Introduction
In 2017, he made his first million dollars purely by luck. In 2018, he lost everything and was left with only 300,000 dollars due to blind investments in ICOs. By 2025, he made a comeback through systematic learning in trading, amassing a fortune of tens of millions.
This is not a simple success story, but a true reflection of cognitive upgrades, self-reflection, and professional growth. From being a standard "retail investor" to becoming a well-known trader with 70,000 followers on Bilibili and 60,000 on Twitter, Millionaire Eric shares his blood and tears experience to tell us:
In the speculative market, the only shortcut is to not take shortcuts.
Mercy: First, I would like to ask Boss Wang to introduce himself, especially the origin of the name "Millionaire Eric."
Eric: Hello everyone, I am Boss Wang. I first came into contact with Bitcoin in 2013 and made my first pot of gold in the cryptocurrency market in 2017. In 2019, I went to a self-operated fund in the United States to trade US stocks, where I honed my trading skills and made my overall trading strategy more professional. After that, I brought this experience back to the cryptocurrency market and have been working full-time in the crypto field ever since.
As for the name "Millionaire Eric," I actually struggled for a long time when creating my personal brand. At that time, there was a very popular American TV series called "Billions." I thought, I don't have billions, but I have millions, and Eric is my English name, so I called myself Millionaire Eric.
Act One: The Cycle of Sudden Wealth and Sudden Loss
When Luck Comes, It Can't Be Stopped
Mercy: Let's talk about your most dramatic experience—going from 1 million dollars to 300,000 dollars. What happened in between?
Eric: I lost money in the same way that everyone else does, which is the standard retail investor's way of losing money. I made that 1 million purely by luck; I sold all my Bitcoin at its peak. But the losses came from project investments in 2017.
At that time, I thought, since I could make so much money, I should be able to make even more, so I joined a lot of groups—I'm embarrassed to say it myself. The atmosphere was very heated; even when prices pulled back from their highs, everyone thought it was just a temporary correction, and prices would continue to surge to 30,000, 50,000, 70,000, 80,000, 90,000, 100,000.
The market was even more speculative than it is now, with various ICOs leading the charge. I followed everyone and invested in whatever projects the big shots were promoting, and before I knew it, my money was gone.
Waking Up After Being Scammed Twice
I fell into two traps in total. The first was investing in a project, and the second was investing in a token. At that time, the project owner treated us to dinner, claiming that he and his team came from BAT and were working on a public chain project. Even in a bad market, they insisted on continuing development. So, I gave them my money, and the result was that it went to zero once it launched.
These two incidents made me suddenly realize that I completely did not understand this market. In this market, wanting to compete and make money gave me no advantage; the money I made before was all due to luck.
Once this realization hit me, I knew that to make money in this market, I had to abandon my previous understanding and mindset and start learning trading from scratch.
Act Two: The Transformation from Retail Investor to Professional Trader
The Refinement from Trading in a US Self-Operated Fund
Mercy: How did your experience in the US self-operated fund change your trading mindset?
Eric: The biggest gain from the fund was breaking through the ceiling of my trading level. When I first started trading, I was like everyone else, joining groups and learning a little bit about everything—news, fundamentals, technical analysis.
At that time, I was already able to make a profit, but I clearly felt that the ceiling was right there, and I couldn't break through it no matter what. It was like being able to get into a 211 or 985 university, but wanting to get into a double first-class or better university was just impossible. After joining the self-operated fund, combined with my discipline and eagerness to learn, and doing things logically, I broke through that ceiling.
The Core Difference Between Institutional Traders and Retail Traders
Mercy: What do you think is the biggest difference between institutional traders and individual traders?
Eric: This is a very big question. I'll mention the most obvious and counterintuitive point: Institutional traders never predict the market.
What we do is observe what happens in the market, and then find strategies to respond, making money in the market from the dimensions of odds and probabilities.
But individual traders are always thinking about whether there is a simple, straightforward logic that tells them that knowing A will inevitably lead to result B, or will definitely make them profit.
