Investigation into the Huaqiangbei "mine accident": the market is manipulated by humans, and going overseas is a false alarm

On January 3, 2009, the first Bitcoin algorithm client program in human history was launched, and Bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto obtained 50 bitcoins through the first mining.

In January 2013, "Avalon" developed by the team of Zhang Nangeng, the current founder of Canaan Creative, was officially released. The launch of the first commercial ASIC mining machine in history ushered the Bitcoin mining circle into the nuclear age. The era of industrial-grade Bitcoin mining has since begun. At the same time, mining machine brands and mining machine merchants gathered in Huaqiangbei, Shenzhen.

In December 2013, the first Bitcoin mining accident occurred and the price of the currency fell to 2,000 yuan. Dozens of mining machine manufacturers went bankrupt due to broken capital chains. Bitmain, which survived by chance, gained a firm foothold in the bear market and later became the industry leader.

From January to December 2017, the trading volume of mining machines in major electronics markets in Huaqiangbei reached a historical peak. According to relevant persons from Huaqiang Group, in 2017, the indirect income brought by mining machine exchanges alone to property companies under Huaqiang Group across the country reached more than 1.5 billion yuan.

On December 18, 2017, the real-time price of Bitcoin reached an all-time peak of $19,442.1. On January 1 of the following year, the real-time price of Ethereum reached an all-time peak of $1,412.12. Subsequently, the global virtual currency showed an astonishing exponential decline in two months. On February 7, Bitcoin fell to a low of $6,849.42 (a decrease of more than $200 billion in market value). The collapse of the currency price directly led to a plunge in the price of mining machines that were tied to it, severely damaging more than a dozen electronic markets in Huaqiangbei, causing tens of thousands of dealers to be trapped.

On January 2, 2018, the Office of the Leading Group for the Special Regulation of Internet Finance Risks of the People's Bank of China issued a regulation document on the regulation of relevant mining companies, which directly triggered a large-scale panic in the mining circle.

On April 6, 2018, Bitmain released a nuclear-grade ASIC Ethereum mining machine that "beats" graphics card mining machines. On the same day, ETH plummeted to its lowest point in the past year: US$368.23 (market value decreased by more than US$93 billion). The era of industrial-grade Ethereum mining is about to come, and it has been less than 5 years since the last nuclear weapon "Avalon" for mining Bitcoin was released.

On April 8, 2018, Canaan Creative, China’s second largest mining machine manufacturer in Hangzhou, announced its IPO in Hong Kong.

In 20 days, the $200 billion market value of Bitcoin evaporated quietly, and a number of virtual currencies including Ethereum fell exponentially. For currency speculators, Bitcoin miners and retail investors engaged in mining machine sales, the most tragic virtual currency "mining disaster" in human history occurred before the New Year of 2018.

The government issued a special rectification document on mining on January 2

However, in sharp contrast, the Great Depression on October 29, 1929, which triggered the global financial crisis and ignited the fuse of World War II, the Black Monday of the Dow Jones Index on October 19, 1987, and the Lehman Brothers' bankruptcy protection under the financial tsunami in 2008, the above three contents may be heard by primary and secondary school students from textbooks. But for the disaster of Bitcoin price falling from a high of $19,442.1 to $6,849.42 in December 2017, I am afraid that many people can't find it even if they want to, because in mainland China, you still need "scientific Internet access" to obtain the latest currency price, so this disaster is like a real mining disaster: it must be a man-made disaster, but no one knows who is responsible for it.

If faced with the horrific disaster of hundreds of billions of dollars in market value evaporating, retail cryptocurrency traders may be able to sell at a loss, and local mine owners may be forced to sell at a low price or move their assets overseas due to pressure from electricity bills. However, the mining machine dealers in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei region face the danger today that their own inventory of mining machines may become a pile of worthless electronic waste at any time.

On the other hand, the three major mining machine manufacturers made a lot of money in 2017, and there were constant big news in 2018: it was reported that Bitmain conservatively estimated that its annual profit in 2017 exceeded US$3 billion, Ebang Technology began to invest in building a factory in Russia in April this year, and Canaan Creative just started its IPO in Hong Kong.

