It would be hard to tell if this secluded house on Beijing’s fifth ring Road was the working residence of Xue Manzi, once billed as China’s “first day envoy investor”, were it not for the words “Find Mr. Xue” scrawled in chalk on the door.

The end of the chalk letters pointed to the back yard of the house — the entrance was through a thick clump of flowers and plants almost knee high. It seemed to be a lonely place. But in the back yard, it was a different story — there were already seven or eight visitors in the room. There are several traditional fund investors, and 36 Krypton talk, new visitors are also coming to talk about bitcoin, blockchain, ICO (Initial Coin Offering, Initial Coin Offering).

Dressed in a blue T-shirt, Mr. Xue’s ruddy face seemed excited. “What does the old man think, boy? What’s up with this all of a sudden? Old husband chat hair teenager crazy, be sick? Is it goat madness?” He laughed and turned to another investor, Hao Qiu, a partner at Innovation Works. “Don’t you want to ask the same question? Let’s talk.”

On July 6, 2017, Xue posted a photo of himself with Li Xiaolai, the “richest man in Bitcoin”, on his Micro blog. They were sitting at a dinner table, with Xue holding Li’s shoulder and laughing heartily. It read: “@Li Xiaolai, I have finally found the path to wealth and freedom! Ha ha ha!”

Investors are understandably keen on blockchain technology, which is comparable to the Internet in the 1990s. When Xue Manzi met Li Xiaolai, it was like finding the next Netscape gate. This new field is so elementary that there are few real professionals. “I can’t see Xu Xiaoping, I can’t see Lei Jun, nobody there.” “All of a sudden, the whole world orders food, and I’m the only one to choose,” he said. “It’s such a good thing, I have to go.”

The first thing you hit was a giant bubble.

Celebrity Li Xiaolai is being seen as one of the makers of the bubble. As the “richest man in Bitcoin”, Li xiaolai has invested in and participated in several blockchain teams, and is also the initiator of several ICO projects.

What drew attention was Li’s feat: his blockchain project, EOS, raised $185 million on an ICO platform in just five days. On July 2nd the project hit $5 billion in the corresponding secondary market.

Some call it the “$5 billion air.”

Most investors only know that ICOs can grow 30-fold or 50-fold in a short period of time, but they can’t even figure out what the product is — Li xiaolai’s EOS has almost no physical product, and the rules say there is no cap on the amount of money raised, and it’s unclear what the money will be used for.

After its peak, it lost a third of its value over the next ten days-much to the wailing of those caught in the trap. Soon, Li xiaolai was thought to have created a “Ponzi scheme”, and there were even rumors that he was being prosecuted.

So far, you probably don’t know what we’re talking about. It was like a dream.

it doesn’t matter We assume that you know what the currency is roughly, so you can put the ICO analogy traditional IPO in the financial markets, it is some company through the issuance of a way to raise money, but not in RMB and dollar legal tender purchase directly, but only with the virtual currency such as COINS, etheric currency payment, in order to get the project to use certain functions, Or dividends after the project is profitable. After the ICO, these tokens form a secondary market that can be traded with each other, similar to the stock market.

ICO is a seemingly more “democratic” way of investment, only used by enthusiasts in the “coinsphere” community to fund blockchain projects that can’t get VC funding, but in China, it is complicated by more non-professional speculators.

36Kr spoke to nearly 20 people up and down the industry chain to find out how this new thing, touted as the next generation of the Internet, has created a “40x overnight” speculative frenzy, and how “decentralization” has turned into a technological utopia.

Li Xiaolai and Xue Manzi pose for a photo on July 9

From geeks to speculators

Huang Minqiang, founder of blockchain startup Gongxinbao, did not expect to see his business become part of the mythology of ICOs.

On June 15, huang minqiang came to his office on the morning of the official listing of public trust shares. It was the first day of the launch of GXB, gongxinbao’s token. He turned on his computer and saw the opening price of public trust shares: 31 yuan.

That’s about 40 times its ipo price three months ago.

