Young Cryptocurrency Traders in County Town: Lost 130,000 and Returned to the Construction Site to Repay Debts

Author: hachii, Viewer inSight

Getting Rich Overnight is Just an Illusory Legend

24-year-old Yang Yi is the kind of ordinary youth from a county town. After dropping out of high school, he followed his parents to work at a construction site in the city, and perhaps would spend the next ten years working, saving money to build a house in his hometown, marry, have children, and then return to the construction site to continue working, just like his father.

But the emergence of virtual currency changed everything in his life.

Yang Yi followed people online to trade Bitcoin, engaging in contracts, which allowed him to "buy coins" using leverage and earn profits by predicting the rise and fall of currencies. For Yang Yi, who did not have enough capital, this was a lower-threshold way to play, but the risks and opportunities were equally significant.

Searching "contracts" on the internet always brings up warnings like "Playing contracts is a sure death." Despite this, some people still fervently desire to strike gold in this wealth game. For example, Yang Yi. His yearning for "getting rich" was like an endless whirlpool, pulling him into the cryptocurrency circle time and again.

In the past, he lacked the ability and luck to catch any wealth train of the times. Now, he was addicted to this game of small bets for big gains, thinking he could finally grasp the lever to wealth and achieve a leap in social class, even though it was actually a scythe harvesting him.

"New World"

Recalling the first time he clicked into a virtual currency exchange, Yang Yi thought of the fable of Pandora's box. After opening this "box" of virtual currency, his life fell into a numb cycle: trading coins, accumulating online debt, and working at the construction site to pay it off.

But at that time, Yang Yi thought he had discovered a "new world." In the derivative community of the exchange, hundreds of thousands of people were active every day, sharing their trading experiences and teaching courses. Yang Yi felt like a brave adventurer stepping into a game, receiving "beginner tutorials" in the community.

It was 2019. In February, Bitcoin was valued at $3,500, and by June when he entered, it had already surged past $10,000. That intangible currency tripled in value in just four months.

Those who hoarded Bitcoin saw their assets appreciate in this wave of prosperity; some contract players, through correct predictions of price movements, also doubled their investments. They shared enviable screenshots of their assets in the community, complimenting and seeking advice from each other in the comments. Yang Yi looked at the dizzying zeros in those screenshots and felt for the first time that wealth was so close.

Yang Yi was secretly delighted, thinking he had found an easier way to make money. More importantly, it gave him hope of leaving the construction site.

Yang Yi dropped out of school during the winter break of his second year of high school and went to the construction site where his father worked. His family lived in a small town in Liupanshui, Guizhou, where people like him were not uncommon. Many of his peers had already dropped out of school in junior high. There were not many options: wandering the streets; or leaving the town to find a job in the county; if going further, it was usually to wear a hard hat and engage in infrastructure work in cities of various sizes.

Working as a construction worker is very hard, and sometimes the dangers are even greater. In his first year at the construction site, his father fell from a two or three-meter-high scaffold, suffering a shattered knee and lying in bed for two weeks. Since he had no insurance, the foreman only provided 20,000 yuan for medical expenses, hastily concluding the matter.

This made Yang Yi develop a resistance to life on the construction site. After coming into contact with the cryptocurrency circle, he fantasized about being able to possess multiple assets overnight like those players in the community. This way, he could escape the dusty and noisy world and finally relieve his parents of the burden of life.

The scaffold at the construction site, with no protection around. Two people are standing on it, the one on the right is Yang Yi's father.

He tried to invest for the first time, putting in a hundred yuan to test the waters, trading contracts.

Contract trading corresponds to spot trading. If you have enough capital, you can directly buy the currency and wait quietly for it to appreciate. This is a safer way to play, but for Yang Yi, relying on hoarding coins to profit was too slow and required funds, which left young people like him with no money barred from this method.

Contracts are similar to futures in the stock market, earning profits by predicting the price fluctuations of currencies. More importantly, with leverage, it can double the invested capital, thereby doubling the profits. With a capital of 10,000 yuan and 100 times leverage to buy Bitcoin, when Bitcoin's price rises by 1%, the capital doubles by 100%, directly earning 10,000 yuan.

