It's been a long time since I wrote a long article, so I’d like to share the story of my connection with BNB during this event. A story of intertwined destinies.
A journey filled with uncertainty and ups and downs.
Let's go back to June 2017. At that time, at my partner's suggestion, I tried to purchase cryptocurrency for the first time. Back then, I could directly bind my bank card for deposits and withdrawals, and I chose Yunbi—owned by Li Xiaolai and Lao Mao. That day, I deposited a full 500,000 RMB and bought some Credo, Quantum Chain, EOS, and so on. As a new investor, I liked to chase highs and cut losses, and I was no exception. After two weeks of intense trading, I lost more than half of my investment. That was the first time I truly experienced what 'crypto fear' felt like.
In this state, I accidentally came across a news article saying that a new exchange called 'Binance' was about to launch and was issuing its platform token BNB. The founder is Zhao Changpeng, known as CZ. With a try-it-out attitude, I decided to participate. At that time, Binance's strategy was to give registration bonuses, and the first 3000 users could get 10,000 BNB, while subsequent users had a bonus of 3,000. So my friends and I prepared dozens of email accounts to compete for registration, but the server crashed, and we couldn't receive the verification code. It took almost an hour to recover, and I finally registered successfully. My account ID is 10018188, which is clearly not among the first 3000.
At that time, I was in the Binance WeChat group and noticed someone with the nickname 'CEO Zhao Changpeng.' By chance, I added him on WeChat—surprisingly, he had not set any verification, and I successfully added him. I sent a message that sounded quite official, roughly saying: 'Mr. Zhao, I have high hopes for your platform. Is there any chance you could grant me a quota of 10,000?' To be honest, I thought my request was a bit presumptuous. What I didn't expect was that at 12:30 AM that night, WeChat suddenly popped up a reply from CZ. He said he would check if there were any remaining quotas and could arrange it if there were.
At that time, I was replying with thanks while thinking to myself: Is this project reliable? The CEO is so easy to reach, and he even personally replied to WeChat messages at midnight; could he be here to raise funds? But the next day, he really sent another message saying 'there are 10,000 quotas available.' I hesitated for a while, but in the end, I decided to take a gamble and transferred 3 ETH to the Binance platform—at that time, this ETH could be exchanged for 10,000 BNB. That day was June 27, 2017, and a few days later, my first BNB arrived just like that.
So, I should be one of the earliest holders of BNB!
Let's share here for today. As for how I later sold half of my BNB for 0.5 RMB, and what struggles and choices I went through, I'll continue in the next article.
If you like this story, give it a thumbs up for encouragement; there’s more to come.
