A deep interview with the cryptocurrency community: After getting rich overnight, you will never forget the shortcut

Editor: Miss Jia Interview and writing: Match Q

WeChat public account: Jiazi Guangnian (ID: jazzyear)

Life and death are determined by fate, wealth and honor are determined by God, heaven and hell are all in one thought.

In the past crazy month, "Jia Zi Guang Nian" has traveled across China and the United States and interviewed many holders who have "got on board": senior currency evangelists; super holders who are said to have made billions; the owner of the world's largest Litecoin mining pool; and a civil servant in a fourth-tier city who rushed to enter the market in 2017, invested 200,000 but only made 40,000 yuan and was deeply annoyed...

This digital currency craze has created a huge human stage: greed, fear, anxiety about gains and losses, and the collapse of faith are all on display. All roles are helpless. Entering the circle early, understanding the technology, and having connections cannot guarantee that you will get out of it 100% unscathed.

Some people insist on "don't touch if you don't understand", such as Buffett; more people believe that "wealth and honor are sought in danger", and they repeatedly ask themselves: "You have missed the Internet and real estate, do you dare to miss Bitcoin?"

Once you have made a lot of money and enjoyed the joy and confidence that comes with getting rich overnight, it will be difficult to adapt to the loss of "earning less" and it will be difficult for you to give up the idea of ​​obsessing over shortcuts.

In a world where wealth flies by, 59 points is more despairing than 0 points.

Billion Dollar Salon

If everyone's real wealth could be displayed on a map in real time, then one night at the end of 2017, a cafe near the Beijing World Trade Center FFC Building would be marked with a staggering number.

I'm afraid it's more than a billion, I mean US dollars. In the words of a senior person in the industry: "The wealth in this industry is beyond the imagination of the outside world."

That night, a blockchain-themed private investment meeting was being held here. The venue was less than 300 square meters, with a seating area of ​​about 70 people in the middle and more than 100 people squeezed in the outer circle, and the crowd poured from the second floor to the first floor like water.

There is a subtle order in the chaotic appearance - blockchain is a decentralized technology, and this salon is also a decentralized salon:

The older people who have entered the circle, the more casual they are. They are not in a hurry to find a seat to sit down, nor do they care what the guests on the stage are talking about. Instead, they naturally gather at the stairs at the edge of the venue, busy meeting netizens, discussing cooperation, scanning QR codes, and saying "Nice to meet you" and "It's you" all the time.

The people who came to the salon, divided into "inside and outside the community", just covered the main players in the current blockchain and digital currency fields:

The so-called "community" refers to the forums, groups, blogs and interpersonal networks spontaneously established by the initial digital currency enthusiasts.

People in the "community" like to gather in the back row. They are either technical geeks who are fascinated by the genius of Bitcoin, or wild investors in the community who may not understand the underlying technology but keenly smell the opportunity.

The front row and the podium were mainly occupied by people “outside the community”: various institutions that entered as mainstream.

Although there are many well-known names among them: IDG, Sequoia, ZhenFund... but the real back-row people will put on a mocking smile and whisper their opinions about them: Look, leeks.

Dai Yusen, partner of Zhen Fund, appeared at the event that day, and he also squeezed in the "back row". One rumor was that he had lost 500,000 yuan in cryptocurrency trading recently, and another rumor was that he had earned more before.

Half a month later, Mr. Xu Xiaoping, the helmsman of Zhen Fund, personally jumped in front of the public. In the message in the group that was marked "Do not spread outside" but was "red to blur" because it was copied and shared too many times, Xu Xiaoping wrote: Dear CEOs, the blockchain revolution has arrived. This is a great technological revolution that will prosper those who follow it and perish those who go against it...

The next day, the A-share blockchain concept stocks sector surged 5.47%. So much so that a conspiracy theory emerged that Xu Xiaoping himself had invested heavily in blockchain and the "information leak" was intentional.

However, even if Mr. Xu really came to the salon that night, it is hard to say whether he could outshine the “gang leader” Zhou Shuoji, the founder of FBG Capital. This VC has a high status in the community. As soon as the “gang leader” appeared in the back row, he was surrounded and could not move. Wherever he went, there were hands stretched out from all directions and iPhone Xs opened to scan WeChat.