The singing and dancing while the bodies of the “victims” are still warm is actually a great disrespect to the dead. I wonder if it is the survivor bias at work, or the mining machine manufacturers’ understanding of the blockchain spirit as profit-seeking without any social responsibility, or is it the burp of the three major mining machine manufacturers in response after having eaten their fill of human blood?

Who should be held responsible for the mining accident, who is bluffing in the face of supervision, and who is deviating from or distorting the spirit of blockchain?

Pursuing the above questions, there may be answers, or there may only be clues, but at least we can be sure of this:

There are indeed hunters in this world who prey on humans, who are at the top of the food chain.

In real life, perverted murderers are usually very quiet and never show off. Some of them are even quite likable at the beginning.

1. Huaqiangbei Survey

Huaqiangbei is located in the central area of ​​Futian District, Shenzhen. It extends from Hongli Road in the north to Shennan Middle Road in the south, Huafu Road in the west and Yannan Road in the east. Huaqiangbei is actually under the control of the listed company "Huaqiang Industry" - this is a sample case of "state-owned to private" in Shenzhen at the beginning of reform and opening up, while Huaqiangnan is controlled by the state-owned SEG Group. As the largest electronics market in China and even the world, Huaqiangbei is also the home of the famous "Chaoshan Gang" in China's business community. Even Ma Huateng has publicly stated that before he joined Runxun, he also engaged in the sale of assembled computers for 50 yuan each in "Huaqiangbei".

Generally speaking, China's Chaoshan businessmen can be divided into two categories: the first category is the representatives of Chaoshan big businessmen, such as Tencent's Ma Huateng, Gome's Huang Guangyu, Baoneng Group's Yao Zhenghua, etc.; the other category is the small businessmen represented by Huaqiangbei.

"There is no big factory of Foxconn, no full industrial chain, only the balance maintained in the chaotic market order. The foreigners' statement that we can gather all the parts of an iPhone in "SEG" is actually wrong. It should be that all iPhone parts can be obtained in any store in Huaqiangbei, because the strategy pursued by the Chaoshan gang is to bring goods to each other and make money together."

Awen is a Chaoshan boss from SEG Plaza. Having experienced the ups and downs of Huaqiangbei for more than a decade, he believes that most of the Chaoshan gang are shrewd, united, and low-risk profit-seeking small businessmen. This is especially reflected in the fact that when one company here makes money because of high gross profit, there will be thousands of companies following suit. Awen cited the fidget spinners that were popular in various stalls in the market in 2016, the mining machines in 2017, and the headphones that have been popular since the beginning of this year as witnesses of the Chaoshan gang's pursuit of profit. Therefore, there is no so-called "big goods" winning here. Some are just retail investors who lazily start their busy day in Huaqiangbei around 11 o'clock every day. "It's just like my brother told me yesterday that he could get 1,000 iPhones from customs, but in the end I still didn't dare to place an order."

However, just yesterday, the Chaoshan Gang, known as the Jews of the East, fell in the face of a Bitcoin "mining accident."

“Our market opened later than other domestic markets during the same period. Of course, every year many merchants don’t come after the Chinese New Year. However, last year’s mining machine dealers were obviously affected by the price of coins and the news of new models being launched, and began to hesitate on a large scale at the beginning of this year. At present, several floors of our SEG that sell mining machines from 1st to 10th floors are almost empty now, and merchants will not tell you whether the mining machine business is good or not, because those who want to leave usually vote with their feet.”

Price fluctuations in the hardware market are actually a normal market law, and the reason for the fluctuations is nothing more than the shortage of key components of the equipment: for example, a severe flood in Thailand in the summer of 2011 severely hit hard disk manufacturers including Seagate and Western Digital, causing hard disk prices in Huaqiangbei and even the whole country to rise by 100% or even higher. But today, the price of Bitcoin mining machines has collapsed directly with the coin price plummeting, and even the fixed cost of the hardware components themselves cannot suppress the continuation of this fluctuation. There may be only one possibility behind the plunge in mining machine prices to "kill" retail dealers - this is the result of human manipulation.

