Recently, the cryptocurrency world was exploded by a post-90s individual, Shen Yu, who earned 100 million US dollars from 1,000 US dollars, equivalent to more than 700 million RMB, directly ranking among billionaires.
Ordinary people yearn to get rich overnight in the cryptocurrency world, but the reality is often particularly cruel. Every day, someone is protesting at the door of the OKEX company. Every day, some people start to turn the tables and achieve financial freedom.
The longer I stay in the cryptocurrency world, the more I feel how deep the waters are, which is not something ordinary people can handle. What ordinary people need to do is still to work steadily.
Now let's learn about this legendary figure like a myth.
Shen Yu dropped out of school and became a mining machine mogul.
Shen Yu, whose real name is Mao Shihang, is known in the circle as 'Seven Colored Immortal Fish', a post-90s generation.
Entered the digital currency field in 2011.
Back in 2011, 21-year-old Mao Shihang was studying at Beijing University of Chemical Technology in his sophomore year, majoring in communication engineering. Two years prior, he was admitted through the self-selection process as a candidate from Henan.
One afternoon, Mao Shihang, with nothing to do, went to the library to surf the internet. He saw a piece of news stating that the price of Bitcoin had surpassed 1 dollar. At first, he didn’t pay much attention, but it seemed that fate was knocking at his door. Within half an hour, Mao Shihang saw another news report about Bitcoin rising.
What exactly is Bitcoin? Mao Shihang's interest was immediately piqued when he learned that Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that can solve the double-spending problem in the value transfer process through cryptography. It was as if Mao Shihang had discovered a whole new world.
From that day on, Mao Shihang spent all day in the dormitory, didn’t attend classes, and even had classmates pack meals for him, spending day and night in the earliest Bitcoin forums abroad.
In that forum, he saw Satoshi Nakamoto and his team interacting with members in the 763 community.
Mao Shihang, as if enchanted, stayed in the dormitory for three months. His classmates all thought he was obsessed and shook their heads, believing he had no future. However, a genius's thoughts are different; Mao Shihang felt that this was a technology that could change the future landscape, and his life might be reshuffled because of it.
That year, the price of Bitcoin surged to 30 dollars. To obtain Bitcoin, there are only two ways: either buy it on the market or mine it. As a student of science and engineering, lacking sensitivity to price trends, Mao Shihang believed he was not suitable for trading coins, and mining became his only option. After choosing the right direction, Mao Shihang dove into researching various Bitcoin mining technologies and deeply studied mining hardware technology.
In early 2012, Mao Shihang bought several GPU mining machines and officially started mining. By the end of the year, he bought a large number of 5870 graphics cards and set up more than 20 mining machines at home, working day and night. Soon, Mao Shihang sold the mined coins and cashed out over a million.
In 2013 (at 23 years old), he dropped out of graduate school.
In 2013, Mao Shihang, who had just started his first year of graduate school, still wanted to devote himself fully to mining work.
So, he spent a few months explaining Bitcoin's technology and future to his father. After obtaining his parents' consent, Mao Shihang officially suspended his studies and founded China's first Bitcoin mining pool—F2Pool, known as the fish pond in the cryptocurrency world.
China's vast mining army was born from this, and a computing power war shifted from the United States to China.
2013 is referred to as the 'year of Bitcoin,' with prices soaring and a large influx of people into the mining world.
At that time, there was not a single stable mining pool in the country. Most miners were scattered and independent, which was a rare opportunity for Mao Shihang. At that time, most foreign mining pools used the PPLNS mining income distribution model, distributing coins based on miners' actual contributions. This led to too many uncertainties for miners, as luck, network stability, and mining pool technology all affected miners' earnings. Even worse, it was a black box where miners could not calculate how much they contributed; everything was dictated by the mining pool.
At the beginning of establishing the mining pool, Mao Shihang adopted an innovative PPS distribution model, where miners receive rewards based on theoretical difficulty, while all other factors are borne by the fish pond. If due to network instability or outdated technology, the Bitcoin output falls below theoretical output, the fish pond compensates for the loss.