He was wearing a plaid shirt, the standard for programmers, and gold-rimmed glasses like a principal. He smiled and responded to everyone's greetings one by one. His overall style was a bit weird, but it further highlighted his special status - because truly powerful people don't need to bother with decoration and pandering.

I tried to ask the gang leader to talk about blockchain and the cryptocurrency world, but he said: "I never speak out through Chinese channels." Unlike Mr. Xu, who called on people to embrace blockchain in a group of 500 people, the gang leader believes that keeping a low profile is a basic attitude.

The salon does not provide alcohol, but the conversations in the back row are more excited than the alcohol: someone said that I am preparing an exchange in a country in the Middle East and have obtained a local license; someone said that we will "IFO" (issue new cryptocurrency) next month; someone asked for a pre-allocated quota for a new ICO on the spot.

Of course, there is also a fourth type of people in that cafe. They are the majority on the street - the pure newbie "No Coiner" who may become leeks if they are not careful.

“Do you know what Stud is?” said a boy born in 1996 who taught me blockchain knowledge for half an hour.

"I know. It's a gambling game."

The 5 or 6 people around him burst out laughing instantly.

“How come you don’t understand anything? Stud means putting money into ICO.”

He contributed the strongest alcohol of the night: "Do you know? This year someone entered the market with 20,000 yuan, and now he has made 200 million!"

There are many people who play "all in".

In June 2017, Li Xiaolai's PressOne project held an ICO, raising tokens worth $82 million in an instant without even releasing a white paper; the BAT ICO initiated by JavaScript founder Brendan Ek was so popular that the crowdfunding website was paralyzed. Ek originally wanted to raise $15 million in Ethereum, but within 24 seconds of the ICO starting, he raised $35 million.

This salon is like a condensed version of the "all-in" craze: the market is changing dramatically, marginal forces are rising rapidly, and the "center with a seat" is losing its advantage - when VCs want to invest in ICOs, they basically have no time to do due diligence, because the quotas are snatched up.

In the words of someone in the back row: Only projects that the community does not look favorably upon will be the turn of outside VCs.

You want to play my game? You have to follow my rules.

But the more likely scenario is that in this free, fresh world, there are no so-called rules.

“I entered the market just to make money.

Then I had faith.”

In the past few years, it is difficult to summarize in one sentence how people make money in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Some people mine by themselves, some open mining pools, some speculate on coins, some issue coins, and some go all-in.

You also don’t know how many coins anyone has. In public media materials, Li Xiaolai once revealed that he had six figures of bitcoins; Pumpkin Zhang, the founder of Canaan Creative, which recently applied for listing on the New Third Board, once owned 60,000 bitcoins; the Winklevoss brothers had 100,000 bitcoins; and Roger Ver, known as “Bitcoin Jesus,” had 300,000 bitcoins.

According to incomplete statistics, there are currently more than 1,600 digital currencies listed on major exchanges, with a total circulating market value (excluding locked shares) exceeding 5 trillion yuan and a daily trading volume of more than 500 billion yuan - the trading volume is already comparable to that of the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets.

Yancun Cowherd wrote in the article: "I have come into contact with many people who switched from the stock market to the cryptocurrency market. In 2017, a 10-fold return was just the starting point, 30-fold was barely acceptable, and 100-fold was commendable."

As the saying goes, "One day in the cryptocurrency world is like one year in the real world." The volatility of digital cryptocurrencies is unmatched by any financial product in history, and has created countless little-known ups and downs stories.

Tsubasa Ohzora, a legend in the community, you can't even see him in the back row of the salon because he rarely participates in offline social activities.

It is widely rumored online that Tsubasa Ozora, who was born in the 1990s, has made billions by speculating in cryptocurrencies.

"Billions?" Ozora Tsubasa laughed incredulously, "No one in the country can earn that much."

But he immediately added: "But I know someone who has half of it."

Tsubasa Ozora told Jiazi Guangnian that his total investment was only 20,000 RMB. In the summer vacation of his sophomore year in 2013, he returned home from the UK and assembled a mining machine on Taobao at a cost of 20,000 RMB. At that time, the computing power of GPUs could no longer mine Bitcoin, so he mined some unmined altcoins, such as Worldcoin and Feathercoin, and exchanged them for about 80 Bitcoins by the end of the summer vacation. At that time, one Bitcoin was 4,000 RMB, and Tsubasa Ozora earned 10,000 RMB from it.

