From Corporate Executive to Rideshare Driver: The $3M Crypto Crash of a Former Factory Deputy

## The Fall From Stability

I don’t often write about personal tragedies—my job is to quantify risk, not dramatize loss. But this case from Zhengzhou (via Bilibili’s Fengge Wangmingtian) stopped me cold.

A man who once managed 30 employees at a coal processing plant in Handan, earned 9k RMB monthly (about £1k), lived debt-free with an Audi and stable home life—now spends 14 hours driving for just \(300/day. After losing \)3 million on leveraged altcoin trades and failing to repay loans totaling over $450k USD, he’s reduced to renting a 600 RMB/month room with private toilet—the last vestige of dignity.

Yes: lived debt-free. That’s what makes it so tragic. It wasn’t financial desperation—it was confidence that turned into compulsion.

## The Slow Burn of Leverage

Let me be clear: I’m not anti-leverage. In my quant models at CoinDesk, we use 15x–25x margin strategically with hard stop-losses—backtested over 8 years.

But here? It was psychological warfare disguised as strategy.

He started small: postal stamp trading in the early 2010s—just enough to feel clever when he made two grand. Then came Bitcoin in 2020: cautious at first—but each win fed the narrative: “I’m good at this.” Soon he graduated to altcoins and contracts with 10x–100x gearing.

“I wouldn’t go all-in at once,” he said on camera. “It was like… knife cuts slowly.”

That’s how most people lose everything—not in one explosion but by believing they can outsmart gravity.

And yes—he admitted: no stop-losses. He’d set them… then cancel them mid-trade because ‘the market might rebound.’ Classic sunk-cost delusion.

## Four Borrowings, One Abyss

Let’s map the descent:

• 2020: Lost 10k → borrowed via Alipay Jiebei + friends = 22k total recovery (parents funded).
• 2021: Another run → borrowed another 30k → blown again.
• 2023: Sold sister’s apartment (under 70 sqm) for 50k → paid off debts briefly—but guilt crushed him.
• Early 2024: Mortgaged his own house → took high-interest loans (annual rates up to 35%) → piled on another $1M+ debt.

Every time? Same lie: “This time will be different.” The cycle repeats like clockwork across markets—from Dubai real estate traders to Reddit scalpers in Berlin.

And when someone tells you they’re saving money while borrowing more… that’s not survival; it’s active self-destruction under optimism’s disguise.

## Why Even Kindness Can Fail The community response? Cooler than expected. KOL Liangxi announced he’d fund this man with ¥55K upfront plus ¥6K/month living support for one year—to prevent relapse into trading. The intent? Pure empathy—he knows what it feels like being on margin edge-of-the-cliff too. But here’s my concern: a contract trader giving aid to someone still addicted? based on emotional need? can that really break dependency loops? a single tweet can’t rewrite trauma or dopamine circuits built through repeated losses. The fastest way back from ruin isn’t money—it’s rewiring your brain’s reward system using data-driven boundaries.* The only real safety net is discipline enforced by code—not compassion alone.* We must teach people how loss behaves mathematically before teaching them how to trade.*