On October 10, 2025, in under 24 hours, more than 1.6 million crypto traders were wiped out of positions worth a combined US$19.37 billion, roughly IDR 322 trillion, as a wave of leveraged liquidations swept the market. According to CoinGlass data, the detail that matters more than the total is who got hit hardest. Bitcoin and Ethereum, the two largest assets by market cap, "only" fell 11 to 13 percent that day. Smaller tokens like Solana, Dogecoin, and XRP collapsed 60 to 80 percent in the same window. That gap, on the same day, in the same market, wasn't a coincidence.
Four months earlier, Bitcoin had just hit an all-time high around US$126,000. By early February 2026, it touched US$60,000 — a correction of more than 50 percent from its peak in under five months. For anyone who bought in during October's euphoria, it felt like the floor giving way. For people who'd already been through a cycle or two, it was just crypto being crypto again.
What's striking is that Indonesia's market didn't flinch through any of this. Data from OJK, Indonesia's Financial Services Authority, shows the number of domestic crypto investor accounts kept climbing — from 21.37 million in March 2026 to 22.4 million in May 2026 — with monthly transaction value holding steady around IDR 23 trillion (about US$1.3 billion) and year-to-date volume through April already past IDR 99 trillion (roughly US$5.5 billion). People keep coming in even as the pile of loss stories from the global market keeps growing. So it's worth asking honestly: why do most people who invest in crypto end up losing money, even as the number of investors keeps rising?
It's Not the Volatility. It's How You React to It.
A 2022 study found that 73 to 81 percent of people who invested in crypto ended up losing money. Not because the assets they picked were necessarily bad, but because of a combination of bad timing and emotional reactions to price swings. A 2025 study reinforced the pattern: investors who used no risk-management strategy lost an average of 37 percent of their portfolio during market corrections, far more than investors who had an exit plan going in. FOMO on the way up, panic selling on the way down — two sides of the same coin, and both erode capital just as effectively.
The same pattern shows up outside the crypto spot market itself. When shares of Bitcoin treasury companies like Metaplanet and Strategy tanked after October 2025, retail investors are estimated to have lost around US$17 billion, roughly IDR 281 trillion. Not because Bitcoin itself crashed that hard, but because they'd paid a premium far above those companies' net asset value, chasing the hype without checking the valuation first. The biggest losses, it turns out, tend to come from how people get in and out of a position, not from the volatility of the asset itself.
Same Starting Capital, Two Very Different Outcomes
Picture two people, call them Investor A and Investor B, each starting with the equivalent of about US$600 at the end of October 2025, right after Bitcoin hit its all-time high.
Investor A saw an altcoin trending on social media and put the entire amount into it at once. When the October 10 liquidation hit, that coin was among the ones that fell more than 70 percent. Investor A held on, hoping for a rebound, but when the next leg down came in February 2026, panic set in and they sold near the bottom. What was left: about US$150, a 75 percent loss.
Investor B spread the same amount into Bitcoin through staggered purchases over six months instead of buying all at once, and set a stop-loss at 20 percent below their average entry price. When prices dropped sharply in October and again in February, some of those purchases landed at lower prices, pulling down the average cost of the whole position. By mid-2026, with Bitcoin trading in the US$62,000–77,000 range, the portfolio was still below its highest entry point, but nowhere near Investor A's 75 percent loss. What was left: roughly US$420, a 30 percent loss.
The difference isn't about who guessed the market's direction better. It comes down to two structural decisions: how concentrated the position was, and whether there was an exit plan in place before emotion took over.
A Framework You Can Use Starting Today
A few concrete principles follow from all this, regardless of when you enter the market:
- Cap position size per trade at around 1–2 percent of total investment capital, instead of going all-in on one asset or one moment.
- Look for a risk-to-reward ratio of at least 1:2 before opening any position.
- Use dollar-cost averaging for large-cap assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have historically held up far better than altcoins during mass liquidation events.
- Avoid borrowing or taking on debt to buy crypto — the combination of debt and a volatile asset has repeatedly proven to be one of the most damaging sources of loss, financially and psychologically.
That last point matters precisely because it gets talked about the least: risk management isn't about avoiding losses altogether. Losses will still happen, even with the best strategy. What changes is how much damage a loss can do to your capital, and to the decisions you make next.
With 22.4 million active crypto accounts in Indonesia as of May 2026, and transaction volume still climbing every month, the more relevant question isn't "will crypto stay volatile" — it clearly will. The question is: out of those 22.4 million accounts, which side do you want to be on — the majority that loses money reacting to price, or the minority that already has a plan before the price moves at all?