Economic Observer reporter Hu Yanming "I was gambling."
When talking about the trading mentality, many speculators will use this sentence to summarize.
If you pay attention, you may also hear a lot of the wealth stories of people around you who got rich overnight - attracting more fresh blood into the market; they are mostly small and big, gambler-style trading mentality.
This is also seen as a game of drumming and passing flowers, but most investors are holding on to the luck that they will not be the last to get the flowers.
On the evening of May 18, the China Internet Finance Association, the China Banking Association and the China Payment and Clearing Association jointly announced. The next day, the global cryptocurrency collective suffered a major setback. Among them, Bitcoin once approached the $30,000 mark and fell 30%, Ethereum fell 46%, and Litecoin fell 51%.
After the big fall, some people have bottomed out, and some people are still waiting. The sharp decline on May 19 is also seen as a repeat of the history after the seven ministries warned about the risks of virtual currency trading on September 4, 2017. Over the years, some people have already achieved wealth freedom, some people have traded frequently but have not made money, and some people have left the market after losing their principal.
"Little Leeks"
"I'm just a little leek, no principal, no information." Just like speculating in stocks and buying funds, this is more exciting. When the reporter asked whether he could interview, Li Shan repeatedly refused, saying that he could not compare with the big guy with tens of millions of funds and had no interview value.
Li Shan is the most common type of person in this ecology, because the novelty has entered the circle and floated in the ups and downs of the market. He is a designer of a company, in his 20s, full of curiosity about new things, and has also speculated in stocks before, but he has not made money, learned about coin speculation from the Internet or the stories of people around him, and entered with the mentality of playing.
At the beginning, with the mentality of winning when he earned and leaving the market when he lost, Li Shan did spot trading in the early days, that is, directly buying and selling existing virtual currencies on the market.
However, the spot virtual currency bought by Li Shan has not had a big market, and in his view, it is all a small fight. He began to get in touch with contracts.
The contract is leveraged, and you can choose to go long or short. The concept of a contract is somewhat similar to the current way domestic futures are traded. Some platforms can open up to 150 times the leverage, and the profit and loss is amplified in an instant.
Contracts only trade mainstream virtual currencies, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, etc., Li Shan believes that other coins are small and easy to be manipulated by market makers. Now Binance, Huobi, OKex and several trading platforms provide contract services. OKex can now increase the maximum leverage to 120 times, and both profit and loss can be multiplied by 120 times.
"Caught in the flaws of human nature, like gamblers, they want to make more when they earn." He described his mood this way. But Li Shan was eventually blown up on May 19.
It is precisely because of participating in contract trading and doing leverage that many users burst their positions on the day of the plunge, and many platforms cannot trade, nor can they make up the margin, and many investors have suffered heavy losses.
Li Shan and investors in private exchanges speculated that it may be that the number of users is too much, resulting in system downtime, because it was also the case when there was a big market in the past.
Some people also believe that the platform deliberately "pulls the network cable". Everyone describes the phenomenon of blowing up but not being able to call margin calls "one by one to accept shooting". Later, many investors set up a "Huobi Rights Protection Group", believing that it was a system problem of Huobi that led to the inability to call the margin and was blown up.
Around Li Shan, some people earned millions from 100,000 principals; some people lost 10 million and 30 million yuan. At first, he felt that he would not play when he was done. But after plummeting on May 19, it rose a lot the next day.
Li Shan still kept 8,000 yuan in his account. On May 20, Li Shan still bought Ethereum for 8,000 yuan to "read the bottom".
Bottom-up
On the night of the virtual currency plunge on May 19, seeing the mobile phone message pop-up window "Bitcoin is now $33000", Akan quickly opened the mobile trading software and rushed in to buy bitcoin with all the money in the account.
At that time, the account was only $750, after buying, the price of bitcoin was still falling, when the price reached $30,000, she still wanted to continue to buy, but at this time the mobile phone trading system was very slow, it could not be charged with money, could not buy.
At the end of 2017, Akan was an employee of a foreign-funded company, and her colleague's roommate made a lot of money because of the coin speculation, and bought a BMW car in Beijing in her 20s. Later, the roommate quit his job at BAT, concentrated on speculating in coins, and helped the newly issued virtual currency as an intermediary.
Although colleagues did not say how much money they made, Akan heard from his tone that they had made a lot of money, and they were not limited to speculating, buying two consoles and graphics cards, and mining at home.
After listening to the introduction, Akan felt that this matter was quite interesting, not only to make money, but mainly to be very novel. That afternoon, she opened an account with Huobi and bought some bitcoins. She clearly remembers that the price of a bitcoin was $6600.
Before long, Bitcoin had risen to more than $10,000. In the middle, she has been trying to trade, buy in and buy out, and also helped friends open accounts on other exchanges and do short-term trading, but her friends did not recognize the concept of Bitcoin, and soon cleared their positions and exited.
In 2018, Akan's family needed to use money to clear the account. To sum up, I invested less than 10,000 yuan and earned 20,000 yuan. Later, Akan also continued to pay attention, but at this time, Bitcoin has risen relatively high.
Recently, Musk has brought fire to virtual currency, and colleagues have suggested that you can learn to do contract transactions with a little money. She returned to the "coin circle", and by noon on May 21, she told reporters that the bitcoin bought for $750 had risen to $877. "The essence of coin speculation is gambling." Akan still wants to buy and sell in the short term and make a difference.
