It’s a paradise for people in the cryptocurrency world, crowded with project teams, fixers, and self-publishers, each with a set of spiritual victory methods. Even on January 19, after thousands of coins had all fallen, someone still whispered to me, “Get in now and be financially free in a year.” No matter what time you mix into the cryptocurrency circle, you can hear such voices. Some are willing to be leeks for their faith, some want to get rich overnight, but end up being cleared overnight.

The heated scene is like going back to Zhongguancun Venture Street in 2015.

The heated scene is like going back to Zhongguancun Venture Street in 2015.

1

should plummet

“Blockchain made a dream too beautiful to believe.” In the eyes of Guo Yuhang, founder of the unicorn company dotcom, it was like dry wood meeting a blazing fire: the dry wood was the unimaginative financial market after the 2008 financial crisis, and the blazing fire was the money that had nowhere to go. In the midst of the blaze is the fire of anxiety for bitcoin entrants.

Unlike the dreamers and ambitious people in the cryptocurrency circle, those in the chain circle are lonely and sluggishly living in the office building R & D technology on the south side of Wudaokou Huaqingjiayuan. I visited several of them, and the picture was clear: low ceilings, newly painted walls, poor quality desks and chairs, the floor was still scattered with decoration materials, and the empty room was filled with pungent smell, but at the moment, they were all enjoying s, are all enthralled by the blockchain.

The story of the cryptocurrency and chain circles is moving towards two extremes. Guo Yuhang told a short story: a post-90s investment banker who originally worked at Big Morgan bought 4,000 bitcoins 6 years ago, and only after the big rise of bitcoin in 2017, he suddenly remembered that he was also a “thousand coins Hou”, but because his wallet and key were not saved well, he could not retrieve them, and finally lost several hundred million RMB, which is equal to about 3 Wang Jianlin’s small target.

Greed and remorse are mixed in the huge fame and fortune field of the coin circle, and the fate of countless people is fluctuating violently. But before you know it, the fame and fortune arena has turned into a meat grinder: from January 7, when Bitcoin started to fall, to January 15, when thousands of coins started to fall, the “cryptocurrency circle” has experienced an unprecedented precipitous plunge in history.

digital currency quotes site “not small” shows that the drop generally reached 20%. Every perceived “bottoming out” opportunity proved to be a much larger plunge, with only single-digit gains in more than a thousand digital currencies. By Jan. 21, coins large and small had yet to recover after the shakeout.

“The coin price is now only one-twentieth of its peak, and it is being chased by bloodthirsty fans every day.” A team leader who issued the digital currency complained as soon as they met on January 16. The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the market.

“After entering the cryptocurrency circle, every day has been very painful.” he concluded. He concluded.” The

and the plunge happened at the same time, is the blockchain concept in the square rapid warming. January 9, Zhenge Fund Xu Xiaoping’s arm, the blockchain keyword WeChat index in the following two days in succession doubled several times.

and the plunge happened at the same time, is the blockchain concept in the square rapid warming.

More and more big companies are running into the field. The huge profit tempts every entrant. Industry insiders tell such a thing: one Internet giant and want to taste fishy, but also want to avoid risk, so came up with a brilliant plan – let the whole team fake leave to develop blockchain projects, made on the ground spin-off, do not do not turn back to the body.

Even a group of penny stock companies regard blockchain as a life-saving straw for market value management: Renren, Xunlei, Kodak, Sifang Jingchuang, Ease of seeing shares …… They have one thing in common – weak main business, but as long as you add a blockchain concept, the stock price rocketed upward.

Soft Soft Jun said to me on January 17: “Today, on the one hand, we are selling coins like crazy, and on the other hand, we are plunging like crazy.” Despair and hope, greed and fear, together occupy the minds of players of all sizes in the cryptocurrency and chain circles.

2

Unexpected major reshuffle

What pushed the wave in the plunge of coin prices was the tangible hand of regulation – from the gossip that China’s central bank had banned mining, to South Korea’s mooted closure of digital currency exchanges, to The U.S. SEC will take enforcement measures against virtual currencies, the siege of digital currencies has taken shape around the world.” The

In the history of China’s digital currency speculation, the “September event” is a major reshuffle in the history books. on September 4, 2017, the seven departments of the three councils, the Internet Information Office, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce officially called a halt to ICO financing. Since then, domestic ICOs have once disappeared and several major exchanges have moved overseas.