As an early blockchain entrepreneur who started mixing coins in 2012, Huang Minqiang has witnessed the whole process of this concept from cold to hot. Huang minqiang started his business because he saw the problem of easy leakage and illegal sale of user data in financial credit investigation. The decentralized blockchain technology and the difficulty in forging records could solve the problem, so he quit his job and started his business with his friends. However, he encountered many difficulties in the early stage.

Most troubling is the difficulty of getting government backing or venture capital. At the time, little was known about blockchain — most people in the coin-world still regarded it as “the basic technology that makes Bitcoin happen”, while people outside the coin-world, including senior investors, had no idea what blockchain was. It was also difficult to find a suitable engineer, and Huang came to the conclusion that “there are no more than 20 people in China who can independently manage a blockchain project.”

Huang received support from the community during his difficult times. In March, he did an ICO in the community and received 2,451 Bitcoins, which helped the company.

Huang Minqiang and many founders of blockchain enterprises often refer to the “community”, including many senior people in the early coin circle, chain circle and security circle. The community is a group of idealistic geeks who believe in blockchain technology and its ability to transform society. More than professional investors, community-invested Bitcoins represent a kind of human connection: they are willing to take the time to grow with the project, while also providing technical support to help early projects break through technical, protocol, and application barriers.

The presence of community is also a constraint. In addition to the agreed issuance of tokens, ICO issuers and buyers do not have legal responsibilities and obligations, but because the personnel are familiar with each other, so to “cherish their feathers”, otherwise they will “mix not go on”. Therefore, Huang Minqiang also increased the dividend in the public trust shares to return the supporters of the coin circle.

At this time, ICO is still in the early stage, both the participation of the crowd and the fundraising is far from the same as the later stage. However, over the course of the next three months, a new community of 1 million people began to form outside the core community of less than 100,000 people, surrounded by speculation and community, and the early geek culture and community sense was gradually diluted in the hands of new players.

Gongxinbao is regarded as a serious enterprise in the currency circle. But the problem is that quite a few people know it’s not because of technology and applications — blockchain and data protection are too difficult to understand — but the 30 to 50-fold increase in wealth is well understood.

Gongxinbao trend chart, the opening price is nearly 40 times its ICO price

Bull market and innovation

“You can tell him (Xue Manzi) for me that when you circle the money, you should circle it better. Don’t cut it too quickly, and all the retail investors will be rounded up.” That 36 krypton interviewed Xue Manzi, retail investor Alan said so.

As a private equity fund manager, Alan regularly attends financial forums and also dables in stock trading with blockchain concepts. In a forum, he heard tao Rongqi, head of Xiaoyi, say “ICO” for the first time. “Isn’t this like an IPO?” Alan felt there was “money to be made” from it.

Alan bought ant’s tokens, which, on average, cost about 70 cents each. After two months, the small ant coin entered several trading platforms and began to trade. When it reached about one yuan, it traded sideways for a long time.

Still, he was quite content. He thinks: this is a long-term investment, can protect the capital, a little rise is enough.

As the years passed, he almost forgot the existence of the asset. It was not until near April, from moments and the Internet, that he noticed that the long-silent little ant was starting to work. It grew slowly from late March to April. “You reach a tipping point, and all of a sudden it explodes.”

Between April 21 and May 3, the price of the ant coin rose from 1.21 yuan to 3.69 yuan — a threefold increase in 10 days.

As if the ice of early spring had cracked and started to melt, capital and investors piled into ICOs. In March, another project “Quantum chain” legend is about to enter the secondary market, the crowdfunding price is less than 3 yuan; In April, the price of private transactions in the QQ group was raised to 10 yuan. The listing ended up close to 60 yuan — 20 times the initial price. There’s a legend in the community that someone went to sleep and woke up financially free.

Alan later felt that what was behind the craze was the same as the bull market and “making new” in stocks: investors who found themselves missing the lows were turning to the next round of ICOs. In April, there were not many ICO projects that could be launched on formal platforms, and this relative shortage made ICO projects all the more attractive.

According to the REQUIREMENTS of the ICO, ordinary investors cannot directly participate in the exchange of tokens with RMB, but instead use Ethereum and Bitcoin. As a result, newly minted investors started buying up Ethereum and Bitcoin, driving up already rising prices.

