Some people see contracts as simple gambling—winning a hundred times and getting rich overnight, losing everything in a single night. But in reality, the rules of this game were never designed for retail investors from the start.

The data is there: less than 3% of retail traders in the crypto space achieve long-term stable profits; most others are just being cut like chives.

Take high leverage, for example—it's like a drug. Using 10,000 yuan to open a 100x leverage on BTC perpetual contracts, a slight market move can yield a hundredfold return, instantly turning your account into millions. Sounds awesome, right? But what about reality? Just a 1% adverse move, and once the maintenance margin is hit, a forced liquidation occurs, wiping out your principal instantly. No buffer, no negotiation.

In December, a single day saw a total liquidation of $603 million across the entire network, with 184,600 traders forced to close positions. On a major platform’s BTCUSDT contract, the largest single liquidation reached $11.5818 million. How many people's hard-earned money is behind these numbers?

The typical player’s pattern is this: once they make a profit, they become greedy. Making 1 million, they want to push to 2 million, completely ignoring the risks of funding rates and extreme market conditions, ultimately losing everything in one last trade. When they lose, they get even more hooked—taking out loans, swiping credit cards to add margin, hoping to turn the tide with more leverage. But the more they add, the deeper they sink, and once trapped, they can't get out.

Ultimately, the biggest magic of contracts isn’t a financial tool, but the stimulation of extreme emotions. Those virtual millions on paper can be addictive enough to make people lose their rationality.

Everyone understands risk management when they’re rational, but once their brain heats up and they trade based solely on emotion, the final outcome is almost always—zero.

To survive longer in this market, you must build a complete trading system and risk control framework; otherwise, the difficulty is higher than climbing to the sky. It’s not that you can’t play, but without these fundamentals, losing money is only a matter of time.