Filecoin investor confession: I admit that there is an element of gambling

In 2020, the controversy surrounding Filecoin has never stopped. Some people say that Filecoin’s total market value has reached 30 billion US dollars before the mainnet is launched, and it is the biggest bubble scam in the cryptocurrency circle. Others say that it is the next Ethereum-level investment opportunity.

After the testnet and mainnet launches were delayed one after another, the debate and dispute about Filecoin became increasingly louder.

At the end of September, Filecoin announced that it would be officially launched around October 15. However, until the last minute, no one knew whether the "pigeon king" could be launched as scheduled.

TechFlow interviewed 5 Filecoin investors to understand their investment logic and views on Filecoin. The products they invested in are different, including cloud computing power, mining machines, or futures currencies.

For some Filecoin investors, this was an event they had been waiting for for two years, and the results were finally revealed. Some investors expressed that they were half optimistic and half bearish, admitting that investment contained an element of gambling.

What does Filecoin represent? Is it a scam or an opportunity? Everyone has a different answer.

Filecoin is the Internet's equivalent of real estate

Lin Bo｜Technical Lecturer at Tianhe Guoyun

I am an early miner of Ethereum. I heard about Filecoin in 2017. I didn’t get the private placement quota because I didn’t pass the whitelist (in 2017, Filecoin conducted public and private placements, and only individuals, institutions or funds with US qualified investor identity certification could participate). I have a friend who bought foreign passport information, but he logged in with a Chinese IP and was rejected. I didn’t expect the review to be so strict.

Why invest in Filecoin? I want to invest in IPFS, but there is nowhere to invest because it is an industry, and FIL is a company in this industry, and it is relatively reliable.

I have spent more than 30,000 yuan to buy 420 FIL futures and invested in 400T machines. I expect to get my money back in half a year at the earliest and a year at the latest.

I have not invested in cloud computing power. Computing power is a huge pitfall. It is not that it is useless, but its cost is almost 0. In essence, FIL servers do not use computing power, but are forced to sell computing power. The mining logic of FIL is that the amount of work done is the amount of coins generated, that is, the amount of deposits is the amount of money. Assuming a server has 96T, its actual performance can be several times or even ten times, but many companies split this multiple and sold it to investors, and sold it at a high price.

According to our prediction, one ton of work can be rewarded with about 0.39 FIL. According to the current FIL market price of 500 yuan, 1 ton is 200 yuan, but many companies sell it at 900 yuan/ton, which is a pitfall.

Let me tell you this: the cost of one T, including hardware, cabinet rental, bandwidth, electricity, software, and operation and maintenance, will not be higher than 1,000 yuan, but the market price starts at 3,000 yuan. Not to mention the computing power, which costs less than a few dozen yuan but is sold for hundreds of yuan. These bubbles will eventually burst.

I attended the Xiamen Filecoin offline investment promotion meeting in September last year. It was very low-end and brainwashed you. But I think this is a good thing. The market needs Chinese aunts. The essence of all finance is the game of dividing money. The investment logic is mostly a process from speculation to investment.

The people around me have a very high recognition of Filecoin. I think the model of Filecoin is that customers store their data on your server and pay you rent every month, which is an Internet real estate.

"What are you doing playing with?"

Liu Qin｜Bitcoin miners invest 5 million to configure mining machines

Now, it costs around 100,000 yuan to equip yourself with a Filecoin mining machine. A friend of mine has prepared 3 million yuan for a Filecoin cluster. I know of several companies that have invested more than 10 million yuan. What the hell are small investors doing?

Filecoin mining requires a lot of money and technology. Currently, there is a serious misalignment in the industry. Those with money don’t have technology, and those with technology don’t have money. The technical reserves required for Filecoin in the early stage are relatively high, and people in the Bitcoin mining circle are not used to it and can’t do it.

According to my observation, most of the people who plan to invest in Filecoin come from other industries. They are jealous of the money made in the cryptocurrency circle, and are distressed about missing opportunities, but they also have certain technical capabilities.

If Filecoin does not sell computing power properly, there will be a lot of disputes. I met an investor of a leading mining company some time ago, and he told me that the money several companies received was disproportionate to the coins they mined, and they would run away after the mainnet was launched, but they might not run away if the coin price was good.

“I admit that there is an element of gambling involved”

Bao Lele｜Nutrition product practitioner

I bought the machines early. In July last year, I spent 30,000 yuan to buy two 8T mining machines. Apart from the mining machines, I have not invested in Filecoin or virtual currencies. I don't understand it. There are too many pitfalls.

Why did you choose to invest in Filecoin? I feel that this technology is good and may benefit mankind. But now that Filecoin is so popular, I can’t say for sure whether I am optimistic or bearish. I admit that there is a gambling element.

You asked about the configuration of my machine. I only know it is 8T, but I am not sure about the internal configuration.

The cost of mining FIL machines is too high now. I am worried. If we follow the official requirements, the configuration of a mining machine will be no less than 100,000. The storage servers currently used in the computer room are much lower in configuration. 50,000 is already very high.

Now I have entrusted all my mining machines to the mining machine manufacturers, and they take 25% of the custody fee. I heard that in the second phase of testing, their results ranked in the top 3, so there shouldn't be any problems.

Not optimistic about Filecoin technology, but more optimistic about the concept

Zhu Zhiyong | Digital currency investor

I bought 20,000 FIL futures at around 50 yuan and sold them all at around 170 yuan.

I bought it at that time because I knew it would go up. The concept of FIL was easy to understand and hype. I also knew that there would be more buyers later, so I bought some in advance. It was bound to fall later, and it was risky to hold it, so I sold all of it some time ago.

Later, I will wait for an opportunity to go short based on the market atmosphere, and then choose to purchase some mining machines after it is basically stable.

I started paying attention to Filecoin around 2017, but never bought any. I am not optimistic about Filecoin. I am just a miner. The quality of the technology has nothing to do with me. I am more optimistic about the concept of this project.

FIL has real application value and is more worthy of investment than most currencies

William｜Chief Researcher at OKEx Research

Filecoin has practical applications, and FIL has real application value. This is rare in the currency circle. Without the "air coins" that have been launched a few years in advance, even the popular DeFi mining coins this year, most of the DeFi coins have no real application value. Although the project party claims that these DeFi coins can be used to participate in community governance, most of the chips are concentrated in a few addresses, and the so-called governance voting is ultimately just a decoration. But Filecoin is different. FIL has obvious applications in Filecoin's economic system and can be used for mortgage mining, storage and retrieval fees, etc. This alone is more worth investing in than most currencies.

The biggest risk of Filecoin lies in its legal risk. Currently, most of Filecoin's network nodes are concentrated in East Asia. After the official launch, there may be problems such as content infringement and whether the data complies with local laws. For example, cross-border flow of data and storage of sensitive data are all facing great risks.

It is recommended that Filcoin developers, miners, and users consciously comply with local legal requirements.

Currently, OKEx has added a new storage project token display area. The first batch of tokens entering the OKEx storage project display area include well-known head projects such as BTT, SC, and STORJ. With the launch of the storage project display area, OKEx will further integrate its high-quality traffic and brand advantages, further bring more high-quality storage projects into the mainstream trading market, and effectively promote the development of the blockchain decentralized storage field.

(Bao Lele, Liu Qin and Zhu Zhiyong are all pseudonyms.)