Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)
Produced | Odaily (ID: o-daily)
The blockchain industry has experienced ups and downs in 2019.
In the first half of the year, the industry entered a deep winter, and practitioners looked around in a daze; in the second half of the year, the attention of the top level brought the blockchain back to the public eye and injected energy into the industry.
Bitcoin exploded by nearly 40% overnight, blockchain concept stocks have their daily limit, "Bitcoin" is on the hot search again, major brokerages publish research reports explaining what "blockchain" is, party members have begun to learn blockchain ...
Behind this is the ten-year accumulation of practitioners' deep cultivation of the industry.
Blockchain technology has been born for ten years and entered China for ten years.
China is the soil that has to be mentioned in its development process. The two major public chains, Bitcoin and Ethereum, have flourished through the investment of Chinese people. Today, the mining machine giants and top exchanges that can be listed on the Forbes and Hurun Rich List, the talented youngsters who are enshrined as gods, and the hidden capital traders behind them all come from China.
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Birth of Bitcoin, Birth of the Blockchain
In 2008, the US subprime mortgage crisis broke out, and Wall Street investment banks collapsed one after another.
On October 3, the Bush administration signed a $700 billion financial rescue package.
28 days later, on November 1, 2008, the "Cypherpunk" mail group published a paper titled "Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System", signed by Satoshi Nakamoto (Satoshi Nakamoto). Two months later, Satoshi Nakamoto released the first version of the Bitcoin client as open source.
This is the birth of Bitcoin and the birth of the blockchain.
The white paper became the "Bible" of "Bittheism", and the developer documentation became the "Code of Hammurabi".
The "Bible" flew across the sea and came to China, and many financial and technology enthusiasts began to use computers to try to mine Bitcoin.
At that time, Bitcoin was also known to some domestic people, but those who recognized it were often ashamed to admit it, because Bitcoin was regarded as a pyramid scheme.
In 2011, a teenager who worked as an analyst at a brokerage firm came into contact with bitcoin for the first time, used bitcoin to upgrade cloud services, and bought a pair of luxury slippers on Taobao. He felt that this experience was as wonderful as flying a kite when he was a child.
At the end of the year, he translated the Bitcoin white paper, making the "Bible" the earliest Chinese version. In the same year, he and his new acquaintance with science fiction writer Chang Jia (Liu Zhipeng) founded the earliest Bitcoin exchange community Babbitt.
He was Wu Jihan, the co-founder of Bitmain, the world's largest mining machine manufacturer.
At that time, he was still a preacher of Bitcoin. Watching his speech and reading "The Beauty of Computing Power", you may still feel the purity of Bitcoin in him. Talking about the vision of founding Babbitt, he said that it was the responsibility that prompted him to "stand up" and explain the slightly sparse basic technical principles to the public.
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The Bitcoin industry has just formed, and mining and exchanges are now the sons of tomorrow
In 2013, Bitcoin ushered in a turning point.
In May, CCTV reported Bitcoin for the first time, and investors came after hearing the news. The currency price soared 4 times in November. Mining machines are in short supply.
This year, Wu Jihan met Zhan Ketuan and founded Bitmain. Li Lin and Xu Mingxing established Huobi and OKCoin in May and October respectively.
The Chinese make up the absolute majority in the Bitcoin trading and mining world, probably from this year onwards.
With the advent of the first Avalon mining machine, the Bitcoin computing power war kicked off, and computer mining ebbed. (Please read the details"The Spring and Autumn Era of Mining Industry: Bit Powerful Ranks, Singapore Fights Ruthlessly"）
In the garage coffee, Li Xiaolai, Bao Erye, Lao Mao, Zhao Dong, Zhao Guofeng, Yi Lihua, Wu Gang, Prince Gong and others chatted happily here.
Later, the VCs who actively embraced the blockchain in the "blockchain revolution" have also planted the fire at this time.
