Is there any brutal truth of trading cryptos, anyone want to share?

<ul><li id="isPasted">Don’t trade crypto without understanding tax laws.</li><li>​Plan and prepare your transactions.</li><li>​Already messed up? Learn from it. Fix your future trades.</li></ul>

<p id="isPasted">The "brutal truth" of cryptocurrency trading is often obscured by social media hype, but industry data and veteran experiences from 2025–2026 reveal a stark reality: the vast majority of retail traders lose money.&nbsp;</p><p><strong>1. The Survival Statistics</strong></p><ul><li>Massive Failure Rates: Approximately 80% to 90% of retail traders lose money in their first year. Long-term success is even rarer; only about 1% of traders remain consistently profitable over a five-year period.</li><li>The "Winning" Paradox: A study found that 65% of traders actually win more individual trades than they lose, yet 82% still lose money overall because their average losses are significantly larger than their average gains.</li><li>Leverage is a "Liquidation Engine": On leverage-heavy platforms, up to 89% of retail clients lose money. In a single event on 10 October 2025, over $19 billion in leveraged positions were wiped out in hours as Bitcoin dropped from $122,000 to $105,000. </li></ul><p><strong>2. Market Realities &amp; Manipulation</strong></p><ul><li>You Are the "Exit Liquidity": When a coin is trending on TikTok or X (Twitter), the "smart money" is usually already selling. Retail investors who buy during the hype are often just providing the liquidity needed for early whales to exit their positions.</li><li>The "Greater Fool" Theory: Many crypto prices are not driven by fundamental value but by the hope that someone else (the "greater fool") will buy the asset at a higher price later.</li><li>Predatory Exchanges: Some unregulated exchanges use internal "liquidity engines" to see where clusters of retail stop-losses are located and algorithmically trigger "wicks" (sudden, sharp price movements) to liquidate those positions for profit. </li></ul><p><strong>3. Psychological &amp; Security Traps</strong></p><ul><li>Emotional Sabotage: The most common reason for failure is trading based on FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) or revenge trading (trying to instantly win back a loss).</li><li>Security is Fragile: Even "safe" storage isn't foolproof. In 2025, one whale lost $27 million because they stored both keys to a "secure" multi-sig wallet on the same computer, while another was robbed of $11 million at gunpoint.</li><li>The "Dark Forest": Scams are sophisticated. In late 2025, a Bitcoin whale lost $91.4 million after a one-hour phone call with someone posing as "official customer service" for a hardware wallet. </li></ul>