The first-generation pioneers: from the mining sector to exchanges
Between 2011 and 2013, Bitcoin quietly rose in China, and a group of the earliest 'gold miners' began to set up mining operations.
During this period, Shen Yu established one of the world's earliest mining pools, F2Pool, while Bao Er Ye (Guo Hongcai) from Shanxi built the world's largest Bitcoin mining farm on the Inner Mongolia grassland.
At the same time, Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan co-founded Bitmain, developing the first batch of dedicated Bitcoin mining machines (ASIC), sparking a 'computing power arms race.'
The prosperity of the mining sector also gave rise to the first internal power struggle in the crypto world: Shen Yu represented the interests of 'small and medium-sized miners,' emphasizing decentralization; Wu Jihan represented the capital power of Bitmain, pursuing industrial monopoly.
Around the Bitcoin scaling dispute (SegWit vs Bitcoin Cash), the two sides engaged in intense confrontation, ultimately igniting the Bitcoin fork wars of 2017. On August 1, 2017, Bitcoin underwent a hard fork, leading to the birth of BTC and BCH, which also laid the groundwork for years of internal strife in the mining sector.
The BCH ABC chain led by Wu Jihan stands in opposition to the BCH BSV chain represented by Craig Wright, forming two major camps!
The Bitcoin SV community hopes BCH will still strictly limit opcode as described in Satoshi Nakamoto's paper, focusing on transaction transfers themselves, and aims to ultimately expand the block size to 128MB.
The Bitcoin ABC community hopes to develop BCH towards basic infrastructure public chain while maintaining the block size at 32MB (expanded from 8MB in May this year), allowing BCH to create more application scenarios like Ethereum.
The two sides holding different opinions also led to the BCH consensus protocol no longer being compatible and having to be resolved through a fork. After the hard fork, only the longest chain can be the main chain, and only the digital currency obtained from the main chain has value. Therefore, this hard fork is also a battle for computing power. BCH forked in the early hours of November 16, implementing the protocol upgrade at block height 556766!
Exchange Wars: The rise of CZ and He Yi
In 2013, OKCoin rapidly rose under Xu Mingxing's leadership, attracting young programmer Zhao Changpeng (CZ) and former host He Yi.
But just a year later, due to ideological and equity disputes, CZ fell out with Xu Mingxing and chose to leave. After leaving OKCoin, He Yi also accumulated a lot of industry resources.
In 2017, CZ founded Binance, with He Yi serving as CMO, one responsible for technology and the other for marketing. The two worked seamlessly together, seizing the dividends of the ICO wave and global user expansion, and within six months, Binance became the exchange with the highest trading volume in the world.
During the same period, Xu Mingxing's OKEx also went international, but due to management issues, it frequently faced crises, ultimately leading OK Group into a regulatory whirlpool, with Xu Mingxing himself facing border control and even brief detention multiple times. Binance emerged as the king, while OK gradually sank.
The myth of wealth creation in the crypto world and Sun Yuchen's alternative narrative
If CZ represents the cold rationality of engineers, then Sun Yuchen represents another extreme—the marketing maniac's wealth-building game.
Sun Yuchen founded TRON in 2017 and became the world's most famous 'super internet celebrity' in the crypto world through a complete model of 'issuing coins - platform - washing traffic - pumping prices.' His famous saying is: 'As long as the hype is still there, the story will not die.'
He spent $30 million in 2019 to win a lunch with Buffett; he invested in Poloniex, Steemit, BitTorrent, and laid out a strategy of exchanges + content ecology;
At the same time, he also became synonymous with cutting leeks and capital operations in the crypto world.
The internal evaluation of Sun Yuchen in the crypto world is extremely polarized—some see him as a genius marketer, while others view him as a traffic scammer.
However, it cannot be denied that he accurately stepped on the nodes of every wave in the crypto world, always managing to successfully 'cash out' before a bear market.
The 'Godfather' of the crypto world: Li Xiaolai's preaching and downfall
Between 2013 and 2017, Li Xiaolai was undoubtedly one of the most influential figures in the crypto world. He gained fame as an early Bitcoin evangelist and authored the bestseller 'Treat Time as a Friend.' Through Yunbi, Bit Fund, and the leaked recordings of his 'cutting leeks' history, he became one of the most controversial figures in the crypto world.
He supported projects like NEO (Da Hongfei) and Qtum (Shuai Chu); collaborated multiple times with Bao Er Ye, jointly promoting projects during the ICO boom; but also became infamous overnight due to the 'cutting leeks recording scandal.'
Li Xiaolai gradually retreated from the front lines, turning to education and angel investing, but his ideas of 'traffic to death' and 'cryptocurrency bubble theory' still influence the cultural atmosphere of the entire cryptocurrency industry today.
Regulatory Storm: The final showdown of the crypto world?
In 2021, China completely banned mining and trading, leading to the migration of core forces in the crypto world. From 2022 to 2023, a regulatory storm swept across the globe, CZ faced heavy penalties and resigned due to Binance, while He Yi operated behind the scenes to transform Binance.
Sun Yuchen has shifted the battleground to Huobi (HTX) and the TRON public chain, continuing to maintain influence through TRON and the USDD stablecoin.
Shen Yu and Bao Er Ye have become increasingly low-key, focusing more on behind-the-scenes investments and infrastructure.
The entire crypto world is transitioning from an era of chaotic struggles to a new stage of compliance, globalization, and capitalization.
To summarize in one sentence:
1. There is no eternal myth of invincibility in the crypto world. The rise and fall of any individual, project, or exchange follows a clear cyclical pattern!
2. Always stay sober and think independently.
3. In the crypto world, it's not enough to just make a profit; the real winner is the one who can securely take the money away and walk away from the table alive!
