陆六六

No one wants to get rich slowly

🌍 KOHO888088

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the cryptocurrency circle (VIII)

On September 4, 2017, the central bank and seven ministries jointly issued the "Announcement on Preventing the Risks of Token Issuance and Financing", announcing that ICO (Initial Coin Offering) would be positioned as an illegal financial activity, prohibiting ICO and new projects, and the existing projects would be cleared within a limited time. That is, any token issuance and financing activities were clearly prohibited, and all ICO token trading platforms were required to clear and close transactions before the end of the month.

One day in the cryptocurrency circle is like one year in the human world.

China's supervision intervened strongly, and the trading platform was interviewed by the regulators. The original three major exchanges, Bihang, Huobi.com, and Bitcoin China, were forced to stop trading, and then issued an announcement stating that user assets could be retained, but all related trading businesses would be stopped and they would withdraw from the Chinese market.

After the September 4 ban was issued, the domestic exchange track experienced a short window period. Will it end here or move overseas?

The liquidity that has nowhere to go stimulates the taste buds of every adventurer. Some people cut their losses and exited, some kept their troops on the sidelines, and some chose to fly far away, placing the company's registered place and operating entity abroad, and continued their business of selling water on the road to gold rush in the attitude of participating in the global market.

In order to avoid the domestic regulatory system, exchanges such as Binance decisively chose to go overseas to make a living.

Zhao Changpeng moved out of Shanghai with the server and team. The first stop was Tokyo, where he used to work. But within a few months, the Japanese Financial Services Agency, which issued eight bans in a row, issued an expulsion order to Binance.

A boat is swaying in the wind and rain, this is a contest between technology and politics.

Facing the wake-up call of the expulsion of a big country, Zhao Changpeng is unfortunate and lucky.

"In such a contest, compliant officials and lawyers will only hinder the development of the exchange. Binance chose to move forward, and did not spend a lot of energy to hire a legal team and let lawyers tell it what not to do, but continued to move forward."

Many years later, when Binance quickly grew into an industry unicorn, people in the circle joked that "the jade returned to Zhao", and Zhao Changpeng calmly recalled those days of life and death.

"Go to places that welcome us, follow people who are not stupid, use the simplest profit model, and do legal business."
#cz

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the currency circle (Part 7)

There is no consensus within the community on the plan for expanding the block size of the Bitcoin network. Some people advocate expanding it to 2M, some advocate expanding it to 8M, and some advocate unlimited dynamic expansion as Bitcoin develops.

If you choose the delicious fish, you cannot avoid the entanglement of fish bones.

This is the disadvantage of decentralized autonomous organizations. Network upgrades require community consensus, and the efficiency of reaching consensus is often extremely low.

Power comes from the barrel of a gun. Whoever has computing power in his hands has the right to speak.

The two mining pools under Bitmain deployed a large number of server farms and cheap labor in the early stage, using lower coal to power the operation of their computers and create large mining pools. At its peak, they occupied 42.5% of the computing power of the entire Bitcoin network and monopolized half of the Bitcoin mining industry.

At the same time, Bitmain also sells computers made with custom chips, which are designed to cope with Bitcoin's increasingly complex algorithms.

The powerful economic force of the "Wu Empire" directly affects the political power of this block expansion debate.

In 2017, the cryptocurrency market rose strongly. In an absolute seller's market, Bitmain made great strides in fame and fortune.

Standing in Beijing Science Park, 31-year-old Wu Jihan looked at the rising mining team and wondered if he would remember his glory and dream of being admitted to Peking University at the age of 19.

At the same time, CZ, who had been working in the cryptocurrency circle for several years, decided to agree on a white paper in Chinese and English to establish a new exchange, whose name is a combination of binary + finance.

In 2017, CZ founded the exchange in Shanghai.

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the cryptocurrency circle (VI)

In March 2016, the Financial Services Agency of Japan defined cryptocurrency as a commodity. In May, Japan approved the cryptocurrency regulation bill for the first time and defined Bitcoin as property.