Under the craze, ICO fundraising time was shortened from half an hour to one second. In May, the gold chain, which promised to “cooperate with gold storage institutions around the world to confirm the rights of each gram of gold by real name”, started an ICO and was robbed within half an hour on a weekday afternoon. After June, icOs on Binjiu and other platforms are snapped up in minutes or seconds. The Singapore project SNT, which claimed to be the “wechat on Ethereum”, died a second after it was launched due to too many people flooding in.

To “respond to overwhelming demand,” SNT temporarily announced a tenfold increase in its crowdfunding goals. Ten hours later, the ICO closed and the Status team, the founders of SNT, raised the equivalent of 800 million RMB worth of Ethereum — already more than the total investment received by all tech finance companies in Singapore in 2016.

“Everyone was grabbing.” Alan recalls that in various circles, those who had won and those who had not, would speak in the group, creating psychological pressure on those who were holding the cash. Seems to have cash in hand from the moment we snagged the ICO. “People may feel that no matter what it is, no matter what project it is, no matter what currency it has, it is right to grab it first.”

On June 19, xiaoyi reached the highest increase of 95.14%, and the highest price reached 72 yuan, 100 times that of the ICO.

Amid the euphoria, Alan noticed something that no one else noticed: In May, people were still paying attention to what the white paper said, and starting in June, as more and more people poured in, the white paper became less important. When the crowd gradually increased, except for the mainstream currency, some currency prices did not meet people’s expectations, began to stagnate or even decline.

As a long-term currency investors, Alan judgment: this is the makers feel the top has arrived, in the slow shipment and retreat signal.

But most people in the market are not paying attention to these signals or even taking seriously the occasional item break that has occurred. Quantum chain, public currency, small ant coin these three kinds of money up more than 30 times, at this time has been held on the altar, become the representative of ICO in the hearts of retail investors.

Small ant coin trend chart: from May 19 to June 19, the price increase is 20 times, from the ICO price, nearly 100 times

Listing, stock exchange and cessation of trading

Getting on trading platforms is a key leap in the run-up to ICO prices. They call this a “listing” and the trading platform a “secondary market” and treat it like a real stock market.

When Xiaoyi, Gongxinbao and Quantum chain began to take off, it brought unimaginable numbers of users, power and trouble to bijiu, which opened just three months ago. Bitcoin.com and other mainstream coin platforms, in addition to holding the right to publish ICO projects, more importantly, also hold the right to whether ICO tokens can be traded.

At the same time with the huge trading volume, is the coin long net received more and more ICO white paper. Entrepreneurs of all kinds approached him through various channels, some promising certain tokens, others bringing millions of dollars in cash to the door, suggesting that as soon as the ICO went public, “the money will go directly to you.”

Liu Jingchao, CEO of Binjiu, sees three to five ICO white papers a day — that’s about the total number of ICO projects that binjiu launched a month ago. It covered a wide range of industries: from finance and security, where traditional blockchain is involved, to entertainment, culture, retail, social, and more, including some he had never heard of.

One day, a car wash shop owner came to Liu, hoping to “chain”. The reason is that, through blockchain technology, it is possible to trace the origin of automotive beauty accessories and help car owners know which beauty accessories they use.

Liu jingchao was surprised. “If you are a car manufacturer, the country has made relevant regulations. If you are a nationwide chain 4S shop, it is understandable that you do information management. But if you are just a separate car wash shop, what is the meaning of doing this? What are you doing with the chain? It’s completely unrelated to blockchain.”

Zhang Lu, blockchain investor of Xiaolai Fund, also joined blockchain investment at this moment, and found that most of the projects were beyond her imagination, “there are love and marriage, there are social, there are plants.” She even found a “blockchain booty call” project that “keeps track of who you date, presumably in case you get sick or something, in case you have a bad record.” Later in the crash, the project’s official website closed, “should be running away.”

Even after passing the first round of screening and successfully conducting an ICO, it does not mean that the token can be listed. “Which currency” often becomes a new focus of controversy. And the rise of the new token has become the standard for retail investors to evaluate the trading platform.