But if the direction is wrong, the loss is also 100%. If Bitcoin's price drops by just 1%, the 10,000 yuan capital disappears without a trace. Losing all the capital like this is called "liquidation."

In the cryptocurrency circle, many people have frequently faced liquidation due to market volatility, ultimately losing everything. But some have soared with skill and courage, becoming legends of overnight wealth under high leverage.

Dying Before Dawn

The stories of small bets for big gains in the contract market marked the beginning of Yang Yi's obsession with trading coins.

During the day, he worked at the construction site with his master, and whenever he had free time, he would open his phone to learn from active veterans how to read the rise and fall curves and predict future currency trends. At night, after washing up, he would not rest but engage in contract trading at the exchange. First, he would convert cash into stablecoins, fill in the leverage multiple, then judge the rise and fall, deciding whether to buy or sell. Every choice affected the outcome of the money: double or liquidation?

The outcome was often "liquidation." Before this, the platform would give a warning in advance; if the margin was not added in time, the capital would be "liquidated"; and even after paying this margin, the next curve's volatility could still lead to losses along with the capital.

Email notification received by Yang Yi after liquidation (i.e., forced closing of positions)

After losing the initial few hundred yuan, Yang Yi was unwilling to accept it, thinking it was due to his lack of skill. He became more cautious in his operations, but his desire grew, and the money he invested increased from a few hundred to a thousand, with the leverage multiple rising from ten to a hundred. The money in his bank card dwindled, the numbers in the trading software appeared, increased, and then returned to zero again.

He was almost pushed along by contract trading. Every night, it felt like he was walking a tightrope in mid-air, his heart rising and falling with the fluctuations of the curves. The real-time fluctuations of his assets kept him from sleeping soundly; after lying down for a few minutes, he would get up to check his phone.

In less than a month of trading coins, he lost all of the over 40,000 yuan he had saved from two years of working. He also accumulated 60,000 yuan in online debt before finally stopping, simply because he could not produce more money to re-enter the market. By the end, Yang Yi felt no real sense of loss. The only thing that made him unwilling was that he had lost the opportunity for the next round, that possibility of "making the money back."

Yang Yi finally understood what some contract players meant by "dying before dawn"; his invested money almost never lasted through the night. Once, he was so tired that he fell asleep holding his phone, and when he woke up the next day, the money had vanished, leaving only a text message in his inbox saying, "You have been liquidated."

He rarely made money. Even when he did, he always waited for it to continue rising, only to be met with a sudden downturn, losing both the principal and the profits.

Now, Yang Yi understands that contracts are a gamble for bottom-tier cryptocurrency traders. Wealthy people can invest substantial idle money, playing slowly with small leverage. But they can only take on dangerous multiples, using savings, living expenses, or even borrowing to gamble for a chance at "financial freedom." This land is not the profit-seeking arena he imagined.

In various communities within the cryptocurrency circle, Yang Yi saw many people torn between life and desire. Some sought help, asking where to go after losses; some wrote long articles reflecting on how they ended up in their current situation. There were also those who left messages about jumping off buildings and then disappeared. He did not know if these people had waited for their dawn.

The Only Straw

If he had money, a stable job, and a family of his own, Yang Yi felt he would definitely not touch the cryptocurrency circle again. But he had nothing, and trading coins was like the match in a fairy tale; he couldn't help but strike it again and again.

This young man fighting in the cryptocurrency circle had always been seen as a good child in his parents' eyes: obedient, quiet, and steady in his work. The only time he did not listen to the adults was when he insisted on going to the county town for high school.

In their high school, about half of the students could go to college, mostly to second-tier or third-tier universities. He ranked in the lower middle of his class, and if he persisted until the college entrance examination, he might also get into a third-tier university.

But after just half a year, he wanted to drop out. It had nothing to do with his grades; he simply felt that "studying was useless." He posted this thought on Baidu Zhidao, and a netizen persuaded him to continue for another year. By the time he reached the second year of high school, he still dropped out. "Many of my classmates who went to third-tier universities ended up no different."

In a small county town, the trajectory of life seems predictable from birth.

