Seeing everyone discuss the topic "Choice is greater than effort," I can't help but feel a bit emotional. Throughout a person's life, it is actually full of various choices, and a particular choice often determines which path you will take in the future, what kind of life you will live, and even who you will live with.

Hiking downstairs yesterday, passing by the real estate agency at the entrance of the community. The signboard listed the listing prices for different house types in our community. My husband and I stood there looking for a while, and a sales agent from the agency came over to chat.

He asked us which year we bought the house, how much we paid at that time, whether we plan to upgrade to a bigger house or consider selling.

We bought the house in 2020, in a community in Shenzhen near the airport. During the period right after the pandemic ended, we started viewing houses intensively, looked for over a month, and finally settled on this one.

The house viewing was particularly surreal. You needed an appointment to see a house, and five or six groups of people would view it at the same time. The atmosphere on-site was extremely heated, and there was no room for bargaining; being a step slower felt like being left behind by the times. We were also anxious. Afraid that if we didn't buy now, we wouldn't be able to afford it later.

So, at that emotional peak, we made the decision. A few months after purchasing, the value of this house indeed increased by nearly 1 million. At that time, we even secretly celebrated: luckily, we acted quickly. But as time went on, everything changed.

The house we bought for 580 million yuan, including taxes and agency fees, totaled 610 million yuan; with a mortgage of just over 20,000 yuan per month, we have been paying it off to this day, and have paid back over 1 million yuan. But now, looking again, the market value of this house is only around 4 million yuan. If we sell now, after paying off the bank’s loan of over 2.6 million yuan, we probably only have a few hundred thousand left.

The 2 million yuan down payment back then, plus the mortgage over these years—almost all of it has evaporated.

Sometimes I often think:
If I hadn’t bought a house back then and had instead used all that money to buy BTC, would it have been a completely different life?

Calmly thinking about it, it’s not really about the house, but about our misjudgment of the post-pandemic housing prices, and our overall misjudgment of the environment. This is also the price we pay for our understanding at that time.

A choice that seemed “completely normal” back then has now become a rigid expense of at least 19,000 yuan per month, like a rope tightly tied around us.

You dare not stop, and you dare not make mistakes.

Every day online, there are stories of “earning a few M” or “multiplying several times,” and after seeing too many, it’s easy to think the world is flying. But in real life, look around at the people—how many can steadily earn a few M a year? Most people are actually carrying heavy burdens forward.

Last night, chatting with my husband, we talked about @cz_. Starting a business at 40, selling a house, going all-in on Bitcoin.

With our current state, honestly, we wouldn’t dare.

At first, I said he was gambling, but then I thought about it, and actually, it’s not.

That’s not an impulsive act driven by emotion, but he stands on his expertise, cognition, and judgment, seeing the trend clearly, and daring to stake his life on it.

That is his choice.

And we are just paying the price for that choice back then. Some choices are not immediately right or wrong, but time will gradually lay out the answer in front of you.