A college student was reportedly to run away to Cambodia with loans he could not repay. A total of 140,000 yuan ($23,000) were lost in trading cryptocurrencies, most of which are aircoins.

Liu Ke, a sophomore in his twenties, picked up cryptocurrency on Internet in November 2017, and bought an aircoin with pocket money in hand. To his surprise, the aircoin earned him more than 2,000 yuan shortly in two days. For the first time in his life he felt it was so easy to make money by trading cryptocoins.

At that time overnight-rich stories related to bitcoin came into ear one after another, Liu was obsessed with this game where money, he thought, was virtual, it was just a number.

The quick profit tempted him to go a step further. In early 2018 he invested a lot when almost all cryptocurrencies were hitting their all-time-high, but unexpectedly sluggish came, during which he lost almost half of his holdings.

His trouble started when crypto futures came to his eyes. It seemed to be another approach to make quick money, while he didn’t realize that a nightmare was at the corner.

According to the transaction history of Liu’s account on crypto exchange OKEx, since February 25, Liu has undertaken more than 50 futures trading on the platform, investing over 100,000 yuan ($15,000) but only 6,800 yuan ($1,000) was left in his account. Almost all of the transactions were losing money, or wiped out.

During this period, he borrowed a total of 40,000 yuan in several months from five online lending platforms including Alipay and Baidu wallet. He even threw his 10,000-yuan tuition fee in it. After mounting losses, he began to sell his valuables, including an iphone8 and a Samsung note8.

Liu Ke confided that he has lost a total of 140,000 yuan on futures trading on OKEx, including all the loans and tuition fees transferred by his father. Learning that he hasn’t paid the tuition fee, his father made other two transfers. However, again and again, Liu failed to learn from the experience, putting his crypto career ahead of his college degree.

His inability to pay back the debts left him thinking running away. Days ago, leaving no words for his parents, he escaped to Sihanouk Cambodia, a coastal resort where many Chinese buy lotteries there, and also ‘Noah’s Ark’ for debtors. He thought he could earn all back by soliciting Chinese to buy lotteries there and then taking high commissions. But it turned out it was not that easy and well-paid. After that he even took the risk to make money by being subjected to drug tests like a lab rat, 5,000 yuan ($800) for 5 days’ drug test.

And he said desperately that there’s nothing in his head but to win all back when asked what he would do with the payment.

Many people believe that cryptocoin investment is a gamble where wealth is at the disposal of god. While they don’t realize that it is an unfair game where there are tricky swindlers and market manipulators, and more appalling, those scamcoins purchased with real money might worth nothing.