A few years ago, a veteran in traditional finance told me that the first pot of gold in life requires leverage. If you can maintain an annual compound interest of over 10%, you will have nothing to worry about for life.

Unfortunately, I didn't understand the deeper meaning at first, but now, looking back, I am already part of the story.
I didn't expect that my previous article on "Low Leverage Harms People" would gain good traffic and resonate deeply with many fellow "gamblers," which is why I decided to continue writing the "Gambling Reflection" series.
Why did we come to the crypto world?
Certainly, some curiosity about new forms of assets and a desire to explore new business models, but undeniably, we all want to make money faster. So when many people comment to me "Stay away from leverage," I also find it unrealistic.
Because when we come here, we are already "leveraging" our lives.
But you can't keep adding leverage forever.
The Way of Leverage

When you have almost no principal, being conservative is obviously useless; your only advantage is volatility.
Like many teams at Odaily and in the crypto space, our average age is young, many born in the 2000s. Most of us don't come from wealthy backgrounds. Entering the crypto industry, it's clear we're not here for "asset allocation." What attracts us is this high-volatility, high-uncertainty, high-stakes environment.
At different times, I have entered the same river as others, but their understanding of the crypto world is completely different from mine. Most of the time, I feel I can't teach them much; instead, I glimpse new developments through them.
Although hot topics are always changing, the stories we experience are always rhyming. We keep bouncing between getting rich quickly and hitting zero, unable to control the fluctuations on the screen.
For example, my colleague Xiao N is an "A5 to A7 expert."
In October 2021, right after he graduated, Axie Infinity was igniting a whole narrative about chain games. He decisively went all-in, and within two months, his funds jumped from A5 to A7. But this was still a typical Ponzi scheme; after reaching the peak, it naturally collapsed. He then chose to fully invest in another chain game, CryptoMines (spaceship), and after losing money, he kept adding to his position, trying to return to the peak, nearly wiping out his funds.
In 2023, he early participated in inscriptions and caught the main rise of ORDI, then followed the Solana meme boom with Bome, Slerf, and others, again from A5 to A7. At that time, SOL's price soared past $200. He used 4x leverage to go long on Solana with full position, only to be bloodily wiped out again.
In 2025, he jumped on the bandwagon, tirelessly sitting through the BSC meme market, again from A5 to A7. This time, he chose to heavily invest in BNBHolder when its market cap was about $170 million, only to see it retrace again and again.
These stories are not only completely true but also simplified versions of his many crazy fluctuations—his actual cases of wild swings are countless...
Actually, my colleague Xiao N is very capable. He always manages to grasp the pulse of front-line hot topics and decisively jumps on opportunities. However, in the end, he doesn't have much money left in his pocket.
If you only look at the assets and sectors, his trading trajectory seems chaotic. But if you strip away project names and market cycles, his behavioral logic is highly consistent: always going all-in, always wanting to earn more, repeatedly using the same gambling-style risk structure to fight the same anxiety: hoping to push life to the finish line with one big move.
This is called: wrongly continuously adding leverage to life, living a Sisyphus life.
The Battle with Your Brain