ICO project Marlego coin publicity page, the project claimed that they have ICO success

After a currency, the group inside began to talk in succession. Liu Jingchao went to see, found that many spearheads are aimed at him. “Calling me trash, calling our platform trash, this team trash.” The reason is “it’s only tripled, it’s only tripled.” Liu Jingchao depressed hair circle of friends. “You did it in less than a month. What could support a 30-fold, 50-fold return on your investment? Where do you get the confidence?”

Everyone seems to be entering the market, and everyone takes money for granted.

In the retail for a few ICO token incredible rise intoxicated, Liu Jingchao is to see: retail fantasy with reality distance is growing, as the increase in currency circulation, the rise and fall of the currency price is also more and more polarized.

Xue Manzi saw a round of ICO projects after the judgment is: if in accordance with the VC standard requirements, most ICO projects can not pass the standard, even can not reach the door, in technology, market and so on have defects; The entrepreneurs were simple and naive, and mixed in with a lot of speculators looking to make 10, 20, 30 times profits.

Compared with the traditional angel round to see the team to see demo, to A, B, C round to see the data, look at the income, look at the profits of venture capital, ICO this only A “white paper” fundraising model, the judgment is less and less, and the pie and empty hands set A white Wolf operation space is huge.

“At present, 90% of icOs are not reliable, many people are in essence to make money, quickly to their own ICO, and then quickly get a sum of money. 90% of them only care about 5 times, 10 times, or 20 times after listing, and they don’t care about technology. It’s now like a new era of crowdfunding, where he buys with people who are famous.” Xue Manzi said.

Once prices fall, the danger arises. Chinese investors lost money, and the “national team” to save the market, when the coin circle retail investors lost money, what will they do?

This virtual market, which resembles a stock exchange, is fragile: no rulemakers, no SEC, no SEC, no penalties. The team can run or break at any time, but the trading platform is directly in the face of an irrational horde of retail investors.

Mr. Liu began to realize that he was playing a dangerous game. He consulted the legal department, once ICO problems, what should be done?

Binjiu’s role at this point is just like that of nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange, except that it is just one of a dozen or so larger exchanges. Mr Liu has modelled his measures on regular exchanges by adding new risk warnings and asking retail investors to fill out questionnaires to gauge their risk tolerance.

But in the heat of June, things are rolling like wheels. The pressure comes not only from retail investors but also from particularly famous people inside and outside the industry pushing for all kinds of projects. “I can’t afford to offend anyone,” Liu said. After much deliberation, he made the seemingly absurd decision to suspend the launch of ICO projects until the market calms down.

Not surprisingly, Liu’s decision was opposed by most in the company: as a trading platform, this bull market is almost the best chance to gain users and grow profits. Liu Jingchao held three meetings inside the company, but still could not reach an agreement. Liu jingchao tried to persuade the rest of the people, giving them two ways, “First, continue to do, this may be everyone will die. We might be doing the industry a service if we bring it up now.”

At 11:30 p.m. on June 26, after a long discussion, everyone in the conference room finally reached an agreement. Agreed with Liu Jingchao’s decision to suspend ICO online. After making his decision, Mr Liu asked the site’s operators to draft a notice and publish it immediately in the wee hours of the morning.

After the announcement, Liu’s tense heart finally relaxed: “All those who agreed that night may come back tomorrow and say it’s not a good thing to do. When I give notice, it can’t be changed.”

Liu’s premonition soon came true. A few days later, the rally in the red-hot ICO market came to a screeching halt. This time, the anger of many investors is not directed at ICOs and trading platforms, but at one ICO project: EOS, and its investor: Li Xiaolai.

Quantum chain trend, June high price for ICO price 40 times

Big V and “$5 billion air”

In July, xue savages, after sending the photo with smile li to weibo, this tweet received more than 300 people, more than half of them with anger and attacks: was warned, “don’t and lee smile to collaboration”, replies “joint lee smile to such people to the Chinese own money pit”, some people ridicule two people “to develop new ‘lee pretty currency’ paralysis (you)”.

As the most famous person in the coin circle, known as the “richest bitcoin” Li Xiaolai, has a huge appeal. This also makes his wind rating the most polarizing.

On the third day of Li xiaolai’s EOS listing, Dahu, an investor, dumped all his EOS tokens, saying he had escaped the biggest disaster since entering the ICO circle.

