Lessons learned from losses: Jumped in at 3 AM, wiped out in three minutes—that time I lost 2 ETH. It was around May or June of 2023, at 2 or 3 in the morning. A small group chat suddenly blew up. Someone dropped a contract address, saying this shitcoin just launched on PancakeSwap five minutes ago, LP locked for a year, team is anonymous but their GitHub has stuff, and Musk just liked a related tweet. I was lying in bed, eyes half-open, brain not functioning at all. Saw the group already spamming screenshots like "it's doubled!" and "ape in!"—my fingers moved faster than my brain. 2 ETH, roughly $3,800 at the time, aped in without hesitation. The moment I bought, it doubled. I literally laughed out loud under the covers. Took a screenshot, thought about posting it on my feed, already planning where to treat myself tomorrow. Then the LP got pulled. Not gradually—just one massive red candle, straight from double to zero. The whole thing lasted less than three minutes. I stared at the screen, watching those few thousand dollars turn into 0. Didn’t even have the energy to curse. The group chat was still asking "what happened," while the project’s Twitter had already been deleted. Looking back, that trade had three fatal mistakes: making decisions when half-asleep, not verifying if the LP lock was legit, and dreaming of a 10x instead of cashing out after a 2x. Since then, I’ve set three hard rules for myself: 1. Don’t look at coins, open trades, or ape into shitcoins when you’re not fully alert—no decision made at 3 AM is ever rational. 2. If you ape into a shitcoin and it doubles, take out half your principal first. No matter how high the rest goes, don’t get greedy. 3. Always use DeFi security tools to scan the contract address someone shares. Check for duplicate tokens before deciding whether to ape in. That $3,800 was the most valuable tuition I’ve ever paid. Not because it taught me how to ape into shitcoins—but because it taught me that in this market, if it’s a real gem, you won’t miss out on wealth by entering two minutes late. But one impulsive second can wipe you out completely.