Sequoia and Innovation Works voted for Bitmain. Dai Zhikang and Zhenge invested in Huobi’s angels, and in March of the following year, Sequoia invested in the Pre-A round. With the help of investor Mai Gang, Xu Mingxing received angel financing from Jiang Tao, Cai Wensheng, Pre-Angel founder Wang Lijie, and Leifeng.com founder Lin Jun. Turn into capital.
The rudiments of the Bitcoin mining and exchange industry chain have taken shape.
Subsequently, the digital currency industry quickly fell into a trough that year.
This is the first bear market experienced by the trio, and it may be the worst. In future stories, they may have gotten used to the ups and downs of the industry cycle, and will become a pivotal figure in the blockchain field in the future.
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Ethereum came to China to raise funds, and the blockchain became a "pig on the wind"
Before 2013, there was only Bitcoin in the blockchain world. Until the Russian teenager Vitalik Buterin proposed to add a virtual machine to the bottom layer of Bitcoin, which is called a smart contract today.
Vitalik was born in 1994 and is also a cryptocurrency enthusiast. He believes that what Bitcoin can do is "not limited to currency", and may be a "universal application platform".
The suggestion to add smart contracts failed to be approved by the Bitcoin development team, and Vitalik decided to start a new one.
Since then, there has been Ethereum, and Vitalik has become a god.
V God’s vision is obviously sexy enough, so that at the age of 19, he was surrounded by a lot of "Ethereum co-founders" who were much older than him: Gavin Wood, the first CTO of Ethereum and later the founder of Polkadot , Consensys founder, marketing expert Joseph Lubin. In January 2014, they made the first public launch of Ethereum at the North American Bitcoin Conference in Miami.
Since then, in 2014 and 2015, Vitalik came to China twice to raise funds.
He went north first, and with a poor Chinese translator, he knocked on the door of Huobi Du Jun's Beijing office. Du Jun's judgment was not reliable at all. During the period, there were many stories about big shots missing Ethereum. Now I may want to regret it, but at that time Ethereum, even the "Bittheists" thought it was a scam.
However, those who missed out later accepted the baptism of the blockchain 2.0 and ICO era opened by Ethereum.
V God’s fundraising in North China was not smooth, and then he went south to Shanghai and found Shen Bo who had been in contact with BitShares (a decentralized trading platform founded by BM). The latter helped at the right time, not only took V God to give speeches everywhere, but also invested $500,000 in 2015 when Ethereum encountered financial difficulties.
This has become the most successful investment of Fenbushi Capital, with a return of up to 1,500 times, plus the fame that V God has brought to Wanxiang after becoming famous.
The era of blockchain venture capital started in China.
In 2015, Wanxiang established a blockchain laboratory. At this time, blockchain technology has also become a small trend. People in the domestic financial industry have discovered that the underlying infrastructure of Bitcoin, the blockchain, has great promise. at the meeting.
Discussions at major conferences in Shanghai have already drawn the conclusion that the blockchain fits the financial scene, but they recognize the alliance chain more, that is, the "coinless blockchain" as it is called today. Zhejiang University has also sent a large number of blockchain talents to the industry.
Many alliance chain companies have been born in Shanghai and Hangzhou, such as Fun Chain, Fuzzy Beauty, Secret Ape, Bubi, Yunxiang, etc.
During the same period, a wave of ICO projects also broke out on a small scale. Domestic projects such as Xiaoyi, Lingmengbao, and Metaverse have all successfully ICOed, and a number of blockchain crowdfunding platforms such as Coincrowdfunding, Yunbi.com, and ICO365 have started.
The blockchain in 2015-2016 was ridiculed as a "pig on the wind" because it did not land.
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Bitcoin reaches its peak again, ICO brings the dream of getting rich
So far, geographically, the domestic blockchain map has shown different advantages: Shenzhen is an important mining town, where many mining machine manufacturers produce; Shanghai and Hangzhou have many alliance chain companies seeking to integrate with the real financial industry; The location of the two major exchanges.
