As a loyal believer in Ethereum, Wesley sold his house and car during the bear market just to continue his dollar-cost averaging. After the price of Ethereum surged, the first thing he did was to redeem the "ETH10K" license plate, which is not only a proof of faith but also an explanation to his past self. This article is sourced from a piece written by lockBeats and organized, translated, and written by Rhythm. (Background: Ethereum climbed to $4,640, less than 5% away from its "all-time high," surpassing the market capitalization of Netflix and Mastercard) (Additional Background: Chinese A-share retail investors shout for cryptocurrency: Bitcoin is digital gold, Ethereum is the Web3 leader, and SOL is the blockchain gambling leader) At the moment the red taillight lit up, Wesley put the license plate that read ETH10K back on. He joked, "Cars can be bought again, positions can be added again, but I need to restore my dignity first." After the Spring Festival, when ETH dropped and the market was filled with judgments of "800 dollars seen," he sold all three cars: a Ferrari used for buying Coca-Cola, an SUV used for grocery shopping, and a red Porsche with the "ETH10K" plate, even parting with the license plate. He also sold two properties in Australia, ran off to a farm to pick fruits, did physical labor during the day, and self-studied programming at night, working for a few project parties. On August 11th, when ETH returned to 4350, he didn’t rush to increase his position or change cars; the first thing he did was to redeem the license plate. He said this small metal plate was an explanation to his past self. During the interview at OKX, I sat across from him. He didn’t look like a traditional "trader" but more like an engineer. He spoke logically, didn’t chase trendy terms, and liked to start from "verifiable". "I won’t sell; I have no plans to sell. After it rises to 10,000, I will put ETH into Aave/Compound, borrow a little U out, and still won’t sell. Even if it pulls back, it doesn’t matter, just keep low leverage." He said the phrase "I won’t sell" calmly, as if completing a task that needed to be done. From 2015 to 2025: A winding but clear line 2015—2016, Hong Kong investment bank → Entrepreneurship (chatbot lending MVP) Wesley graduated from finance and received a full-time offer in Hong Kong, working for two years in bond sales. "Working felt like acting; I’m more introverted, so I quit my job and went home to start my business." His first "product" was neither an app nor a website but a chatbot built using the Facebook SDK—a set of online loans for students. "To be honest, I only wrote code for one or two months, so I couldn’t produce a complete app or website. The most convenient way for me was to write the logic into the SDK and guide users through text to complete the process." At that time, there was no ChatGPT or LLM, so he used conditional logic to parse keywords, breaking down the loan process into executable dialogues, and a rough but functioning MVP was completed. After going live, due to a minimal team (basically just him and a partner), the product logic was light, and they broke even in two to three months; the total transaction amount was about 10 million, serving five to six hundred users. "My motivation to start a business was simple: my family was poor, and I wanted to study abroad but couldn’t afford the tuition." He rented a place in Wan Chai, paying a deposit of 26,000 HKD. The bank wouldn’t lend, and the landlord wouldn’t accept credit cards. In the end, a few friends pooled together to help him settle in. "At that moment, I thought, can students like me have a more decent path? Upload student IDs and scholarship records, and they could get a small loan?" Among the first batch of borrowers, there were students who used this money to buy tickets to Japan and paid back as soon as they landed. Fortunately, there were no bad debts. The numbers were small but surprisingly stable. Later, after a quarrel with his partner, he was forced to learn programming himself, "or the company would go under." Soon, the company was sold as a whole, and his first original accumulation was bagged. 2016—2017, Australia working holiday: daytime financial analysis, nighttime self-study programming After finishing his entrepreneurial project in 2016, he decided to go to Australia for a working holiday. To obtain residency, he first went to study, but since his undergraduate degree was in finance, and local "job content must align with the major," he could only study finance and work in finance. During the day, he worked at a very small community bank, where his daily tasks even included counting cash in and out of ATMs. One time, a bizarre case broke out: a gangster from South Africa tampered with the cash transport armored vehicle, consistently underloading the ATMs, and over a year absconded with 7 million. The bank, being a listed company, ultimately had insurance cover it, but his position was affected. Later, the bank encountered malicious mergers, and he was transferred to financial analysis: equity valuation, merger models, Excel reports—solid processes but slow rhythms, with colleagues leaving work by three or four in the afternoon. After evening, he dedicated the entire "blank time" to programming: casually finding online courses to learn, watching public courses and PDF materials, filling in the gaps in data structures, algorithms, and operating systems; at the same time, he prepared for GRE/TOEFL and planned a route of "studying for a master's in the U.S. → obtaining OPT → entering a big company." The reality was not glamorous: having only written code for a year and without systematic training, the resumes he sent out were repeatedly rejected. To maintain his Australian status, he briefly attended finance-related courses, only to circle back to his old profession again. After two years, he saved about 400,000 RMB in Australia and increasingly confirmed that if he really wanted to write code, he had to return to the Chinese community to take the engineer path seriously. Thus, he chose to return, formally shifting towards an engineering track, laying a foundation for later entering Web3. 2018—2019, Australia → return Wesley shared two car photos with us; another picture shows the ocean in Australia, with the wind blowing across the vast shore. As for the "room photo" below, it is not in Australia but a small room he rented after returning to the country, not large but very bright. "The view is nice, and many friends are willing to come over," he said with a smile. After returning to the Chinese community, Wesley joined a Hong Kong insurance startup as a backend engineer. At that time, a crypto exchange collapsed, leaving around ninety practitioners unemployed, and the company hired a lot of people in one go, "the office language suddenly turned into crypto jargon." This was how he officially entered the circle. In 2019, he began to allocate ETH and Synthetix (SNX)—"a year before DeFi Summer." By the summer of 2020, when SNX soared in the DeFi narrative, he jokingly noted, "At that time, I didn’t have much money; even if it rose, it was just a momentary thrill." What truly got him started was capital rate arbitrage: he and his colleagues developed an algorithm for spot-futures basis/capital rate arbitrage. By the end of 2020, they executed the strategy to achieve an annualized return of 80%—90%. "The problem was that I had no money." He was holding...

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