On June 24, the results of the Brexit referendum in the UK were announced. More than half of the people supported leaving the EU, and British Prime Minister Cameron also announced his resignation. The pound plunged, and the price of Bitcoin rose by nearly 20%.

On November 9, as the results of the US election votes continued to be released, various assets recorded the largest amplitude since Brexit, and Bitcoin rose sharply without surprise. The market generally believed that the uncertainty surrounding Trump's policy proposals would drive the price of safe-haven assets.

Amid global economic and political shocks, Bitcoin once again demonstrated its safe-haven characteristics.

As the volume of Bitcoin transactions continued to grow, the 1M block size designed by Satoshi Nakamoto made Bitcoin transfer transactions slower and slower. While a large number of merchants tried to accept Bitcoin payments, the fact became increasingly clear - Bitcoin transactions were just a gimmick. In fact, the Bitcoin payment method invented by Satoshi Nakamoto has not been market-forward-looking. It takes 10 minutes or even longer to confirm that the transaction has been settled. What's worse is that the price of Bitcoin, which is out of regulation, fluctuates so much that consumers' purchasing power may lose more than 10% in one morning.

The problem of Bitcoin network expansion is imminent with the rise of competing coins such as Ethereum. #比特币

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the currency circle (V)

At the end of 2013, Vitalik Buterin, a Canadian born in Russia, sent a white paper to his friends, suggesting the design of a new Bitcoin. This new cryptocurrency will be based on a universal programming language and can be used to create a variety of applications, such as social, trading, games...

Vitalik Buterin thought that his avant-garde concept had many loopholes, but he did not expect it to be well received. It soon gained consensus in the Bitcoin community.

In the far east, this thin as a bamboo pole, with a giant head, fast speaking speed, erratic eyes, and aliens who seemed to be out of tune with the world had a new nickname-"V God". That year, he was 19 years old.

At that time, V God had just won the $100,000 Thiel Scholarship (a scholarship to encourage young people under 20 years old to start a business). Before the money was warmed up, he used it to develop a decentralized, blockchain-based computing platform named Etherum.

In 2015, Ethereum was officially launched.

In the year of Ethereum pre-sale, founder Vitalik Buterin came to China to promote Ethereum and gave away 5,000 Ethereum to the attendees, but no one was interested. Because the situation of Bitcoin, the leader of cryptocurrency, is not optimistic.

Starting from January 2014, the price of Bitcoin dropped from $864 to about $200 in a year, and the mainstream media rated cryptocurrency as the "worst currency of the year". #V神 #ETH

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the currency circle (IV)

Currency is centralized, and the right to print money is in the hands of the state.
Currency is decentralized, and the right to print money is in the hands of capitalists.

On December 5, 2013, the central bank and five ministries jointly issued the "Notice on Preventing Bitcoin Risks", which clarified the nature of Bitcoin, believing that Bitcoin is not issued by the monetary authority, does not have monetary attributes such as legal compensation and compulsion, and is not a real currency. From the nature of Bitcoin, it is a specific virtual commodity that does not have the same legal status as currency and cannot and should not be circulated and used as currency in the market.

At the same time, in view of the high speculation risk, money laundering risk and the risk of being exploited by criminals, Bitcoin service agencies are included in anti-money laundering supervision, and Bitcoin websites need to be real-name registered, and Bitcoin ushers in the "real-name system" era.

One day in the currency circle is one year in the human world.

This is the first official statement of China after nearly a year of wild growth of Bitcoin. After the "Notice" was issued, the price of Bitcoin fell sharply, and the market entered a long bear market.

In the cold winter of cryptocurrency, some people chose to get out, some chose to stick with it, and some chose to "all in".

Canadian Chinese Zhao Changpeng first heard about cryptocurrency at the poker table. After learning about it, he resolutely sold his property in Shanghai and invested all the proceeds in Bitcoin.

