Binance's Okinawa event came to an end today, and I boarded the flight back to Tokyo with many regrets. After all, gatherings are always short-lived, and partings are always hard to bear.
1. Last night, I met Sisi. I asked her why so many celebrity bloggers would choose to invite a junior like me. She said that she loves to read my articles and hopes that I can come and feel the real atmosphere of the community. I am grateful for this, because after communicating with everyone in the past few days, I have really experienced that I have gone from being a stranger to falling in love with this place.
2. In fact, I have always been resistant to exchange activities, because I think that for the community, exchanges and project parties are opposites of each other. But until I met a lot of young people, I realized that exchanges have really changed their lives and wealth, and also made more people exposed to Bitcoin and Ethereum. Therefore, I think exchanges play an important role in attracting traffic from outside the circle.
3. This event allowed me to meet many great rebate givers. Before they came into contact with Binance, they might have been female workers in small workshops in third- and fourth-tier cities, or businessmen who had gone bankrupt. They have always been diligent and dedicated, but the reality did not give them the due rewards.
4. Maybe they don’t understand professional terms like zk in the industry, but they know that the more famous Bitcoin and Binance are, the better their future will be. So, compared to my peers, who are fighting over the legitimacy of Ethereum or technical opinions, I actually see a little warmth in the rebate and trading circle, and they treat their peers as family.
5. The project owners have been separated from the community for too long. APTOS, YGG, and EDU all came to this event, but APTOS was blocked in the corridor because they did not do many things they promised before, and many of their practices betrayed those who believed in them. YGG and EDU have even bigger historical problems. Without seeking solutions or positive responses, they are still thinking about starting a KOL round and selling coins off-site to collect more money. As a result, these project owners have failed to achieve their goals and were rejected by everyone on the scene.
6. The biggest topic of this time is the return of CZ. His position in the industry today is more like a religious leader, which will always make people look forward to the future. Although CZ no longer interferes with Binance, we have seen the recovery of the BNB chain, the increase in the price of new coins, and the influence of related offline activities. Behind all of this, there seems to be the shadow of CZ.
7. When Binance brought a group of bloggers and community leaders to hold an event in Okinawa, the Binance Japan site in Tokyo was also busy. It took people from Toyota Laboratory to promote Web3 and Crypto everywhere. The invitees were basically people in charge of money from major consortiums. Whether these companies invest in Bitcoin or put their money in Binance may be a suspenseful decision.
8. People seemed to have an illusion before, that is, anyone can be a blogger, but this time I observed that many of the big bloggers on Twitter actually have very high backgrounds and IQs. For example, bloggers who do analysis basically get high scores in offline quiz activities. Any one of them is much better than the CMO or BD of many current projects.
9. I used to like communicating with project owners or fund personnel to gain unique perspectives and industry knowledge, but later I discovered that the value of information obtained from communicating with these bloggers is far greater than that from VCs. Although this is not absolute, I really think that most VC friends, if they give up their positions to these bloggers, will be beaten in terms of influence or revenue. After all, the former have formed a path dependence on working, while the latter may not have food to eat tomorrow if they do not make progress every day.
10. Four years ago, Huobi, which was still managed by Li Lin, invited many project parties and VCs to team building and learning. Looking back now, many people at that time became the targets of sickles or community attacks; four years later, Binance invited many bloggers and community leaders to team building and learning, which brought substantial traffic and newcomers to the industry.
11. This time the person in charge of Binance Wallet also came. He started by reflecting and apologizing, and then told everyone about the things that will be implemented in the next few months. People finally stopped criticizing and hoped that Binance Wallet can do well. After all, the MEME market will always come, and they should always be prepared.
12. We invited 80 people to the last event in Maldives, and 180 people were invited to Okinawa this time. We gave feedback last night and got the reply that this event will definitely continue, and we plan to invite more people. I hope to choose Osaka next time, after all, there you can experience Kyoto’s Kamogawa, Kobe’s harbor, Arima’s hot springs and Nara’s deer. In a word, I am looking forward to it.
13. There are so many things I want to write. I really want to share my experience and what I saw on the scene with everyone. This time I arranged an interview with Sisi. Four years ago, she joined Binance as a member of the Binance girl group, and now she has become a decision-making manager. This interview contains a lot of information. I will try my best to write it out in the next few days and try my best not to be asked by the public relations to revise the manuscript. Thank you all for your long-term support.
The above is my experience at the Binance Okinawa event.
Thank you for reading.
November 28, 2024
AB KUAI DONG
Written on the way back to Tokyo.