So why do you say that this is the result of human manipulation?

Bitcoin has not been recognized by any of the five permanent members of the United Nations , and its value can only be realized through exchanges. When it is not a circulating currency, the only physical object that can have a direct relationship with reality is the mining machine. ASIC professional mining machines are different from GPU\CPU mining machines, and their binding relationship with Bitcoin is more clear.

The research and development of Bitcoin ASIC professional mining machines is actually specially made by mining machine manufacturers by modifying the products of upstream hardware manufacturers such as NVIDIA . There are only three domestic mining machine manufacturers with such strength: Bitmain, Canaan Creative, and Ebang Technology. Therefore, it is much easier to reach a tacit understanding among the three companies than in other industries.

When a technological revolution occurs, the lead time between the launch of a new generation of products by upstream hardware manufacturers and the launch of the products by mining machine manufacturers after R&D and modification is completed and then put on the market is completely controlled by the mining machine manufacturers themselves . This is especially true for professional equipment such as ASIC mining machines. Once a technological revolution occurs and the computing power increases by dozens or hundreds of times, the old models become scrap metal overnight. Under the same electricity price, old machines with a generation gap cannot even earn back the soaring electricity bills in the environment of general computing power improvement, and this type of mining machine can do nothing but mining. As for when this revolutionary change will happen, it is entirely up to the manufacturer.

The three major mining machine manufacturers control the global computing power at the same time, and they all own extremely large mining farms. As the scale of their mining expands rapidly and the marginal cost is further reduced , they have actually become the dealers who influence the price trend of the currency while holding a large amount of Bitcoin. It is the same principle as developing aviation rocket technology for scientific experiments while also using rockets as intercontinental ballistic missiles as a platform for launching nuclear weapons.

The sales of mining machines have long followed the strict futures trading model set by the manufacturers, and the spot market, except for second-hand machines and some small dealers, is basically in the hands of large dealers who work closely with the manufacturers . According to many mining machine dealer bosses in Huaqiangbei, several large dealers upstream are actually the source of goods for retail investors in Huaqiangbei. In addition to having first-hand information sources directly communicated with the manufacturers, they are also the owners of the largest mines in China, and they usually participate in various blockchain-related exchange activities at home and abroad.

“In fact, the market leaders also support the sale of mining machines, because what the market needs is something that can bring in rent and gather merchants, but the mining accident is not their responsibility, because no one in the market has ever set up a “mining machine mall” for investment. The coming and going of people is determined by the free market, not to mention that the mining machine itself is a sensitive thing.”

Lao Bao, a former executive of Huaqiang Group, who has been engaged in the electronics industry for many years, believes that various e-commerce platforms have eliminated the information asymmetry in the offline market in the past eight years, and the problems of scattered and poor domestic electronics industry have been reshuffled by strong brands through formalization. The mobile phones, notebooks, and tablets that Huaqiangbei once proudly produced for export have been disintegrated by big brands, resulting in the transformation of to C business. The size of emerging products such as smart wearables, drones, headphones and speakers is getting smaller and smaller. The primary problem is that the demand for electronic components has dropped sharply, and the decentralization of large factories has made this type of to B business encounter difficulties. The rental income of the market has dropped sharply, and the demand for electronic components is huge at this time. The to B business is the main business, and the market price is directly linked to the currency price. The "profitable" mining machine can be said to be a long-awaited opportunity for the Huaqiangbei market.

"We privately say that Huaqiangbei has always been engaged in a business that is not worthy of being on the table: on the one hand, the state has supervision over mining, but it does not prohibit the sale of mining machines. On the other hand, even JD.com and Taobao are not allowed to sell mining machines. However, Huaqiangbei not only has various channels to accumulate spot goods, but also urgently needs such consensus-based products to open up various market parties in the situation of shrinking market rents. To put it bluntly, it is like a client meeting a prostitute, and Huaqiangbei itself is pimping, but one thing is certain: the market is not a vested interest group."