“EOS”, endorsed by Li Xiaolai, set a new record in the ICO market in July — the opening price was only 5.87 yuan, which rose fivefold to 30 yuan two days later. At that time several star currency, quantum chain, gongxinbao, small ant coin began to dive. Everyone in the group started talking about this rising star, and even their previous skepticism of EOS had been silenced for a few days.

However, this aroused the suspicion of Da Hu, who, as a veteran investor in Bitcoin, was sensitive to the ups and downs that deviated from the value. Without thinking long, he made a choice and shipped at 30 yuan.

The big Tiger was proved right: EOS fell for more than 10 days from July 4 to July 16. EOS is less than a third of the peak price. Although the price was still higher than the original value of the ICO, the vast majority of retail investors bought EOS at a high and rapidly rising price, so most of them lost a lot of money and were cut in half.

EOS prices, after a six-fold jump in two days, began to dive

EOS, which is already controversial, has its most famous investor, Li Xiaolai, who is always smiling in propaganda pictures and guiding people to the path of wealth and freedom.

The full name of EOS is “EOS Operating System”, or THE EOS Blockchain Operating System. Developed by Hong Kong company Block.one. According to EOS, it provides basic services such as database, account licensing, scheduling, authentication and Internet application communication, making it easy for other blockchain application developers to develop on top of its services and increase efficiency. Compared to other projects in June, its white paper and content logic are very clear, and its developer is BM, the founder of BitStock and a well-known blockchain technology engineer.

But for most outside investors, these advantages are outweighed by the sheer simplicity of “Li Xiaolai”. Not only was he a core member of Block.one, he also traded EOS on his own investment platform yunbi, which led many to equate EOS with “Li Xiaolai’s coin”.

However, when Li xiaolai announced EOS’s unique ICO model, it attracted a lot of controversy: First, it no longer has a funding target like traditional ICOs, EOS’s crowdfunding has no target and lasts for a whole year, with the primary ICO and secondary transaction taking place simultaneously. Second, daily ICOs are no longer traditional ones where users exchange at a fixed exchange rate, but a set number of tokens are issued each day to be shared equally among all participating users. Finally, EOS can’t use Bitcoin, only Ether.

Some argue that this model opens up a huge capital black hole: it means that every day a steady stream of Ether will be pumped into EOS. Others argue that for EOS, which has almost no physical product, there is no cap on how much money it can raise, and the use of the money raised, even for tokens, is unclear, putting investors’ money at risk.

Despite all the skepticism, EOS raised $185 million in just five days. But this is said to be only 20% of all EOS. After entering the secondary market, EOS’s overall market value on July 2nd reached a mind-bogglingly high of nearly $5 billion in dollar terms. Some call it “$5 billion worth of air.”

After the big drop, the disenchanted retail investors began to rebound. There are more and more voices of “circle money”. Some people link the EOS crash with the Ethereum crash on June 27 (which is also considered to be the trigger of the whole currency market crash), and there is a saying: Li Xiaolai absorbed a large amount of Ethereum through THE ICO of EOS, and sold a large amount of cash on June 27, resulting in the Ethereum crash. Through the cloud coin network it invests in, the secondary market price of EOS is artificially raised, so that people can buy ether back with high price again. Finally, while selling EOS again and arbitrage again, the price of EOS was depressed, paving the way for the redemption of tokens or the announcement of project failure in the future.

The claim accused Li of “successfully robbing everyone” through a “three-for-one” scheme in the capital markets. Against this background, angry netizens began to besiege Li xiaolai. However, Li did not give up, and on July 10, he announced another even more controversial ICO project: Press.One.

Press.one, another of Li’s projects, is described as “a content distribution public chain based on the EOS blockchain infrastructure, where people can create a wide variety of decentralized content-based applications”. A notice on PressOne’s website says 22 billion tokens will be sold, of which 10 billion PRS will be crowdfunded and worth $200 million.

Fewer people understand what Press. One is than EOS. The reason is that Press.One doesn’t have a white paper. The reason given by the project side was “not to provide that, and even if it did, few people would understand it, even few people would read it.”

