Here’s something that might sting a bit: Even when there are low-risk strategies right in front of us, why do most people still jump headfirst into the huge pit of leveraged contracts?

The trap of contracts isn’t actually hard to see through. The funding rate is like an invisible tax—when the market is quiet, it quietly takes 1% of your principal every month; when things heat up, it shoots straight to 10%. What’s worse, the higher the leverage, the higher the risk of liquidation—not additive, but exponential. If you run 1x leverage for a year, even if the price doesn't move at all, your account might only have 0.8 left. Here, time isn’t your friend—it’s a slow-acting poison.

But the market has long hidden the treasure of “zero-cost leverage,” most people are just too lazy to dig for it:

Spot staking. Holding spot assets is a time game in itself, but if you stake them, you can get an extra 30%-50% in tokens per year for free. If the market goes up 50%, you double your holdings. Even if it drops 20%-30%, you’re not wiped out—the margin for error is way bigger than with contracts. For spot, time is a compounding machine; for contracts, it’s a blood pump—every extra day you hold, funding fees cut you again.

Choosing the right coin is an even more powerful hidden leverage amplifier.

In the same market cycle, some coins can go up 10x, while others might only rise 60%. If you pick a strong performer, it’s like getting 3-5x leverage for free, with no cost and no risk of being wiped out by sudden price spikes.

Unfortunately, most people still fall into traps:

They can’t wait for the “slowly getting rich” of spot, always dreaming of a single all-in leverage play to turn things around; they don’t have the skill to pick good assets, but are addicted to the adrenaline rush of high leverage. The result? They lose dozens of percentage points a year to funding fees, stubbornly clinging to the hope of “making it back next time,” and end up losing everything.

Bottom line: trading crypto is a math problem. If you calculate your costs and risks clearly, you’ll survive to share the profits at the end.

Stop falling for the high-risk temptations of contracts. The spot + staking combo, trading time for growth, is the real path used by people who actually make money.