The offline physical market is different from e-commerce. The production tool of the e-commerce platform is the Internet, so the marginal cost is almost 0. However, under the model of building buildings and collecting rent in Huaqiangbei, once the overall market environment is not good, the silent cost of its physical market will rise. After the merchants rent the stalls, their actual marginal costs are also very high. The average price per square meter of its market stalls has long surpassed the housing prices in Shenzhen. Therefore, under the overall market environment, the stalls must be forced to complete the initial break-even and gradually profit-making model by selling high-gross-profit products. Due to the geographical location of Huaqiangbei and the genes of the Chaoshan Gang, their buying and selling must be just a speculative behavior, not a long-term investment.

If we exclude the affected market, implicated dealers, and small miners and mine owners who died, who should be held responsible for the mine disaster? At least one thing is certain: the mining machine manufacturers, as the vested interests, cannot escape blame.

2. The Chinese Expeditionary Force from the Mining Circle

At 15:49 on the afternoon of February 23, 2018, the WeChat group "Three O'clock Sleepless Blockchain" invited Kong Jianping, chairman of Canaan Creative, to share his special topic. Regarding the movement of Canaan Creative's mines after the January document was issued, which was of concern to the mine owners, Kong Jianping publicly shouted to the group members: "We are in China, we will not move anywhere, and we must pay more taxes for socialism."

However, compared with the manufacturers' argument of "paying more taxes for socialism", private mine owners like Lao Lei believe that going overseas seems to be the only way out at present.

"After the 1994 new policy was introduced, the core reason was that domestic mines had long been using electricity in an irregular manner. But now we are facing a situation where small miners will have very high electricity prices if they are dispersed, but once centralized supervision is implemented, they will have to take action. So when there is no more room for maneuver, they can only choose to go overseas. The dealers are different from us."

According to the spirit of the document issued by the central ministries and commissions, the core of the document does not actually propose specific implementation standards or thorough solutions. After all, the country will not set a KPI. According to the information obtained by Lao Lei after long-term contact with law enforcement departments and leaders in various places, it can be summed up in one sentence: "You can't go too far or too exaggerated. I have to give an explanation to the leaders."

Lao Lei gave an example of an industrial park. If only three out of four industrial plants are engaged in mining, then the regulatory authorities will definitely take action. If there are 100 plants, the 3% ratio will not be so conspicuous. When weighing the benefits and costs, being the "unobtrusive thing" is indeed a very Chinese characteristic of this mining farm operation model.

A mine under construction in western China

However, in contrast, the mining pools operated by mining machine manufacturers are actually the opposite of the development path of the "Olympic spirit": faster, higher, stronger, and rapidly expanding in remote areas such as Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Yunnan. Bitmain's mining pools are distributed in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Sichuan, Yunnan, and Fujian. Among them, the Xinjiang Shihezi Cloud Computing Center, which was completed at the end of 2016, directly uses the abundant local wind and solar energy, with a scale of up to 140,000 kilowatts, but the official has not disclosed the number of installed units and the scale of investment. Zhu Simaji did such an arithmetic problem for readers: According to the latest model of Bitmain - Ant S9 14T mining machine (1350W + machine self-consumption 10%), the line power loss is 5%, and the installed capacity of 140,000KW is about 90,000 units. Compared with the Inner Mongolia Maker Cloud Computing Big Data Industrial Park mining farm with an installed capacity of 40,000 units and an investment of 1.2 billion yuan, it is roughly estimated that its investment scale is at least more than 2.7 billion yuan. This scale cannot be described as exaggerated. Of course, Bitmain has always maintained a noncommittal attitude towards the outside world's claims that it controls 40-50% of the world's computing power and 80% of the mining machine market. What is terrifying is that a mining pool like Shihezi is just a relatively new one among Bitmain's many mining pools.

The situation of Bitmain’s four mining farms in China compiled from external public data

Faced with tightening regulations, why don’t the three major mining machine manufacturers actually take action to expand overseas?

