In 299 BC, Qin captured eight cities of Chu, and King Zhaoxiang of Qin called King Huai of Chu, Xiong Huai. King Zhaoxiang said that his brothers were ignorant and ate eight of your places, and they were very sorry, father-in-law. How about this, you come to Wuguan to treat you to a meal, and by the way, talk about how to return the place to you. After all, the rivers and lakes are not all about fighting and killing. At that time, the temple was divided into two factions. The intellectual faction headed by Qu Yuan believed that Qin had wolfish ambitions and its words should not be trusted; Prince Zilan and others advocated peace and strongly advocated Wuguan Alliance. It seems that the Xiong family is worthy of the orthodoxy of the Chu people, and the main idea is to go deep into the tiger's den. As expected, he was detained in Qin. Although King Huai did not agree to cede land, his iron will was exchanged for a three-year detention.
During these three years, Crown Prince Xiong Heng succeeded to the throne and became King Qingxiang of Chu.
In the late Warring States period, the entire territory of Jiangsu belonged to the Chu State, and the blood of the people there now has some ancient heritage. Zhao Changpeng, who was born in Lianyungang, Jiangsu, also voluntarily went to the United States to plead guilty last year. Originally, the bail terms did not restrict Zhao Changpeng from leaving the United States, but the U.S. Department of Justice regretted it because Zhao Changpeng's assets were all outside the United States.
The US originally intended to follow the example of the Qin Dynasty and give Zhao Changpeng three years in prison, but he was sentenced to four months in the end. He paid a $170 million bail and was not allowed to participate in Binance operations in the future. Binance was also fined $4.3 billion.
People were detained, land was cut, and positions were lost.
It is said that Zhao Changpeng did not make any excuses for his crimes before appearing in court. The Chu people are still more resolute in character and are not as slippery as monkeys after all.
Brother Sun, who went to the West to seek Buddhist scriptures, has entered the hall. Thousands of years have passed, and Brother Sun understands the principle that a gentleman should not stand on a dangerous wall. SEC, you can sue me, but I will lose every time I go to the United States.
But you have to pay for what you have done.
The sky is watching
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Everyone says that web3 is a revolution, but if we look back at all the revolutions in the past, it is entrepreneurs who have accumulated the most wealth. Because their products have brought about social progress, they have replaced the market monopolized by old products and gained greater profits.
In the crypto industry, exchanges are the most profitable. This is because, apart from BTC, the most valuable asset in the industry is
It seems to be an exchange.
The reason is that although the industry has huge dividends, it is extremely unfriendly to retail investors. In daily life and work, everyone is used to having centralized departments to protect their rights and interests. For example, if assets are stolen, you can find banks and relevant law enforcement agencies to protect your rights.
Cryptocurrency is different. The crypto industry itself is a decentralized environment. Assets are stored in wallets, and the private keys are yours and can only be kept by yourself. Many people cannot get used to the lack of "bottom-line" protection.
As a bridge connecting the two worlds, exchanges do more than just provide liquidity. When users trade on exchanges, their assets are transferred from their own wallets to the exchange’s hot wallet. In theory, the money no longer belongs to them.
In a world lacking regulation and laws, exchanges are the first and last line of centralized protection. From this perspective, exchanges have huge requirements for the "pattern" of the founding team and security technology.
Huobi founder Li Lin said in the last article of his official account:
"We are all lucky people of the times. We accidentally stepped on the cusp of the times. Then, we were not that bad, and our competitors at that time were not strong enough, so we temporarily reached the top of the industry. That's all."
Fortunately, although several major exchanges have resorted to dirty tricks in the competition, it is generally safe to say that "no major losses have been made", especially Zhao Changpeng.
After prosecutors from the U.S. Department of Justice submitted a 36-month sentencing recommendation for Zhao Changpeng, a total of 161 joint appeal letters circulated online, including from family members, friends, political and business leaders, colleagues, industry experts, Binance angel investors, Binance users, etc.
Of course, many of them are written for their own interests, but this is enough to reflect the importance of Zhao Changpeng to Binance and Binance to the industry in the eyes of many investors, users, and industry experts.