"When I first entered the market, I just wanted to make money," said Ozora Tsubasa, but gradually, his mentality changed, "I had faith."

Initially, the belief mainly came from the admiration for the community's talents. Tsubasa Ozora believes that the world's top and most thoughtful talents are in the community. These talented people highly respect "decentralization". They work tirelessly to develop the underlying protocol, but "spend all their money" and share the benefits with the community. According to Tsubasa Ozora's understanding: "They are not developing for money at all. The reason why the market has risen so much is the recognition of them and the recognition of technology. "

The community's early cultural atmosphere was somewhat similar to the "hippie movement" in the Bay Area in the 1970s, which believed in anarchism and opposed regulation and constraints.

But the "anarchist utopia" has never been realized in human history. When the Internet first emerged, similar promises may have been made, claiming to pursue "anonymity" and "decentralization." But after decades of development, the virgin land of the Internet is getting closer and closer to the physical world: monopolized, centralized, and disciplined by a few companies. As a result, blockchain has risen from the margins - in the eyes of some technology geeks, it is a correction and new revolution to the Internet that betrayed its original intention.

But “there is nothing new under the sun”, decentralized Bitcoin itself is becoming “centralized”: According to Credit Suisse’s analysis of transaction addresses, 97% of the world’s Bitcoin is in the hands of 4% of the participants. A small number of participants have already controlled a large amount of Bitcoin’s computing power and share.

But making money is a good thing after all. For believers, value growth represents recognition of the community and can achieve "faith recharge."

What made Ohzora Tsubasa a lot of money was a legendary currency: IOTA.

IOTA can be described as “Ten years of hard study without anyone paying attention, but it becomes famous overnight and known to the world.”

As a non-blockchain encrypted digital currency, IOTA is based on a new type of distributed ledger, Tangle. It has the characteristics of no handling fees and extremely fast transfer, and is considered to be applicable to small payment scenarios in the Internet of Things.

Tsubasa Ohzora told Jiazi Guangnian that when IOTA launched its ICO in the second half of 2015, there were 7 or 8 people from China who participated, but in the end only two people got the money: him and Jimmy, the head of the IOTA Chinese community. At that time, IOTA raised more than 1,300 bitcoins, worth about 3 million RMB, and each IOTA token issued was about 0.001 RMB.

From the end of 2015 to June 2017, IOTA was very cheap. The IOTA China QQ group had less than 300 members until May 2017, but after the ICO boom began in June, IOTA skyrocketed, rising to about 36 yuan in early December 2017, a 35,000-fold increase . It was during this round of market that Tsubasa Ohzora became an "industry legend." Jimmy said that the total number of IOTA China QQ groups also reached 4,500.

"Xiao Qingnian" is a member of the IOTA community. His other identity is a civil servant in a fourth-tier city in a southern province of China. He started investing in Bitcoin in March 2017. What annoyed Xiao Qingnian was that although he was lucky to enter the market during the bull market, he did not make enough money.

In fact, when hanging out in various QQ groups of bigwigs, the young man once received a variety of encrypted digital currencies worth 60,000 US dollars just by "asking people for coins" - just because he often "praised" others. But these coins were lost by the young man in short-term speculation after September. At that time, he speculated on the Bitfinex trading platform. The platform provided a leverage function. He borrowed a leverage of 3.3 times the margin to short multiple currencies and lost 200,000 yuan. He lost all his capital and also lost the rewards he received from part-time work in the IOTA community.

The young man calculated that if the currency could be held at that time, its maximum value would be RMB 5 million.

In the past year, the young man has been anxiously watching the market every day, "I can't help but check it every hour." He sold too early in early April. Although he made 200,000 yuan in that wave, he was not happy at all. Seeing that the market was still rising every day, he was "very depressed."

He once saw a netizen posting his account in a QQ group. He invested 20,000 yuan and made 8 million yuan in one year. He invested more than 200,000 yuan and only made about 40,000 yuan. After a year of hard work, he made a small profit but felt like a complete loser. "I have never heard of anyone who lost a lot of money. I am the worst. Anyone who doesn't make 1 million yuan in one year is unsuccessful. "

Although depressed, the young people who have seen too many "pig runs" have firm faith in digital currency: they must hold it for a long time and hold on to it until death.