The value brought to the local area. Mining machine manufacturers must pay taxes to produce hardware as Kong Jianping said, followed by value-added tax formed by wholesale to dealers, and then investment and construction of factories in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Sichuan and other regions, employment relationships with local people, leasing of factory buildings, etc. Under the same circumstances, small and medium-sized miners obviously do not have such capabilities. At the same time, the above-mentioned remote areas have a single industrial structure and rich electricity resources, and they really need "electric tigers" like mining machines to convert into other outputs. Even in Inner Mongolia, some local institutions have made computing power into a financial product for small and medium-sized investors.

Electricity price considerations. Cheap electricity is the most important cost consideration for all mining farm owners for Bitcoin mining. In the early days, areas with developed hydropower such as Yunnan, Sichuan, and other places were where Bitcoin mines gathered. Even today, we can still find several "cloud computing centers" or "big data industrial parks" around some hydropower stations, but the flood and dry seasons of hydropower stations are indeed divided according to the seasons: spring and summer floods, autumn and winter dry seasons. Zhu Simaji calculated this account: At present, the dry season electricity price in the southwest region is about 0.45~0.46 yuan, while the flood season electricity price is between 0.36~0.38 yuan, but the problem is that the mining pool must maintain a 365D X 24H operation mode, so the annual average price is maintained at around 0.4 yuan at most. But in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, where large mines are located, the industrial electricity price can be maintained at 0.3 yuan throughout the year. Lao Lei gave Zhu Simaji about the electricity price in Silicon Valley, California, although it is around 2 to 3 cents (equivalent to RMB 0.13 to 0.19), but after adding the cost of the transformer system that converts low voltage to high voltage, the local construction cost, and the high local labor costs in North America, the price difference between Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia is not that big. However, if they do not go overseas, the price that small and medium-sized mines in China can get is at most 0.4 yuan. Of course, we do not rule out the possibility that specific mines have "stronger backgrounds" to break through the bottom line and get lower electricity prices - such as direct investment by local power companies.

Going overseas is just a false move. Whether it is North America, Iceland, Sweden or Russia, the natural industrial cooling advantages of these high-latitude countries, plus the low electricity prices, are the focus of coveted attention. However, the core of the overseas layout is based on the collapse of the currency price. In the context of the bear market, coupled with the news that the mines were cut off by the regulatory authorities, so many people have paid attention to refined operations and cost considerations. Moreover, in the current context of the Sino-US trade war, the foreign political, economic and social environment is full of uncertainty. It may not be so easy for large miners to go overseas. On the other hand, Zhu Sima Ji contacted the mine owners from Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and other places to verify and learned that at present, the payback period of a medium-to-large mine in China takes at least 24 to 36 months, and the currency price is in a bull market. At most, it is halved. Therefore, these large miners who have invested billions of yuan, the so-called relocation to the sea may just be a false move to use the public opinion level to put pressure on the superstructure. Similarly, according to many parties, Bitmain’s mobile mining farm is actually just a high-cost product that improves the efficiency of mining farm construction, which is very similar to a fully-decorated house in a commercial housing. As for why Bitmain launched this product at this point in time when regulation is tightening, the meaning is self-evident.

“The supervision of mining farms is very interesting. If the country really wants to crack down on mining, tomorrow we just need to pull out the electricity bill of the Chinese power grid. The one with the same stable electricity consumption every month must be the owner of the mining farm. In fact, the core is that the government has seen too many blockchain and ICO scams. Since it is difficult to distinguish what is what, it might as well cut it first, and then distinguish how many good and how many bad are there after this cut. But as long as blockchain technology is not completely denied, the underlying miners still have value in existence, but industrialization and scale are the general trend.”

The so-called industrialization and scale-up, to put it bluntly, means that in the future, no matter whether it is the regulatory authorities, large miners, electricity prices, currency prices, or mining machine manufacturers, small miners will not be allowed to stay in the mining circle. Behind every surge in computing power in history is an opportunity to concentrate computing power. Under the spirit of decentralization, the computing power is actually being highly centralized. At present, the only people who have the ability to truly control these computing powers are mining machine manufacturers.

