Anonymous confessions from crypto traders paint a grim picture: most people lose, and the few who win big usually give it back — a warning for anyone who thinks the last rally means easy money.

• The most common story is making six figures and losing it again, because there was never a written strategy behind the trades.
• Big gains in small coins almost never hold — sharp rallies tend to fall back to where they started, sometimes within days.
• Several traders ended up in debt, using payday loans, credit cards and pawned electronics to keep trading and chase losses back.
• The rare winners mostly just bought Bitcoin and sat on it instead of trading actively.
• One trader got out of FTX hours before withdrawals froze, purely on a gut feeling after seeing a warning dismissed online as fear-mongering.

Outlook: The people still trading without a tested plan are the likeliest to blow up in the next downturn, and cashing gains into boring long-term holdings remains the way most of them would keep anything.