Many people have asked me why xx OG and big players, who are already so wealthy, keep opening high-leverage contracts and repeatedly hitting zero. Can't they do something else? Are they hedging? Are they laundering money?
Maybe some are, but definitely not all. Many of their trading logic and patterns clearly do not conform to hedging strategies.
In fact, we're tired of these stories in the crypto space. When whales fall, it's like fireworks exploding in the sky. Many people risk losing "the truly needed money" to chase after returns they don't really need.
Because on the road of using leverage, many have gone from using leverage as an efficiency tool to being controlled by leverage. In reality, they no longer need a single correct judgment to change their fate or maximize profits. What they need is to control risks and avoid hitting zero when they make wrong decisions.
But this is very difficult because we are already controlled by our own brains.
Human behavior is often governed by stable and stubborn patterns. Once these patterns form, they are very hard to change.
When a person faces something new for the first time, their brain mainly uses the recently popularized "prefrontal cortex."
You will think about whether to do it, how to do it, whether doing so will cause problems—all judgment, impulse control, and planning are handled by the prefrontal cortex. But the prefrontal cortex has a very real flaw: it's slow and energy-consuming. For the brain, every serious thought is a significant "energy expenditure."
Therefore, in principle, as long as a task is repeated enough times, the brain will automatically do one thing: hand over control from the prefrontal cortex to the circuit responsible for habits and action routines. This process is like compressing a real-time calculation process into a one-click shortcut.
This is very intuitive in experiments with mice. When a mouse is first placed in a Skinner box, whether it presses the lever is a decision that needs to be tested. It hesitates, observes the results, and then decides whether to repeat the action.
But after experiencing "pressing the lever yields food" multiple times, it changes. It no longer judges whether it's worth pressing; as soon as it sees the lever and enters the environment, its body automatically presses it. This behavior no longer involves the decision-making of the prefrontal cortex but is solidified into a "situational-response" automatic pathway.
Once inertia develops, the small cognitive process originally used for judgment and adjustment is bypassed by the brain to save energy. You are controlled by the brain's inertia.
After reading my article the day before yesterday, BITWU's boss also wrote an article sharing his real-life experience: a traditional boss who used leverage trading during good market times, reaching a peak of 370 Bitcoin, but during losses, he didn't scale up leverage. After losing everything, he repeatedly deposited funds, adding tens of thousands of RMB daily, going to zero and re-depositing, cycle after cycle for months until he went bankrupt and even accumulated debt.
I believe many people have had similar experiences—deep down, they already know they are "hooked," but they can't stop opening positions or going all-in.
Reclaim the Prefrontal Cortex, Stop Adding Leverage

So, if you haven't yet fallen into a vicious cycle, stop immediately!
If you're already drifting further down the gambling road, what you need to do is not find the next better asset but start the difficult process of reclaiming control from your brain's automatic reactions.
You need to first reconstruct one thing: the correct "psychological reward" gained from trading. Many people keep going all-in, but it's no longer about making money itself. The profit and loss on the account are just numbers. What truly drives you is the thrill, the sense of control, and the illusion of "retiring with this one." If you still see fast, aggressive, heavy positions as the only commendable behavior, your brain will keep reinforcing this gambling loop.
You need to shift the reward focus from "how much I earned" to "whether I followed the rules," whether you stopped loss as planned, whether you reduced positions after profits, and whether you forced yourself to rest after a series of mistakes.
Only when you start to get positive feedback from "not getting hooked today" and "not breaking discipline today" will your brain gradually learn: the new source of security is not leverage but control, establishing a new pattern.
Another very important point, which is also easy to implement, is to be willing to spend money in the real world! Be willing to turn paper profits into real life. Cash out timely and enjoy a good life.
You should know that 1 SOL can already satisfy your appetite. If you want to buy a car, just go buy it—don't always think about "earning enough for another car before buying." Let your brain rebuild a human circuit: making money is not for continuing to bet, but to improve life itself.
True happiness requires surpassing the excitement brought by trading, so you can truly step back from the leverage-adding path.
Final Words

Today, a few years later, I understand what that veteran said: the first pot of gold in life requires leverage; afterward, if you can maintain over 10% annual compound interest, you will have nothing to worry about for life.
If you have 10 million RMB, a 10% annual return, in 10 years, you'll have about 26 million RMB.
How many in our industry, in the dead of night, still dream of the 10 million RMB they once had?
The first pot of gold depends on judgment, courage, and luck; all subsequent money should rely on structure, discipline, and reverence for "drawdowns."
Those fortunate enough to have completed their initial accumulation should not chase the steepest curves, should not risk unclear structures, and should not gamble with leverage and all-in for so-called "certainty."
If you've just made money, stop! Enjoy real life, don't let your brain fall into the wrong path.
— A call to all fellow gamblers, Let’s quit gambling early
Share the article from the Planet Daily boss