Source: Interface Author: Lin Teng
Someone once compared Li Xiaolai to Schrödinger's liar, because you can't know his true side of good and evil until the conclusion of the blockchain world comes. But now, the answer to this mystery may never be revealed, because Li Xiaolai has decided to change careers.
At 1:30 in the morning on September 30th, Li Xiaolai suddenly posted this Weibo :
From now on, Li Xiaolai will not invest in any projects (whether it is blockchain or not, whether it is early or not). Therefore, if you see Li Xiaolai being on the platform again (he has been on numerous platforms for a long time before, saying 99% is absolutely not too much in fact), just ignore it. I was going to spend a couple of years seriously switching careers. As for what to do next, I have no idea. Another: Nonsense, I am still optimistic about the blockchain for a long time.
The currency circle, which had fallen to the bottom, made waves the moment it saw this news.
Some netizens tried to persuade: "Mr. Xiaolai can't leave. You still have N funds and more than 20 projects that you actually control."
Wu Xiaobo, who is far outside the currency circle, also posted an article saying: "Just like that, the vigorous blockchain expert suddenly turned around and left, leaving behind a lot of feathers."
The difference is that just a few days ago, Wu Jihan, the overlord of mining machines in the currency circle, officially submitted the prospectus in Hong Kong. Li Lin of the Huobi Exchange spent huge sums of money to purchase the shell resources of listed companies in Hong Kong, while Li Xiaolai, who is also at the top of the blockchain food chain, took a completely different path—retreat.
Why did Li Xiaolai run away?
untimely intruder
The last time I saw Li Xiaolai was three months ago. As soon as he saw me at that time, he took out three anti-recording and tapping devices from his trouser pocket, snapped them, and threw them on the table. "My friends gave them to me these days, but I really don't want to live such a life." Li Xiaolai said helplessly.
That meeting, two weeks had passed since the recording leaked at the time. In the restaurant of a five-star hotel in Beijing, there sat a man with silver hair and a vicissitudes of life, but there was a bit of ruthlessness in his eyes. If it weren't for the guidance of Li Xiaolai's assistant, it would still be difficult to connect him with the "richest man in the currency circle" with a bit of nouveau riche color in my mind who had a few words in the recording, holding six-figure bitcoins in his hand.
The recording incident at that time plunged this man into a whirlpool of public opinion. In the recording, phrases such as "don't blindly believe in value investing" and "selling air coins" appear repeatedly, mixed with swear words in the Northeast accent. Li Xiaolai is considered to be a banker behind the scenes, using the traffic accumulated by his previous selling methodologies to harvest leeks.
In a bull market, he is a godfather and a prophet; in a bear market, he is a liar and a banker who cuts leeks.
Many people believe that they entered the currency circle under the guidance of Li Xiaolai, but many projects recommended by Li Xiaolai suffered serious losses, so they concluded that Li Xiaolai made troubles and made money that should not be earned.
However, Li Xiaolai believes that there may be market makers and leeks in the traditional stock market, but this is very difficult in the currency circle, because transactions in the currency circle are traded 24 hours a day. There are more than 10,000 trading platforms in the world, and a currency is available on multiple trading platforms, so it is too difficult to be a banker.
"I also make mistakes. No one makes a sound during the bull market, but when it comes to the bear market, they start cursing." Li Xiao said.
"How do I prove that I also lost money in a bear market? Do I have to disclose all addresses? I don't think it is necessary to do this. Is it related to whether I voted for a project or not? Besides, no one can achieve a 100% investment success rate, and I sometimes make mistakes."
After being besieged, Li Xiaolai fell into the predicament of self-certification for a long time. You can call his logic rational, but judging from the current negative sentiment of investors, it can also be regarded as a kind of sophistry. The richest man in the currency circle is both good and evil. His true and false good and evil cannot be distinguished.
On the day we met, after a few simple greetings, Li Xiaolai played with the menthol cigarette in his hand and tried to light it, but after looking around for no one smoking, he stuffed it back into the cigarette case.
"How the hell can you say that I cut leeks." Just when I thought he looked quite gentle, Li Xiaolai opened his mouth and cursed again.
