In the past month or two, two things have once again made people focus on the cryptocurrency world.
First, the UK seized a money laundering case involving more than 61,000 bitcoins, with the amount involved exceeding RMB 40 billion. Second, bitcoin first fell to $56,000, and then gradually returned to $70,000.
Whether people are inside or outside the cryptocurrency circle, they all know clearly that this involves huge sums of money.
As for how to measure the value of Bitcoin, insiders have a more vivid explanation: In 2010, the highest value of a Bitcoin was $0.5. At that time, if you invested 10,000 RMB, you would get about 2,857 Bitcoins. Now, it is worth about 1.45 billion RMB, which can buy 233 Rolls-Royce Phantoms.
If converted into hundred-yuan bills, the height of this money stacked up would be equivalent to a 100-story building.
However, wealth inevitably comes with risk.
The bitcoin in Wang Yu's hands fell from 1 coin worth $70,000 to $59,000 on April 17. A green K-line that was climbing up suddenly fell straight down. After ups and downs for several days, the K-line fell again: $56,000.
In his words, this was the first time he realized that "weak legs" were beyond his control.
He squatted on the ground with his phone in his hand, feeling dizzy and his scalp was numb, "just like hypoglycemia." The cause of the disease was the green line that kept going down, and the price was "1 million, just gone."
Zhang Xingzhou also had similar feelings. He couldn't calculate the exact amount of his loss, but he said it was a two-bedroom apartment in an old town in a first-tier city. And all this happened in less than 4 hours.
What is quite dramatic is that in less than 20 days, the price of Bitcoin returned to $70,000.
People in the industry summed it up as: there is a new story or accident every second.
Sudden Wealth and Anxiety
Zhang Xingzhou’s wealth story begins in 2013.
At that time, Li Xiaolai, Zhao Changpeng, Li Qiyuan and others were all well-known figures in the circle. They claimed to hold 5-6 digits worth of Bitcoin, appeared in magazines, shot covers, and became celebrities in the circle.
Zhang Xingzhou studied business in Australia. Like Li Xiaolai, he had no technical background and liked to speculate in stocks and do short-term trading. He spent most of his earnings on entertainment.
The day I saw Li Xiaolai’s report, he was preparing the slides for the next day. Before he clicked save, a message popped up on the chat software. Someone told him, “Bitcoin is great, better than stocks. Do you want to try it?”
Seeing that he was a little hesitant, his friend told him that he could buy coins with him and he would not lose money.
Within two months, Zhang Xingzhou discovered that the price of Bitcoin had really increased: the value of the 50 Bitcoins that the partners had bought had increased sevenfold, "about 400,000 RMB."
After these 60 days, he felt different.
When chatting with others, Zhang Xingzhou would casually mention "Bitcoin" and say that he was investing and had made some money, with a proud tone. In order to live up to this pride, he changed into designer clothes, bought a new computer, and went to high-end Chinese restaurants for dinner.
At the end of November 2013, Zhang Xingzhou called himself "Smile", named after his idol Li Xiaolai, and said that he was an explorer like those celebrities in the circle.
The stimulation of money made him addicted, and his lifestyle changed in the next four years.
Since the end of 2013, he has been in front of his phone and computer almost every day. At first, he was unmoved by the ups and downs. In 2014, Bitcoin fell from 1,000 US dollars to below 100 yuan. Zhang Xingzhou could sensitively capture every tiny change on the candlestick chart.
These ever-changing forces magnified his anxiety, especially when the market was falling. He would ask his friends. If his friends didn’t reply after one or two minutes, he couldn’t wait any longer and called them directly, “Did you run away?”
His friend told him, "Why rush? It's still early."
Zhang Xingzhou said that this kind of anxiety lasted for three or four years. Although he made money, he also suffered from insomnia for several months and had to rely on medication to fight it.
The hope of "guaranteed profit"
Now that he thinks about it, the reason why Zhang Xingzhou has survived until now is entirely because of "money".
He always uses the story of "counting money" to motivate himself.
At the end of 2017, the value of Bitcoin exceeded 10,000 US dollars. He took out 200,000 RMB in cash in different amounts, spread the money on the floor of his girlfriend's rented house, and used a broom to gather the money into a pile.
Zhang Xingzhou said that was the first time he used cash to measure the square footage of a house.
Of course, he also had his share of losses, such as losing hundreds of thousands of dollars in one day. However, he had a self-consistent logic: he treated the lost money as previous earnings, and did not lose his capital. "Losing 100,000 is like working for nothing; losing hundreds of thousands is like working for nothing for several months."
