But my mind didn't fully buy into this decision — I just hadn't realized it yet. It wasn't until I found myself selling my position in less than six hours after buying that I understood. Bitcoin dropped again, fear made me weak. I sold my HOT, losing more money. A few days later, HOT surged as I'd hoped — reaching the expected 5x. But by then, I had converted everything back to BTC and moved it to NEXO.

I was desperate. I borrowed more money against my BTC holdings to play BitMEX futures, trying to catch the bottom. This maneuver made me realize that changing plans mid-trade is simply panic in disguise. You make yourself believe you're being flexible, but you're just spinning your wheels under the drive of fear.

At that time, Bitcoin was hovering around $4000. Everyone started shouting "this is the bottom." Twitter was filled with tweets about "generational buys." I clung tightly to this hope. But the bottom had not arrived. The price slid to $3000. My long position got liquidated, and suddenly, fear was no longer distant — it was right at my neck.

I felt the blood drain from my face. My BTC collateral on NEXO was in jeopardy. The thought of losing my collateral made my hands turn cold. I couldn't afford to lose everything. So, I used the remaining BTC to pay off the loan, licking my wounds. Now, I was BTC-scarce, the market had stripped me of all rationality. Instead of walking away, my brain told me to double down. Revenge trading became my new faith.

And so, I took out a $10,000 instant loan, buying in at the absolute bottom of $3,300. This was my last chance. The plan was crystal clear: hold BTC for 12 months. Just hold. I was confident it would rise to $10,000, giving me a 3x return. But within hours, I abandoned the plan. I couldn't sit still. The desperation to quickly recoup losses overwhelmed the patience I needed.

I put all 3 BTC into BitMEX, opened a 10x leveraged long position at $3,500. The market didn't care about my hopes. The price plummeted once again. I lost it all. It was then that I realized you can't recover losses through shortcuts. No amount of leverage or doubling down can undo your mistake. It will only make you fall faster.

My brain refused to accept the losses. It kept pushing me back into trading. You can make it back. That was the voice in my head. Every trade I made on BitMEX during that time was at 10x leverage. I thought it was low—because Twitter had reshaped my perception.

People posted screenshots of 50-100x leveraged trades, making 10x seem like a "safe bet." I painfully realized that perception was a dangerous illusion. Just because 10x was lower than 50x didn't mean it was safe—it just slowed the bleeding.

When I switched to cross leverage, I had no idea how to mitigate risks. I put 100% of my funds into every trade. Each time, I got liquidated. Each time, I cursed cross leverage as a scam. Later, I realized it was my lack of knowledge—my inability to manage risk. That's when I understood that ignorance was the real scam. Not the platform's issue—but my recklessness.

I was losing money every day. I started selling personal items just to get through the next few weeks. My life was being consumed by the losses. Then one day, when I was broke and hope was fading, I made a decision—I needed to seriously learn Technical Analysis (TA). I spent several nights studying charts, patterns, and indicators.

I hardly slept. But knowledge alone wasn't enough—I needed funds to trade. So, I joined the global trading competition hosted by Blockchain Whispers. The top trader with the highest ROI within a month would win 1 BTC. While mostly a simulated trade, I treated it as a matter of life and death.

My mind is razor-sharp. I execute every trade with sniper-like precision. I 13x-ed my initial capital in a month, winning a 1 BTC reward. Skill is the only thing that truly gives you an edge. Luck runs out, but skill doesn't.

That 1 BTC was a relief. I could finally breathe. Weeks later, I needed to make a $30,000 mortgage payment, giving me a fighting chance. I made a slew of trades with that 1 BTC.

The market started trending up again. I traded EOSBTC, earning a few more BTC during its upward swing. I used those profits to cover the remaining mortgage payment. By early 2019, I was back in the game.

I felt untouchable. The winning streak gave me an intangible confidence. I convinced myself that I was now a top futures trader. The losses that once haunted me gradually faded into the background. I had paid off those seemingly insurmountable debts.

Then, Bitcoin skyrocketed 40% in two days. My heart raced—I thought ATH was inevitable. But it was all a trap. The market crashed back to $6000. Manipulation was at its peak. BitMEX was liquidating users daily due to system "errors"—I likely lost at least 20 BTC because I couldn't close positions during those platform "errors" that froze up during high volatility.

BitMEX was manipulating the market. We all knew, but we tolerated it—we had no choice. Binance Futures didn't exist back then. When Binance finally launched futures, we all migrated over. Better user experience, but manipulation still existed. Volume dropped, the timeline became blurred. The market entered a lull.

Then came the epic collapse, BTC lost 40% of its value overnight. It wiped out countless cryptocurrency traders. Most never returned.

I too planned to leave. I even did leave for a while. I spent months as a filmmaker. I shot a documentary, gained acclaim, and even penned a movie script. I wanted to direct it, but no one was willing to fund a newcomer.

So, I returned to the cryptocurrency market. Not for thrills—but for money. For making my movie. I had no choice. It took me four years to finally earn enough to realize my dream. Four years of market cycles, endless patience, and experiences that pained me, reshaped me, and tested every ounce of my resilience.

I succeeded. But I am no longer the same trader I used to be.

The market not only took my money—it also reshaped my soul.

「Original Tweet」