The upsurge of studying abroad more than ten years ago allowed him to enjoy the first class leap. Invited and introduced by Luo Yonghao, the man from Northeast China, he came to New Oriental , where famous teachers were recruited with high salaries, to teach English. With the highest course rating in the school and an annual salary of 600,000 yuan after tax, "Yu Minhong greets me first when he sees me" and "opens QQ every day after class to read the compliments written by students", Li Xiaolai has a smooth life, and he can scold people who are unhappy.
But after the arrival of the blockchain era, he felt that he was on a higher-speed train. In addition to his fame, his rapidly growing wealth and social status allowed him to jump several levels. When he pointed at the people in the circle with his teeth and claws, scolded non-stop, and rebelliously expressed his thoughts at will, you can also feel that maybe he himself is still learning how to find his true position.
New Oriental famous teacher, ruffian, best-selling author, columnist, richest man in the currency circle, too many labels that seem to be completely irrelevant have been slapped on him. When you want to define this person, his words and behavior make it impossible to define immediately. This is my most intuitive feeling about him.
"I don't have any character design." Li Xiao said, "I have to restrain myself, and I have to try my best to adapt to the current world."
half a year of despair
In the first half of the year when he announced that he would leave the currency circle, Li Xiaolai struggled to prove that he was not a liar. This half year was also the half year when he fell from the altar.
He first broke up with many partners. For example, Yi Lihua, former partner of Coin Capital, Zheng Yiting, a well-known Taiwanese currency circle who developed ico.info and otcbtc, Wu Gang, the founder of Bixin, and the core operation team of its subsidiary exchange BigOne.
And the exchange project he devoted himself to is also approaching collapse. The popularity of Fcoin in June this year gave Li Xiaolai new inspiration. The former head of BigOne said that despite the objections of his partner Lao Mao and BigOne technical director Qiu Liang, Li Xiaolai ordered the BigOne team to quickly launch the transaction mining mechanism and provide more aggressive rebates than Fcoin.
With the end of the rebate and the end of the ICO, the price of the platform currency often encounters people's panic selling and falls sharply. After more than a month of prosperity, Fcoin has fallen into an endless loop of frequent bailouts with little effect. The price of ONE in the BigOne transaction also fell by 99% from the high point, and retail investors once again lost everything.
In July 2018, the 45-minute recording leaked, and the situation officially expanded. The complicated and confusing disputes that belonged only to the currency circle suddenly rose to the height of public opinion. Li Xiaolai began to be criticized under the spotlight, and the only topic of debate was whether Li Xiaolai had cut leeks.
At this time, the currency price also entered the bottom. On January 7 this year, the unit price of Bitcoin was US$17,389, and then fell all the way. In August, the unit price was US$6,297, a drop of as much as 64% in more than half a year.
Not only that, but other well-known digital currencies such as Ethereum and Ripple have all experienced sharp declines. Many air coins or unknown digital currencies fell by more than 90%, and even became dead coins directly.
In September of this year, Coin Capital, once known as the "Sequoia Capital" of the blockchain, suddenly terminated all ongoing project investments on hand. Laomao, a partner of Coin Capital, quietly registered and established a new investment institution in Hainan, and transferred some of the invested companies that have a weak relationship with the currency issuance to this institution.
What Lao Mao said to the project side is: the previous attempts at professional investment management were not successful. The Bit Fund, established in 2014, found that its performance did not outperform Bitcoin when it was liquidated.
At the same time, Yang Nan, head of Coin Capital’s RMB business, resigned in a low-key manner, and Eric, a partner of Coin Capital’s US dollar fund (with a scale of 20 million US dollars), which was just established in July, co-founded a new fund Primitive Ventures with Dovey Wan, a well-known female investor of Danhua Capital, in less than two months.
Today, Coin Capital's official website inblockchain.com has removed all information, leaving only one picture.
After the recording incident, Li Xiaolai, who was physically and mentally exhausted, hid in the small building and began a long life journey to prove his innocence. This teacher, who had never said the word "leek" before, was determined to give a clear definition to this word that already has a broad consensus. It took him two weeks to quickly write a book called "Self-Cultivation of Leek".