I often receive questions like, "Is it going to rise or fall tonight? When will it rise to what position?" Such questions are to me like asking, "When will the Earth explode, and when will humanity go extinct?"
Why do people ask such questions? Because without a trading strategy, you have no skills to rely on, and facing a highly speculative market, you are inevitably driven by emotions. Emotion-driven thinking leads to wanting the simplest and most easily understood ideas within the realm of common understanding—when will it rise, when will it fall.
Act Three: Trading Philosophy and Practical Wisdom
In One Sentence: Look at the Big Picture and Do the Small Things
Mercy: If you had to summarize your trading philosophy in one sentence, what would it be?
Eric: Look at the big picture and do the small things.
Looking at the big picture and doing the small things means that this industry is developing. Overall, although there are imperfections and various problems, the industry is generally progressing, gradually being accepted by mainstream institutions and national-level policies. You just need to know this, and you also know that BlackRock is buying; that’s enough.
What affects whether you make money or not is entirely the odds and probabilities of each of your trades.
If you don't manage the odds and probabilities well, knowing more won't help; it will only turn you into an analyst who understands everything but makes no profit.
For example, you often hear people in the market talk about having a vision, looking further ahead, what BlackRock is doing, how on-chain data looks, how institutional traders are doing. You will find that these people articulate their points well, like taxi drivers in Beijing who know everything, but when it comes to actually making a trade, they can't do it.
The Fallacy of News
Mercy: Many retail investors are easily influenced by one-sided information, such as hearing that interest rates will be cut in September and thinking that prices will definitely rise. What do you think?
Eric: This is the basic understanding of someone who has not undergone systematic and intensive training. If you ask artificial intelligence now, it will tell you many factors that affect prices, and you will find that a specific piece of news can sometimes have a positive correlation with price movements, sometimes a negative correlation, and sometimes no correlation at all.
For us, we never look at the news. My boss even said, "When I retire, I will do financial media, analyzing the market every day, because you won't be able to point out where I went wrong."
We don't explain why prices rise or fall; we only explain the probability and odds of whether this asset will rise and whether we should participate. If there are no probabilities or odds, then we simply won't trade.
The Market Has Rules, but Trends Are Unpredictable
Mercy: How should we understand the statement, "The market has rules, but trends are unpredictable"?
Eric: These are two different levels of perspective.
The market has rules means you are looking at it from a larger time frame and price framework. For example, if you open a candlestick chart, pull out a moving average, and look at it from a daily chart perspective, you will find a very simple rule: if the price is above the moving average, it should rise; if the price is around the moving average, it will fluctuate; if the price is below the moving average, it will fall.
Trends are unpredictable means you are looking at it from a micro perspective. For example, if you say, "Boss Wang, is it going to rise or fall tonight? Let me place a trade, and I'll bet my salary for this month on it."
To me, that means I have no idea what is going on in the market.
But if you ask from a different angle, "Boss Wang, at what position should I place a trade, where the odds and win rate are relatively high?" I can answer that question.
It's like you don't know where the rabbits are, but through observation, you know that there is a higher probability of catching a rabbit near that tree stump over the past month. You know there is a rabbit hole near the tree stump, which increases the probability of catching a rabbit, but it doesn't guarantee that you will catch a rabbit at any specific time.
The Combination of Spot and Futures Trading
Mercy: How do you combine spot and futures trading?
Eric: Futures trading, for me now, is to keep my feel for the market and maintain my sensitivity to it. Sometimes I deliberately place particularly large trades to expose any issues I have in my trading and identify my blind spots. Losing money, for me, helps me understand my own weight.
Spot trading, on the other hand, allows me to better handle the issues exposed by futures trading.
When I lost down to 300,000 dollars, I felt that I completely did not understand futures and leverage, and I could clearly sense the risks involved. I couldn't mess around with it; if I lost another 300,000, I would be done.
After that, I started only doing spot trading, initially with Ripple (XRP), which was relatively cheap. I experienced traditional technical analysis—prices fall when they hit resistance and rise when they hit support. In this process, I learned and validated my logic from a spot trading perspective.
