Ethereum's earliest headquarters was the spaceship house in Switzerland. On the day of the college entrance examination for domestic students in 2014, Vitalik and the leadership of Ethereum chose this place for a full internal meeting. Everyone was discussing:
Will we be whores or set up a figurehead in the future?
That day-long meeting formally announced that the future largest public chain leader in the crypto industry would not act like a whore, and the 'Eight Kings' who created Ethereum would fall apart.
According to founder Vitalik's recollection: "I was trying to shirk responsibility throughout the process because I really didn't want to take on the responsibility. In the end, I had to clear out some people."
Such stories, I first heard from Zhao Kuangyin in the Song Dynasty.
1
At the end of 2022, the famous exchange FTX collapsed. As the largest backer behind Solana, the price of Sol naturally suffered a heavy blow after FTX's collapse. At that time, Vitalik sighed on Twitter:
I hope the Sol community receives a fair development opportunity.
Including earlier, Vitalik has praised Solana in various occasions, but anyone with clear vision can see that those were condescending favors. However, power has its size; as the only proven survivor in the crypto circle, it is natural to show some respect.
But one cannot just look at what is said; ultimately, one must see what is being done. Vitalik didn't grant this face for long. In September 2023, when MakerDAO, the largest stablecoin minting protocol on Ethereum, prepared to create its own chain and attempted to choose Solana the next day, V God immediately sold his 500 MKR and stated on Reflexer's Discord:
This is self-destruction.
I often say that Ethereum and Bitcoin have fundamental differences. Bitcoin, as a pure store of value, does not need a value perspective, nor does it need to promote decentralization; it only requires collective consensus. Ethereum is different; its founder is still around, and his values will become the values of Ethereum.
(Spring and Autumn) also distinguishes between public lamb and Gu Liang; the explanation of decentralization may also have V's or S's versions. When it involves a higher-level struggle for orthodoxy beyond wealth, face and substance will not be given, especially when one has been snubbed.
V God was at his peak, making everyone feel breathless. Sun Yuchen cautiously asked why, while the Sol community remained silent, and MakerDAO founder Rune could only stand at attention and take the beating, saying Ethereum is great, Sol is great, Atom is also great, and everyone has a bright future.
In the past, under Vitalik's leadership, Ethereum became the 34th largest asset globally, sitting firmly in the second seat of the crypto industry, with a peak market value of $550 billion.
During this high-speed running process, Ethereum experienced four major price discoveries.
The first stage is technical advantage; amidst a bunch of Bitcoin clones, Ethereum has essential technical differences. The second stage is environmental advantage; the strong regulation of Bitcoin in 2017 created a market void, and Ethereum occupied a large market by fulfilling liquidity needs. The third stage is that ETH, which has good liquidity and easier transfers, became the first choice for many ICO projects. The fourth stage is the last bull market where DeFi, the Metaverse, and the NFT boom coincided with the trend of transitioning from POW to POS. During this time, a large number of interactions and staking led Ethereum to briefly enter a deflationary era. In this cycle, Ethereum continuously broke new highs, from $100 to $400, to $1400, and finally reached $4800.
At this stage, Vitalik became V God. The sign that was erected only had a few letters spelling Vitalik; not to mention us, even 90% of the Ethereum community could not name a second Ethereum developer.
The Ethereum Foundation has naturally become the parliament of Ethereum. In May 2024, important members of the foundation, Justin Drake, who is the host of Ethereum's POS transition, as well as Dankrad Feist, who is a major spokesperson for Ethereum's future technological roadmap, successively announced that they would become advisors for Ethereum's re-staking project Eigenlayer, and Eigenlayer is offering:
Tokens that exceed their existing total wealth as compensation
As a massive entity with a peak market value of 500 billion and ecological funds exceeding 20 billion, Vitalik and the members of the Ethereum Foundation are like a beautiful widow living alone, always having countless single men knocking on their doors at midnight with money.
However, not everyone with a figurehead has money; there will always be people who choose to be whores. This is human nature and also the biggest problem of centralization. In the past, when discussing the development of Binance, I also mentioned this issue. Binance is the most profitable and powerful organization in the crypto industry; first-generation entrepreneurs like CZ and He Yi have earned enough wealth, and they can consider longer-term plans and make the cake bigger.
However, when second- or third-generation successors, or professional managers in high positions have not earned that much money, their mentality will also change.
When the single men knocking at the door offer enough money, the door will naturally open.