The reason he convinced himself was that Bitcoin would always go up. "Look, if I had invested 10,000 yuan in Bitcoin 14 years ago, it would have become 1.4 billion yuan now."
Zhang Xingzhou's desire for money gradually expanded. In 2018, he realized that neither cryptocurrency speculation nor mining was the best way to maintain a stable income. Celebrities in the circle gave him reference models: some switched to selling courses, some established paid groups, and some built platforms.
He chose to provide technology. He brought in a few friends who were in technology and made a cryptocurrency trading robot, where users can set the price for automatic trading, and no longer need to watch the market 24 hours a day. The fee is 6,800 yuan per half year and 8,800 yuan per year. Zhang Xingzhou said that the number of users currently exceeds 15,000 and is continuing to increase.
Among them is an investor with the username Huang Xue.
He came from a well-off family, had his own BMW, and had about 200,000 yuan in spare cash. Rather than wanting to get rich, it was more a protest against repetitive work; he didn't like spending his days sitting in an office.
His original intention was to use this as "insurance": he could adjust the transaction at any time, and the robot would save him the trouble of watching the market 24 hours a day. More importantly, he believed that "Zhang Xingzhou and others" could provide "guidance". At that time, in the group Zhang Xingzhou had set up, someone forwarded such a news, "Bitcoin is expected to rise by more than $100,000 (about 700,000 RMB)".
Huang Xue felt that he had caught the trend and his wealth quickly accumulated to millions.
He also lived a different life, spending his days in the office in a daze and immersing himself in games at night, becoming a krypton gold player. He also fell in love with silver jewelry and spent 60,000 yuan to buy a feather ornament from Goro Takahashi.
He originally believed that this was a way to make money without losing money. Until mid-April this year, he experienced two sharp declines in half a month and lost nearly 300,000 yuan.
Huang Xue was at a loss as he saw one third of his money evaporate. When his friends advised him to stop, he hesitated: "When the price goes up again, I will run."
As for when the price will rise, he threw this question to Zhang Xingzhou.
He said that Zhang Xingzhou did not respond directly, but only sent out a few articles that said "Bitcoin will rise sharply after halving." Someone in the group responded, "This is almost an iron rule."
Addictive numbers game
In a conversation a few days later, Zhang Xingzhou said that he didn't quite remember what message Huang Xue sent, but he roughly knew that it was another "failure" story.
For him, Huang Xue’s story is just the tip of the iceberg of the cryptocurrency circle, and it is not even worth mentioning. According to Coin Glass data, in April 2024, more than 70,000 people had their positions liquidated in the virtual currency market, with a total liquidation amount of RMB 1.506 billion.
Zhang Xingzhou said that most of the time he recommends investors to do spot trading, "Do as much as you can with the money you have. This way, even if you lose, it won't be much."
Bitcoin's rise and fall history Source: Internet screenshot
But the reality is that the bait of "1.4 billion" is so tempting that there are always people willing to take risks - to increase leverage and make a small investment for a big gain.
In the contract leverage model, investors only need to pay 5% of the margin to trade. This ingenious setting gives people endless imagination, so much so that everyone ignores the risk of liquidation.
10 times, 20 times, 50 times - in the contract game, getting rich or going bankrupt is concentrated in one minute.
Wang Yu entered the market in 2022. He borrowed money from his friends and added all his savings to start contract leverage.
He was 28 years old that year, unemployed, unmarried, renting a one-bedroom apartment, trading hundreds of thousands of yuan a day, without changing his expression or getting upset. As the numbers got bigger and bigger, Wang Yu began to feel numb, because his daily contract turnover far exceeded his principal.
After getting high, he was reluctant to sell and continued to increase leverage.
Trading software leverage page Source: Software screenshot
In 2023, Wang Yu earned his first million yuan. He said that he watched the market for more than 13 hours that day. When he received a text message from the bank, he was in a shopping mall near his home, scrolling through WeChat as if nothing had happened. He only felt that a string of fate was trembling slightly, "very cool."
The text message indicated that his account had received 1 million yuan. That afternoon, he called his parents on the roadside and said, "Mom, I have money now. I've made a fortune."
But those who are involved in it don’t actually realize that the numbers in the account will always be numbers unless they are withdrawn.
Wang Yu said that the market was good at that time and he was reluctant to sell his coins, but he was short of money. So he sold some when he needed money, and then used the remaining money to enter the market again. In this way, only those numbers once proved that he was a rich man.