One day, I suddenly realized on the train that I had crossed the most basic threshold and should increase my training volume. I found that it wasn't just about having good skills to make money; it was about doing more deliberate practice. So, from then on, I started doing futures trading.
I often emphasize the risks of futures trading, stating that the risk of each trade should be controlled within 1%-2% of the total capital. This total capital refers to the funds in your trading account, not your entire assets.
Whether you should take that trade is not like many retail investors think, where they see an opportunity and just open their phones to trade. Instead, to wait for that opportunity, you might not be able to do anything for two or three hours; you have to wait, adopting a "waiting for the right moment" mentality. You need to observe how the price reaches your position while also watching for key signals before you can place a trade.
This requires a very high level of skill, and you still cannot predict how the price will react in the future. In contrast, for spot trading, you can set a stop loss of 5%-10%, which is a different level of difficulty.
Act Four: The Secret of Accurate Predictions
Mercy: Can you share a case of an accurate prediction that left a deep impression on you?
Eric: There are two that stand out, one was with OKB, and the other was with Bitcoin.
OKB Case: At that time, the highest price surged to 250. When the price was still at 228 or 238, my order book data showed that there were several orders at 239.48 that were statistically significant enough to influence the subsequent price trend.
Looking back now, after that large sell order, the price of OKB retraced by 20%, then rose again, but there was no structural breakthrough to a new high; it only rose by 5, 6, 7, or 8% above that large sell order position before falling again.
Bitcoin Case: On April 7 and 8 this year. At that time, our order book data showed that someone was building a position at 78,000 and 79,000. Before the price even dropped to that level, I already knew that someone was going to act at that point, and I was also prepared to trade with them. Undoubtedly, I benefited from the rise from 70,000 to today.
But I want to emphasize, I did not know who was placing the orders at that time, and I have no way of knowing—I am Boss Wang, not a fortune teller.
What I can analyze is that there were orders at that position significant enough to influence the price trend. If you want to use this signal to trade, it’s not about entering without any risk control and just waiting; there needs to be a calculation process.
The first step is to eliminate what trades cannot be made at that position. You cannot go long at a place where there are orders that can significantly affect the price trend; that would be like shorting at the lowest point, right?
The second step is to consider that there is a position and an order that influences the price trend. When the price reaches that level, how did it get there? After reaching it, how do you combine price patterns and key signals to execute that trade, including how much to trade and where to set the stop loss? There needs to be a calculation process.
As long as there is such a calculation process, your risk is controllable. If the risk is controllable and the odds are favorable, then in the long run, you can continue to trade based on this logic without predicting the market, yet still make money in the end.
Act Five: Trading and Advice for Beginners
Mercy: From your perspective now, is profitability dependent on luck, skill, or mindset?
Eric: From my personal perspective, I think it’s a combination of luck and mindset—knowing your own weight and choosing a path that is less traveled and particularly difficult.
If we want to elevate this a bit, for everyone: it is essentially an arithmetic problem.
When you start trading, if you can clearly calculate this matter, understanding why you earn and why you lose, and through a lot of deliberate practice, you will be able to make money.
Once you start making money and want to earn more, it becomes a mindset issue. For example, some people’s mindsets are not suitable for short-term trading; they are only suitable for swing or trend trading.
Taking it a step further, when the capital scale is larger, it becomes a mathematical problem because it involves capital management and risk allocation.
Ultimately, when the capital amount is larger, it becomes a philosophical question. You will ponder whether the money you earn is like that saying, "Life, luck, feng shui, accumulating virtue, and studying"?
Mercy: As a beginner, what misconceptions should be avoided when learning to trade?
Eric: This question might offend some people, but I still have to say it.
In this market, you can receive a lot of information that won’t tell you how much you lose or earn back, but only how to make money today, tomorrow, or how to make big or small profits, how to earn a down payment today and a Land Rover tomorrow.
Most of the information people pass on to you, whether it’s their teaching or analytical framework logic, lacks any calculation logic.