According to the clues provided by various public information, based on the state of the market at its peak, Li Xiaolai's net worth was once as high as 800 billion yuan, but now he announced his departure in a lonely manner.
An investor in the blockchain industry commented: "Although Li Xiaolai has been ranked among the most successful investors in human history from the perspective of achievements, he is still Mr. Li who can only accumulate fans, raise funds, and hoard coins. As an industry leader, he and his investment institutions have not shown their due level in the face of the long bear market."
Li Xiao said that it was not that he recruited gangsters, but that he accidentally rushed into a new world, and then he did a lot of things that used his past habits instead of following the rules of the new world. He could only blame himself.
"When I am a fool, I have to admit it," he wrote on Weibo.
nuggets alone
Most of the time in the past, Li Xiaolai was a smart person.
Li Xiaolai's enlightenment on money came from high school. In a physics class at that time, the teacher talked about a theory of "escape velocity", which mentioned that "only when a spacecraft reaches a certain speed can it fly away from the earth, the Milky Way and the solar system."
He suddenly had an idea that the speed of making money must also be fast, and making money slowly is a sin.
In 1994, Li Xiaolai, a junior, saw in the newspaper that a wholesale market near the Changchun Railway Station was attracting business. He recommended himself to the manager at the time and went back to his hometown to help them attract business. The reward was a 10% commission.
Then Li Xiaolai returned to his hometown, borrowed money to advertise in local newspapers, sold more than 200,000 yuan in a week, and took more than 20,000 yuan in commission in a short period of time. But he didn't ask for cash. Instead, he exchanged the proceeds for a small counter with a good location, partnered with others to start a wholesale business, and soon made hundreds of thousands more.
That was his first pot of gold.
Later, one incident completely aroused Li Xiaolai's extreme desire for wealth. In 1997, when his father fell ill, Li Xiaolai sold the counters, stalls and company in Shenyang Sanhao Street, and returned to his hometown of Yanji. In order to pay for medical expenses, the millions of savings accumulated in Shenyang quickly returned to zero.
In order to support his father's high medical expenses, he thought of other ways to make money. He started a computer company and an Internet cafe, but he was scammed and his savings returned to zero.
The medical expenses that could not be filled, and the successive failures in business startups corrected Li Xiaolai's way of making money. He felt that instead of investing a lot of money in business, it is better to find a place to get a stable and higher income, so Luo Yonghao introduced New Oriental.
During this period, Li Xiaolai saw too many people who had to go home and wait to die because they had no money for treatment after they got sick. Just like a sentence in "I'm Not the God of Medicine", there is only one disease in this world, the disease of poverty.
Even with New Oriental's high after-tax salary of 600,000 yuan, Li Xiaolai and his wife live frugally for a whole year, and life is still very difficult. His father became ill seven years ago, and all the money he earned was used to fill this bottomless hole. In order to keep his father, he "takes money to fight for his life" every day.
In a New Year's Eve review, Li Xiaolai recalled the state at that time: it was too difficult. "At that time, my mother called to inform my father that he was ill. Then I hung up the phone and went back to telling jokes with the students. They didn't know what was going on in my head."
Lectures and books, he thought of various ways to make use of existing resources. In 2011, Li Xiaolai used the money from New Oriental’s US stock account to start buying bitcoins. The first batch spent a total of 13,100 US dollars and bought the first batch of 2,100 coins. Later, he continued to build positions in the subsequent bear market.
The wait time for this investment is long. Until December 2017, the price of Bitcoin reached a record high of 20,000 US dollars. According to Li Xiaolai's six-figure bitcoin number, Li Xiaolai's Bitcoin assets at that time were close to 2 billion US dollars.
But the appreciation of these assets did not change the fact that the person Li Xiaolai wanted to keep left him. In 2005, his father passed away, and Li Xiaolai smoked Changbai Mountain all night. Wealth has returned to zero many times, no matter how anxious you are to make money, no amount of money can save your health and loved ones. This makes Li Xiaolai's understanding of wealth and money much deeper and heavier than his peers.