Think about it, when WBTC was revealed to be related to Justin Sun, what was the reaction from all walks of life in the industry?
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However, the value brought by the exchange is not the value that can promote the development of the industry. However, retail investors who are used to gaining dependence regard the exchange as the last savior.
Especially under the anti-VC wave this year, the ones with the largest number of casualties in the household register are not only VCs but also exchanges, especially Binance. All the previous negative information has been dug up and rushed in.
But there is only so much that exchanges can do: provide better protection of user assets and a more rigorous and transparent coin listing process.
The problem is that for most projects, it is useless.
It cannot be said that it is useless, but it is too far away from generating a business model. The most important application of the entire encryption so far is anonymous payment, and the rest are in vain, and there are almost no projects that can make money.
Even if there are projects that can make money, they do not bring progress to production and life, but rather income from transactions - but finance that is not based on the consumer market is a pure Ponzi scheme.
Since no one is using it, should the exchange choose projects with big company backgrounds and top VCs, or choose local copycats?
More importantly, the problem mentioned above is that the value of the exchange is not the value of industry development, so it can be replaced. In order to maintain competitiveness, even if you know that the project is useless but can bring in incremental users, you must participate.
The "pattern" of the exchange is based on the premise that it can survive.
No matter what coin is listed, retail investors will lose money in the end. 99% of projects cannot make a profit, and VCs have to get their money back. If you want to make money, you can only work on currency value management.
Top VCs look for second- and third-rate VCs to take over in the primary market, and second- and third-rate VCs can only look for takeovers in the secondary market. Then the funds in the primary and secondary markets are inverted, and ultimately these "top projects" must have high market capitalization, low circulation, and rise first and then fall.
After the old investors were cheated by ZKS and L0, their last hope for VC and value coins was shattered, and they began to indulge in PVP, with less and less money; the few new investors who entered the market were assigned to various small hot spots and found it difficult to achieve great things.
This has led to the current awkward situation where Bitcoin remains high, altcoins are in a mess, and occasionally there is a small hot spot but then it quickly returns to calm.
There have been recent reports that VCs are starting to prioritize protocol revenue as their highest growth metric. But this hasn’t worked.
What is the core of the protocol's revenue growth? It is that it can have so many paying users. The only appeal of encrypted paying users is to make more money by paying, rather than paying for work, life or even leisure and entertainment.
I think that instead of thinking about how to increase the growth of the protocol, it is better to think about why in the decentralized world, centralized teams make the most money?
Li Jiaqi told us, have you ever thought about whether the current cryptocurrency world is decentralized enough?
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Sometimes, I think MEME tokens may be more meaningful than VC projects, because many MEME tokens are launched fairly, are highly decentralized, and even if there is a loss, it is the gamblers' money that is lost.
On the contrary, those centralized institutions can always accurately hinder the development of the industry, not only in the crypto industry, but also in reality. Whether it is LTCM, Terra or 3AC, it is the same.
Centralization is serious and opaque. Whenever problems are disclosed publicly, it means that they can’t cover it up at all. For example, when SBF asked Zhao Changpeng for help, I don’t think Zhao Changpeng knew how serious the problem of FTX was. Zhao had to wait until the information was made public before he knew that multiple companies associated with FTX were misappropriating user assets.
If it is not exposed, no one will know how much filth is hidden in it, and there may be more filth in the future.
Founders of the first generation of centralized projects such as Zhao Changpeng can pursue higher ideals after the success of their projects, but a company has more than just one manager.
Those who later hold high positions and inherit the power but have not accumulated enough wealth will abuse their power to make money. This is inevitable.
In the process of the crypto industry adapting to regulation, more founders who really have ideals, ambitions, and vision will be forced to leave the project. The fruits of decentralization will eventually be seized by centralized institutions.
In the future, Zhao Changpeng will not be able to participate in the operation of Binance. Even if he can do it secretly, Zhao Changpeng will say goodbye openly.
But I think all centralization will say goodbye to the crypto industry soon.
