China's cryptocurrency "Tsinghua Gang": Huobi's Li Lin is the leader, and the "Sickle" drags down its reputation

Wu said blockchain original 2020-10-12 10:54 popularity 485

Alumni are the core contacts in the political and business circles, and mutual support and investment are common. Tsinghua University, as China's top science and engineering university, is undoubtedly the top circle in the Internet, artificial intelligence, chip and other industries, and is gradually becoming a force in the cryptocurrency industry.

Not long ago, Li Lin, the founder of Huobi.com, who graduated from the Department of Automation of Tsinghua University in 2007, went to Hangzhou to invite Zhang Li, the former vice president of Canaan Technology and a graduate of Automotive Engineering from Tsinghua University, to join as CFO.

So far, Huobi's Li Lin has more and more senior executives from Tsinghua University under his command, including Weng Xiaoqi (Qi Ye), a master of software engineering from Tsinghua University and CEO of Huobi Global Station, Lan Jianzhong, Li Lin's Tsinghua classmate and vice president of contracts, and Yuan Yuming, head of Huobi China. In 2018, Li Lin returned to his alma mater, the School of Software, to hold a campus recruitment and gave a speech in person.

Alumni are naturally more likely to receive investment from alumni. Conflux and Elastos, two public chain projects founded by Tsinghua teams, have also received investment and support from Huobi. Inno Angel Fund, founded by Tsinghua alumni such as Li Zhu and Lin Sen in April 2013, is also active in the cryptocurrency industry.

Conflux: A public chain team founded by Tsinghua Yao Class team, with Yao Qizhi, the founder of Yao Class, as an advisor. In 2019, it received $35 million in financing from investors including Sequoia China, Baidu, F2Pool, Huobi, Shunwei, etc., with a total valuation of $400 million. It is currently on the eve of coin issuance, and there is still great uncertainty.

Elastos: Founder Rong Chen graduated from the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University in 1982, went to the United States to study in 1984, and participated in the planning and establishment of the Elastos Foundation as a co-founder in May 2017. Elastos Huobi was launched on February 1, 2018. Another founder, Han Feng, is a doctoral student at Tsinghua University. However, in 2018, Elastos was subject to a large number of rights protections due to operational chaos. The current price of the currency is 1/20 of the price when it was launched, and it has semi-exited the market.

However, the Tsinghua Group has also produced many "sickles", causing dissatisfaction among retail investors. There are even occasional rumors in the cryptocurrency circle that the "Tsinghua Group" is avoiding the issue.

Case 1: JiMuCloud. JiMuCloud CEO Ming Zhongxing is a PhD in Computer Science from Tsinghua University, and the largest individual shareholder Yang Shu is also a PhD in Computer Science from Tsinghua University. As the first 1EO project of OKEx, it has more than 120 investors, but due to poor management, the current price of the currency has fallen by 98%, and rights protection has continued. The founding team of Tsinghua University has been questioned by investors for cutting leeks because of extravagant behaviors such as buying Porsches.

Reference: In-depth: How did JiMuCloud collapse? Tsinghua PhD team, Nobel Prize consultant, 120 investors

Case 2: Huoniu. The founder, Jing Feng, was admitted to the Department of Computer Science at Tsinghua University at the age of 16, and obtained a doctorate in artificial intelligence from Tsinghua University at the age of 24. He focused on "YouTube+TikTok+blockchain", but was suspected of "running away" in September 2018.

Chen Lei, the founder of OneCloud and former CEO of Xunlei, also graduated from Tsinghua University. He founded OneCloud based on Xunlei and pushed Xunlei's stock price to a high point, but due to criticism by the government, the business plummeted. Today, when distributed storage and Filecoin are popular, not many people remember OneCloud. Chen Lei was reported to the police by Xunlei, including suspected misappropriation of tens of millions of funds for cryptocurrency speculation, and ended up with a sad ending of being unable to return to China.

Reference: What exactly is Xunlei's former CEO Chen Lei's "illegal cryptocurrency speculation"? Is cryptocurrency speculation illegal?

Some people believe that although the founding team with a Tsinghua background has certain skills and connections, they do not have a good understanding of finance, the cryptocurrency industry, and even human nature, so they may fall into a dilemma similar to the above-mentioned JiMuCloud. In addition, their attitude towards regulation is relatively conservative, and they are at a loss as to what to do when faced with regulation.

In addition, Zhou Yahui, Deng Di and other bigwigs who graduated from Tsinghua University early on are also involved in or controlling some blockchain projects behind the scenes, but they have a bad reputation.

It was revealed that Dengdi used his own account and multiple accounts suspected of being related to him to continuously, frequently and at high prices to buy stocks, pushing up and maintaining the stock price, causing the company's market value to increase significantly. The National Equities Exchange and Quotations has imposed a disciplinary sanction of public reprimand on Dengdi, and the China Securities Regulatory Commission has also launched an investigation.

In 2018, Jerry Ji Guo, founder and CEO of ICST, a blockchain video content sharing platform, was arrested by the FBI. The FBI accused him of stealing more than $3.5 million worth of cryptocurrency and suspected of fraud through ICO. Now that ICST has completely gone to zero, investors have directed their rights protection efforts at Zhou Yahui, chairman of the ICST project, and pointed out that Zhou Yahui is the actual controller behind the ICST project.

Outside of the traditional currency circle, two crypto mining tycoons also belong to the Tsinghua school.

Yang Zuoxing, the founder of Shenma Mining Machine, graduated from Tsinghua University and obtained a doctorate in nuclear physics. He joined the BBK team in 2014 and later worked part-time to help Bitmain design mining machine chips. Because the option shares could not be negotiated, he founded Shenma and became a mining machine giant alongside Bitmain. Chen Jianbing, COO of Shenma Mining Machine, is also Yang Zuoxing's classmate at Tsinghua University. Although another founder of Bitmain, Zhan Ketuan, did not graduate from Tsinghua University, he worked in a Tsinghua-affiliated company after graduating from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. Some media confused him with a Tsinghua graduate, so he was ridiculed by Yang Zuoxing's side.

In addition to the Tsinghua system, China's cryptocurrency industry also has the Peking University system, the Chinese Academy of Sciences system, etc., but compared with Tsinghua, their star power is still much dimmer.