"Filial piety is not enough, filial piety also requires strength."
challenger of the order
In the impression of his friends, Li Xiaolai often behaves differently from ordinary people.
Technology blogger Huo Ju's deepest impression on Li Xiaolai was the first time he met Li Xiaolai for dinner. For a total of 4 people, Li Xiaolai ordered 8 servings of dried tofu and 4 dishes of twice-cooked pork. Li Xiaolai explained, since this is delicious, why not order more?
He Caitou, who was acquainted with Li Xiaolai, told a joke. Li Xiaolai once encountered Pengci while driving, and the other party kept cursing after getting out of the car, but Li Xiaolai closed the car window and said nothing, causing the other party to break down emotionally and almost despair. Finally, Li Xiaolai rolled down the car window, stared at the other party and said:
"Brother, think about it carefully. Did I say a word in this half hour? Did I mention the word 'money' to you? Did I ask you to pay for it? It's you jumping and jumping, why don't you think about it? You still have 5 fucking minutes, only 5 minutes, go back and fuck it up before you come back and talk to me! Remember, you only have this one chance, and then fuck you and tell me. Get out!" Finally, the other party fled in fear.
Li Xiaolai is bloodthirsty to make money, but rarely spends extravagantly. He said that his spending power is not strong, and the money he can spend in a year is very little. At that time, his father was sick and hospitalized, and he and his wife spent about 150,000 yuan a year, and the rest of the money was sent to the hospital. "This process took seven years, so the consumption concept can't be changed now."
Xu Xiaoping wanted to transform Li Xiaolai, so he rented a house downstairs for Li Xiaolai to live in, and bought an expensive crystal cup for Li Xiaolai. "But in the end Xu Xiaoping gave up, because he felt that I was down to the bone." Li Xiao said.
Not long ago, Li Xiaolai drove a Nissan to meet his friends, and was ridiculed by his friends for driving a broken car for being rich, and questioned him as a liar.
In a fit of anger, Li Xiaolai took his wife to the 4S shop and bought two Porsches. "If I was in my 20s, I still felt the pleasure of buying, but now I don't think it's interesting. Now I bought those two Porsches because I had to buy them in response to people's doubts about my wealth." Li Xiao said.
In Li Xiaolai's heart, there is a set of strict formulas that calculate the efficiency of time. This man who is friends with time is always calculating with time in his life, how to do it to achieve the highest efficiency, whether it is ordering food, negotiating with people, let alone investing.
A blockchain programmer who had in-depth contact with Li Xiaolai said that Li Xiaolai is the most efficient in doing things and making money. As long as it is not illegal, he tends to redefine everything.
He emphasized the use of wealth to recreate wealth. In the book "The Road to Wealth and Freedom" published not long ago, Li Xiaolai repeatedly mentioned the concept of "compound interest". He believes that "compound interest" is the core element of wealth growth. (Compound interest refers to the interest calculation method in which, in addition to the interest generated on the principal, in the next interest calculation cycle, the interest generated in the previous interest calculation cycles is also calculated for a fund.)
In the subsequent investment in the blockchain industry, most of the time, Li Xiaolai did not directly invest in RMB, but invested in Bitcoin. He believed that Bitcoin could nourish more projects with wealth growth value.
For another example, Li Xiaolai participated in the construction of the exchange, and let the projects he invested land on the exchange he invested in. It can be said that he participated in the entire industry investment in this market. If this is unimaginable in the traditional securities market, it is also a violation of regulations. But Li Xiaolai didn't take it seriously.
Li Xiao said that the current exchanges are in a mess. He can do more high-quality exchanges and select high-quality projects than others. As long as the efficiency of blockchain applications can be improved, he will do it.
There are no rules, no boundaries, and no definitions. Just like he was born recklessly, he was born in an irregular army, but he became the richest man in the currency circle by mistake.
learn to get rich
At the age of 40, Li Xiaolai picked up the guitar again.
This instrument belongs to young people, but he picked it up again in middle age, and just recently, he has been able to play the very difficult Romance Petit. "Every time you play a tune, your hand changes, and some moves you have never even tried before."
