*This is an old article, written on April 26, 2022. Because the previous article was deleted, and Sun Yuchen just recently made a Pump imitation, I posted it here for everyone to think about together
Preface: Some thoughts on Crypto investment arising from Lianjia.
When I passed by Lianjia on the weekend, I remembered a speech given by Lianjia Chairman Zuo Hui in Shanghai.
That was an internal speech in 2015 after Lianjia was asked by Shanghai authorities to remove financial products, stop exclusive management, and withdraw window advertisements due to housing problems. Zuo Hui was very angry at the time, denouncing fake housing sources and being angry at the brokers for not fighting back.
The reputation of real estate agencies has been rotten since the days of the real estate brokers in the Song Dynasty. But during Zuo Hui's speech, I realized that this guy really had some "revolutionary ideals" - he probably really wanted to change something. He said something that I heard for the first time and was very skeptical. He said:
The world will be a little different with or without us (Lianjia).
Now that he has passed away, looking back over the past seven years, it is just as Shouye said: Among all the agencies, Lianjia is undoubtedly the one that has come closest to completely eliminating "fake listings"; Beike's real estate dictionary has, in a sense, become a database comparable to the US MLS, which was created by the entire US agency industry; Beike has recruited a large number of undergraduate graduates, and real estate brokers have finally begun to professionalize.
It’s a pity that the person is gone.
Where will Lianjia and Beike go in the future? For me, Zuo Hui was the biggest reason why I invested in Beike. But what about the successors? Faced with policy, performance or other pressures, do they still have the same "original intention" as Zuo Hui? It's uncertain and hard to say.
I once discussed a very interesting topic with a friend who works in investment at Goldman Sachs, which is: Does an excellent project need a signature founder?
The interesting thing about this topic is that there are enough excellent examples on both sides. You may know Steve Jobs and Apple, Dong Mingzhu and Gree, Ren Zhengfei and Huawei; similarly, you may not know who the founder of Midea is, or who the founder of Moutai is.
The final conclusion still depends on the development process of the project. In the early stage of the project, a LOGO is indeed needed to stand out and blow up the spark of the prairie fire. If the founder has traffic, ability, and ideals and ambitions, then it will be of great significance to the project.
In today’s Crypto, the celebrity effect is magnified. Because retail investors now control the secondary market, memes are very meaningful to a project. Chainlink became popular in part because community members often spoofed the founder Sergey, and Sergey was happy to see it happen.
After all, in an era where traffic is paramount, attention is particularly critical.
But after the project matures, or in order for the project to survive longer, the founder’s imprint will have to be gradually erased. There are two reasons for this.
First, personal energy and vitality have a time limit. If the founder becomes the sun of the project, it means that the project is held hostage by the founder. As long as the founder has problems, the project will be in tatters (unless they have already established a strong empire like Microsoft and Apple, even then, it will be difficult for them to have new creativity).
In fact, I am still full of doubts. Buffett and Munger are almost 200 years old in total, and they still have no heirs. What will happen to Berkshire Hathaway after they pass away?
Second, if a founder is unwilling to give up power, then his original intention is questionable, or it may have changed along the way. The temptation of power is even greater than money. When investing, once I find that the founder is obsessed with power and is addicted to playing power games, I will definitely withdraw.
This is especially important for the Crypto industry. If a decentralized industry is managed in a centralized manner, it will be a devastating blow to the industry, not to mention the investors in the industry.
At this point, based on professional habit, I couldn't help but check myself in Crpyto, and finally found that in the entire Crypto industry, from the perspective of the pattern, there is only one and a half founders who are trustworthy.
One person is the disappeared Satoshi Nakamoto, and half of the person is Vitalik Buterin who doesn’t care about anything.
After Satoshi Nakamoto released BTC and the white paper, he disappeared from the world. This is exactly the approach that best conforms to the fundamental principles of decentralization and best reflects the founder's vision.
In terms of the value of the project, BTC was born out of the financial crisis, to solve P2P trust, for decentralization, and to protect privacy; in terms of the development of the project, after independently developing technology and formulating the rules of the game, all power was handed over to the community; for individuals, they did not seek fame or fortune, and did not take a penny.
It is precisely because the founder has such a vision that so many people around the world are willing to devote themselves to the evolution of the product and form such a strong consensus.
If there is one person in the cryptocurrency world who is trustworthy, it must be the disappeared Satoshi Nakamoto.
The remaining half is Vitalik Buterin who doesn’t care about anything. As for why there is not one, it is because Vitalik continues to be active in the Crypto industry and does his job as an evangelist.
In a sense, Satoshi Nakamoto and BTC have no values, because they are decentralized enough and there is no need to emphasize decentralization again; as a currency, BTC has no values, only group consensus.
Ethereum and Vitalik are different. Ethereum's vision is actually Vitalik's vision for the crypto world, and the values designed by Ethereum are naturally Vitalik's values. Therefore, Vitalik needs to become an opinion leader and thinker to preach his values to the world.
It is precisely because of this reason that Vitalik cannot fully "trust". He will reject projects and individuals with different ideas from his own, and will be swayed by emotions and do irrational things.
But the other half of Vitalik Buterin who is worthy of trust is that as the "God" of Ethereum, he did not seek more wealth for himself. It is hard to imagine that the founder of Ethereum is worth only 300,000 ETH and more than one billion US dollars. Just based on his net worth, he may not necessarily have more than the big miners in China, or the likes of Justin Sun.
Sun Yuchen can be called a great hero, and he is one of the few people in Crypto who has the ability of a great founder, but he is too smart and has embarked on the path of cutting leeks - let's just treat him as dead. I will not invest in any of Sun's projects. I can't believe that a person who makes a fortune by market value management will do a great thing steadily.
He is a person without values and beliefs.
The other two founders are CZ and SBF. The right time, right place and ability make them the most powerful people in Crypto. The difference between CZ and SBF and Vitalik is that the latter preaches for the ideal of building a decentralized crypto world, while the former expands the territory for hegemony in the Crypto world.
CZ went from Binance to BSC, issued the stablecoin BUSD, and built a centralized Crypto empire; SBF did something similar, from FTX to Solona and FTM, and also built a centralized Crypto empire.
Moreover, it is precisely this kind of early vested interests who will use their enormous wealth and resources to weld Crypto's promotion channel shut, and the dragon-slaying warrior will become the next evil dragon.
To be honest, their investors were all Lu Buwei. He should have invested in them when they were crown princes and withdrawn in time, so that they would have the opportunity to "rise to fame together with their families."
Of course, based on the current development of the Crypto industry and the difficulty of realizing the concept of decentralization, CEX will still be the most profitable business for a long time. That’s why I say that if you want to invest in CEX platforms, you should not consider other than BNB and FTT - these two can still guarantee a higher annualized rate of return, but the opportunity to get rich quickly is gone.
Interestingly, many people regard SBF as a god because he can pull the market. At this moment, I agree that this set is the greatest weapon for retail investors - but the profits from his pull are rarely retail investors, most of them are "rat warehouses".
