BTC123 has 500 franchisees. Can Bitcoin go offline?

Guo Hongcai is well-known in the domestic Bitcoin circle as "Second Master Bao". He is well-known as an investor in the domestic Bitcoin navigation website BTC123. Recently, BTC123 announced the establishment of branches in various places, which is generally understood as recruiting franchisees. How can Bitcoin go offline? What business should franchisees do? Guo Hongcai has his own ideas.

From investment to offline

In fact, he is not one of the first people to enter the Bitcoin industry. At first, people in the circle were more familiar with his wife, who was well-known for the first self-media video program in the domestic currency circle, "Yangyang Interview". Before entering the currency circle, Guo Hongcai was mainly engaged in investment. Entering the currency circle is also based on the idea of ​​investment. As an angel investor mainly engaged in equity investment, his current investment projects include Bitcoin portal btc123.com, Bitcoin bank bitbank.com, Bitcoin lending platform jua.com, Bitcoin mining pool bw.com, Bitfund.pe, Yangyang Interview yangyang.tv, Wells Fargo Fund richfund.pe, Bither Wallet bither.net, YH Yihang Cloud Computing, AQH American Mine. He joked, "I am also a karate black belt in the currency circle, and I have shares in many companies. So far, I have not lost money."

During the Spring Festival in 2015, he took his parents on a self-driving tour to Inner Mongolia and visited the mine in Baotou.
The moment he entered the mine, he described, "My father, who is in his sixties, was shocked."
In Guo Hongcai's father's mind, Bitcoin is like stocks, something that cannot be seen or touched except for the numbers. But when he actually entered the mine, Bitcoin became a real commodity in his mind. At that time, the mine consumed 400 million kWh of electricity a year. "That's how Bitcoin is produced. It costs real money to produce it."
Naturally, I took a few photos of the mine and posted them on WeChat Moments, saying, "This is the mine my son invested in and built in Inner Mongolia." Within two days, four or five friends called me and asked, "Can I invest in Bitcoin now?"
In this way, after several elders had a general understanding of Bitcoin, they asked Guo Hongcai to buy more than 1,400 Bitcoins. Because they were not familiar with the Bitcoin transaction and storage process, they asked Guo Hongcai to keep them for them.
According to him, the assets of the elders born in the 1950s are mainly real estate and cash. The interest rate for keeping cash in the bank is too low, and for them, "it's fine as long as the interest rate is higher than the bank interest rate." One of them even said, "Notify me when the interest rate doubles."

Such practical experience, as well as the experience of working in traditional industries, made Guo Hongcai feel that the promotion of Bitcoin should start offline.

Selling Bitcoin Using Commodity Logic

After buying the BTC123 website, he completely revamped it. Most people didn’t see his intention: from the beginning of the revamp, the goal was to do offline business.
In his opinion, from a compliance perspective, Bitcoin is商品, while BTC123 is品牌. “Commodities should be treated as commodities,” this has always been his logic.
What does the product look like? To put it simply, it is like making a USB flash drive, which contains 1,000 bitcoins. Selling physical bitcoins is the first business scope of offline franchisees.

Unlike previous ideas, his target group is not the cryptocurrency circle. Instead, he looks beyond the cryptocurrency circle to the more "mainstream Chinese economic society". The "mainstream economic society" is not made up of elderly grandpas and grandmas, nor most of the post-80s and post-90s, but "the backbone of the economic society" and "a group of people who can influence the direction of China's economy". The common feature of these people is that they have a lot of闲置资金and are in urgent need of good投资品.

After the franchise plan was released, it underwent a round of major changes.
The first round of franchise plan was as follows: no franchise fee, 50,000 yuan deposit for first-tier cities, 30,000 yuan for second-tier cities, and 10,000 yuan for third-tier cities. We received deposits from四家加盟店, located in Shenzhen, Yangzhou, Tianjin, and Chongqing.
Later, Zhao Guofeng of Fuwu Fund pointed out to him that this model was "not quite right". The low entry threshold for joining would invisibly lead to the loss of many high-quality investors. So he increased the margin tenfold at once.
As expected, after the plan was revised, we received more calls from people who wanted to know more. At the same time, the crowd had obviously changed. So far, more than 20 franchisees have been confirmed.

How do franchisees make money? There are currently five tentative business types, which are the result of brainstorming in the franchise WeChat groups established in various places since the plan was released:
Cooperate with major mining machine companies to distribute mining machines and cloud computing power;
Bitcoin joint recharge card, cooperate with major exchanges, and can also sell physical Bitcoin;
OTC Bitcoin trading, with channels provided by BTC123, and offline profit sharing;
Provide offline service support and marketing promotion for Bitcoin companies;
Study abroad and foreign trade, foreign currency settlement, Bitcoin exchange for foreign currency services.

At first glance, the business scope is too broad and it is hard to grasp the key points. Guo Hongcai explained: "In actual implementation, it is possible to add or subtract. You have to try to know which solution is better."

Why now? Why BTC123?

During the narration, Guo Hongcai kept emphasizing one question: "Why now? Why 123?"
He explained:

“Bitcoin’s development in China has now reached a bottleneck period, and the online market has entered a dead end. The “loser” users have almost been covered, and it’s time to enter the “rich” circle. However, most people in the cryptocurrency circle are busy with development, writing code, and making applications, and have no time and energy to promote it outside the circle. This is exactly the opportunity for BTC123.”
“I worked in offline business before, so I understand the key to offline sales. In the circle, BTC123 is well-known to everyone, so BTC123 is naturally a brand. So what I have to do now is to create the concept of the first offline brand in addition to the online brand.”
“It’s not that we have to sell Bitcoin, but we just need to find someone in a city who is willing to learn about Bitcoin. Simply put, don’t reject this thing. If he comes to see the production process of Bitcoin in person, he will understand that this is a commodity with a production cost of more than 1,000 yuan. The order we need to do is to get some people interested, come to visit, and spread the word, so that more people will understand Bitcoin.”
With the idea and plan, Guo Hongcai's daily job is to make and receive phone calls to talk to others about his plan. "Get to know 300-500 local tycoons" is his preliminary plan for this year.打通渠道and帮A介绍B is the value of BTC123.

Selling Bitcoin offline is a new path. Doubts are inevitable. "Specific offline promotion and expenses are the responsibility of each branch. They are responsible for the good and bad. Give me the deposit first." "Typical recruitment and pyramid selling." He looks at the outside doubts like this: "Comments are always like this. No matter whether it is right or wrong, there will always be people saying so. There are many difficulties, but compared to difficulties, imagination is even greater. This is a blank market offline. No Bitcoin company in the world has done it. I think the imagination of the blank market is huge."

The biggest advantage of btc123 in developing offline franchisees is undoubtedly its reputation in the industry and its powerful channels and resources. However, whether the brand effect can bring lasting and tangible benefits to users, and what else it can bring to users besides the brand effect, still needs to be tested by time.