This distribution model is undoubtedly very friendly for miners, as everyone can calculate their earnings. More touching for miners is that the fish pond distributes earnings 24 hours a day, alleviating their concerns about the risk of the pool running away.
Even if the fish pond runs away, it would only mean losing a day's earnings, and the risk is controllable. Initially, the mining pool lost a few thousand Bitcoins, and investors chose to withdraw their investments, forcing Mao Shihang to temporarily shut down the pool.
On July 16, 2013, Mao Shihang notified miners: Due to insufficient Bitcoin reserves, mining must be stopped, and miners are requested to withdraw from the pool by 4 PM on the 16th and transfer to other pools.
At the appointed time, many miners remained in the fish pond unwilling to leave. Their reason was: I have mined in many pools, and only Shen Yu is the most credible pool owner. Mao Shihang was very touched. To not disappoint the miners who trusted him, he grit his teeth and personally put in over 3,000 Bitcoins to get through that most difficult time.
That year, the price of Bitcoin rose to over 700 dollars, and every day Mao Shihang's account increased by millions of RMB.
One day, he suddenly realized that his wealth had reached 100 million. So he called his richest former classmate, saying he didn't know how to handle this wealth.
Born in the 90s, Shen Yu expressed that he has always envied those born in the 80s. Because they were lucky enough to catch the early internet, creating the splendid era of the internet we have now. Fortunately, at a very young age, Bitcoin gave him such an opportunity.
“Entering this industry was actually quite coincidental. If that afternoon I hadn’t seen two reports about Bitcoin, I would have missed this industry.”
Then Shen Yu said: 'I finished reading the Bitcoin white paper, and during those two hours, I was very shocked.'
In the early days as a hobby, Shen Yu tried investing in Bitcoin and GPU mining and wrote a large number of mining tutorials, leading many early domestic miners to participate in Bitcoin and Litecoin mining.
In addition, 2014...
Bitcoin entered a bear market, and the mining world faced a period of mining difficulties. On May 8 of that year, Mao Shihang married his girlfriend, whom he met in a Bitcoin QQ group.
On the day of their marriage registration, Mao Shihang did not buy a diamond ring but instead gifted his wife 25 Bitcoins from a block mined by his machine.
He specifically prepared a wallet address starting with 'ILoveYou' and left a message in the transaction information of that block: 'One hand, growing old together with you.'
Message from 'Shen Yu to Dong Dong'
This information is permanently written into the block, and no one can change it. As long as Bitcoin exists, the network exists, and human civilization exists, this vow will also endure. This is a unique romance of a blockchain technology man.
The Bitcoin mining crisis did not end due to the joyous event of Mao Shihang's marriage; on the contrary, a wrong decision brought them a devastating blow.
In 2015, the long bear market of Bitcoin.
It brought Mao Shihang to the brink of collapse. Around him were many familiar friends, those who once felt invincible. Some jumped off buildings to commit suicide, and others disappeared quietly, never to be seen again.
Mao Shihang could no longer hold on and had to close the company. He took a lot of mining machines and returned to his hometown.
This was Mao Shihang's first zeroing out. After a big rise, he immediately entered a big drop. Most people might not be able to get back up.
Mao Shihang also tried to adapt to life outside of the cryptocurrency world. During this rest period at home, he read a large number of books. Many people advised him to study for a few more years. He also tried to participate in game development work, but after less than a month, he couldn’t continue. In 2016, the Bitcoin market began to warm up slowly, and Mao Shihang heard the call of his heart.
That year, he returned to Beijing again and continued to operate his mining pool.
In early 2016, Ethereum had just entered people's sight, and Mao Shihang's fish pond launched the Ethereum mining pool.
Mao Shihang has accumulated nearly 100,000 Ethereum, which now, looking back, is worth tens of billions.
From the number one in mining pools to a big player in wallets, a glamorous transformation.
