In the cryptocurrency world, there is never a shortage of stories about losers’ counterattacks and ordinary people achieving financial freedom.
Guo Hongcai, known as "Bao Erye" in the cryptocurrency circle, is a well-known old leeks in the cryptocurrency circle. He is a beef vendor who graduated from high school. He reached a bottleneck in selling beef, and by chance, he came into contact with Bitcoin.
From then on, Guo Hongcai went all in on the cryptocurrency circle, transformed himself into "Bao Erye", and became active in the cryptocurrency circle.
So, how did Guo Hongcai come into contact with Bitcoin? And how did he change his fate through Bitcoin?
Bao Erye's real name is Guo Hongcai, nicknamed Erbao, and he was born in Pingyao, Shanxi. When he was a student, he loved to talk, like to organize, and was warm and hospitable, completely unlike the reserved and shy students of that era.
While his classmates were silently enduring the shackles of examinations, Guo Hongcai was always able to chat and laugh. Although his grades were average, he often became the focus.
"Erbao is smart and talkative. He left a deep impression on everyone when he introduced himself on the first day of school." Guo Hongcai's classmates at Pingyao Middle School recalled, "Now he has become a billionaire and can talk freely under the media spotlight. I am not surprised at all. He is born different from ordinary people."
A group photo of Guo Hongcai and his students at Pingyao Middle School
In 2003, after the college entrance examination, Guo Hongcai, who scored 300 points, also had a dream of studying at Tsinghua University. When he failed to be admitted to his first choice of Tsinghua University, he went north alone and rented a small house in Zhaolan Courtyard of Tsinghua University. While attending classes, he thought about how to make money.
During his three and a half years at Tsinghua, Guo Hongcai tinkered with domain names, built websites, sold CDs, and served as Tsinghua's campus general agent for Internet telephones, earning hundreds of thousands at his peak.
In 2006, Guo Hongcai, who was a bit bohemian and romantic, decided to go out and "wander", so he left Beijing and went cycling alone along the Sichuan-Tibet line.
Guo Hongcai travels along the Sichuan-Tibet Highway
It is worth remembering that Guo Hongcai met the love of his life on the Sichuan-Tibet Highway.
That day, Jin Yangyang, who was participating in the school's group cycling activity, met Guo Hongcai on the road. The two fell in love at first sight and exchanged their mobile phone numbers.
After the breakup, bachelor Guo Hongcai couldn't stop thinking about Jin Yangyang. He went to Jin Yangyang's hometown, Mianyang, Sichuan, and met Jin Yangyang's parents. Guo Hongcai introduced himself and said he was Jin Yangyang's boyfriend.
Jin Yangyang was also stunned at the time, but did not refute. Acquiescence was an admission. In this way, Guo Hongcai won Jin Yangyang. I have to admire Guo Hongcai, who always takes an unconventional approach, and even his actions of flirting with girls are so coquettish. It is also because of Jin Yangyang that he later became the "Second Master of the Coin Circle".
At that time, Guo Hongcai was just an ordinary thin guy with no car or house, and Jin Yangyang was just a student at Sichuan Agricultural University. They would never have thought that 12 years later they would live in a 10,000 square meter villa in the United States and have a net worth of over 100 million.
In 2008, Jin Yangyang graduated from university and the two decided to go to Shanghai to start a business. At that time, e-commerce was booming, so Guo Hongcai put Pingyao beef, a specialty of his hometown, on Tmall.
In the early days of their business, Guo Hongcai and Jin Yangyang rented an attic in Chuansha Town, Pudong, Shanghai. There was no heating in the winter, so they could only put buckets full of hot water in the room to keep warm. When it was the coldest, the two of them curled up in sleeping bags at night.
Guo Hongcai and Jin Yangyang worked together through a difficult start-up period. They gritted their teeth and persevered despite difficulties. With the advantage of being one of the first merchants to settle in Tmall, their business gradually improved.
Five years later, they built a thriving beef business from scratch, and also sold various Shanxi specialties. Not only did they rank first in sales on Tmall, they were also one of the top sellers in Shanxi.
As life gradually became stable, Guo Hongcai could no longer sit still.
"One morning when I woke up, Erbao suddenly told me that he could see the next 60 years of his life at a glance, and he wanted to change the way he lived," Jin Yangyang recalled.
So in 2013, Guo Hongcai returned to Beijing with Jin Yangyang.
Guo Hongcai was introduced to Bitcoin thanks to his wife Jin Yangyang.
When Jin Yangyang first arrived in Beijing, he wandered around aimlessly every day. One day, he walked onto the Entrepreneurship Street in Haidian District and accidentally stumbled into Garage Coffee, thus opening the door to a new world.
"Without Garage Coffee, there would be no cryptocurrency circle today." Guo Hongcai commented many years later.
At that time, Garage Coffee was just an entrepreneurial incubation platform, until one day a "MLM master" came and talked about blockchain and Bitcoin, and gained a lot of followers. These people later made money. This "MLM master" was Li Xiaolai.