One million is the highest amount in Wang Yu’s account. It is also his “sweetest memory”: a testimony to his courage and time.
Because a year later, that is, in mid-to-late April 2024, he lost all his money in less than half a month.
He had the opportunity to close his position, stop loss in time, and accept the loss. But when the price of the currency falls, people in the circle always believe: it will rise in the next second, and you will turn defeat into victory.
In the words of the insiders, this situation is called "pin insertion", which means finding the time point for a pullback in the decline. In more understandable terms for the general public, it is called "bottom fishing".
On the afternoon of the day of the crash, the price did pull back. But he didn't, instead he increased his bets. As a result, "the next minute", his position was liquidated.
The story reached Zhang Xingzhou through a few words in the group chat.
He still said, "It's nothing new." Zhang Xingzhou said that people like Wang Yu will definitely continue to stay in the cryptocurrency circle and try to make a comeback.
Because Bitcoin is "addictive" to them.
“Nothing”
There is a saying often quoted in the cryptocurrency circle: "Everyone in the know needs to know about Bitcoin because it may be one of the most important developments in the world." However, no one ever cares who the owner of this sentence is, nor does anyone delve into the truth of this sentence.
Zhang Xingzhou put this sentence on the last page of the company's introduction PPT to "recharge his faith." But he believes that only a small number of people hold faith. The rest are just pretending - even the idols he "respects."
Zhang Xingzhou said, "They" have all changed, "They will stop doing it after they make money."
When the Times Weekly reporter tried to contact Zhang Xingzhou's "idol", Li Xiaolai declined the interview through his assistant. However, the assistant said that he recommended players to read "Let Time Accompany You to Slowly Become Rich" and "The Truth of Wealth".
The two books are priced at 45 yuan and 58 yuan respectively. A reader commented on the latter, saying that the book has 150 pages, "a quick read makes people realize that confidence is as valuable as gold and that anyone can start from scratch."
With the help of Li Xiaolai and others, Bitcoin seems to be equated with wealth, which makes many people addicted to it.
Deng Wei, a professor at the School of Accounting of Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, mentioned in his book "Bitcoin Price Bubble: Evidence, Causes and Revelations" published in 2017 that "Bitcoin is an object of financial speculation." As a novel investment product, the potential value of Bitcoin has great uncertainty, which makes it very attractive to speculators.
According to the data from the "Global Bitcoin Development Research Report", among the sampled population, 80.77% of Bitcoin investors aim to make short-term profits, and only 13.81% of users choose to hold for the long term.
In the cryptocurrency world, the myth of wealth creation and the nightmare of bankruptcy go hand in hand. On the stage of wealth game, human greed and rationality each occupy a corner.
Today, Zhang Xingzhou has chosen the side of reason. The reason is that, on the one hand, the mining cost has increased after the fourth halving of Bitcoin price; on the other hand, the rise and fall of Bitcoin is too frequent and fierce.
He said that there are now two worlds of Bitcoin. One is what the outside world thinks is a "wealth-making factory"; the other is hidden in the stories of thousands of speculators, who either make enough money to leave or lose everything.
Zhang Xingzhou, who claims to be smart, creates an atmosphere for the still noisy cryptocurrency circle as a bystander. "Those who seek gold in the cryptocurrency circle do not rely on knowledge and rationality, but on the desire for wealth."
What he has to do is to convince speculators that it is not difficult to achieve wealth. He has 30 full groups with a total of more than 10,000 people. Based on the annual fees he collects, the total income is equal to the value of the Bitcoin he owns - more than 10 million.
Huang Xue is the one who fits Zhang Xingzhou's judgment. What he likes to see and spread are those myths of getting rich quickly - even if he loses 300,000 yuan. Like gamblers in casinos, he believes that he can always make back what he loses, and all he needs is luck. And he is still waiting for an opportunity to take advantage of the opportunity.
He said he wouldn't give up.
But some people have nothing left.
Wang Yu once thought that Bitcoin made him successful, “all of a sudden it seemed like he had everything.” But when he went from being a “tycoon” to having nothing, he realized that it was a process from zero to zero, “actually nothing.”
However, he still couldn't help but open the cryptocurrency trading software, sometimes every other day, sometimes every few hours.
On May 21, Bitcoin reached its highest point this year - $71,000. Wang Yu thought that if he had more capital and could survive the big drop, he might be able to reap the fruits of victory. But now, the funds on his account show that he has no chance to enter the market.
