Coincidentally, I just happened to talk about this topic with my friend the day before, and this "second-hand celebrity quote". In fact, Buffett's original words were "Indeed, who was ever benefited during the past 238 years by betting again American?" In the 14th annual report of Hill Hathaway, it is used to summarize the reasons why it still spends a lot of money on large-scale acquisitions during the economic "recession".

In connection with the context, it is not difficult to find that these words have nothing to do with the context of blind patriots, but Buffett's evidence with the support of data that the US economy still has potential for development, and his boast of "wise decisions" in the past. But there is no need to rush to criticize Lao Luo. In the past two years, the investment circle full of elites also likes to give each other Buffett chicken soup to keep warm when the industry goes down.

From this, I want to say that the business world has always praised the myth of "success"; in the face of "failure", it is used to cover up and whitewash it. As a commercial media, there are many graffiti on the fig leaf, but few are willing to face the bleakness directly.

"Blockchain" is a strange flower with the most drama in the business world this year, and blockchain media is a by-product that was spawned in batches in the early days of the blockchain "Dancing Demons". As a founder of blockchain media, I write such a title It is true that the articles in the article are "crazy and even scolded myself" and "short the industry", but I have to say: it is really not.

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The year when the blockchain degenerated into a "matrix"

First of all, I look back on the year I have been practicing as a media, that is, observing as a bystander and practicing as a witness. Briefly describe everything that happened on the way of the changing of the guard between bulls and bears.

Just over a year ago, we came into contact with a large number of "blockchain transformation" application projects that people in the Internet and venture capital circles know well, such as blockchain + social, blockchain + live broadcast, blockchain + Everything, I joked at the time that I used to accept BPs, but now I accept white papers. The main difference is that the former mostly has horizontal editions, while the latter mostly has vertical editions.

Then a few months later, a large wave of companies were picked up one after another. The same entrepreneurial team "Painted Skin" does two things, the investment institution helps to make the bureau, and the equity company changes its name to the foundation to issue coins. It turns out that this is just a wave of stagnant start-up companies wanting to use the name of the blockchain to solve the "customer acquisition" of the project, solve the project financing, and even solve the exit. It turns out that "coin reform" is a false concept, and the industry began to call for a clean-up and return to the bottom, and public chain projects have attracted much attention.

So when the much-anticipated "blockchain 3.0" EOS mainnet was launched, we received the white papers of blockchain 4.0, 5.0, and 6.0. At first, it was a competition of TPS imagination, and then the blockchain In the heated discussion of the impossible triangle, scholars and technical experts debated the expansion plan fiercely.

By the middle of the year, the market value of the digital currency market has been halved, and the market value of most public chains with high hopes has fallen by more than half. The founding team is busy appeasing the community. Everyone lamented that the goal of the public chain is lofty, and the road is long and difficult.

As a result, the industry once again retreated one layer, and everyone began to think about the last layer of protective wool for existing users. A large wave of FCoin-like models swept the currency circle, and I don’t need to say more about the following stories.

At the end of the year, freezing three feet was not enough. Bitcoin fell below the support level of 6,000 US dollars and then dropped again and again.

Let's look at everyone's current focus, returning to Bitcoin and mining.

After ten years of Bitcoin, no one dares to judge that it will die immediately. At the same time, the mining industry is also the only heavy asset in the currency circle, and it must be supported no matter what.

Let’s look at the new currency that has attracted much attention recently, the projects of Mimblewimble. The story goes back to improving the defects of Bitcoin, talking about currency, talking about payment, and Panpan mining.

The reason why Grin is highly respected is that the project does not pre-divide coins, accept investment, and do not conduct ICO. The tone is simple, and the posture of re-preaching Bitcoin, like the crazy, complicated, and complicated things in the past few hundred days, has never happened.

In this way, in one year, we have witnessed the complete reverse growth of this industry. Application-public chain-exchange-mining & bitcoin, the blockchain "leaves the real to the virtual" step by step, looking for the route it grew out of, and returning to the "matrix".

It took ten years to come, and only one year to return.

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bear market is a good thing

After a year like this, a bear market is justified. Talking to the People's Bank of China about the current situation of the industry yesterday, I joked about the four quadrants of a bear market, which I found interesting after thinking about it.

The big waves in the bear market wiped out all the heroes. When the wave goes to the beach, it is a piece of "actively leaving" and "passively leaving", "actively staying" and "passively leaving".

Those who take the initiative to leave the market are speculators who have successfully run fast (such as some bigwigs who were once lively and now dare not return to China) who come in to try and stop losses when they encounter coldness (such as some equity investment institutions); those who leave the market passively are projects that return to zero (such as A wave of altcoin projects), overnight liquidation (such as some automatic long positions with leverage when Bitcoin falls below xxx).