In terms of industry, Bitcoin production (mining machine, mining pool), storage (wallet), transaction (exchange) and other chains have been established, and are called "coin circle" by later generations; alliance chains also have some industrial pilots.
In 2017, the flood of ICOs and the slogan of "blockchain revolution" brought these people into the same huge vortex, together with a group of classical Internet VCs.
Three times in ten days. 40 times in three months. 100 times, 1500 times a year...
The soaring stories have turned the once niche ICO into the dream of getting rich for "Chinese aunts".
The biggest star in this bubble is undoubtedly the teacher Xiaolai who loves to learn. He initiated and invested in many blockchain project ICOs. Today’s famous EOS raised 185 million US dollars on the ICO platform within 5 days of that year, and became the “air of 5 billion US dollars”.
On July 6th, Xue Manzi put his arms around Li Xiaolai,posted a group photo on Weibo and added: "@李笑来, I finally found the way to fight for wealth and freedom! Hahaha!"
ICOs are like undiscovered mountains of gold. "I can't see Xu Xiaoping, I can't see Lei Jun, nobody there." Xue Manzi said, "It's like suddenly the whole world orders food, and I'm the only one who chooses. If there is such a good thing, I have to go quickly."
In 2017, the "September 4th" policy came out, ICO was suspended, and the project began to withdraw coins. On September 8, there was more news that the regulator decided to close the virtual currency exchange in China. Huobi, OK and Bitcoin China have successively announced the suspension of trading operations.
Since then, the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum have experienced a short-term plunge, but they have started a non-stop skyrocketing, breaking new highs frequently, and finally rose to the highest point in December: 20,000 US dollars and 1,400 US dollars respectively. Behind it is inseparable from the boost of ICO.
Crazy currency prices have made domestic users eagerly looking for alternatives to exchanges, and the little-known currency exchange Binance has become the world's number one digital currency exchange by virtue of this bonus period.
Suddenly, classical internet VCs and Bitcoin exchanges such as Huobi OK, who missed out on bonuses, were surprised and rushed to grab their right to speak.
In January 2018, screenshots of Xu Xiaoping’s chat calling for the invested project to “embrace the blockchain” went viral in the venture capital circle, and the sleepless three o’clock community created by Yuhong showed urgency and anxiety. The large number of cafes in the group and the seven-day red envelopes of the Spring Festival are as high as one million, which makes the "learning atmosphere" spread all over the Internet. Chen Weixing relied on philosophy and economics at his fingertips to argue with Zhu Xiaohu, who was bearish on the blockchain.
Big Internet companies such as BAT have successively attached importance to the blockchain business. C-end products such as "Lets Gou" and "Netease Odaily" are slightly behind in testing water, but BaaS business has finally become standard.
"Blockchain + finance/social networking/copyright/fitness..." and other concepts that can be reformed by coins and chains have become popular, and many Internet projects such as Meitu, Jianshu, and Xunlei have successively issued coins.
In order to seize the new dividends, Huobi launched the HADAX voting mechanism.
In March, the currency circle set off a carnival for the election of EOS super nodes.
Perhaps for these, the leeks only remember the painful memories of XMX being reset to zero, the exchange cutting the project party, and the project party cutting leeks. But at that time, it was the time when project parties, exchanges, PR service companies, and blockchain self-media were "taking coins and getting soft".
Exchanges simply collect the listing fee of a single project, and easily pocket millions of dollars; "Blockchain Self-Media" sends a soft article asking for hundreds of thousands of dollars; public chain projects are easily valued at over 100 million; FOMO3D, etc. Gambling games lead to a small climax of DAPP.
For leeks, the end of 2017 and the beginning of 2018 are clearly a market for picking up money: blind selection can pick a hundred times coins.
However, madness starts and ends with the currency price.