In those days, many light and strange things happened among the coin circle: the head of an ICO project that ran to Shangri-La was too scared to open a room with his ID card due to panic, and was shaking with fear. And more people have gone abroad for various reasons.

Incredibly, the cryptocurrency world has since become more frantic. The retail capital accelerated the influx, some with silver to make bets, some with themselves to make bets, “many VC, PE industry friends, even the year-end prize do not want, have longed to jump into the coin circle.” An investment industry source said.

And people like Soft Soft Jun, almost loaned hundreds of thousands to speculate on coins. The civil servant students around him also joined in, “Although only six or seven thousand a month, but the bank’s eyes of the quality of the population, the loan amount is high.” According to a cryptocurrency veteran speculation, after two rounds of bull and bear switch, people in the cryptocurrency circle from tensmillion people skyrocketed to millions of people today.

When the entire cryptocurrency market expanded rapidly from 200,000 people to 10 million, its capacity quickly skyrocketed from 20 billion yuan to 1 trillion yuan based on a per capita investment of 100,000. The unit price of hard currency in the cryptocurrency world, such as bitcoin and ETH, rose, and the amazing wealth creation effect of blockchain attracted more leeks to enter. The carnival ball was pushed to a higher climax.

The regulators themselves probably didn’t expect this September 4th outburst to unexpectedly rewrite the industry landscape.

Originally a second-tier exchange, Coin On seized the opportunity to regulate and rectify the three oldest domestic bitcoin exchanges, and quickly moved the company from Hong Kong to Japan, with some team members even bringing their families with them, soaring to the top of the industry in just a few months, with the number of registered users soaring to 6 million and even having to suspend registration at one point.

From September 4, to November, after the RMB deposit was called off, the old players all went to Coinan. Coinan is mainly coin trading, as the deposit and withdrawal links do not support fiat currency, basically unaffected by the regulation, and these old first-tier exchanges are busy at this time to rectify, the members lost a large number.

“Before the policy crackdown, Coinan was a second-rate platform and we have been loving them.” The head of a digital currency issuance team with a market cap of nearly $10 billion said, “But now, we have to go on our knees and beg them to get on our coins.”

Surprisingly, a grassroots exchange person was even more outspoken: “I am fond of regulation, every regulation is an opportunity, the regular platform is regulated to death, we such a wild way to get rich. If it weren’t for the last round of regulation, 100% of our exchanges would still be at the bottom of the pile, and we’d have a chance to be among the top if we had the guts. The recent wind is tight, we changed the office, and then not, give the team a vacation, rest a few months and then fight.”

Just like the cash loan industry suffered a devastating blow from regulation, private loan sharks saw a resurgence of momentum, each round of regulation also brought the relatively obedient digital currency exchanges to a standstill, but demand did not weaken, the chaotic phase did not completely disappear, but in turn gave reckless heroes a great opportunity to overtake.”

In the eyes of the aforementioned grassroots players, the newly introduced notice from the central bank is just scratching the itch, “In fact, the restriction is on legal person accounts, now where are the exchanges still using company accounts to collect RMB? Either coin trading or over-the-counter trading.”

An industry deep throat revealed to AI Financial News Agency, some newly risen exchanges, found a more covert way to trade, they bought thousands of RMB bank accounts from the black market to collect money, the play is very exciting, “in fact, and the spirit of the regulatory ban on fiat currency into the gold.””

3

The hidden chain

There are a lot of risks hidden inside: exchanges and coin issuers change to new vests and continue to make a fortune, tokens are issued indiscriminately and fraud is mixed in them, a large number of private placement on behalf of the act began to be staged in the WeChat group and the circle of friends, the circle of slightly influential leading brother, by a certain coin The team’s request, just pull a WeChat group, you can “to chive when cut”, earn tens of millions of difference, the big company is to take advantage of the blockchain concept hype, welcome the stock price rise.

“November to December, many new coins, originally engaged in marketing, doing micro business, coal boss, what people have entered the field. No more regulation, I’m afraid myself, just out of a project, easily raise several hundred million, simply do not know what kind of stuff behind.” An exchange person expressed his concern.

“I just sat on the plane for a while, my phone was off, and once I landed, I saw a dozen ICO projects needing me to pull the WeChat group to dock, the market was too enthusiastic!” He said to me.

A paradoxical fact in front of the coin circle is that a new technology dedicated to the establishment of a decentralized trust mechanism, but in the early stages of its birth, it relies heavily on a centralized chain of trust – for the newly admitted leeks, there is an urgent need to solve the information asymmetry problem, which gives everyone in the chain, the project teams, exchanges, brokers and media, all of whom brought in a staggering amount of wealth.