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the cryptocurrency circle (Part 3)

In May 2010, a programmer in Florida, USA, spent 10,000 bitcoins to buy two pizzas, and the transaction was successful four days later. At that time, one bitcoin was worth only 0.003 cents. This is recognized as the first commercial bitcoin transaction, that is, the first time bitcoin was used as currency. Later, in order to commemorate the successful purchase of physical goods with bitcoin, everyone designated May 22 as "Bitcoin Pizza Day".

Bitcoin defines the atomic operation of financial scenarios, that is, point-to-point currency payment. In the digital world, the oldest payment method of mankind has been restored - one hand for money and one hand for goods, without middlemen to make a profit. All financial behaviors can ultimately be attributed to point-to-point currency payments, and then all financial businesses are derived.

In February 2011, Bitcoin and the US dollar were the same price.

Li Xiaolai, an English tutor who had left New Oriental, decided to buy a large amount of bitcoins, and won the title of "China's richest bitcoiner" in one fell swoop, and the road to wealth freedom was opened.

With the help of translating the Chinese version of the Bitcoin white paper, Wu Jihan, who was already well-known in the industry, took the opportunity to launch Bitmain, which was born in October 2013. In the context of the Internet boom and the contention of a hundred schools of thought, Wu Jihan, who advocated the liberal school, was broad-minded and willing to give 60% of the equity to the mining team.

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the cryptocurrency circle (Part 2)

On November 1, 2008, a Japanese-American named Satoshi Nakamoto published a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". This 9-page white paper stated his new vision for cryptocurrency across the ages, a decentralized electronic trading system that does not need to be based on mutual trust between the two parties.

On January 3, 2009, the Bitcoin Genesis Block was born, becoming the first application of blockchain. The total amount of Bitcoin is constant at 21 million, and rewards are distributed through mining based on the proof of work principle.

Satoshi Nakamoto developed the first client program for the Bitcoin algorithm and conducted the first "mining", a decentralized, fully automatic cash transaction system and its basic protocol composed of encryption algorithms, consensus mechanisms, peer-to-peer networks and distributed accounting technologies, marking the official birth of the Bitcoin financial system.

A contest between technology and politics has begun.

In that year, 23-year-old Wu Jihan successfully graduated from Peking University. In the context of the financial crisis when people were unemployed upon graduation, Wu Jihan, with the halo of a top student from Peking University, got what he wanted and joined Huaxing Capital to do venture capital.

What made him famous in the circle was translating Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin white paper into Chinese "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System". Even though Li Xiaolai later translated the Chinese version of the Bitcoin white paper, Wu Jihan's translation is still widely circulated in the circle today. #中本聪

The glory and dream of the bigwigs in the cryptocurrency circle (I)

In 2019, Sun Yuchen, the "Wolf of Blockchain", bid a sky-high price of $4,567,888 for Buffett's 20th anniversary charity luncheon. He promoted his self-marketing with great momentum, and two days before the meal, he broke his appointment with the elderly Buffett on the grounds of kidney stones.

In the cryptocurrency circle, a bad reputation is also a reputation, which is better than no reputation.

The "Tron Boy" who knows this well once again chose to stand at the forefront of public opinion. Among them, the one who cursed the most was a teacher named Li Xiaolai.

When he was young, he worked at New Oriental Education as a senior English tutor in the foreign department. During that period of making friends with time and teaching and solving doubts for young people, Li Xiaolai stood at the forefront of the times and felt the collision and integration of Western liberalism and Eastern Jianghu culture.

In 2008, Li Xiaolai resigned from New Oriental.

In the same year, Lehman Brothers, one of the four largest investment banks on Wall Street, collapsed due to its fraudulent accounting practices of concealing debts and exaggerating assets. Trust begins with authenticity and ends with the truth. As a result, the two major mortgage giants in the United States, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, were taken over by the US government. The subprime mortgage crisis triggered the US financial tsunami, which instantly swept the world. #李笑来