He joined a paid small secret circle and planned to follow the big names to do "value investment" in 2018. Pay 388 yuan a year to become a bronze member, pay two Ethereums to become a silver member, and pay one Bitcoin to become a gold member. The circle leader will recommend some ICO investment projects and new currencies here. The young man bought a new currency called "Red Braised Pork".

The price of "Red Braised Pork" has been trapped for the time being. The young man bought it at more than 190 yuan, but when he was interviewed, the price had fallen to more than 140 yuan.

“But I won’t change it,” the young man said firmly this time, “They all say it’s a pyramid scheme coin, but I won’t change it. I’ve been through it, and I don’t want to change it again. I think it will definitely go back up. ”

Don't watch the thief eat the meat, watch the thief get beaten

Life and death are determined by fate, wealth and honor are determined by God, and heaven and hell are determined by a single thought. This statement is not an exaggeration to describe the ups and downs of the fate of people in the cryptocurrency circle.

The founder of f2pool, the world's largest Litecoin mining pool, "Seven-Colored Angelfish" (hereinafter referred to as "Godfish"), told "Jia Zi Guang Nian": Recently, people in the cryptocurrency circle have been taking photos with their index fingers pointing to the sky, which means "keeping rising."

Just a few days before we met, at the end of 2017, there was a small drop in the market, and Bitcoin fell from a high of about $18,000 to $11,000.

"For those few hours, no one in the usually active group chat was talking," Shenyu recalled the grand occasion while standing in front of the elevator of an office building in Beijing. It was a weekend, but Shenyu's team often worked overtime. "Then someone finally popped up, and the first thing he said was: I just went to buy at the bottom, did you guys buy at the bottom? "

While he was talking about this short-term operation, several messages popped up on an APP on his mobile phone - this was a crawler application written by the F2Pool team itself, which monitors important news about digital currency on the entire network in real time and pushes new mining information.

Shenyu, who graduated from the communications engineering department and has worked on chips, mining machines and mining pools, and now runs a cryptocurrency quantitative fund, is a "technical person" in the cryptocurrency circle. He entered the circle as early as 2010 and has experienced the upgrade of computing power from CPU to GPU to FPGA and then to ASIC.

But technology cannot keep you safe. Many old people who have experienced the Bitcoin crash in 2013 said: "Keeping the currency is like being a widow" and "You only see the thief eating meat, but not the thief getting beaten."

“Where is FriedCat?” is one of the top ten unsolved mysteries in the cryptocurrency world.

FriedCat, a top student of the Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Junior Program, raised funds in the community in 2012 and created the “Butterfly Miner”, which was the earliest prototype of ICO in China.

But during the Spring Festival of 2015, the project had not yet distributed dividends, and FC had lost contact in January of that year. Many of FC's shareholders, who had worshipped him as a "legendary expert," had their faith in him instantly shattered.

An old man in the circle revealed to "Jia Zi Guang Nian" that the reasons for the disappearance of Friedcat are very complicated: first, in early 2015, there was a wave of sharp declines in the price of Bitcoin; second, the mine operated by Friedcat had a conflict with the local hydropower station, and the transactions between the mine and the hydropower station were not standardized - "black eating black", and all of Friedcat's mining machines were seized; at the same time, his family was also in crisis.

"This person ran away, probably went abroad, and now we don't know whether he is dead or alive."

Another group of people who have suffered setbacks may be luckier than "BaocaoCat", but the lessons they learned still leave them with lingering fears.

"Baozou Gongqinwang" (hereinafter referred to as "Baozou"), who now runs the blockchain media platform "Blockchain Pencil", once cooperated with Shenyu on the "Silverfish" mining machine project in 2014. They designed an ASIC chip specifically for mining Litecoin and mass-produced it at TSMC.

As a result, in 2014, the price of Litecoin fell from more than 380 yuan to 5 yuan, and then hovered around 10 yuan. The "Silverfish" project that Shenyu had high hopes for was forced to be interrupted.

“All the elderly people I know have been inflated and won’t be inflated again,” said Mr. Bao.

2013 was the first "expansion period" in the industry, when some people went to Beijing to "look at buildings one by one". But in 2014, Bitcoin plummeted from more than 8,000 yuan to more than 2,000 yuan, and many people reluctantly sold their shares, losing all their leveraged money.