“In order to send articles to our new coins, I have sent money to many self media, just a certain influential network media, I put almost a couple of million in six months, there is a time a day to go out of my hands more than 100,000 placement, the signing time are feeling the meat pain. “A founder of a coin-issuing team told me.

According to several cryptocurrency circle people to AI financial news agency, some influential media in the cryptocurrency circle, the most important profit model is not advertising revenue, but by issuing articles to influence the price of coins, or to promote new coins, from which profits, sometimes an article to charge a number of bitcoins, a cryptocurrency circle media therefore monthly income of about in the order of ten million yuan.

There is also the role of an endorser: when an ICO project is issued, it will find endorsers to stand, these people either have been in the cryptocurrency circle for a long time and have some appeal, or they are in academia, financial institutions or Internet companies holding key positions. As long as you endorse the ICO project, you will have the opportunity to participate in the share.

This later evolved into a brokerage game of private placement on behalf of the investment. The project owner will provide a certain amount of internal coin grants or low price subscriptions to the private placement agent or relevant self-publisher. The price usually ranges from 30% to 80% off the ICO sale price.

There are many such stories played out in the cryptocurrency world.

An influential senior person in the coin circle has set up his own business and launched a private placement on his behalf, earning tens of millions in a few weeks. Some ICO projects look for him, and if the issue price is two dollars, he can get his share for 80 cents, and then resell it to the next family for one dollar and a half. The equivalent of turning yourself into a first-class agent. Then he will distribute the share layer by layer, and his disciples continue to pull the group to sell, also can earn the difference. For this kind of cryptocurrency circle V, there will be quite a lot of ICO projects begging him to sell them.

For a while, such pulling group moves became popular in the circle of friends. There are also some cryptocurrency circle bigV just send articles to recommend coins, or open a small secret circle to charge users, but also can make money every day. More true and false information is flooding the whole coin circle, the noise has long covered the truth, and both long and short sides are profiting from all kinds of news.

On January 22 in a WeChat group, a group of users sent a message shouting injustice, “At present, it is confirmed that the XX project of the XX station circled money and ran away, and the project party lost contact.” Soon another big V came out to disprove the rumor, claiming that the runaway is purely a falsehood.” The

turbulent market, the dealer also took advantage of the opportunity to harvest the retailer, soft soft Jun recalled his thrilling experience: “the exchange is 24h never sleep, the dealer took advantage of no one to the second half of the night began to smash the plate, a smash on the smash through, the morning when you open your eyes very panic, this sleep loss to Lou Lou home, to the afternoon, the dealer began to pull up again. The time, every day so, very painful, did not sleep a good sleep.”” The actual

and the exchange is a dry harvest harvester, it will charge the ico team “on the coin fee”, a single, some up to tens of millions. A token team person said, the first two months more and more new coins, leeks are not enough to use, some new coins up on the broken hair, and finally hastily raised tens of millions, it is better not on, “this circle is too close to the money, all the rules of the game are money open road.”

The lucrative profit of the exchange is no secret – “OKEX, fire coin such head platform a day’s transaction volume in 10 billion yuan up and down, such an exchange, the light fee a day can be collected a hundred million, a year down the profit may be tens of billions of magnitude This is very scary. Even many long-tail exchanges can earn tens of millions of dollars in fees every month.” The above exchange sources said.

The daily trading volume reached 16.8 billion yuan of Coinan, issued its own platform coin – Coinan Coin in November, the market value once reached 15 billion, after the decline still has nearly 9 billion market value, which opened up a new financial path for the exchange.

Compared to other projects that are still only at the conceptual level, Coinan already belongs to the ones that have seen money, and it was immediately grabbed once it came out.

“After I got my hands on it, it turned over dozens of times more, but it’s also because of the ICO thing, they just got tea.” The COO of a platform that also focuses on coin trading with Coinan said to AI Finance.

Just as the regulation is paying close attention, the recovered veteran exchanges Firecoin and OKex are starting to follow suit in issuing platform coins. on the evening of January 20, Firecoin issued an announcement that a blockchain-based issuance and management points system was launched by its Firecoin Pro station, which is registered offshore. Just a few minutes later, OKex also made an announcement that its strategic partner OKB Foundation released the application token OKB, with two new platform tokens calling the shots.

