Masayoshi Son lost 130 million yuan. Who controls the "crypto destiny" of the giant?

In December 2017, at the end of the last bull market cycle, SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin at the historical high of $20,000. He then liquidated his position in 2018, with a loss of $130 million.

In addition, Danhua Capital, founded by the late Chinese-American physicist and Stanford University professor Shoucheng Zhang, lost nearly 90% of its net value during the bear market cycle. Galaxy Digital Capital, founded by billionaire Michael Novogratz, lost $272.7 million in 2018 and $349.4 million in the second quarter of 2021.

These cases seem to be the best footnote to "In new fields, giants are just like this."

So, are the giants who are so powerful in the traditional field really not adaptable to the crypto world? Who controls the "crypto destiny" of the giants?

Are the giants in the Web2 era really “unable to adapt to the local environment”?

In May 2021, at SoftBank's earnings conference, Masayoshi Son said when talking about Bitcoin that he did not understand the true value of Bitcoin, nor did he know whether it was a bubble. But what is certain is that Bitcoin has become an asset that cannot be ignored.

As early as the end of 2017, when the price of Bitcoin peaked, Son personally made a huge investment in Bitcoin, and lost more than $130 million when he sold it in 2018. In November 2018, Son said that he invested in Bitcoin on the "strong recommendation" of a good friend. But in fact, he did not understand Bitcoin, and the price of Bitcoin fluctuated too much.

Masayoshi Son believes that he spent about 5 minutes a day checking the price fluctuations of Bitcoin, which distracted him from SoftBank's business, so he sold Bitcoin.

Masayoshi Son's own crypto investment has not been smooth, and the Vision Fund he helmed also suffered a Waterloo in 2021.

On November 8, 2021, Japanese investment giant SoftBank Group disclosed its latest financial report. From July to September last year, the Vision Fund's total losses reached 82.5086 billion yen (about 46.5 billion yuan), surpassing the previous record of a single-quarter loss of 78.86 billion yen, making it the worst quarter in history.

Another Web2 giant, Meta, which tried its best to enter the Metaverse, did not thrive either.

At the end of January 2022, Meta (Facebook) released its financial report, and its stock price plummeted. The financial report showed that in addition to the decline in daily active users, its short video business was also eroded by TikTok. While the main business was facing huge difficulties, Meta's Metaverse business, which had great hopes, was not going well.

According to the financial report, Meta earned $2.3 billion in revenue from the Metaverse division Quest & Portal in 2021, about twice its revenue in 2020 and four times its revenue in 2019. However, this is compared with the $12.5 billion in costs and R&D costs in 2021, a loss of up to $10.2 billion.

Both SoftBank and Meta were top industry giants in the Web2 era, but they seem to have encountered retrograde trends in Web3.

So, are the giants of the Web2 era really "unable to adapt" to Web3? In fact, this is not the case. Take SoftBank as an example. Although the investment institution suffered a Waterloo in 2021, its layout in the encryption field is still remarkable.

According to public information, SoftBank has increased its investment in the cryptocurrency field and made frequent moves in 2021. SoftBank focuses on three aspects in the cryptocurrency field: NFT, encrypted payments, and cryptocurrency exchanges.

For example, blockchain games include Sorare, Fanatics, Blin Metaverse, Juggernaut, DNABlock, etc. In terms of crypto payments, SoftBank has invested in Chime, oPay, TBCASoft, DriveWealth, Paystand, etc.

In fact, whether it is an institution or an individual, in the crypto field where prices rise and fall sharply and cycles change frequently, short-sighted people will never be able to obtain rich returns. This is also common in traditional finance.

Hold on until the music starts again

The financial market in 2021 was volatile. If there was any institution that represented "falling before dawn", it would be RC Global Fund.

At the end of November 2021, the world's "most pessimistic" hedge fund RC Global Fund closed due to the "longest bull market in history" of U.S. stocks. The fund's assets fell from about $1.7 billion in 2015 to about $200 million.

Russell Clark, fund manager of RC Global Fund, said in 2019 that he was convinced a stock market crash was coming. Having been short U.S. stocks for most of the past decade, Clark has been increasing his bearish bets in the face of a relentless liquidity onslaught from the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and global central banks.

In addition, Scion Asset Management, a fund manager Michael Burry's fund based on the protagonist of the movie "The Big Short", also exited its short bets on Tesla, Google's parent company Alphabet, Cathie Wood's ARK Innovation Fund, and the largest U.S. Treasury exchange-traded fund (ETF) iShares 20+ Year ETF in Q2 2021.

In 2022, facing the highest inflation in the United States in 40 years, the Federal Reserve reduced its bond purchases, and the interest rate hike and taper stick were approaching. The global stock market was in turmoil, and the financial targets that Michael Burry shorted all experienced a sharp correction. Among them, Cathie Wood's ARK Innovation Fund was nearly halved. At this time, it had only been half a year since Michael Burry quit shorting.

RC Global Fund and Scion Asset Management can almost be said to have "collapsed before dawn."

Looking back at the history of Web development, stories of “perseverance leads to dawn” are even more common in the Web2 era, such as Amazon.

In 1990, the market value of Nasdaq, which was home to many Internet companies, was only 11% of that of the New York Stock Exchange. By December 1999, the market value of Nasdaq had risen to 80% of that of the New York Stock Exchange. In March 2000, Nasdaq soared to a peak of 5,048.62.

During this period, Amazon also experienced its own "highlight moment". In the first three years of its listing from 1997 to 1999, Amazon became the "world's largest online retailer" through category expansion and mergers and acquisitions. Its stock price rose to US$106, and Bezos was named "Person of the Year" by Time magazine.

In April 2000, Microsoft lost the antitrust case and faced the risk of being split. As soon as the news came out, the Nasdaq index recorded its largest single-day drop of 349 points, and the Internet bubble officially burst.

Since then, Amazon's stock price has plummeted, and a large number of websites acquired by Amazon during the bull market have closed down, with annual losses as high as 1 billion US dollars. Within a year, Amazon's stock price fell below single digits, a drop of 98%.

Who would have thought that 20 years later, Amazon would grow into a super giant with a market value of 1.5 trillion US dollars, and Amazon's stock price would soar nearly 1,000 times, with its market value second only to Apple.

Google is another example of "perseverance leads to success."

In 1995, Sergey Brin and Larry Page met. In 1996, they invented a simple search engine called "Backrub". In 1997, Backrub was renamed Google. In 1998, the two co-founders of Google wanted to sell Google's core search algorithm PageRank TM to AltaVista for $1 million and then live a carefree life, but were rejected.

AltaVista certainly didn't expect that $1 million could only buy three lots of GOOG stock 20 years later.

Whether it is Masayoshi Son and his SoftBank, or RC Global Fund and Scion Asset Management that fell before dawn, or Amazon and Google that survived in their darkest hour, they all point to the same conclusion: opportunities belong to those who persevere.

Whether you are a giant or a newbie, the fate of the Web3 world is up to you. Hang in there until the music starts again.