From Factory Vice-Manager to Taxi Driver: The Hidden Cost of Crypto Greed in China

The Fall of a Quiet Man

I watched the video late at night, curled up in my San Francisco apartment as rain tapped softly against the window. The screen showed a man — once a respected副厂长 in Hebei — now driving a taxi for $100 a day. His name was never revealed, but he called himself ‘Zheli Chongsheng’ (Reborn from Ruins). What struck me wasn’t just the tragedy. It was how ordinary it felt.

He had everything: a stable job, an Audi, no mortgage, and a five-year-old daughter he loved deeply. In 2020, he entered crypto with $10k — not out of desperation, but curiosity. A small win here. A tiny profit there. Like many of us, he thought he was playing smart.

But then came the compounding pain.

The Slow Burn of Leverage

Crypto didn’t destroy him overnight. It choked him slowly — like water through cracked concrete.

He started with spot trading. Then… contracts. 10x leverage became routine; 50x felt almost normal. He’d use ‘low-risk’ strategies until the panic took over: ‘I’ll just wait for it to bounce.’

And so he did.

No stop-losses. No exit plans. Just hope wrapped in algorithmic noise.

The numbers don’t lie: \(3 million lost across four rounds of borrowing — from friends, family, even his sister’s house sold for under \)70k.

What haunted me most? Not the money. It was how easily trust eroded.

Lies That Outlived Love

To keep going, he lied. To lenders. To relatives. To his wife. Each loan required another cover-up — until one friend told her everything.

She left him two months ago with their daughter. The father’s last message from his father? ‘This house has no place for you anymore.’

I’ve seen this pattern before in my research: when people lose control of risk management tools like margin trading or DeFi protocols… they don’t just lose capital — they lose themselves.

It’s not about greed alone; it’s about the illusion of mastery in chaos-driven markets where price swings feel like fate rather than function.

Can Help Save What Was Destroyed?

When influencer Liang Xi offered ¥50k and monthly living support (¥5k/month) to prevent him from returning to crypto… part of me understood why someone would do it.* The kindness mattered.* The irony? This man helped others survive margins during bull runs himself—now asking for survival aid as if redemption could be bought by charity alone.

The truth is deeper: you can’t pay off emotional debt with cash flow diagrams or yield farming strategies. The mind doesn’t reset after trauma just because you’re not losing money today.

The real question isn’t can we rescue him, but * do we want systems that make such rescues necessary at all?*

A Call to Build Better Systems

As someone trained in AI-driven market modeling and blockchain analytics, I know that transparency shouldn’t be optional—especially when real lives hang on code errors or flash crashes.r

We have tools now—on-chain tracing algorithms, behavioral risk scoring, self-custody education—that could flag dangerous patterns before they become personal catastrophes.r

But tech alone won’t stop people from chasing ghosts.r

What we need is empathy embedded into design—the kind that asks not only ‘how much profit?’ but also ‘what will this cost you tomorrow?’ r

So let’s stop idolizing volatility as freedom.rLet’s start valuing resilience over returns.rLet’s build platforms where dignity isn’t lost when your portfolio drops below zero.r You’re not broken because you traded too much.rYou’re human because you believed.rAnd maybe that belief deserves protection—not punishment.