On paper, the mining machine manufacturers' claim of "paying more taxes for socialism" is actually fine. However, the manufacturers' control of amazing computing power is based on a large investment in electricity resources to mine huge amounts of Bitcoin, and then buying and selling them through exchanges. This behavior no longer falls within the scope of business operations, but has risen to the level of investment in sideline businesses. However, it also happens that the status of virtual currencies is currently unclear, and this type of investment is in a blank area outside the scope of regulation. At the same time, no one knows how many Bitcoins the company holds, how much its market value is in US dollars, how much of the company's total capital it occupies, and how much of the investment income is the company's mining machine sales profit.

Compared with the historical Japanese bubble economy era, Yakult Corporation is the parent company of the famous dairy beverage Yakult. In the late 1980s, it used trust transactions to increase its financial management sideline business to 3.7 times the profit of its main business. Its trust funds also expanded 34 times from 1.916 billion yen in 1984 to 65.1 billion yen in 36 months, exceeding 30% of total capital. With the stock market crash caused by the bursting of Japan's bubble economy and Yakult's subsequent involvement in the "Cresvale securities fraud incident", Yakult sold its financial assets in 1998 and completely withdrew from the financial management front, with a total loss of 105.7 billion yen in the end.

Kitashige, former president of Hanwa Kogyo Co., Ltd., a representative of radical investors in the bubble economy era

Perhaps it is precisely because of the single profit point of the main business and the high-risk investment behaviors outside the main business that are still in a blank area that we have not seen a pure blockchain concept stock successfully listed domestically or overseas so far (Yibang shares announced the suspension of listing on March 22, 2018). This can be positively interpreted as an expectation of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, or it can be interpreted as a concern.

3. The spirit of blockchain is not lawlessness

On April 6, 2018, Bitmain released a professional ASIC mining machine tailored for Ethereum, the F3. This incident directly triggered a plunge in the price of ETH that day, and at the same time caused the Ethereum community to propose a joint boycott of the algorithm modification. Even the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, had to publicly express his attitude. Everyone knows that once ASIC mining machines are put on sale, it means the end of the era of traditional graphics card mining machines, and Ethereum miners have to take the risk of purchasing ASIC mining machines - this type of mining machine is the culprit of the previous "Huaqiangbei mining accident" that hit Chaoshan dealers hard. When Ethereum enters the ASIC era, people speculate that Bitmain will inevitably monopolize Ethereum computing power in the same way as it controls Bitcoin today.

Xiaobo, a miner from Hangzhou, started mining Bitcoin in 2016. In early 2017, he began to sell his ASIC mining machines and replaced them with graphics card mining machines. He mainly mined ZEC, Monero and Ethereum, and then converted these virtual currencies into Bitcoin and sold them for profit. However, the sudden attack of Bitmain's release of F3 still caught him off guard.

"When JD.com was selling graphics cards in September last year, the price of GTX1060 was 1,500 yuan. It became 1,700 yuan at the end of November, and 2,500 yuan in January 2018. Then JD.com's graphics cards started to run out of stock. The reason they were sold out as soon as they went up was that some people were buying graphics cards for mining. At that time, the price of ZEC rose from 1,000 to 1,400 to 2,000 in November, and then it became 7,000 in January. It was almost a rhythm that whoever got it first got rich. But what's interesting is that a lot of video game players started to scold us miners everywhere at that time, because you need a graphics card to play games, but they said that all the graphics cards were used for mining."

However, the situation we need to face now is much more complicated, especially when ASIC Ethereum mining machines appear, Xiaobo needs to sell off the large number of second-hand graphics card mining machines on hand and purchase new ASIC mining machines to maintain profits. Otherwise, under the background of the concentration of computing power again, Xiaobo's input-output ratio of choosing urban civilian electricity will undergo major changes. Of course, how powerful the impact of this reshuffle will have on the graphics card market will have to wait until the F3 mining machine is released to see it, because the night before dawn is always the darkest.