As Guan Qingyou, dean of the Institute of Finance and professor of the School of Economics of Hainan University, tip, cryptocurrency investment risk is extremely high, volatility and drawdown are huge, and Bitcoin is not suitable for ordinary investors.
He believes that there are only two types of people who can really make a lot of money on Bitcoin: one is the believer in Bitcoin. The second is the Bitcoin speculators, who recognize the speculative significance of Bitcoin, endure violent fluctuations at major key points in time, and finally earn this profit. "But in general, both kinds of people are very rare."
From the perspective of ordinary investors, Guan Qingyou said that such an investment target with huge volatility and obvious heading is not suitable for someone, investors still have to recognize their own positioning and choose a target that matches their own situation for investment.
As for whether many people can read the bottom after the big fall, Guan Qingyou topsoil, first recognize these four problems and then make a decision: First, value. The second is volatility. First of all, we must consider whether we can withstand huge fluctuations, soaring and plummeting is the norm of Bitcoin, "5.19" such a flash crash of 30% is not surprising, from 20,000 to 3000 in 2018, a year decline of more than 80%, not just waist cut. The third is liquidity. 2% of the accounts control 95% of the bitcoins, a large number of bitcoins are concentrated in the hands of a few people, poor liquidity, plunging exchange downtime can not be sold often. The fourth is jet lag. Bitcoin booms and busts usually occur late at night, and if you can't keep an eye on the market late at night, you may accidentally take a roller coaster.
"The circle is still the same"
"There are still those people in this circle, still irregular, and the behavior of cutting leeks has not changed." However, there may be more reliable projects, Wang Yifan summed up.
He entered the currency circle in 2017, and after the seven ministries and commissions released documents on September 4 of that year, the currency circle plummeted, when the reporter and Wang Yifan exchanged, he told reporters that the 70,000 principal was instantly lost only 10,000.
In that year, the Chinese Bank and other seven ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Announcement on Preventing the Risk of Token Financing", which clearly pointed out that "token issuance and financing refers to the financing entity's raising of so-called virtual currencies such as bitcoin and ether from investors through the illegal sale and circulation of tokens, which is essentially an act of illegal public financing without approval, suspected of illegally selling token tickets, illegally issuing securities, and illegal fundraising, financial fraud, pyramid schemes and other illegal and criminal activities."
Dong Ximiao, chief researcher of CmF, believes that the virtual currency represented by Bitcoin is not a digital currency, does not have the basic attributes of currency such as legal compensation and mandatory, and there are transaction risks, monopoly risks, technical risks and institutional risks. Illegally engaging in bitcoin trading and speculation, or illegal token issuance and financing (ICO) under the guise of "digital currency", illegal pyramid schemes may not only bring huge risks to investors, but also may affect the country's financial stability and social order, so it must be severely cracked down. The "94 Policy" has also become a recognized landmark event in the virtual currency circle. Four years later, Wang Yifan has not left the industry. For four years, Wang Yifan basically held the currency, but paid little attention to the price rise and fall. He mainly buys virtual currencies with high market capitalization in the industry. Previously, the market value of his position was more than one million, and after the plunge on May 19, the value of his position fell by 60%, and now his account is only a few hundred thousand. He laughed at himself for having become an old leek. "Theoretically it should be wealth freedom," but he hadn't yet. He concluded that if you want to make money in this circle, you can either invest in the right currency and seize the highest point in the bull market; or you can issue coins and cut leeks, which may involve some gray areas. In his view, it is still quite easy for people without a bottom line to make money, and the money these people make is the money that others lose, but this also has risks.
Before the introduction of the "94 Policy", many domestic projects raised funds under the guise of virtual currency, and Wang Yifan could not look at the air coin at that time, and still cannot look at it. He believes that the Dogecoin and Shiba Inu coins on the market are air coins, and it is also because of these animal coins that the air coins are back up.
Wang Yifan believes that the corresponding air coin is a virtual currency with specific application scenarios. They may "have so-called value." "For example, Ethereum has application scenarios, decentralized computer networks, and many smart contracts are deployed on Ethereum, and coin issuance is only one of the functions.
The current trading platforms such as Huobi, Binance, ouyi, although the main body is registered abroad, but the main team is still in China. Recently, many people have consulted Wang Yifan on how to buy coins, and he feels that the recent market is a bit like 2017, and new blood has begun to enter.
However, after the big fall, the WeChat group was cold and cold in the past two days, and basically no one spoke. "Whoever loses money has a casual chat," said a group of friends. Another group friend said that the WeChat group in the cryptocurrency circle can be called a barometer of the hot and cold of the cryptocurrency market, and the group is not active, indicating that it is falling. The group is active, indicating that it is rising.
Dong Ximiao said that for ordinary investors in the market, the tips made by financial management departments and industry associations have not attracted attention. Some financial institutions and payment institutions also provide support for virtual currency transactions such as Bitcoin. Especially since this year, the price of virtual currency represented by Bitcoin has soared and plummeted, and related speculation and trading activities are very hot. This not only damages the legitimate rights and interests of investors and property security, but also disrupts the normal economic and financial order to a certain extent. Therefore, the three major industry associations such as the China Internet Finance Association issued another announcement on preventing the risk of virtual currency speculation.
In Dong Ximiao's view, the announcement did not put forward new requirements and norms, but repeated a series of requirements and norms previously proposed. He believes that in the next step, the financial management department should increase the crackdown on illegal virtual currency trading activities, maintain the normal economic and financial order, and create a better environment for the official launch of China's digital yuan. At the same time, investors should fully understand the nature and risks of virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, and not participate in any form of trading and speculation.