Perhaps many people’s impression of Shen Yu still lingers on him as the 'number one in mining pools.'
Little did they know, Shen Yu had already moved to digital wallets.
In 2017, the widely known incident of the fish pond 'Ethereum Valentine's Day attack' made Shen Yu realize that the blockchain was actually under close watch by hackers. Later, statistics showed that about 300,000 hackers were attacking the blockchain, which posed a great threat to the industry's security.
At that time, most digital currency wallets on the market had not lowered the usage threshold to the minimum, such as requiring management of many complex private keys. This was not only difficult to manage but also prone to security attacks.
‘It was in 2017 that we did some business thinking.’
We want to create a business model based on our native mining ecosystem that can bring a win-win situation for users and us. If we create a wallet, our team has the technical ability and historical accumulation, which would allow many novice users to have a better experience in acceptance and use. So we formed a team and moved in the direction of wallets.
Shen Yu felt that running a mining pool is a very simple software and hardware service. He had been focused on the mining field before, and now he was adept at it, and it came naturally.
However, the thinking for creating a wallet is very different from that for a mining pool. A wallet must focus on security, which poses great challenges, so the company must first be positioned as a security firm that combines the underlying logic of blockchain.
‘We created a set of encryption solutions that basically reconstruct every public chain and then deconstruct the wallet part. All core private keys and some user private keys are stored in our customized encryption machines. We made a lot of security optimizations and audits for our entire internal risk control system’s development, IT infrastructure, and network environment.’
We have invested a lot of effort into security and have made many upgrades on both software and hardware levels. In fact, this is the biggest difference from the previous wallet company.
In November 2017, Cobo was officially established and completed seed round financing at the same time.
In December 2017, Cobo completed a multi-million dollar pre-A round of financing, with investors including Linear Capital and Fengrui Capital.
In July 2018, Cobo announced the completion of 13 million dollars in Series A financing, led by Danhua Capital and Shuanghu Capital, with many well-known institutions in the industry participating.
According to Shen Yu, Cobo currently has several million users, and having such daily active users during the winter period is actually a good statistic.
Shen Yu's investment advice for turning 1,000 US dollars into 100 million US dollars.
Shen Yu not only became a billionaire at 23 but also quickly earned 100 million US dollars from 1,000 US dollars in the cryptocurrency world, equivalent to about 720 million RMB.
Previously, Weibo exploded. I re-posted advice I wrote for newcomers on Weibo years ago: How to earn 100 million dollars from a 1,000 dollar principal in the blockchain industry?
Within 100,000 dollars.
Learn more, take action.
Brushing up on the core track of DeFi project airdrops, brushing the whitelist Mint of popular NFT projects. This stage requires spending a lot of time to gather information, analyze and study potential projects, and execution must be strong, persisting in 'shearing the sheep'.
100,000 - 1 million dollars.
Do not leverage trade cryptocurrencies, do not play contracts.
In the new public chain and L2, find potential projects according to the time machine principle and acquire chips at low prices; find your tenfold coin.
1 million - 10 million dollars.
Choose your coin-based principle, whether BTC or ETH, and research deeply; trade appropriately, do not short-sell, do not short-sell, do not short-sell!
Flexibly use low-leverage DeFi lending protocols to improve capital utilization. You can use platforms like dydx to gain token rewards while trading.
Observe more, arbitrage more, insist on coin-based principles, pursue growth in coin-based principles; do not be greedy to participate in every hot topic, earn every penny through arbitrage, staking, etc., to obtain stable cash flow. Stay stable and indifferent; whether the wealth level can break through, the rest is left to time and industry development.
10 million - 100 million dollars.
Once assets exceed a small target, improve family life, read more, exercise more, change personal perceptions and social circles, hold onto core assets, avoid major pitfalls, pursue low-risk stable appreciation and good cash flow.
Do not play contracts, do not start a business, and be careful to avoid pitfalls.
Maintain a certain amount of coin-based assets without missing out.
