Is this just bad luck or is it a case of greed?
I came across this story on a news site about a trader who got liquidated eight times in a week.
This guy is playing with super high leverage, like 25x. Sure, he’s had some bad luck, but this is the kind of stuff that happens when traders go for high leverage. They might have the cash, but they still choose to take on that extra risk.
I don't think that's unlucky; no proper risk management is what I see here. Look at the image; it took millions and was partially liquidated.
If he takes these short entries before June 23, 2025, then it's possible that he forgot to exit when it shows a reversal pattern double bottom, weakness in selling pressure, and already tapping the oversold zone.
I guess this guy is a swing trader who doesn't watch the market from time to time, but the signal and confirmation last June 23 only took 10 hours to decide if you should exit your short position or not.
What I see looks like a reverse DCA, doesn't it?
Its pure greediness. Even a spot trading with that huge amount can give him already a decent amount of profit without the risk of liquidation if he will just be contented on proper way of earnings.
X25 using12.5M of capital is insane amount considering how volatile the crypto market.
Im speculating that he does this a lot before he achieved that huge capital. His lucks runs out so everything was lost. He is literally gambling not trading.
during these days such stories are somewhat "common". I have seen similar stories for at least 4 big traders.
I don't know if these information or news deserve so much space in public (I mean, in trading many people earn or loss... and no one want to be visible).
Moreover, these traders even if they achieve HUGE losses, they have already a great amount earned before... so maybe they loss just a portion of the amount.
For sure this is pure greediness.
Losing millions in a quick time is never good, isn't a good deal...
No, it's not about being unlucky or greedy, it's more about being ignorant, because a knowledgeable and informed trader wouldn't be using 25x leverage to trade when he knows that the higher the leverage the greater the chances of liquidation, and he does not go for 1 to 10x leverage, he went as high as 25x leverage, this alone entails ignorance and lack of knowledge, because even though I decided to be greedy in a trade I wouldn't be using 25k leverage, com'on man, this is just ignorance buddy.
Or maybe he is just too confident and think it is the trend already but later the market reversed and not favour him. I do not know if he is a swing trader or not but I do think swing traders prefer to use low leverage while high risk traders that are using high leverage are day traders.
Yes, it is so insane. I am surprised that there are people that are using huge amount of money to trade and still use high leverage. I noticed what bitbollo posted is true, it is very common now that people use high amount of money to trade and still use high leverage with it which is the cause of their losses.
It's funny to me after thinking or asking my self if the man actually wanted to pack all the money from the market so that he could stop trading for life and so he decided to use 25x leverage but got played instead. Is that not greed? $12.5 million to a trade with such high leverage and even while he was seeing the market turn against him, he didn't close the trade while losing $1 million but he patiently waited to lose such huge amount, weird tho.
It's obvious that he was just being reckless. I won't call it greed but he failed to manage his risk properly that's what I can see from this story. Using a high leverage can have either a good benefit or a bad one but you have to also apply risk management to your trades and not just do what this guy did. The market always targets liquidity and to me he was either unlucky at those points where he used higher leverages. He would have been able to make a good profit if he just risky 1% of his funds on each trades. But that trading though we can't say what is unless we were in his shoes...
Would it change his fate if he lowered his leverage and just add more to his capital incase the trend goes against his position? Just to prevent not being liquidated as long as he didn't set a stop loss, he might just get back his funds when the price retraced.
25x is too much of it. Not having a stop loss will likely make him win back the amount unless some big boys out there really watching his position and really tried to manipulate the market against him.
Thats not coincidence to lose plus $12.5m isnt gonna make you sleep well at night, if its me who losses thay kind of amount will probably be depress like for all time. Trading futures is highly risky, Im sure his aware of thay when he executed his trade. But this event is quite not normal for average users.
No, he is not a trader.
The Cointelegraph article was incorrect, but what Lookonchain stated was right.
He is a GAMBLER, not a trader.
Perhaps his big losses extend beyond trading to gambling, as he likely has substantial funds to wager.
I have a strong suspicion that he intended to gamble in trading, rather than merely participating as a trader.
I wonder why the exchange lacked a loss limit for users facing millions in losses.
The best is for people to learn how to avoid losses, we are in the world that if someone is not careful with his money in this digital age, there are a lot of things that can take the money from person legitimately, trading and gambling are one of the things. These will not b the last because some people are greedy and not satisfied with their wealth.
This is a big loss which I think he was neither lucky nor greedy by using such a large leverage despite having use what we could say to be a big amount to trade with and make some significant profits without leveraging.
Its mostly those traders that have the money enough to trade that mostly makes use of high leverage. Unlike those of us with little trading sum which a high leverage could liquidate with just a swift move, those trading with large sum do assume that they have much higher chances of making profits due to the size of their trading amount and if you check the sentiment in there, you'll agree. Except that whenever they lose, it's usually huge.
If a trader who has enough capital to trade but still chooses the use of high leverage in trading, that is closer to greed than strategy. If I am asked to describe him I would say he is a greedy trader with no knowledge of risk management because there are some greedy traders with knowledge of risk management that have not lost up to the amount of money that this particular individual has lost within this short period of time trading. Some traders also completely ignore spot trading, they reason that futures offers the most profit, but they forget he risk of high losses as well.
Even the beginner traders know that high leverage is equal to high risk and higher losses.
If the trader used such high leverage then he knew that he was gambling his money.
It's obvious that he didn't use any risk management and so liquidated his trades not once or twice but 8 times.
He must have had shit load of money to place that kinda trades.
Exactly what I was about to say, usually you will see people actually blaming every lose on using high leverage 25x is not high in my opinion if you have a very good risk management. What you will do is certainly to calculate your position size and set your stop loss where you can afford to lose. Reason why I will say it is actually the trader or rather the gambler that got himself liquidated. Most of the exchanges I have used for trading most especially the Bybit exchange there is always the amount of money youre going to potentially lose should you put your stop plus at certain positions plus the price the stop plus will actually get triggered.
For example if you dont want to lose that certain amount of money at such stop plus there is no need to reduce the stop loss you can simply just reduce your position size and this means you are reducing the capital to trade with so even if you use the entire leverage on the broker the only difference is how fast it
That is also the same way I feel most times after hearing about this kind of massive losses, I start to feel that the exchange or broker should have put lose limits, but I don't think that will ever happen because the exchange derives its liquidity and volume from the amount traders or investors trade with. From my assumption of what trading is, I think someone needs to lose for another person to make profit, if that's how it really works, then exchange might not set the lose limit.
Liquidated 8 times resulting in a big loss then this is not a sign of bad luck but rather greed... where is there bad luck continuously without him realizing the money that has been lost?
Maybe because they already have a lot of money so they use high leverage, if using low leverage the trader feels less satisfied because of his profit.
Losing in a short time is clearly like greed.
The information in the OP should have given some of us more information because I would have liked to know many years of experience in trading this person has for them to be liquidated 8 times in a week.
If the person is a newbie, I would understand and offer some advice but if not a beginner then it is just greed like you have said and they need to go back and learn more about trading.
I guess I have to believe that hes certainly a gambler, not a real trader in the process. Otherwise, he should have set a stop loss when it seems his trade is no longer going on his plan and expectation. But he keeps gambling on his trade, until he ended up as a big loser, thus losing a life-changing amount.
Hopefully this could serve a reminder to know the real distinction between trading and gambling, although a trader can be a good gambler, but a gambler can never be a profitable trader at all.