This slightly arrogant remark added fuel to the already unfavorable public opinion of Li Xiaolai. This prompted 73 responses on Zhihu, with opponents getting more likes. One user sneered, “Now circle money has changed from change to change the code to send a white paper to fry air, upgrade to, white paper has not yet, you love to pay taxes on taxes!”

On Weibo and Babbitt’s ICO forum, someone found a “Reward Method for People in Beijing to report Suspected illegal fund-raising clues”, asking people to illegal fund-raising, and claimed that “tens of thousands of victims have reported Li Xiaolai illegal fund-raising to the Cyberspace Administration office, financial services office and other government departments under their real names”; Someone posted evidence of Li’s alleged immigration procedures; Some even made pictures similar to the Ping An Beijing police alert to spread the news that Li Xiaolai was arrested.

“Li xiaolai broke the rule of the coin circle that a white paper is a must for every project. No matter how well it’s done, or how badly it might be done. You can treat me like an idiot, but you won’t give me anything. How can you? Are you big V?” Great tiger said.

Zhang Lu, an investor in charge of blockchain at Xiaolai Fund, did not explain why there was no white paper, but explained to 36kr that EOS and Pressone are likely to bring substantial returns to investors.

According to some netizens who bought Press, some of the company’s money was invested in rare metals and other areas rather than in project development.

Zhang lu did not disclose the specific investment direction of Pressone, but said that Pressone’s funds will be used in accordance with the ICO instructions, and some of them will be invested in the BLOCKCHAIN project based on PRS public chain. But when there is no need for capital spending, not to use raise Pressone tokens, such as investors bought BTC, eth, eos three tokens, index, tokens of appreciation for investors is more favorable, can reduce the risk of investors, project funding will be more sufficient to improve the probability of the success of the project.

Although they sold their EOS in advance, Big Tiger still understood the people who forwarded the information. In 2013, he experienced a similar scene: In the summer, bitcoin once rose to 8,000 yuan, then plummeted after the government introduced the policy, hitting a low of less than 900 yuan.

He later wrote about his experience on his wechat account, “I was so frustrated, I felt low in spirit, but I had no strength to fight. I could only watch him fall, helpless.” He finally ran out of patience and sold all of his bitcoins at a loss in 2015.

“If you lose money, psychologically, it needs to find a reason, so it has to vent. When Li Xiaolai has such a problem, people will attribute it to him. He just came out and became the target.”

Another investor summed it up this way of 36 kr: “There is a sense of insecurity behind it. What insecurity? Because I don’t know where your money goes, I don’t know what you do with it, or I don’t know what I can do about it, and the laws of the country don’t protect it at all. What else can I do but scold you or trust you completely?”

In mid-July, such blogs were regularly reposted

Big and leek, foam and the future

However, after August, as bitcoin prices recovered, the ICO market began to recover again.

At the beginning, angry, accusing Li Xiaolai of “illegal fundraising”, ICO is a “Ponzi scheme”, the voice of the state investigation is still sporadic, but as the mainstream ICO coin price rises again, new ICO projects on the platform. Complaints were replaced by a new frenzy.

Zhou Yaobo, a partner at trading platform Gravitational Wave, believes that despite repeated bubbles and busts, the mentality of speculators has not matured with one bubble after another.

The root of the problem is the lack of investment demand and financial intelligence education. For the inflation rate of 6.5%, the bank is not a good choice, the stock market is depressed, the real estate purchase limit, futures, foreign exchange speculation and other professional investment means often have qualification requirements for investors. And the once prosperous postage card and other speculative means, and encounter policy restrictions, in this case, ICO 20-30 times the myth looks very attractive.

There is no limit, no T +0 policy, no landing products, technology core enough “high-tech”, and difficult to the ordinary people, ICO is a “democratic” financing means, but also because of these reasons, but also the current China’s effective speculative tools.

Dahu has a wechat group of 400 people, a small circle of 200 people, and a wechat public account named “mere blockchain”. He found that in most groups, ordinary retail investors are the majority, and the longer the bull market, the more new ordinary retail investors. Most of these ordinary retail investors do not understand blockchain at all, and do not even want to read the white paper, but they believe in the information obtained from the secret circle or wechat group, and tend to follow the crowd in their investment views, especially celebrities. After the recovery of the currency market, some people even use small ant coins as the virtual currency issued by Ant Financial.