Jin Yangyang was fascinated when he heard it, and immediately took out hundreds of thousands of yuan to buy hundreds of bitcoins. At that time, the price of a bitcoin was about 500 yuan. At first, Jin Yangyang did not tell Guo Hongcai about it, but the price of bitcoin immediately rose to 600 yuan.
People are like this. They don't want to talk about losing money, but they can't help but want to talk about making money. Jin Yangyang couldn't help but tell Guo Hongcai about spending more than 100,000 yuan to buy Bitcoin.
Guo Hongcai was terrified and thought that Jin Yangyang had joined a pyramid scheme and had been cheated. He asked Jin Yangyang to sell the bitcoins immediately, but Jin Yangyang refused to do so.
In desperation, Guo Hongcai followed Jin Yangyang to Garage Coffee and met Li Xiaolai. However, Li Xiaolai's brainwashing ability was so strong that Guo Hongcai was completely brainwashed by Li Xiaolai without much effort.
Guo Hongcai suddenly realized that he no longer wanted to sell beef, and Bitcoin was his future. So he quit his job selling beef. In fact, he didn't have a job, but devoted himself to Bitcoin.
When he first came into contact with Bitcoin, Guo Hongcai took a gamble and borrowed a lot of money from friends and relatives and put it all into buying Bitcoin.
At the end of 2013, Guo Hongcai also made a video program titled "Bao Erye Teaches You How to Play with Bitcoin", and officially entered the cryptocurrency circle under the name "Bao Erye".
Under the guidance of Guo Hongcai, Jin Yangyang also made a program called "Yangyang Interview", which specifically interviewed people who were active in the cryptocurrency circle at that time.
In this way, Li Lin of Huobi, Xu Mingxing of OKEx, and Wu Jihan of Bitmain all met in this way.
However, like many newcomers to the cryptocurrency world, Guo Hongcai soon faced huge losses before he could make much money.
In 2014, the Mentougou Exchange ran away, shocking the cryptocurrency world. Bitcoin prices collapsed, ushering in a bear market. As the price of the currency plummeted, Guo Hongcai watched the value of his account shrink every day. A lot of the money was borrowed, which put him under tremendous pressure.
At that time, many mining machine manufacturers could not sell their mining machines, so they had to use them to mine. Wu Jihan of Bitmain had a mining farm in Shajing, Shenzhen, but it used industrial electricity at that time, and the electricity cost was 0.9 yuan per kilowatt-hour.
With the financial support of several friends, Guo Hongcai went to Inner Mongolia in 2015 and established a Bitcoin mine.
The electricity there is cheap, only 0.3 cents per kilowatt-hour, and the climate is cool, which just solves the problem of high heat generation of Bitcoin mining machines.
At that time, Guo Hongcai's mine could produce 500 bitcoins a day, but the mine's electricity bill was more than 500,000 yuan a day. According to the currency price at the time, the coins mined were sold to just cover the electricity bill.
It was at this time that Guo Hong realized that he could only really make money if the price of Bitcoin rose.
In order to increase the price of Bitcoin, more people must know about Bitcoin and more people must reach a consensus.
After many twists and turns, Guo Hongcai finally sold the mining farm to Bitmain.
In order to expand his influence, Guo Hongcai bought BTC123, the largest Bitcoin information website in China at the time, at a cost of 5,000 bitcoins.
Then, he and Jin Yangyang drove his domestically made extended car and started the Bitcoin China Tour, traveling around the country to preach Bitcoin.
In 2015, Guo Hongcai gave a speech across the country, but the market was sluggish at the time and not many people attended such gatherings. Therefore, the name "Bao Erye" is not actually well-known.
What really made "Bao Erye" famous was in 2016.
That year, the Davos Economic Forum invited Guo Hongcai to attend, and he was invited as a mine owner.
At that time, Guo Hongcai was not quite clear about the scale of Davos meeting and thought it was just a gathering of a few brothers bragging.
He didn't think much about it and went there in his shorts and slippers.
But when I arrived at the venue, I was stopped by security and not allowed to enter because I was dressed too casually.
Only with the coordination of the organizers was Guo Hong allowed to enter the venue.
During the meeting, in front of a group of well-dressed financial professionals, Guo Hongcai spoke freely in English, which he had learned by himself. He even said shamelessly that the market value of Bitcoin would exceed the GDP of all countries.
Guo Hongcai attends Davos Forum
The financial professionals present all thought that Guo Hongcai was crazy. Only one person who understood Bitcoin thought that what he said made sense.
This time, participating in the Davos Forum made Guo Hongcai a big name in the cryptocurrency circle. "Bao Erye" also went from being a nobody to a big name in the cryptocurrency circle.
It was also in this year that he said his most famous words: "If Bitcoin is less than 1 million US dollars in my lifetime, I will eat ×× on live broadcast."
Although his language is simple, crude, and even rude, it still does not affect him from becoming an "idol" for many people who pursue financial freedom.