After the mining machine project was interrupted in 2014, Shenyu returned to his hometown and was depressed for half a year. He had invested more than half a year in the mining machine and enjoyed the sense of accomplishment of making a chip from a grain of sand, but the market afterwards was cruel and ruthless.

In the same year, Ozora Tsubasa lost more than 100,000 yuan of his previous profit of more than 1 million yuan. Compared with the original investment of 20,000 yuan, it was still several times more, but he was extremely depressed.

"People just never get satisfied. I slapped my thighs every day, thinking that it would be better if I sold it earlier." During those two years, Ozora Tsubasa was completely focused on cryptocurrency and had no energy to study.

On Zhihu, a question has been viewed more than 2 million times: "Does the story of Bitcoin show that your life is determined by fate?"

Blockchain enthusiast @神马疯了 gave a high-voted answer:

You only saw that Bitcoin had a smooth sailing in 2017, soaring 20 times and breaking through 100,000 per coin.

but

Didn’t you see that in 2016, 120,000 bitcoins were stolen from Bitfinex, the world’s largest exchange, and how many people were forced to commit suicide by jumping off buildings due to leverage?

Didn’t you see how many Bitcoin enthusiasts ate boiled noodles at home late at night after Bitcoin plummeted by $200 in 2015?

Didn’t you see that in 2014, a guy on Tieba sold his house for 480,000 yuan to speculate in cryptocurrencies under tremendous pressure? He held on for 5 months, but finally left the market with a loss of 180,000 yuan.

Didn’t you see how Bitcoin was booming in December 2013, but China’s Bitcoin plummeted 40% due to a ban?

If you bought Bitcoin in 2013, there is a 99.99% chance that you would not have made it to 2017 and would have been "tortured by pain and unable to sleep late at night."

But the fact is... you avoided all of the above risks, and you still happily played games, ate pizza, and bought snapchat, isn't that great?

Many people in the cryptocurrency circle that Jiazi Guangnian has come into contact with have described this mentality:

Once you have made a lot of money and enjoyed the joy and confidence that comes with getting rich overnight, it will be difficult to adapt to the loss of "earning less" and it will be difficult for you to give up the idea of ​​obsessing over shortcuts.

In a world where wealth flies by, 59 points is more despairing than 0 points.

Who is the frightened bird: individuals, enterprises, or countries?

There are many dramas in the cryptocurrency world, and not only individuals but also companies have their fates rewritten.

On the same day that Xu Xiaoping’s chat records were leaked, the 129-year-old Kodak announced the launch of the cryptocurrency “KODAKCoin”, and its stock price soared 120% that day.

Earlier, in August 2017, Xunlei Company, which launched the smart hardware "Wanke Cloud" and the corresponding digital currency "Wanke Coin" (now renamed "Chaink"), entered the blockchain industry, and its stock price rose by nearly 400% throughout the year.

On the evening of January 9, 2018, local time, Xunlei Group's NetMind Technology CEO Chen Lei was still eagerly sought after at the CES evening event in Las Vegas. Many people curiously asked him to talk about "Chainlink". Just a few dozen hours later, on January 12, 2018, Beijing time, Xunlei was criticized by the Internet Finance Association in China, saying that the "Chainlink" project was a disguised ICO. Xunlei then issued a statement saying that it would accept guidance and supervision. On the same day, Xunlei's stock price plummeted 27%. Just now, Xunlei issued an announcement saying that Chainlink will completely stop transfer services on January 31.

Bitmain, which also makes mining machines, has now developed into a star company entering the AI ​​field and has embarked on a brilliant path of corporate transformation.

Bitmain is smart in that it does not completely tie its fate to the cryptocurrency industry. Perhaps it is because the company deeply understands that in this wave of wealth creation composed of anonymity and decentralization, the other side of freedom is that both companies and individuals are constantly exposed to the danger of being unprotected and unregulated.

Nowadays, many people who own huge amounts of digital currency assets are becoming more and more anxious. They are not only worried about the safety of their property, but also their personal safety. After all, encrypted assets are just a string of characters. Will they be kidnapped?

In fact, in recent times, not many people in the cryptocurrency circle are willing to be interviewed. On the one hand, they do not want to reveal too much personal property information, and on the other hand, they vaguely feel that new policies may be coming towards them.

