Late last night, I was downstairs having skewers with a childhood friend who runs a restaurant. He showed me a payment reminder from a supplier on his phone and said he couldn’t hold on much longer. At that moment, I suddenly realized that after spending so long in our circle, our sense of what it means to “make money” has really become disconnected from the real world.

I’ve been to his hotpot restaurant before. The renovation alone cost nearly a million. Every morning when he wakes up, whether there are customers or not, he has to pay the landlord and employees thousands of yuan. Over the course of a year, whatever profit there was gets eaten up by platform commissions and rent. Now he can’t even find anyone to take over the business, and all he’s left with is a pile of tables and chairs he can’t sell.

By contrast, although we get anxious about market volatility and slap our thighs when we sell too early, we don’t have to deal with business administration or fire safety inspections, don’t have to worry about inventory expiring in a warehouse, and don’t even need to be in any particular place. As long as we have a computer, we can make money from global liquidity right from home, and get paid in real USDT. Even if we just make a few dozen dollars a day as a “basic income,” that’s still equivalent to what many people earn standing ten hours on a factory assembly line.

It’s not that we’re smarter or more hardworking than those running physical businesses—it’s just that we got lucky and happened to be standing closer to the money, enjoying the premium of dollar purchasing power.

So even if your account is currently showing a floating loss, don’t think you’re not good enough. Just realizing you need to go all-in on this space already puts you ahead of those still worried about “rent and utilities.” Don’t leave the table too soon; the hand you’ve been dealt is a lot better than you think.