Maintain a certain amount of stablecoin assets to acquire stable cash flow. At the same time, respond to unexpected situations in life so that when there’s a downturn, you can buy the dip.
Invest 10-15% of assets in the track you are optimistic about, give yourself something to do, while also preventing yourself from being too impulsive.
Shen Yu's investment advice is to take different strategies based on different asset scales and risk preferences. His advice can be summarized in the following points:
1. Within 100,000 dollars:
Learn more, take action, brush airdrops, brush whitelists, seek potential projects, and improve capital utilization.
2. 100,000 - 1 million dollars:
Do not leverage trade cryptocurrencies, do not play contracts, find your own coin-based principles, acquire chips at low prices, and discover your own tenfold coins.
3, 1 million - 10 million dollars:
Do not short-sell, flexibly use low-leverage DeFi lending protocols, observe more, arbitrage more, insist on coin-based principles, pursue growth in coin-based principles, and obtain stable cash flow through arbitrage and staking.
4, 10 million - 100 million dollars:
Improve life, read more, exercise more, change perceptions and social circles, hold onto core assets, avoid major pitfalls, pursue low-risk stable appreciation and good cash flow. Do not play contracts, do not start a business, be careful to avoid pitfalls, maintain a certain amount of coin-based assets and stablecoin assets, and invest a portion of assets in tracks you are optimistic about.
Summarizing Shen Yu's life trajectory in the blockchain industry.
1. For a period of time, every day when he opened his eyes, there were millions more in his account. He searched on Zhihu about what to do with a hundred million and felt confused, not knowing how to handle love. That year, he was 23 years old.
2. Discuss the annual fluctuation of Bitcoin in recent years, price ranges, friends jumping off buildings, friends eating buns to buy Bitcoin, and some stories from the industry.
3. In early 2016, I sold 100,000 Ethereum for 20 yuan each, making over 2 million, which was very exciting, and my family was also very excited. But later, Ethereum rose to 12,000 each. So theoretically, it could be calculated as a loss of over 2 billion.
4. In his sophomore year in 2011, Shen Yu first encountered Bitcoin. He was very excited, skipped classes, and stayed in his dormitory. It was also in 2011 that Bitcoin rose from one dollar to thirty dollars, and Shen Yu earned a million within a year. In 2013, the first-year graduate student Shen Yu dropped out and established China's first Bitcoin mining pool—f2pool.
5. During the first withdrawal, his family had misunderstandings and confusion about what Shen Yu was doing, including himself who was about to graduate. The family had already made adequate arrangements.
At that time, Shen Yu did not know that this would become his career and an important part of his life.
6. In 2013, many friends in the group made a lot of money. Everyone wanted to buy a building in Guomao, demolish hotels, and many other crazy things. Still in 2013, Bitcoin plummeted, and the industry entered a long winter. Mining costs were insufficient. A typical case was 'Kao Cat', a top student from the University of Science and Technology of China, who created one of the earlier mining chips in China. The company virtually IPO'd on forums with a scale of about a few million Bitcoins, but in 2015, 'Kao Cat' disappeared. Suddenly he evaporated.
7. In 2015, Shen Yu was forced to liquidate the company and returned to his hometown. On the last day of liquidation, he called all shareholders to bear most of the losses, took the machines back home, and he also began to doubt himself. He tried to work on a game for a month but returned to the cryptocurrency world again, preparing his mining field and establishing China's earliest Ethereum mining pool, which once held one-third of the global Ethereum computing power.
8. In 2017, Shen Yu's company suffered a hacker attack, losing 100 million RMB. In December 2017, Bitcoin broke through 20,000 US dollars, rising 21 times throughout the year.
Short-term fluctuations may have seemed like big waves at the time, but viewed through a longer time period, they were merely small ripples.
9. In 2014, Shen Yu married his girlfriend without buying a diamond ring but instead mined two new blocks embedded with wedding vows, 'I love you'.
Keep an eye on it.$ETH $BTC $SOL
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