Those who take the initiative to stay are those whose beliefs are unbreakable (early believers who entered the market with dozens or hundreds of bitcoins, still sit and watch the situation remain unchanged); those who are left passively are those whose funds or reputation are locked up (this will not be explained) up).

After checking the numbers in this way, I feel that the current bear market is pretty good, and no one is doing evil. Either you can't do it, or you can't do it.

Of course, the phrase "the industry is not good" this year is not a blockchain patent. The bear market bears a nest, from A shares to US stocks, "bears" appear everywhere.

Two days ago, I saw an interpretation of the A-share bear market published by FT Chinese website, which classified the bear market as the normal adjustment of the market and the rationalization of the structure. Stocks with high leverage, high debt, and bad performance suddenly collapsed, while companies with stable performance, stable cash flow, and financial stability remained stable, which is a "comparison structure" that conforms to investment logic.

So we look back at the shortcuts to wealth creation in A-shares. Private entrepreneurs easily go public, but their profitability is not good, and they rely on pledged stocks to "buy, buy, buy" everywhere...the bear market has come with reason, it is "irrational prosperity" bubble burst.

In the same way, the currency market is even more so. Being in it and driven by human nature, I don’t want to believe that it has taken a sharp turn, but looking back at 2018, it makes sense. The speculative money is wasted, the leverage disappears, and one group of people is eliminated from the industry, and another group is left behind.

Speaking of "returning to zero", I prefer to believe that this is "returning to zero mentality". After the myth of irrational and unbalanced wealth creation has finally been shattered, and after we have paid tuition fees in various forms, we are groping to start again.

A tycoon in the currency circle and an early believer in Bitcoin once told me that he believes that Bitcoin has its own will.

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Where is the way forward?

When the industry is cold, the surrounding industries are naturally colder.

When many "blockchain" layoffs, closures, shutdowns, and transformations, I often tossed and turned late at night, thinking about tomorrow. Just share it at the end. As a member of the industry, I hope to provide some ideas for the development of the industry.

Information is so important to transactions, there will always be someone trying to fill in the information gap, so the development of the industry will always give birth to "commercial media". Commercial media rely on industry value to exist and rely on industry dividends to grow. Therefore, at all turning points in the business world, there will always be a group of people who want to use new carriers, new forms, new media, and explore new business models.

The dual perspectives and roles of commercial media are also very interesting. They are not only bystanders and recorders of the industry, but also witnesses and participants of the industry. If you stand far away, there is no business model, and if you stand close, it becomes a private exchange.

The rise of the Internet has catalyzed the example of the portal website. I will not give an example. For a closer look, I will use my old company 36 Krypton as an example. Today’s 36Kr is already a new business group that supports many people, and its process from 0 to 1 is the process of China’s venture capital industry and the primary market from 0 to 1. As a recorder and participant, 36 Krypton's values ​​and corporate culture are also branded as entrepreneurs, young, cutting-edge, and sunny, and they don't care about making money to support their families at first (not to say, the boss now!).

And what about the process of blockchain from 0 to 1? In China, its first inflection point was in 2013, the so-called "first year of the bitcoin industry" in China.

This year, Bitcoin released the most important version 0.8 in history, which can be regarded as supporting large-scale transactions on the entire network, and was also recognized as a legal status by the US government at a hearing. The price of the currency soared from more than ten dollars to the highest point of more than one thousand dollars in November, and a large number of RMB poured into the bitcoin trading market. Some people began to spend a lot of money to develop mining machines, and digital currency exchanges such as Huobi and OK were also born in the same year.

The blockchain media that took advantage of this period is still Babbitt today. Although Babbitt was established in 2011, it was in 2013 that a large number of KOLs entered and became active from pure technology sharing. The Babbitt brand has also injected the genes of the early Bitcoin community, technical content-oriented, community-oriented, and circle-oriented. At the same time, because the content is only a means for early explorers to preach the blockchain, how can Changxia and Wu Jihan support Babbitt, so the independent business model is naturally not very important to Babbitt.

The second inflection point is 2017 when the blockchain was "stigmatized". It can be said to be the "first year of domestic ICO", or barely called "the first year of the Ethereum industry".

This year, ERC 20 was transferred to the request of GitHub, and the threshold for issuing coins was greatly reduced. The old coin circle has already gathered people with free wealth to "start a business", or set up a token fund, or challenge the public chain, the vc of the primary market and the aforementioned " There is no way to exit” Internet entrepreneurial projects added fuel to the fire. For a while, blockchain entrepreneurial projects were everywhere, and Binance took advantage of the momentum to rise.