2
When making investments, there is always one question:
Does an excellent project need a flagship founder?
The interesting part of this topic is that both sides have excellent examples; you may know Steve Jobs and Apple, Dong Mingzhu and Gree, Ren Zhengfei and Huawei; similarly, you may not know who the founder of Midea is or who the founder of Moutai is.
In the end, I believe this question must be viewed from the perspective of the project's development process.
If in the early stage of the project there is a flagship founder, it can bring tremendous traffic to the project. At the same time, if the founder is capable enough, they can focus their energy to accomplish big things.
But if the project is really as Zhang Lei said, able to crazily create value for society in the long term, it will inevitably erase the founder's mark.
History has taught us too many lessons. Many emperors in ancient times were diligent and hardworking in their youth, but in middle and old age, they continued to enjoy music and dance. Long-term absolute power will inevitably corrupt even the most original intentions; geniuses are also human and cannot overcome human nature.
Another factor is innovation. Ethereum represents the application layer of crypto, and the value of the application is whether it can provide convenience to everyone; this convenience will eventually translate into a larger market share, more income, and the value will be realized in price.
However, times are progressing, technology is evolving, and more new things are coming out. To continuously create value, projects must not only do good strategic planning but also possess the ability for ongoing updates. The energy of founders is limited; it cannot be governed by personal rule, but must be governed by the system to ensure long-term innovation.
Shen Nanpeng now does not make any demand evaluations for new projects. According to him, he has already become an old man, and what he considers unnecessary often turns out to be the core competitiveness of the project.
Calculating, Vitalik is now already 30 years old. When he was doing social experiments for projects in Montenegro, there were leaders ten years younger than him. At a hacker meeting in South Korea, he had already become the oldest one.
Marco Castignoli, who works at the Ethereum Foundation, said:
Vitalik is just a member of the EF research team, which is made up of a group of very smart brains, and Vitalik is just average among them.
When running at high speed, probably no one will pay attention to these issues, everyone is absorbed in the joy of ETH rising and celebrating together. No one cares whether the Ethereum Foundation is acting like a whore or a figurehead, nor will they care if Vitalik is creating a one-man show, and even less will they care if Vitalik has money to chase women.
Once the growth rate slows down, all problems become problems. Especially in the crypto industry, such backlash is even more serious. After all, in traditional capital markets, the people who buy iPhones are not the same as those who buy Apple stocks.
In the crypto industry, there are no people buying iPhones.
3
A few days ago, Vitalik said he wanted to give up because he saw that the crypto community and venture capitalists believed that the PVP game was the most fitting form for the crypto market, and felt frustrated seeing a group of people nitpicking the Ethereum Foundation.
I remember when CZ was asked about Sun Yuchen's advice to Vitalik during an interview, CZ said:
Sun Yuchen giving advice to Vitalik is like a small exchange giving advice to a large exchange; there is still a gap in business level.
My colleague Dai Zong said, CZ is still too kind; if it were him, he would at least ask whether Sun Yuchen deserves the key; how could a sanitary pad absorb the ocean?
Speaking of which, Vitalik has indeed been very anxious lately. CZ mentioned that starting a business is exhausting and urged everyone not to put too much pressure on him. I feel there is a bit of a 'why not eat meat porridge' vibe to that. In an industry like crypto that lacks consumers, all entities outside of retail investors must bear the pressure.
Because everyone does not care whether your product is usable or not, or the definition of usability is based on the premise of making retail investors money—according to internal data from a certain brokerage, 94% of retail investors are trapped, which means they will always be criticized.
When Bitcoin dropped, no one blamed Satoshi Nakamoto because everyone assumed he was dead. Who told Vitalik to be the leader and still be alive?
To be honest, has Ethereum really dropped a lot? From the peak, Ethereum has only dropped 40%; although it can't compare to Bitcoin and hasn't outperformed Solana in this cycle, everyone must understand that the general decline of all altcoins is about 3-5 times.
How much money is left in the pockets of those who did not choose Ethereum?
What truly fits the crypto market right now is indeed PVP, because this is essentially a casino. Talking about value with gamblers is like playing a lute to a cow; on one hand, they cannot take it in, and on the other hand, it won’t help even if they do—ultimately, they have no money and cannot be consumers.
Many people do not realize that the crypto industry is currently just a market of less than several trillion, with extremely high risks. Many see the hundreds of times returns and ignore the risk of total loss.