Since the high point of the previous year, the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum have been falling steadily, and they have been cut in half in the middle of the year, and they have fallen by 80% in the second half of the year. "Blockchain + everything" has become a dead sickle with few landings. The number of blockchain followers has also shrunk proportionally.
Under the bear market, there is no way for project financing, layoffs, pretending to be dead or really dead; blockchain self-media directly shut down under the double pressure of food shortage and title ban, and there are hundreds of bankrupts. Xu Xiaoping, Yuhong and other former bigwigs began to withdraw from the circle.
Zhang Jian's FCoin triggered a war of thousands by virtue of "transaction is mining", and continued to suck blood from the industry. In the end, it was short-lived, but instead boosted the bear market.
At the same time, some alliance chain companies still insist on the coinless blockchain. Although the steps are small, BaaS businesses like WeBank and Ant Financial are still exploring scenarios, such as Internet courts, blockchain electronic invoices, and community voting.
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2019: The industry returns to niche, Libra shakes the Internet
Entering 2019, the price of Bitcoin continued at the low point of the previous year.
In the eyes of the public, the blockchain has been completely cooled down.
After the market for giving money passed away, some "quantitative funds" became jokes, and the projects passed the stage of storytelling. The lack of users and leeks made the industry start to rack their brains to bring in new ones.
The first one to make a move was Binance again, offering an IEO (initial exchange offering, similar to new stock issuance), which attracted many snatchers.
Since the price of IEO is often lower than the price of private placement, it is equivalent to earning money by drawing lots. Each lottery is often sold out within minutes or even seconds, and the online price has skyrocketed dozens of times.
Hundred times coins are hard to find today. In order to grab such benefits, investors spend nights in Internet cafes and hire students to help them grab shares; Binance’s KYC (Investor Qualification Review) is in the forefront, an industry that specializes in helping leeks pass KYC "It came into being as the times require". (For details see:IEOs are heading towards self-destruction，IEO, which used to be ten times easier, is anyone still involved?）
Other exchanges quickly followed suit, and leeks also stayed up all night to accompany them. This has caused the price of the exchange platform currency, which is used as a bargaining chip, to rise steadily. At the same time, Bitcoin is also slowly climbing, from more than 3,000 US dollars at the beginning of the year, to 10,000 US dollars, and it has been searched twice in a row.
In fact, all of this is inseparable from the various positives in the first half of the year: Bakkt, a bitcoin futures exchange under ICE, the parent company of the New York Stock Exchange, is about to go live; Facebook’s blockchain project Libra, from media reports to white papers and hearings shocked the world . The major Internet people who used to think that the blockchain is a pyramid scheme have started to study the "blockchain revolution" with trepidation.
(Related Reading:Can Bakkt, invested by Li Ka-shing, really allow Wall Street to buy Bitcoin?、Selling 8 bitcoins within 2 hours of starting, is Bakkt's bull market myth shattered?、Facebook issued coins, and the life-and-death race between the Internet and the blockchain began、48 hours after Facebook issued coins、Facebook did not start Libra, but started a currency war、Facebook did not start Libra, but started a currency war）
The layout of the traditional financial giants of the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq, London Stock Exchange, and Fidelity reflects their recognition of cryptocurrencies; Wal-Mart, JPMorgan Chase, and then Facebook, the traditional giants issue stablecoins ranging from companies , within the industry and then to global users. Eventually, it turned into a currency war that various central banks had to face.
Just when the industry was improving for a long time, Bakkt went online, and the transaction volume was lower than expected; Xiaozha’s Libra was busy participating in an average of monthly hearings, fighting the crowd. Every time the hearing was held, the price of Bitcoin fell sharply, and finally fell below $7,500 on the night of October 22, when Xiao Zha participated in the hearing again.
There are too many surprises in this world. Within three days, the price of the currency rebounded: it soared by 30% in one day, ushering in the largest single-day increase since 2011.