The blockchain media that occupies this bonus period is Golden Finance. The business model of its rise is very straightforward, and it is easy to pocket hot money in batches by posting soft advertisements for ICO projects.

I don’t need to go into details about the madness of ICO. My clear feeling is that many project parties have received the money for the B and C rounds of equity projects at one time, and their sudden wealth has given them the illusion that “financing is profit”. Distressed. However, the projects are all seedlings to help them grow, and the media that serve them are naturally eager for quick success. When the aircoin bubble burst, not many projects still had money to distribute to the media whose conversion rate was unpredictable, and their lifespan was compressed.

Then there is the third inflection point, which is still unclear.

In recent months, batches of Golden Finance and Economics "blockchain media""Significant layoffs or even shutdown and disbandment, because everyone is copying the above-mentioned business model, without core competitiveness, and without the strong strength and interest chain accumulated by others in the early stage, naturally they cannot withstand the cold of the bear market.

At the same time, there is no new technological inflection point that can bring about industry changes. If Bitcoin media is Babbitt and Ethereum media is Jinse Finance, EOS media can only be a self-media that reports gambling DApps. Of course, TRON media and BCash media can also exist, but their wind will not become a sweeping trend in the short term. There is no dividend in the industry, and the media cannot get a share.

This is not to comment on good or bad, but just to tell the truth: most of the blockchain media have also paid wrongly, and those who think that the media is a fast channel for digging money are even more wrongly paid.

It is true that without an innovative business model, we can still rely on traffic to receive advertisements and organize events, following the decades-old path of the media, but given the current traffic ceiling and the amount of funds in our industry, how do the hundreds of xx finance companies in the back receive advertisements in a bear market? The Coinbase conference is no longer as lively as it used to be, and ConsenSys is laying off employees. It would be better if there are fewer empty events in China that cannot export content.

The more important "cliché" is the game between maintaining "professional content" and "making money to support the family" for the media. The media hope to tell the story of Bloomberg and Forbes, and have a business model that is not incompatible with the authority and professionalism of the content itself. And most of the media in the expensive circle obviously don't bother to think so much and think so far. Whether it is directly selling content as a business model, or relying on the protection of big bosses to live, it is obviously not a long-term solution for the media.

Not only the media, but many people in this industry who were once supported by hot money don't need to think about these things. Now that they are "returning to zero" and "letting go of the old and welcoming the new", they really should think about it.

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Still have the potential to grow a thousand times?

Jack Ma once publicly said at an event this year that the blockchain is not a bubble, but Bitcoin is. And said that blockchain is a solution for data privacy and privacy security.

The biggest "black spot" of the blockchain that has been repeatedly mentioned is that it has not been applied. However, if the blockchain is really regarded as a "solution", the 2B application scenario of the blockchain has already existed. Just talk about finance, such as supply chain finance, clearing and settlement, cross-border transfers, such as insurance... Blockchain is not without applications, but there is no large-scale commercial use, and there is no star-level application for the public.

But it is precisely because of this year of excessive "preaching" that the blockchain is expected to quickly realize the ideal of "value and form". If it is just an enterprise service tool that serves existing processes, it will be too unsexy.

And whether Bitcoin, which has been "dead" dozens of times, is a bubble, and whether it will rise sharply, if it is pulled to an uncertain time scale, it may be right. But I have to say that for a relatively long time, Bitcoin has undoubtedly been the cornerstone of the existence of the so-called blockchain industry.

First of all, the core believers, people in the Bitcoin community will say "Liar, Scamer" (lie, liar) even in the face of Ethereum. If the belief in Bitcoin collapses, the industry will also be overturned; The incremental flow of the blockchain is limited, and the leverage of external funds is even more limited. The original capital for the development of the industry comes from large Bitcoin players; at the same time, there are still many people staying behind in the heavy assets of the mining industry mentioned above (please pay attention to the recent mining industry series of in-depth reports), and everyone's expectations for Bitcoin financial products. Although the approval of ETF has been delayed again and again, there are still many supporters who speak out for it.

Based on the above, on the 10th anniversary of the birth of Bitcoin’s founding block, it’s really meaningless to discuss whether it is a bubble or not. I decided to sincerely say “Happy life!” At the same time, I hope that the dawn of technological change will illuminate the industry as soon as possible.

In the last paragraph of the article, I also want to send you some exclusive warmth. (If everyone is interested, I will also finish the other half of the CZ interview!)