In theory, finding projects with an average industry return rate is sufficient to become rich, regardless of how much principal is involved; after a few rounds of cycles, it can multiply by 100 times. If you must complete a lifetime's worth of returns in one cycle, if you don’t get scammed, who will?
Since the beginning of this year, my largest positions have been Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana. I have always made profits in the past, still making profits now, and most likely will continue to make profits in the future, and can earn a lot.
I also want to get rich overnight, but it seems I don't have that ability. In the past, from studying to working to investing, I maintained a position in the top 5%. Yet I still cannot get rich overnight. I also can't understand why someone with tens of thousands of dollars, who has always been losing money, thinks they can get rich overnight.
It's all Liang Jingru's fault; she gave too much courage.
4
Recently, many friends have called or messaged me. To summarize, it boils down to one sentence:
Is there still a second half of the bull market?
Behind this sentence, it is not asking about the bull market, but about altcoins, questioning an opportunity for sudden wealth. After all, Bitcoin is still at 96K, which is nearly 5 times higher than the average low at the end of 2022; even Ethereum, which has been criticized severely, still has over double the increase. Only the increases of altcoins have been wiped out, even setting new historical lows.
These altcoins, some have exaggerated short-term gains, such as those in the AI track or MEME track. During the rise, there are always a lot of reasons, hot topics they followed, and touching stories—essentially, they have no value and are just scams to evade regulation, which they know, but to feel more secure, they always subconsciously lean towards 'value.'
The author of (The Crowd) mentioned that when people reason without logic and only look at correlation, he cited the thinking logic of the Samoyed as an example:
They see that snow will melt in their mouths, so they deduce that glass will melt in their mouths too, because they are all white and transparent.
Most players in crypto reason in this way. The project team is working hard; why isn't the price rising? AI is obviously a good concept; why isn't it rising? The Ethereum Foundation sells coins every day; no wonder it drops so badly.
These reasoning premises are that in the past, when the project team worked, the coin rose; AI is currently very popular; and Ethereum Foundation did not sell coins, so it did not drop. The question is, why could he become rich overnight, but I couldn't?
Unreasonable yet taken for granted.
Yesterday, a member friend lamented to me that I now finally understand that to achieve results, I must heavily invest in Bitcoin. Unfortunately, such a simple and straightforward way to make money goes unnoticed, and one must go through numerous trials and tribulations, losing most of the time, to finally summarize it. In the end, he asked me:
Why couldn't I realize this at the beginning? This way, I wouldn't have lost so much money.
This question evoked an old memory for me. A few years ago, a member remarked to me that Akong has nothing to offer, only telling people to buy Bitcoin and Ethereum; everyone knows that. What I want is the latest opportunity, and he didn’t mention any.
Many people in the past had fixed mindsets, with differences in levels. Some built a set of thinking systems through their life and learning experiences, and when encountering new things, they would sharpen their knives first and clearly understand themselves, think about who to learn from, and what to learn. So at the beginning, they would not take many wrong paths and would directly buy Bitcoin.
Some people had fixed thinking patterns in the past, just a crowd with no fear, thinking they can do anything, so they must be beaten—during the process of being beaten, lucky ones come into contact with higher thinking and gain positive feedback after trying to learn, ultimately 'changing their fate.' But most people still fall into the same pit and will fall into it again next time.
For example, always chasing the altcoin season, wanting to get rich off small coins, asking everywhere whether there will still be an altcoin season. But have you thought about whether the crypto industry has always had an altcoin season? Did you catch it or not? If not, why continue to ask about news regarding the altcoin season?
The first rule of investing in this game is to be able to keep playing. If the final expectation is zero, then it will definitely go to zero, regardless of the ups and downs along the way, because it is very difficult to sell at a high point; conversely, if the final expectation is growth, then every decline is an opportunity.
However, understanding this issue is also difficult, as it requires the use of an entire knowledge structure and thinking system to make decisions—looking like choosing Bitcoin is a simple decision, but it requires a diligent search and learning process.
In the investment market, everything that everyone does has motives and demands. No role is wrong; the only thing wrong is oneself—why one gets scammed, why one pursues altcoins, why one buys at high prices and doesn’t make money, is just because of one’s own lack of ability.
A few days ago, Dai Zong invited me to dinner and took a Didi. It seems he took a wrong turn. On the way, the driver repeatedly asked him:
Have you figured out your positioning?