Maybe it is because he is down-to-earth and many people like his style. In August 2017, one of Bao Erye’s live broadcasts was watched by 100,000 people. He recounted the development of Bitcoin over the past few years and recharged the faith of fans. At the same time, he also received live broadcast gifts such as flowers and rockets worth tens of thousands of dollars.
It was also in 2017 that Guo Hong finally saw the Bitcoin bull market. As the price of the currency rose, he sold some Bitcoin to repay his previous losses.
As Bitcoin’s money-making effect becomes stronger and stronger, more and more new entrants are joining the ranks of cryptocurrency speculators.
At the same time, the Ethereum smart contract was constantly improving, lowering the threshold for project parties to issue virtual coins to a very low level. That year became the first year of the ICO of altcoins, and various virtual coins were rampant.
Many project parties buy project white papers from Taobao, make some changes, and then issue coins to make money.
In order to attract new investors to take over, the project team needs to find some big names in the cryptocurrency circle to support them. Guo Hongcai, who has a large number of fans, naturally became the target of the project team.
At the beginning, Guo Hongcai accepted everyone who came and clearly marked the price. For each project he supported, he would charge 1% as a fee.
In fact, the 1% platform fee is a misunderstanding. Guo Hongcai said in "Ten Questions with Wang Feng" that he wanted to use the condition of charging a 1% platform fee to scare off those project parties who wrote his photo and name in the white paper without his permission. Unexpectedly, as soon as the news came out, hundreds of project parties took the initiative to come to him and paid coins without saying a word. This is how the saying of clearly marked platform fees came about.
In just three months, Guo Hongcai has supported more than 30 projects with a market value of at least 400 million yuan. Guo Hongcai himself does not understand many projects and does not invest in them.
As long as the project party paid the platform fee, he would spare no effort to promote it, and work with the project party to make drastic profits. In just these few months, Bao Erye earned wealth that others could not earn in several lifetimes. Later, the country stepped in to stop their crazy behavior.
On September 4, 2017, the central bank and seven other departments jointly issued a document to completely halt ICOs, defining ICOs as illegal fundraising and operating cryptocurrency exchanges as illegal activities.
Guo Hongcai, who had made a lot of money through the ICO project, seemed to feel a little guilty. At this time, Guo Hongcai could not spend all the bitcoins he held and the wealth he gained from the platform in his lifetime. So he found a way out for himself and quietly ran to the United States.
At the beginning of 2018, Bao Erye moved to the United States with his family and obtained a green card in a very short time. After that, he spent about 500 bitcoins to buy a 10,000-square-meter manor. He named it "Leek Manor" and opened up a small piece of land in the manor to grow leeks. This may be the bad taste of the rich.
Master Bao and his "Leek Manor"
In addition, he spent 25 bitcoins to buy a white Rolls-Royce Phantom for his wife. Now there are three luxury cars parked in his manor, a white Rolls-Royce, a black limited edition Rolls-Royce classic car, and a silver Lexus. The black Rolls-Royce was bought by him in 2016 for 100 bitcoins.
Bao Erye has always been famous in the cryptocurrency circle for his vicious, vulgar and straightforward remarks. He has never concealed his image of a "nouveau riche" who shows off his wealth. Because Bao Erye believes that the culture in the cryptocurrency circle is grassroots culture and loser culture, he uses a very simple marketing model and the most vulgar way to make everyone remember it - "Blow up the bragging first, what if it comes true?"
So, if you want to make money on the Internet, the first thing you need to learn is: bragging.
Today, Bao Erye has realized his dream of owning a luxury house and a luxury car when he was young. Now all he needs to do is land on the moon and for Bitcoin to rise to 1 million US dollars.
What can we understand and learn from the history of Bao Erye's rise to wealth? The following six points are summarized, hoping that they can be helpful to you in the cryptocurrency circle.
1. Bao Erye also experienced a significant shrinkage of assets. I believe that during this process, Bao Erye must have been very painful. But he was able to survive by borrowing high-interest loans. This really shows that Bao Erye was lucky. Here, it is recommended that you do not take out loans to play financial projects unless you have no choice!
2. Bitcoin production is too small to meet the needs of a family with one Bitcoin. However, families with this awareness should only keep one Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not care about the current price. The key is whether we can hold it.
3. It is better to arrive at the right time than to arrive early. There are many people who entered the market in 2017 and did the right thing. Their wealth increased by thousands of times in a short period of time. This kind of thing is hard to come by. But in the crazy year of 2017, there really was such a magical thing. Maybe there will be such an opportunity again when the next bull market comes. Are you ready?
4. Those who really make money in Internet finance are not necessarily smart people who enter and exit quickly, but may also be people who hold stocks for a long time. They do not trade frequently, but just hold the coins and quietly wait for opportunities for appreciation. They are good at long-term investment and use the compound interest of time to increase wealth.
5. The cryptocurrency world is a Ponzi scheme. As long as others gamble, there will always be losers. The casino always wins, and the shareholders will naturally make money. Among millions of people, there may be a civilian who can counterattack. The probability of this is very low, so ordinary people are advised not to play this Ponzi scheme game easily. #币安合约锦标赛 $BTC