Regulators face unprecedented challenges in regulating digital currencies.

On September 4, seven ministries and commissions jointly issued a document to stop ICO. In the following days, PressOne and others released plans to return the coins. Although the Chinese government strongly stopped ICO, domestic teams have since started the "sea voyage era" and have gone to Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and the Middle East, continuing to thrive.

Since digital currency is decentralized, strong regulation requires the cooperation of governments, which is almost impossible. In fact, some countries have begun to enter the market as "national teams": North Korea was found to have active mining nodes; Venezuela issued the "petro" digital currency linked to oil, diamonds and gold; in Japan, digital currency can be used to complete offline payments in many occasions.

Individuals have the anxiety of not being able to get on the bus, and so does the country.

Many people in the cryptocurrency circle told "Jia Zi Guang Nian" that some of the promotion of digital currency and blockchain even uses the banner of nation-states: if we don't seize the opportunity, we may be overtaken in the new round of international competition.

They find this "ironic": blockchain technology and digital currency, when originally designed by Satoshi Nakamoto, were anti-regulatory and anarchist in nature, but are now considered a "new means of national competition."

There are also differences within the community on whether or not supervision should be carried out and how it should be carried out.

One idea is that there will be a war between legal currency and digital currency. Behind the two financial systems are two completely different ways of social organization, and the currency war has just begun. An insider told "Jia Zi Guang Nian" firmly and decisively: "Bitcoin will either return to zero or go up to the sky, there will be no middle state." He chose to stand on the side of digital currency, claiming that most of his assets were not cashed out, but remained in the community.

Others hope for proper regulation. An old man in the cryptocurrency circle who wishes to remain anonymous told Jiazi Guangnian that, contrary to popular belief, China’s bitcoin trading volume has never been the largest in the world, and it has never had the pricing power for bitcoin.

He and several friends took the initiative to compile a database to analyze global Bitcoin transaction volume, and actively communicated with the government and banking system, hoping to "let the leaders see the real situation" so as to formulate reasonable supervision and development policies.

For holders of digital currency active in the Chinese market, the worst possibility is that holding digital currency may one day be considered an illegal act. Although digital currency is anonymous, it cannot guarantee that it will leave no trace in the physical world. In some cryptocurrency groups, there have been rumors recently that some digital currency OTC bank accounts in Heilongjiang, Hunan and other places have been banned.

When asked about the relationship between digital currency and legal tender, the above-mentioned veteran in the industry who has experienced several strict policy controls said meekly: "Anyway, if the government says you can hold it, you hold it. If it says you can't, you can't. Alas, I am already a frightened bird."

"Do you think 100,000 is expensive?"

We asked everyone this question.

No matter how alarming the warnings about the bubble being too big are, more and more people still want to continue to pour into this trend - what was originally a matter of a small circle has recently stirred up the collective anxiety of the urban white-collar class.

The reason why people worry about gains and losses is that history has given them enough "lessons":

Over the past 20 years, two trains have roared past, and only by getting on them can one change one's fate: one is housing prices, and the other is the Internet boom.

However, in the past, most Chinese people only had the experience of "standing in line" but did not have the awareness of "getting on board". After 20 years of realistic education, hardworking people began to recognize a fact:

It is difficult to achieve class leap by relying on a fixed salary. The existing income and security can hardly fight against potential risks such as serious illness in the future life. "You must get on the bus once in your life. If you don't get on the bus, you will be left in the wilderness."

Nowadays, the roar of the "good car" of digital currency and blockchain can be heard by even the most indifferent people. Should we get on the car or not? Everyone has to answer this question.

On January 14th in Silicon Valley, at the 8th "Smart Industry Silicon Valley Forum", Qinggu Venture Capital temporarily held a blockchain project roadshow and investor discussion meeting, which attracted many home audiences and guests.

All the VCs on the stage were talking about bubbles, but they were all optimistic about the "long-term value" of digital currency and blockchain. The six guests talked about the digital currency market and investment skills in 2018. The event was overtime, but someone in the audience still shouted: Let everyone speak for another 10 minutes.

"Do you think Bitcoin is expensive now?" "Jia Zi Guang Nian" asked different people this question.

A founder of an Internet finance company, who currently does not hold any coins, believes that the current price of Bitcoin is too high, but if it falls back a little, he will buy it.