In October, I exclusively interviewed CZ Zhao Changpeng, the founder of Binance, which was full of essence. But because of the accidental hospitalization at that time, the industry has not been what it used to be after I was discharged from the hospital. I was worried that my questions would be outdated and the article would not be finished. Apologies again to the Binance guys and CZ. However, in the past two days, I went to listen to what CZ said at the time. His confidence in the industry sounds like a timely help, and he is definitely not out of breath. So I selected a few passages to share with you:

Mandy: Your twitter has always been a booster for the industry. You tweeted that the digital currency market will grow 1,000 times. Is your confidence so firm, have you never felt that "the industry is dying"?

CZ: I believe in this industry 100 percent. Because it's not that I convinced myself, but as long as you really understand, you know that from all angles, this industry is just getting started.

Because technology does not disappear, and it evolves gradually.

After 2000, a large number of Internet companies full of bubbles collapsed, but you know that it is not "the Internet is dead", Internet technology still exists, and successor companies will develop better.

Today, you will definitely not worry about the collapse of the Internet. Even if the giants and Apple collapse, the Internet will not die, and this industry will still exist.

The same is true for blockchain, which has many benefits that other technologies do not have, and the essence of these benefits is at the core of the existence of this industry.

The correction in the development of the industry and the fluctuation of prices are all normal in the long run. So I know very well that the blockchain industry will not disappear, but will develop at a high speed.

If the Internet industry used to progress at a rate of x2 per year, the blockchain should be said to be developing at a rate of x5 per year. Looking at Bitcoin again, it is probably x7 per year, so I am not worried about this industry.

When I say a thousand times, I don’t mean that a certain currency will rise another thousand times. The fact is that some coins are likely to return to zero. I mean that the industry has the potential to grow a thousand times. What we have to do is to stay competitive and follow the rising tide.

Mandy: I ​​understand that the Internet has also gone through the process of penetrating into various industries and changing the way of operation from existence to non-existence. However, it is still quite far away for blockchain 2C applications to connect with users.

CZ: Indeed. But let me give you a small example. If you look at Internet video calls, it has only stabilized in recent years. To be honest, it is still not stable enough, but how long has this concept been around? In 1999, we were all discussing what the Internet could do. When it comes to applications, e-commerce Taobao only started in 2003, and it took many years to mature. At that time, I opened the webpage to watch the news, but the internet speed was also very slow, and it took half a day to buffer. If measured in ten years, the ten-year development of the Internet is also very limited. Thirty years today, the Internet can still be used, but there are still great prospects for exploration.

Blockchain technology is firstly disruptive, and secondly, it is highly complex and has many changes. From having many middlemen to disintermediation, so many encryption nodes need to be designed, the performance is not perfect now, and there is still a lot of room for improvement . It is also because it has not yet developed that there are many opportunities. This is my opinion. And I think it's all obvious, and I've never understood why others can't see it.

Mandy: I ​​understand. I think it is difficult for everyone to deny the long-term value of the blockchain, but in the short term, the value may not necessarily be positively correlated with the market value. You also said that the bear market will pass at any time and the market will recover at any time. Why do you do this? Are you so optimistic? Because many people now lose confidence and feel confused.

CZ: Your understanding of the blockchain is very accurate. I have been in this industry for a long time, and I have seen this kind of fluctuation many times. I first bought bitcoin for about 2 dollars, and suddenly it became very popular, and a small number of people became interested, making it soar to 35 dollars.

Then it rose too fast, and it must have been over-operated, so it was pulled back to 6 yuan. Of course everyone was nervous when it plummeted, but if you think about it again, it was only 2 yuan a few months ago.

After that, it remained stable for a period of time, fluctuating around 6 yuan, and then rushed to 90 yuan after half a year, and many people followed suit, and the market returned to 70 yuan again.

After staying at 70 yuan for a while, at the end of 2013, it rushed to more than 1,000 yuan in one breath. Later, from 2014 to 2015, it fell back to more than 200 again, and more than two years later, and then it rose sharply from 2016 to 2017, reaching more than 20,000 US dollars at one time, and now it has fallen back again.

But look at that unit, it fell back to 6 yuan for half a year, fell back to 70 for half a year, and fell back to 200 for 2 years.

You can't always compare with the highest point. The market always rushes up first, then rationally pulls back, and finds a support point for a period of time.

The last time someone asked me what I think about the bear market, my casual reply was distorted. I am not predicting the market price. I just want to say that historically, this kind of callback is very normal. We must look at it from a long-term perspective. It is uncertain tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. How many times it will rise in five or ten years, everyone can make their own judgments. I am confident.

So I will always be firmly in this industry. Because I feel that on the planet right now, I can't find an industry that will develop faster than the blockchain.

-------------- CZ makes sense dividing line----------------

Finally, on behalf of the Odaily team and industry partners who are forging ahead like us, I make a new year's wish: I hope that in the future, the blockchain will find the right person, you and I just happen to be in it.