Li Xiao said that his biggest hobby now is studying. This sounds a little hypocritical, but he opened a personal public account on WeChat called "Learning, Learning, and Learning". In this official account, Li Xiaolai will continue to share learning methods and some personal insights.
From college to now, Li Xiaolai's identity has been replaced repeatedly. Teacher, writer, richest man, there are shadows portrayed by fate behind them, and there are also factors of Li Xiaolai's own struggle, but as he said, these labels, at the beginning, were all determined by the time when they had to sell to satisfy their lives.
Learning may be a way for Li Xiaolai to let himself settle down and reposition himself.
He thinks the Spring Festival is a time-wasting festival. Every Spring Festival, Li Xiaolai would hide somewhere, quietly thinking about things, reading and sleeping. This habit has continued even to this day. The old cat said that Li Xiaolai didn't like to travel, and when the holidays came, Li Xiaolai would open a room for himself in a five-star hotel to read and study.
After each intensive study, he will be born with a new identity. In repeated studies and summaries, it is already difficult for you to equate Li Xiaolai with getting rich overnight, and his wealth can be traced.
In the summer of 2001, before Li Xiaolai came to Beijing to apply for New Oriental, he was preparing for the TOEFL/GRE exam. He rented a house near the National People’s Congress in Shuangyushu.
After passing the exam, he spent less than half the night preparing the lesson. As a result, "the first class was a blast." "The students listened very excitedly and applauded for more than two minutes. Many people slapped the table to express their excitement." After that, Li Xiaolai has always been the teacher with the highest score in New Oriental, and sometimes his score is even much higher than the second place.
The 6 months in 2011 were 6 months when his fate changed. Coincidentally, this is also related to a retreat study. During that time, he was looking for opportunities to make a fortune on Google every day. On a website, Li Xiaolai found that three accounts from Zimbabwe were exchanging 4 bitcoins for 1 million Zimbabwean currency.
Less than a week later, in early February 2011, Bitcoin reached 1 Bitcoin = 1 US dollar for the first time in history. Li Xiaolai was very curious about what kind of currency could be equivalent to the U.S. dollar. In the next six months, Li Xiaolai searched for a large number of documents for research, and finally understood the value of bitcoin, so he bought 2100 bitcoins as soon as he made a move.
Perhaps because he discovered that his learning method has an intuitive effect on increasing wealth, Li Xiaolai began to become a person who peddled various methodologies. From "Being Friends with Time" to "The Road to Wealth and Freedom", he never tires of being a good teacher.
Everyone wants to make money, and they want to make quick money. Li Xiaolai's grasp of human nature is very precise. Relying on this, Li Xiaolai, who has both "bronze" attributes in finance and technology, has reached the level of "king" in the currency circle by relying on his strong fan development ability.
So some people commented that Li Xiaolai's core competitiveness is not his financial ability, but his insight into human nature and learning ability. From the way of wealth growth he summed up, he is proficient in readers' desire for wealth, so much so that he will call Li Xiaolai's view of wealth in the currency circle the bible of the currency circle.
It is undeniable that, as a blockchain missionary, Li Xiaolai has indeed injected fresh blood into this industry, and many people interviewed commented that it is Li Xiaolai who made the blockchain popular.
But the problem is that if the model of teachers and students is introduced into the circle of financial investment, the taste may change.
when english becomes finance
After Li Xiaolai entered the blockchain industry, as he said, he used his past habits to practice in this new world.
He invests, initiates projects, opens exchanges, and is a coach, athlete, and referee, and uses various communication channels under his control to constantly wave the flag for the blockchain.
Every time Li Xiaolai speaks publicly, he has his own routine. He advocates the concept that "everything can be done quickly", whether it is "The Road to Wealth", "21-Day Breakthrough of TOFEL Core Vocabulary", or his official account "Learning, Learning and Learning", such as "Reading "The Essence of Business" in ten minutes", is trying to convince everyone that everything can be done quickly, as long as you master his methodology.
