“Can you trust Bitcoin? You’re wasting your money!”

In 2013, Guo Hongcai, who was running an online store in Beijing, became furious when he heard that his wife had bought a virtual currency called "Bitcoin".

However, 2013 was another glorious year after the launch of Bitcoin.

When his wife proudly told Guo Hongcai that her bitcoin had doubled, he suddenly realized: the opportunity to change his destiny had come!

In the next 10 years, he became a "legend" in the eyes of many people, amassed assets worth tens of billions, and became a "scammer" in the eyes of even more people.

So, after Guo Hongcai staged a loser's counterattack, is he a talented person or a liar?

Many people say that Guo Hongcai should be called "Guo Guicai". This person is smart and eloquent, but his academic performance was not very good when he was in school.

Guo Hongcai was born in the ancient city of Pingyao, Shanxi Province in 1985. As his family were all businessmen, he had been full of business experience since he was a child.

Although he is not very studious, he is obviously a smart kid.

In 2003, after the college entrance examination results came out, his score of 300 meant that he was destined to not even be admitted to a third-rate school, but he was very ambitious and his dream was to go to Tsinghua University.

During that time, he came to Beijing with a 10,000 yuan startup fund from his family, rented a small house next to Tsinghua University, and attended classes at Tsinghua University when he had nothing to do.

In order to support himself, he also sold pirated CDs on campus, and he did this for three years.

After saving a little money, his innate restlessness made him decide to ride his bike alone along the Sichuan-Tibet line. He felt that this would be both exciting and allow him to see a wider world.

On the Sichuan-Tibet line, he met a travel convoy and got acquainted with Jin Yangyang, a female student in the convoy who was attending university in Sichuan.

Soon, Jin Yangyang was attracted by Guo Hongcai, who was eloquent and determined, and Guo Hongcai also liked this beautiful and straightforward female college student, and their relationship quickly heated up.

Not long after, Guo Hongcai followed Jin Yangyang back to his hometown and introduced himself directly to Jin Yangyang's parents, saying that he was Yangyang's boyfriend, and the relationship between the two was confirmed.

In 2008, Jin Yangyang graduated from university and married Guo Hongcai.

After discussing, the two came to Shanghai to start a business. Since e-commerce was booming at that time, Guo Hongcai decided to register an online store to sell Pingyao beef from his hometown.

At first, because of the e-commerce boom, Guo Hongcai's beef business grew bigger and bigger, and the couple also made a lot of money.

But once something makes money, more and more people will flock to it. As more and more online stores open and they keep coming up with new ways of doing things, Guo Hongcai's beef shop business is getting worse day by day.

In 2013, the couple decided to leave Shanghai and move to Beijing for development.

That day, Jin Yangyang listened to a lecture by Li Xiaolai at an entrepreneur gathering. Li Xiaolai talked about a virtual currency called "Bitcoin".

This type of Bitcoin is not the same as traditional currency that is artificially produced. It is mined using computer algorithms.

But although this type of Bitcoin is a virtual currency, it has a physical price and is said to have a bright future.

Jin Yangyang was fascinated by what he heard and felt that it was simply God opening the door to wealth for him.

After some research, she found some tricks and spent more than 100,000 yuan to buy a large number of bitcoins, each of which cost 300 yuan at the time.

When Guo Hongcai found out about this, he became anxious. This was the hard-earned money he and his wife had earned from running an online store, but they had actually invested it in a virtual item that could not be seen. This was simply crazy.

Next, the couple started a crazy quarrel mode.

However, not long after, Jin Yangyang said that his bitcoin had risen to 500 yuan per coin, almost doubling in a short period of time.

Guo Hongcai, who was always quick-witted, came to his senses instantly: This is indeed a shortcut to making money.

After careful research, they believed that it was better to mine Bitcoin directly than to speculate on it, so they invested a lot of money to purchase computer equipment for mining.

Later, Guo Hongcai borrowed money to open a Bitcoin mine in Inner Mongolia, with thousands of machines running 24 hours a day.

This time, they were ahead of others again because there were not many people mining at that time. When they were busy, they could dig out 100 coins a day, and at most, they could dig out over 500 coins a day.

With so many bitcoins, if you want to cash them out, you have to sell them. So Guo Hong came up with an idea to set up an online bitcoin trading platform.

Even so, ordinary people still don't recognize this kind of virtual currency, so Guo Hongcai can only seek help from bigwigs and the media to build momentum for him.

At that time, there was a program on Youku called "Yangyang Interview", hosted by Jin Yangyang. She specially invited financial bigwigs and celebrities from all walks of life to talk about Bitcoin and look forward to the prospects of virtual currency.

During that period, Bitcoin's price rose rapidly, reaching 20,000 per coin, and gradually became known to the Chinese people.

In early 2017, Guo Hongcai announced that he would establish a "virtual currency" training institution and said that he would establish the "Whampoa Military Academy of Bitcoin."

Seeing Guo Hongcai's influence on China's virtual currency market, the Davos Forum also invited Guo Hongcai to participate, which further increased Guo Hongcai's fame in the industry and he was known as the "genius boss in the currency circle."

 

Taking advantage of this favorable situation, Guo Hongcai became bolder and actually launched a "air coin" similar to Bitcoin - a virtual currency that has absolutely no technical content or real value.

This kind of currency, as long as you register and pay, you can get a certain amount of virtual currency, once the price of virtual currency rises, you can cash it out.

Out of trust in Guo Hongcai, many of Guo Hongcai’s “military academy cadets” purchased the air coins he launched.

 

At the beginning, many people made money from this, but many people couldn't stop after making money and directly invested all their savings, only to lose everything in the end.

As more and more people enter and leave the platform, more and more users suffer huge losses, including many celebrities and bigwigs. It is rumored that Wang Feng has suffered greatly.

Soon, relevant departments discovered that many virtual currency platforms were wealth traps, so they banned these platforms on the grounds of illegal fundraising, but the money invested by the victims could not be recovered at all.

In order to avoid legal punishment, Guo Hongcai, who had already amassed tens of billions of dollars, moved his family to the United States and bought a large estate in Seattle.

Instead of growing flowers and plants, he planted lush green leeks in the manor and named it "Leek Manor".

This behavior seems to be a ruthless mockery of the many victims who tried to make money but ended up losing everything.

People thought that Guo Hongcai, who was worth hundreds of millions, went to the United States to enjoy the rest of his life. Unexpectedly, he, who was good at creating momentum, set his sights on a bigger pie.

In October 2022, Musk acquired Twitter, and Guo Hongcai also said on social media that he would soon become the CEO of Twit and hoped that Twitter and Dogecoin (a virtual currency) would grow together.

 

If you don't look carefully, his Twit can easily be mistaken for a close relative of Twitter. In fact, it is a wolf in sheep's clothing to create momentum for Dogecoin.

Soon, Musk came out to clarify that he would personally serve as the CEO of Twitter, and this farce came to an end.

However, Guo Hongcai's popularity increased again because of this.

Now lying in the "leek manor", is he still waiting for new "leeks" to take the bait?