"This is why I didn't continue to make hardware, because technology is changing too fast, especially for a Chinese company facing foreign companies with strong technology research and development capabilities. Without technical barriers, it can only choose to follow, just to try every means to get a bite of soup. Similarly, Nvidia has the core technology of ASIC today, so the pressure on the three major domestic mining machine manufacturers is still very high. Therefore, they have no choice but to squeeze out as much profit as possible to avoid potential risks, because Nvidia will not do such a low-cost thing as mining Ethereum."

Lao Bao from Huaqiangbei believes that the cause of mining accidents does not lie in the mining machine manufacturers who monopolize computing power, manipulate currency prices, and hold the power of life and death of miners, but in the large number of people who blindly enter the mining industry. When Chinese aunties are participating in blockchain technology forums that only top technical experts can understand, this currency circle may have already gone bankrupt.

"It was originally a very good mine. According to scientific mining methods, the difficulty increased, the computing power increased, and it was halved every four years. All 21 million were mined by 2140. As a result, a group of people who run small coal mines came and frantically purchased mining machines. The price of mining machines skyrocketed, and then the price of coins fell. Miners and dealers were locked up one by one, and it turned into a mining disaster. Who do you think is to blame?"

Having witnessed the crazy rise of Bitcoin mining machines in Huaqiangbei and their survival today, and the ups and downs from yesterday when graphics cards were hard to find in the market to overnight when second-hand ones were everywhere, and the next round of Chaoshan gang speculating on ASIC Ethereum mining machines in the near future, the core point is whether someone has deviated from Mr. Satoshi Nakamoto's use of Bitcoin as a reward to motivate miners to do questions, and used various means to turn it into a futures that can make huge profits, or digital gold, and equate it with blockchain technology. When the price of the currency collapses, the most terrible consequence will be that people will lose confidence in the technology that has not yet been popularized, and at the same time lose the enthusiasm and respect they should have for the technology - eventually equating blockchain with scams, and becoming a stereotype that cannot be tampered with like bookkeeping.

"It's just like the Chaoshan gang in Huaqiangbei today never accepts coins, but only banknotes: they think your coins are 100% fake, because fake coins have harmed the previous generation, and the result is that the circulation of coins in southern China is almost zero today, and fake coins are just as fake as real coins."

The crazy ICO led to the proliferation of copycat coins and air coins, or the deliberate deification of this technology, and the farce of a blockchain white paper written for 3,000 yuan on Taobao.com, and the nonsense everywhere in the blockchain WeChat group. The "clowns" call themselves decentralization, but in fact they are making money lawlessly under anarchism. They are not even as good as the real anarchist in "Batman" - the "Joker" has no interest in money at least, and lawlessness is just his endless hobby.

If we go back to the mining to summarize the spirit of blockchain, it is superficially what liberal economists advocate: we get what we give. At first, everyone could use computers to mine, and whoever mined more would benefit, but the technological innovation of mining machines broke the precious balance, because it would inevitably be linked to the resources controlled by a few people, including political, economic, and social resources. It’s just that the process of this series of resources moving towards a high degree of centralization is something that a few people don’t want to mention: "In this world where they pursue social Darwinism, the more resources people have, the stronger they are, and the weak must be eliminated. At the same time, the standards of strength and weakness are set by the strong. It may be the fastest, most abnormal, and most barbaric change in any commercial political form in world history."

In the early days, Bitcoin had the feature of anonymity, which allowed us to use it to meet the needs of some non-office transactions, but later it became an accomplice of anti-social and anti-human activities such as human trafficking, gun smuggling, and drug trafficking. In fact, it is a tragedy caused by the loss of control of technology. Zhu Simaji believes that the tragedy of Bitcoin mining accidents is no less than that of driverless cars. Artificial intelligence robots violate the three principles and become enemies of humans. The meaning of technology is not to do no evil, nor to seek personal gain for a few people. Technology can change human nature, and technology itself may be human nature. We can try to use technology to explore human nature, but I hope we will never use technology to test human nature.

Marx, the great proletarian revolutionary mentor, told us: The fact that human beings originated from the animal kingdom determines that human beings may never be able to get rid of their inherent animal nature.