Let’s do a simple math problem: If you lose 10%, how much do you need to earn back? Most people instinctively answer 10%, but in reality, if you lose 10%, your principal becomes 9,000, and to return to 10,000, you need to earn 11.1%. If you lose 50%, you need to earn 100% to break even.
The efficiency of losing money and making money is different—losing money is like an avalanche, while making money is like climbing a mountain.
So many beginners fall into the misconception that the channels through which you obtain information must be strategies and logic that can be explained by arithmetic. If it cannot be explained by arithmetic, you need to be cautious; if it sounds like a beautiful story, it is likely a Ponzi scheme.
Eight Words for Young Traders
Mercy: Can you give a piece of advice to young traders, especially those experiencing losses?
Eric: Humble yourself and wait for the right moment.
To elaborate on these eight words: Do what you are supposed to do, and don’t think about taking shortcuts. In the speculative market, in the long run, everyone who takes shortcuts ends up on a crooked path. The only shortcut in trading is not to take shortcuts; do what you are supposed to do and execute every trade well.
Do not try to understand the market, view the market, or view yourself through one, two, three, or four trades; instead, find a strategy that gives you a statistical advantage.
This statistical advantage does not need to have an exceptionally high win rate. For example, if you find a strategy with only a 52% win rate and a 2:1 risk-reward ratio, it may sound counterintuitive—how can a strategy with a 52% win rate and a 2:1 risk-reward ratio make money?
In reality, if you have a strategy with a 53%, 54%, or 55% win rate and a 2:1 risk-reward ratio, you will find that you can already earn significant money.
"Waiting for the right moment" means waiting for the market conditions. Earning money in this market is one aspect of your effort, but all the money you earn depends on whether the market gives you a chance. If the market does not give you a chance and remains in a narrow range, no matter how hard you try, it won’t help. But when the market comes, if your fundamentals are solid and in place, and you can calculate the risk of each trade, a market opportunity will arise.
Epilogue: The Only Shortcut is Not to Take Shortcuts
Mercy: Finally, what would you like to say to all the readers?
Eric: I did not start on the most correct path in this speculative market; I was also scammed twice. However, I adjusted my perspective on the market in time and chose a path less traveled—steadily taking every step, executing the trades I should make, ultimately catching the market opportunity and earning the capital I have today.
The logic I want to convey to everyone is that if you want to earn your share of profits in the market, the only shortcut is not to take shortcuts—you need to spend time honing your skills.
In the speculative market, do not rush for money; instead, treat it as a skill. Think about how to design your deliberate training and continuous practice process, and the market will surely reward you in the end.
It took me about a year and a half to learn trading to the point where I could make money, and it took over three years in total to go from being able to trade to earning the profits I desired. This process was painful, but worth it.
Remember, the market is fair; it will not favor you because of your education, background, or luck. But it will reward those who truly learn diligently, execute strictly, and continuously improve.
About Millionaire Eric
Millionaire Eric, also known as Boss Wang, first encountered Bitcoin in 2013, made his first pot of gold in 2017, and honed his skills at a self-operated fund in the United States in 2019. He is now a full-time cryptocurrency trader with 70,000 followers on Bilibili, 60,000 on Twitter, and 30,000 on YouTube, beloved by users for his professional trading analysis and down-to-earth expression.
His story tells us: true success is not achieved overnight but is gradually found through countless falls and rises along the way. In this market full of temptations and traps, maintaining a clear mind and adhering to the right methods may be the most important lesson we should all learn.
Disclaimer
This article is for reference only. It represents the author's views and does not reflect the position of OKX. This article does not intend to provide (i) investment advice or recommendations; (ii) offers or solicitations to buy, sell, or hold digital assets; (iii) financial, accounting, legal, or tax advice. We do not guarantee the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of such information. Holding digital assets (including stablecoins and NFTs) involves high risks and may fluctuate significantly. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and historical returns do not represent future outcomes. You should carefully consider whether trading or holding digital assets is suitable for you based on your financial situation. Please consult your legal/tax/investment professionals regarding your specific circumstances. You are solely responsible for understanding and complying with applicable local laws and regulations.
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