Because ICO controls are fragile, product technology is difficult to understand, and the gap between ordinary retail investors and experienced investors is huge, much larger than the stock market.

The old people in the coin circle generally discuss not the price, but the application scenarios of a certain blockchain technology and the overall evaluation of the blockchain team. But ordinary retail investors “can only go around and listen to some whims and whims.” “If you look at the bitcoin white paper, you’re already ahead of 90% of the investors,” he said.

Moreover, the people around Big Tiger, although the market value of many had multiplied several times, but ultimately did not make much money. In addition to the bear market in July, retail speculative psychology tends to short-term, keen to chase up the fall, commonly known as “can not hold the currency.” As a result, retail investors often make money in one round and lose it in another currency, or at another time. Even after receiving sweeteners, additional investment leads to loss. Real paper profits into actual earnings, very few.

After August, the small ant coin experienced a six-fold increase in eight days, and many people began to pour in again

Dahu has been through bitcoin’s highs and lows, known in industry jargon as “going through the bull and bear.” Those who can “cross the bull and bear” are considered to be truly “in the currency circle into the door”. However, in the face of violent profits, faith often fails to stand the test.

What’s more, there is no management agency in the ICO secondary market, the market is narrow, and some non-mainstream currencies even need only a few million to “do”. Token issuers and stakeholders can also control most of the tokens in their own hands by lowering the issuance ratio. Whether through releasing information or selling or buying tokens, they can control the price of the coins. The only restriction to the big family, at present see only “bigger” big family: if do zhuang, there may be a bigger bookmaker yellow sparrow after.

“It’s not a big loss for me to lose, but if I miss it, it’s a big loss for me. I can’t waste a big trend.” Xue Manzi was asked what he would do if more than a dozen blockchain and ICO projects he invested in failed. He said that blockchain entrepreneurship would change from technology to “blockchain +” and enter financial, medical and other industries with specific scenarios, although he could not say exactly how it would be implemented. Like the Internet, which started with a massive bubble, “If you don’t drink bubbles, you can’t drink beer.”

Although investment institutions are not allowed to invest in the ICO market or own tokens as institutions due to relevant regulations. But professional investors are already rubbing their hands. “The investing elite, the traditionalists, all over China and the world are watching this, and so are Sequoia.” Xue Manzi said.

In short, this is not a retail market. But retail investors continue to move in.

Zhang Lu once wrote a piece of advice on how to invest in ICO, which was not widely read, but nearly 300 people added her to her wechat account after reading it. “Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan compatriots, Chinese compatriots, southeast Asia, Cambodia, Hong Kong funds, stem cells in the United States, everywhere.” But the problem is that “very few people talk about price and value on wechat every day.”

On August 8, 36kr saw an “ICO project team” from northeast China at a fund conference.

Most of the 20-30 “project teams” are over 50 years old and are led by specific leaders. Team wang sister told 36 krypton, she comes from Shenyang, originally do small commodity wholesale. Later, when the economy of northeast China was depressed, they were introduced to earn money by buying mining machines to mine bitcoin. This time, it was the mine manager who brought them to the conference.

Wang doesn’t know what blockchain is, what ICO is, and even has a “general idea” of Bitcoin. But she trusted the mine manager and team leader and felt that “the project they recommended must be a good one”. Wang proudly showed 36kr the money transfer records on her mobile phone: she earned about 3, 000 yuan a day by renting the mining machines she bought to the mining director.

There were also two groups of middle-aged men and women who participated in the project. After the press conference, they got on buses to go somewhere else.

“Chinese people have a gambling nature.” On August 14, in a hotel in Beijing, Zhou Yaobo, who was one of the first Chinese investors to go down to Shenzhen door to door to collect original stocks and participate in a variety of investment trends from futures to bitcoin, meaningfully answered 36 kton’s question “how do you see the re-influx of ICO retail investors”. “China’s capital investment market, including the virtual one, is in fact the same, just changed a vest, change a prop.”

“Money tends to be very expensive.” As The American writer Ralph Emerson put it.

(36 Krypton will continue to describe ICO governance and self-regulation, as well as market developments, stay tuned)