The most direct reference was his father. After graduating from junior high, his parents went to work at a construction site in Wenzhou, while he went to the county middle school to live on campus. Earning 70,000 to 80,000 yuan a year at the construction site, leaving home to work in nearby big cities was an extremely common choice. Many children in county towns separated from their parents early, becoming "left-behind children."

But Yang Yi longed for a warm, stable home and did not want to repeat the same mistakes. After working at the construction site for half a year, he began looking for opportunities to return to the county town. First, he went back for military enlistment physical examination, but he was disqualified due to "elbow joint hyperextension." Then he found a job in a karaoke hall in the county town, but the salary was only 2,000 yuan a month. In the end, he had no choice but to return to the construction site.

Yang Yi described his work in the county town's karaoke hall as "tired of this dark and hopeless life."

Life had entered a dead end: working at the construction site like his parents meant he could not be with his family; wanting to return to the county town to start a family, a monthly salary of 2,000 yuan was clearly insufficient; stable, satisfactory jobs would not open up to this young man with no education or skills.

Scarcity, despair, and a sense of having nothing bred immense desire. Despite continuous losses of capital and loans, Yang Yi could not stop fantasizing about getting rich.

In the summer of 2021, Yang Yi traded coins for the second time, losing over 20,000 yuan. This instilled a sense of fear in him, "It just feels like no matter how I play, I lose." He deleted all his cryptocurrency friends and trading software, determined not to trade coins again.

At that time, he did not expect that shortly after he exited the circle, a legend would be born.

In the cryptocurrency circle, "Liangxi" is known to almost everyone. This name is always associated with three numbers: 519, 1000, 1000.

"519" refers to the virtual currency crash event on May 19, 2021. Data shows that the total liquidation that day reached 6.28 billion USD, approximately 40.4 billion yuan. On that day, while countless people abandoned their positions to escape, Liangxi took 1,000 yuan in capital and leveraged it to roll into 10 million yuan. At that time, he was only 17 years old.

No one expected that it would be a child who seized this historic crash. Starting with 1,000 yuan, this was almost the "entry threshold" that everyone could reach. Entering with a thousand yuan and becoming a millionaire, Liangxi achieved this almost absurd possibility.

Although Liangxi's million profits have now turned into debts, at least in that year, he had everything. Overnight wealth, fame, and several trading software founders continuously awarded Liangxi with dream funds, praising his "spirit of getting stronger in adversity."

Amidst one thrill after another, Yang Yi's determination began to waver.

Lever and Scythe

Last year, he went to Shanghai to deliver takeout with a friend, also for money, as he heard "you can earn 20,000 a month." This was the first big city he had been to since leaving the county town, where delivery workers buzzed around like bees.

Yang Yi took this photo while delivering takeout in Shanghai, feeling that the people in the picture were like ants, "busy and orderly."

He arrived in February but did not earn much because he was not fast enough. In early April, he was locked down, sharing a room with ten people, scrambling for groceries on Meituan from morning till night. After the riders were released from lockdown, he and his friends lived under a bridge, delivering groceries across the city. By May, he had become familiar with the business and rarely exceeded the time limit. In June, he saved some money.

Desire perhaps struck him at that moment. "Going over there made me see a wealthier life." Yang Yi paused, "I felt the gap was too big." Shanghai made him yearn for a better life; both delivering takeout and working at the construction site wore down his body and were not a long-term solution. Looking around at the options left, trading coins was the only lever he could grasp.

In late June, Yang Yi embarked on his third journey into trading coins. He invested 5,000 on the first day, but it did not work out. He still had 20,000 left from his takeout earnings, which was all his savings.

For money, he had been running around during the lockdown, unable to return to his rental place, and he and his delivery friends spent the night in parks or under bridges. For more money, Yang Yi gritted his teeth and threw it in. The speed of his spending exceeded his own expectations; after two days, he lost everything except for his meal money.

Yang Yi's vehicle was filled with goods waiting to be delivered.

He was very sad; he had planned to stop there but then thought, "If I'm going to do it, I might as well go big," so his sadness turned into a sense of determination. Just then, a lending app on his phone suddenly increased his credit limit; he first borrowed 50,000, then another 30,000. By this point, it was hard to stop; he continued downloading other lending apps and ultimately borrowed over 130,000.