Using the education and training program "New University", he made students pay to join the organization, even though the teaching content was completely public. Payment can help students get a certain amount of "candy", which looks like the prototype of issuing coins.
Under the call of Li Xiaolai, a large number of people paid and poured into the community. In 2017, "Xinsheng University" sold membership fees of tens of millions of yuan.
Immediately afterwards, Li Xiaolai set up a "600ETH community". Each person needs to pay an annual fee of 600ETH (equivalent to RMB 6 million at the current price, or RMB 780,000 at the current price), and then participate in the discussion of investment.
After gaining a large number of investment followers, in the second half of 2017, Li Xiaolai braved the wind and promoted a series of ICO projects initiated by himself. They basically have two common characteristics: 1. There is no or only a very simple white paper; 2. EOS is accepted as the token for ICO subscription.
There are two extremes in this investment model. If the bull market in the currency circle continues, Li Xiaolai's personal value will be doubled. But once the bear market comes, the initiators of the investment will fall into the embarrassment of being criticized by the public, because for the vast majority of retail investors, what they recognize is not the project, but Li Xiaolai.
But the problem is that finance is not about learning English. Even if someone has not passed the TOEFL test, Li Xiaolai is still a famous teacher; but in this circle, if someone does not make money, Li Xiaolai is a liar.
The bear market came soon, and the market turned downward in March this year. Most of these investors were deeply trapped. Many people began to wonder whether Li Xiaolai was the cause of trouble and cut everyone's leeks.
"In an industry where idiots can make money, if you don't make money, even idiots are worse than you."
This sentence was repeatedly conveyed by Li Xiaolai to his followers. Unlike Wu Jihan, who uses hard-core technology to achieve wealth accumulation, Li Xiaolai believes that there are shortcuts to everything.
This is contrary to what Li Xiaolai said later: don't speculate, but believe in long-term investment. But he himself is an exquisitely packaged opportunist.
Just as he is advocating the need for independent thinking, he is brainwashing believers to accept his methodology.
Reasonable escape plan
With the expansion of wealth and the rapid rise of social class, Li Xiaolai has not yet figured out how to reposition himself. If you want to prove whether you are a liar or not—what is Li Xiaolai's foundation, maybe it is a question that he himself has not figured out.
Just like the blockchain itself, the debate on the coinless blockchain seems to have no conclusion yet. If the "coin" in the blockchain world loses its value, what is the point of everything that Li Xiaolai has done?
Under the double blow of the government and supervision, more and more practitioners in the technology, Internet and financial industries have joined the blockchain battlefield, and Li Xiaolai's method seems to be less and less effective.
For example, the current mainstream supervision believes that Bitmain is a regular army of the blockchain. They have algorithms, technology, and more chip concepts that meet the trend. And its founders Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan are both finance and technology majors.
"I'm just a straggler in this world, and I don't have leadership skills. I don't know what the next stage of the blockchain world will be like." Li Xiao said.
The Hangzhou Xiong'an Fund Blockchain Industrial Park that Li Xiaolai participated in is also his unknown side of the blockchain. Li Xiaolai once ridiculed the existence of the blockchain industrial park because of the decentralization theory, but soon changed his view that the blockchain industrial park in Hangzhou has great value, and recently, he quit the blockchain industrial park because of the Chen Weixing incident.
"I think that if there is a new center in China in the future, it must be Hangzhou. Xiong'an Fund, with the money in place and people gathered, then this industrial park must be valuable." Li Xiao said.
He proves his role in the blockchain world by repeating, not playing cards according to the routine, and living habits that do not match his own wealth.
is not defined and cannot be defined. In the evaluation of him, some people say that he is a master of fan finance, and some people say that he is a good teacher and helpful friend for confused students, both good and evil.
It can be said that he has no responsibility for announcing his departure from the blockchain, but it seems reasonable to look into the past of this person. He does not belong to this world, but he has become the protagonist of this world.
How can a person prove that he is not a liar? Perhaps Li Xiaolai's own sentence in "Being Friends with Time" can best answer: "Don't waste time to prove yourself".
Without wasting time proving, Li Xiaolai simply ran away.
