In December 2019, winter was particularly cold, but young white-collar worker Linlin was filled with enthusiasm. She saw a prominent figure on Zhihu discussing a project called "BBB" that claimed to cooperate with digital currency, had already obtained a license, and had an ICO price of 0.1 yuan, expecting to increase 100 times upon listing.

Linlin calculated that with 80,000 yuan in her salary card, investing it all would mean 8 million tokens. The thought made her hands tremble. The prominent figure messaged her: "Only 30 internal spots left, over 50 funds have already joined the VIP group." Without a second thought, she transferred the money, not even bothering to check the contract address.

Three months later, the project announced a "strategic suspension due to policy reasons," the official website was inaccessible, the group was deleted by the owner, and the prominent figure's account was directly canceled. Linlin’s 90,000 yuan turned into a hash value that could not be found.

She later learned that during that time, over 100,000 retail investors nationwide were scammed by the same script, with a total amount exceeding 1.5 billion. When the police solved the case, they found that the so-called "team" consisted of only 7 people, operating from a rented room in the Philippines, using template websites and hiring water army to launch a new token in just three days.

Linlin changed her computer desktop to a phrase:

"The most expensive thing in the cryptocurrency world is not the transaction fee, but the IQ tax you pay for believing the stories of strangers."

The wind has gone, the pig has fallen, but the chain remains.

What can truly keep you alive is just those three words: So awesome.