On July 1, Yang Yi spent all this money. At 10:30 AM, he posted a "废" (waste) in his friend circle, announcing the end of this gamble.

During this time, he had thought about stopping, but in the end, he was persuaded by himself, feeling there was no turning back. He always feared that the next moment after stopping would bring some big fluctuation; stopping would lead to regret, so it was better to bet on the hope of turning things around in the next trade, until he fought to the end, even putting in the 700 yuan he had for meals.

"I felt like I had nothing to begin with, which made me want to gamble." He said, "The less opportunity I felt I had, the more frantically I wanted to create opportunities for myself."

When trading coins became a wealth game, most people's motivation was to get rich through it. They did not know what the Lightning Network was, did not understand the forks of Bitcoin, nor did they know what ICO stood for. These ordinary investors, who failed to grasp the essence of blockchain, rushed into the market, becoming the most primitive fighters in the cryptocurrency "ring," while also being the victims who inadvertently pushed Bitcoin's value up.

After multiple liquidations, Yang Yi now admits that ordinary people like him entering the market are just waiting to be harvested as leeks. "We all know we are leeks, but we still want to grab meat from the lion." He chuckled at himself. "If I can't grab meat, soup will do."

Where to Find a Way Out

Last year, he owed 130,000 in loans, and the collection calls reached his home. Only then did his parents realize that he had embarked on another path in a place they could not see.

For this small-town family, 130,000 in debt was not easy; it was the first time his mother cried for him, and Yang Yi felt distressed. He listened to his parents' advice and returned to work at the construction site, where his family helped him gather the money to pay off the debt.

But Yang Yi did not want to stay at the construction site forever. He had been out of school for six or seven years, and nearly five years of his youth had been spent at the construction site.

"The construction site is too dangerous." He sighed as he spoke. The year before last, he worked at a site contracted by two brothers. One minute, the foreman's brother was chatting with him, and the next minute, a wooden board from the tower crane slipped and fell on him, killing him. The terrifying height of the tower crane, the easily accident-prone delivery trucks, and the steel bars and pits on the construction site all made him want to escape.

In his diary, Yang Yi wrote:

Is the construction site my lifelong home? No, when I heal from my injuries, I will come out again. Even if I am battered and bruised, I do not want to live a life where I can see the end at a glance.

This year he is 24 years old, planning to work at the construction site until the New Year. As for his plans for next year, Yang Yi counted on his fingers: construction site, factory work, delivering takeout. "But none of these are what I want."

Not long ago, Yang Yi finished work at the construction site and looked up to see a rainbow; this was his "first time being so close to a rainbow."

At the beginning of last year, he paid 500 yuan in tuition and joined a self-study associate degree group. The teacher sent online course videos for them to study in their free time, and after completing them, they would check in the group.

Yang Yi persisted for half a month. He finished work at 10 PM delivering takeout, then studied until midnight, often falling asleep from exhaustion while listening to the teacher's endless lectures. In the end, he still gave up, feeling he was not the type of person who had "free time." He no longer remembered whether the unfinished ideological and political course was about Marxism or Mao Zedong Thought.

For him, the best days might have been during his student years. When he was in high school, a friend lent him a small book about Bill Gates, which Yang Yi kept under his pillow and read dozens of pages every night. Just before dropping out of the second year of high school to go to the construction site, his roommates joked with him, asking if he was going to become Bill Gates too.

At that time, he thought the future would be full of opportunities, just like what was written in business books. After coming out, he found that the world faced by a young person without education or skills was full of difficulties. Maintaining a state of survival was already everything for many people.

While delivering takeout in Shanghai, a delivery brother ten years older than Yang Yi heard that he was involved in the cryptocurrency circle and came to talk to him. The older brother had lost 400,000 yuan in stocks when he was young and was still paying off debts. "These things are not for us to play with." He told Yang Yi, "We only know how to throw money in."

But Yang Yi was not someone who would easily give up. When asked if he would trade coins again, he hesitated for a moment and then said somewhat helplessly that if given the opportunity, he would definitely still play. On his current desktop, he still kept a dedicated folder for cryptocurrency software, containing several exchanges and information apps, totaling ten. That little hope in his heart was something he could never give up.