The rapid riches made the morale of the exchange to change the world higher and higher, and the CTO of Firecoin said in a high-profile social platform, “Our boss put the word out, don’t ask when Firecoin will be on Nasdaq, we are in competition with Nasdaq.”

Below this status, a good person commented: “I think the target can be bigger, such as the Federal Reserve.” Another do-gooder chimed in, “Yeah, like, take out the dollar.”

4

trillion air

In the opinion of many in the chain, people in the cryptocurrency world are playing a bit too much. trustnote founder Zhou Zhengjun said his company also has tokens, but not for employees to take to speculation, but for talent incentives. The higher the quality of technology development, the more it has a direct effect on increasing the value of the digital currency itself.

Zhou Zhengjun also points out a secret of the token’s popularity in the chain. Some technicians are willing to accept digital currencies actually for tax avoidance reasons, “The current tax policy regarding digital currencies is unclear, and they can basically be tax-free. You think, if one day it is said that you have to pay taxes for acquiring digital currencies, isn’t it a disguised recognition of the legitimacy of digital currencies?”

But right now, the value of digital currencies is severely distorted. The angel investor Sun Jiangtao, who has laid out the whole industry chain of blockchain, expressed his disappointment with the current state of the industry. They have done statistics that at least 80% of the ICO projects on the market are “traps” under the packaging of the digital currency ecology, either lacking project support and reduced to pyramid schemes, or having great “Water”, “the game of raising cats and dogs with blockchain are considered good landing applications.”

An exchange person told me that in the cryptocurrency circle, the most important thing is the marketing ability, “Anyway, it’s a bunch of air, as long as you can help people market the coins, give as much money as you want.” In his eyes, the blockchain industry is extremely low, and they make products that lag and flash back, yet they can casually raise hundreds of millions of dollars.

“This circle, three months appear a big brother, and then a big brother disappears.” He says, “The metabolism is extraordinarily violent.” But there are still plenty of people with a higher risk appetite who want to come in. All kinds of financial imagination that humans have created in the past are concentrated in this space.

In the mobile Internet world, a track generally has only two or three unicorns, the blockchain field is very special, through the ICO and issuance of currency, to reach the threshold of $1 billion market value of as many as dozens of companies. In the eyes of Sun Jiangtao, now the top ten blockchain projects, most of them do not have application scenarios, most of them are bubbles and air, which will surely burst eventually.

boxing champion Tyson endorsement of the bitcoin ATM machine settled in Las Vegas.

ICOs are essentially asset securitizations that bypass the investment banking and exchange system and enable mini-IPOs without having to go through audits and laws.

Tiger Securities founder Wutianhua says that this system of transactions and trust mechanisms that human society now employs is indeed a waste of social resources, but this extra cost is to ensure that transactions security. At this stage, bypassing this system before the technology matures is a great user experience, but it is very risky. In the end, it is likely that there will be more scammers than good people, and bad money will expel good money. This is one of the reasons why blockchain scams are rampant at this stage.

“Aircoin is actually an advanced form of pyramid scheme, and the blockchain concept is indeed an excellent subject matter for pyramid schemes. The pyramid scheme has not been knocked down for so many years, and it is easy to expose the pyramid scheme at least hundreds of people staying in one place, but air coins are not so easy to be found.” The head of a token said.

Zhou Zhengjun is considered an old cadre in the chain circle. He is full of worries about the tricks that the young people in the coin circle are doing: “These fraudulent projects, are consuming the resources of this field, the fraudsters take away more, leaving less to do things properly.” He is worried that the whole industry is being decimated, and the chain circle will be accompanied by ties.

Even those who have recognized the truth, each have their own thoughts.

Sun Jiangtao said, the blockchain industry has three different circles, in the past for a long time, they despise each other and disconnected – people who focus on digital assets despise bored to do public chain, people who focus on the underlying technology development public chain, do not see all day pouring digital assets of the cryptocurrency circle “The Internet giants, on the other hand, find it difficult to put themselves down and seek cooperation from the pioneers.

In spite of all the chaos, Sun Jiangtao remains optimistic. He believes that the blockchain field currently wastes not as much money as the mobile Internet, and scams and bubbles, in fact, is the best investor education, speculative mentality first circled everyone’s attention, only to have the opportunity to slowly unify the cognition, only to have the opportunity to give birth to great enterprises.

After so many rounds of ups and downs, some people find their view of wealth has changed. “I now feel that money is not money, it’s just a bargaining chip to play the game. It’s not a shame to be part of a collective trial and error in human history.”