Jimmy, head of the IOTA Chinese community, blurted out: “Do you think 100,000 is expensive? But in a few years, it will rise to 1 million.”

Shenyu believes that logically, Bitcoin will continue to rise: because legal tender can be over-issued, but there are only 21 million Bitcoins in total, and compared to legal tender, Bitcoin will continue to appreciate.

Xunlei CEO Chen Lei did not respond to this question directly. He said that it depends on how broad-minded and aware a small number of people are who occupy a large amount of Bitcoin computing power and share.

A girl who invested 2.4 million yuan from selling her house in digital currency in 2017 because of a tenant's recommendation told "Jia Zi Guang Nian" that although many people in the circle use Bitcoin to preserve value, she would not do so. She once sold more than 100 Bitcoins at a price of 17,000 yuan: "I can't accept it emotionally if I buy it back for 100,000 yuan."

But the fact of entering the market has made her world much brighter. Facing the "60 years", she expressed her gratitude for this era: "Opportunities are always there, it depends on whether you can grab them. If you use the time you spend reading inspirational books or complaining about class stratification to discover new opportunities and do something meaningful, the world will become a better place."

But for another group of people, the world is a lot darker.

There are traps everywhere for newcomers. For example, many "investors" in the community claim to be able to help newbies find investment channels to invest in a certain ICO project. In fact, the investors do not really grab the project quota, but use the money to invest on their own, collect the income and return the principal, using the excuse that the project is no longer available.

A more direct way to harvest is for the market maker to pull up the market to lure more investors, and then leave the market when the price is high, leaving the leeks to take over. Ordinary retail investors have no way of knowing when the market maker will leave, and they are likely to be stuck at a high position.

For individuals, even if they don’t lose their original capital, the loss of hundreds of millions to tens of millions is enough to make those who have had it mentally collapse. What is scary is not the loss of money, but the loss of self-confidence and the collapse of faith. Such cases not only create individual tragedies, but also have a greater negative impact - for those who truly believe in blockchain, such scams are giving blockchain technology itself a bad name.

“In the past, it was to B, to C, then to G, to VC, and later to leeks.” A corporate CEO told “Jia Zi Guang Nian”, his words were half joking and half sad.

If Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin, were watching all this at this moment, I wonder how he would feel.

Whether or not to hold coins has profoundly influenced people’s views on the world:

Whether you think this era is great or despicable may depend on whether you have coins.

In statistics, there is a concept called "survivorship bias" , which means that because most of the results we get from statistics come from survivors, our statistics often miss the truth because "the dead can't speak" .

The number of losers who are always forgotten is greater. "One general's success is the result of the sacrifice of thousands of soldiers." In this era of rapid change, the development of the script is ultimately very classical.

History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. Everyone can enjoy the tide of the times, but please remember that there is a saying that is not just for fun: sooner or later you will pay for what you have done.

-END-

postscript:

The cryptocurrency world reflects the fragility of rationality and the coincidence of fate. During the interview, we also encountered many unexpected stories.

A Russian translator helped many Russian projects translate their white papers and plans into Chinese during the ICO boom last year. The digital currency community believes in "contributions for rewards", so he grabbed a lot of "Tokens" (quotas) from many projects and made a lot of money. He is now worth tens of millions.

The story of the divine fish and his wife combines two "irrational sides" of human beings: Bitcoin and love.

In 2012, Shenyu met his future wife in a Bitcoin QQ group.

Two years later, on May 8, at noon after getting the marriage certificate, Shenyu accompanied his wife for lunch while arranging to mine Bitcoin blocks. He planned to give his wife one block, or 25 Bitcoins, as a wedding gift.

Halfway through the meal, the block was successfully mined, and Shenyu saved it to a specially calculated account address starting with "1LoveU". Unexpectedly, less than a minute later, he actually mined another highly connected block.

“This is really lucky, because mining luck fluctuates. Sometimes the entire network can’t mine a new one in an hour.”

In the transaction records of these two blocks, Shenyu wrote: "Hold your hand and grow old with you. Shenyu to Dongdong."

He is an overworked engineering man with spiky hair, chapped lips and a dark complexion. One cannot associate him with a romantic side at all.

Shenyu said: “Bitcoin, like love, is a belief.”