On October 25, Xinhua News Agency and CCTV released the results of China's top leadership learning blockchain, clearly stating that blockchain should be used as an important breakthrough for independent innovation of core technologies.
In this way, Bitcoin stood at another 10,000 U.S. dollars, and it was a hot search.
Although the price of bitcoin fell back later, unlike the previous surge, all sectors of the society have started to popularize various blockchain and bitcoin sciences, and the blockchain concept stocks that have been silent for a long time have also risen by a lot. Xiaobai friends from all walks of life approached the editors and reporters of Odaily to ask what is blockchain and how to buy Bitcoin.
The blockchain, which has been cold for a year and a half, is extremely hot in public opinion.
Being valued by the highest level of the country, practitioners will inevitably be injected with a booster.
But what needs to be faced is that the reshuffle in the industry is still going on. The industry is becoming more and more fragmented, and "concentrating on doing things" and "concentrating on MLM" are diverging.
Although the large companies that have deployed alliance chains such as Ant Blockchain, FunChain, and WeBank have not ushered in a business explosion, they are still looking for suitable scenarios and holding developer competitions on this quiet road. Some public chain-related projects are also continuing to develop, and the community conference is as pure as an Internet company’s product launch event (Ethereum’s Devcon 5, BSV’s community conference, NEO product launch event, and some Defi projects that do not hold meetings).
I know it's a fund, but I want to get richI know it's a fund, but I want to get rich）
Ethereum is now the second most valuable project in the cryptocurrency space. Currently in transition from phase 1.0 to phase 2.0. If successful, the mining industry may shift from the PoW era opened by Bitcoin to the PoS era opened by Ethereum. Therefore, Staking (locked tokens) under the PoS mechanism, as a new way to protect network value, has been deployed by major exchanges and mining pools.
Reluctantly, this lock-up mode was later ruined by some fund projects. There are not a few projects that are actually MLM projects under the cloak of blockchain.
Correspondingly, capital and exchanges also showed different styles of play.
Some capitals believe that the industry is at a low valuation point and should look for undervalued projects; some capitals are completely reduced to pyramid schemes and lawn mowers.
Good projects are hard to find, and there are more exchanges than projects. Leading exchanges use derivatives to increase the ARPU value of users; emerging exchanges continue to launch projects with extremely short life cycles.
The currency circle, which was once regarded as "suspected of misappropriating money" by the chain circle (the currency circle also despises the chain circle and believes that the alliance chain is not a blockchain), gradually separated into a "coil circle" and became a "three-legged confrontation".
The good news is that under the heavy hammer of supervision, pyramid schemes and frauds under the banner of blockchain are no longer so rampant. The situation of "bad money driving out good money" is improving, and projects that work hard are getting more attention.
The reason why I write here is that I want to say that MLM should be the cancer that should be abandoned. The public chain and the alliance chain are just different routes, and there are not a few deep cultivators, both of which are important exploration directions.
The blockchain is still in its infancy, and it is not easy to explore the landing scenarios: some people regard it as a technology to improve efficiency and transform it into an alliance chain; some people believe that the future is the value Internet web 3, and that the public chain replacing the Internet is the real area blockchain.
The two are moving towards integration, and they are more likely to complement each other in the future, and together become the standard configuration of the value Internet.
Reference reading:
Reference reading:
The Spring and Autumn Era of the Mining Industry: Bit Powerful Ranks, New Coins Fight Recklessly
ICO Magic Prequel: Currency Circle, Brother Circle, Interest Circle
Odaily Biography | Becoming Satoshi Nakamoto
Wanxiang Blockchain Du Yu: The most important thing about blockchain in 2017 is its implementation
Blockchain is the next outlet? But not all pigs can fly
[Access Research] From One to N, Nuggets Blocks——Blockchain Industry Research Report
"2008-2018 Global Bitcoin Development Research Report" | Odaily Research Institute released
The New Yorker: The upsurge, rise and fall of blockchain in the eyes of encryption experts
