The school’s currency exchange group has become quite deserted recently. Zhang Yan, a college student who was involved in the currency circle, also became much depressed.

This exchange group established in early April attracted more than 100 people to join in just one month, mostly students from Zhejiang University. Zhang Yan is one of the leading currency speculators, with a net worth of over 10 million.

At its peak, there were hundreds of messages in the group every day. Students who were speculating on coins and mining were enthusiastically exchanging experiences, sharing screenshots of their income in the group, or sending out red envelopes to celebrate when they made money. one time.

However, the situation took a turn for the worse after May 18, and the currency circle ushered in the most difficult days.

On May 18, three major industry associations, including the Internet Finance Association, the Banking Association, and the Payment and Clearing Association, collectively issued a collective statement to clearly block the circulation, payment, and transactions of Bitcoin, and also defined it as illegal operations.

Three days later, CCTV published a comment saying that Bitcoin is a tool for speculation and warned of the systemic risks of virtual currencies.

After May 18, fewer and fewer people in the group talked about currency speculation. Several mining group members began to recommend mining machines to each other. They were the temporary survivors of this "disaster".

"There will definitely be a big rebound in the future." Even though they are bruised and bruised, many people still believe in the reincarnation of fate in the currency circle. After all, "among all financial markets, the currency circle is the only market that makes people believe." Zhang Yan holds this view. This Zhejiang University student with a net worth of tens of millions has experienced several bloody storms in the currency world. He firmly believes that this wave of bad news and difficulties is temporary, and "the sun always comes after the storm."

Use 5,000 yuan in tuition fees to become tens of millions of "leeks"

The year when Zhang Yan first entered the currency circle also coincided with a troubled period in the currency circle.

That year, Zhang Yan, who was just a sophomore, joined the currency circle because of his hobbies and interests. Unable to afford the expensive Bitcoin, Zhang Yan chose to buy Litecoin (LTC) for 100 yuan as a try, and earned one yuan the next day. So, Zhang Yan put the more than 5,000 yuan in his account that was used to pay tuition into the Huobi platform in one go.

This impulse passed quickly. The money that was deposited has not arrived. He didn't quite understand whether it was due to an operational error or some other reason. But those beating numbers excited him all night. After a sleepless night, Zhang Yan still took the money back.

This choice allowed him to successfully avoid the famous "94 Incident" in the currency circle. On September 4, 2017, seven ministries and commissions jointly issued the "Announcement on Preventing Token Issuance Financing Risks", officially suspending ICO financing. As soon as the announcement came out at 3 p.m. that day, token prices on various exchanges plummeted, with the highest drop exceeding 90%.

But in the following four years, after two rounds of bulls and bears, the investment consensus on Bitcoin has grown rapidly in the mainland at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Whether it was luck or misfortune, Zhang Yan escaped the "94 Incident" and was too afraid to enter the market. Therefore, he avoided the Bitcoin bull market at the end of 2017. Until he mustered up the courage to join the currency circle again, he directly ushered in 2018. Bitcoin bear market of 2019. The market is sluggish, and many people have chosen to quit. Only Zhang Yan persists, adding hundreds or even thousands of living expenses from time to time.

Zhang Yan’s experience was not smooth sailing, and even had some ups and downs.

In February 2020, Zhang Yan invested a large amount of money in fcoin (a virtual currency trading platform) and ran away, which caused all his profits to be wiped out; later, he encountered the "312 Incident" caused by the epidemic and the impact of the global economic environment. , there was a turmoil in the currency circle, and many people were discouraged, but Zhang Yan persisted.

This persistence largely comes from Zhang Yan’s professional field at school, which is the direction of blockchain. He recognizes the value of Bitcoin and firmly believes in its future market; at the same time, he believes that the currency circle is the most advantageous place for technology realization. “In my opinion, there are only three types of people who can make money in currency speculation, one is talented, and the other One is technical, and the other is a person with information advantages." Zhang Yan believes that the currency circle is quite friendly to technical talents.

Judging from the results, he did succeed. Relying on quantification, arbitrage and other methods, he gradually accumulated hundreds of thousands of profits, and used these hundreds of thousands as admission fees to start social DeFi (liquidity mining) in June 2020. During the mining boom, he successfully earned more than two million.

DeFi, the full name of "decentralized finance", has triggered a wave of craze since June 2020. DeFi introduces lending, mortgage and other methods in traditional finance into virtual currency transactions through various smart contracts. Not only that, DeFi solves the problem of intermediaries earning price differences based on distributed accounting and eliminates the trust problem between both parties to the transaction.

For currency speculators, DeFi means high entry barriers and ultra-high yields. Wang Jiajian, a staff member of Babbitt Information, recalled that in the DeFi teaching courses launched by Babbitt before, most of the participants knew nothing about DeFi, and there were many "aunts" among them. "They all came here after hearing that they could make money. As a result, you can’t even get over the firewall, and you can’t teach them at all.” The various contracts and changing rates of return in DeFi exchanges directly lead to the fact that only a few people can participate in DeFi.

Today, Zhang Yan is already the director of the Zhejiang University Blockchain Club, and his income in the currency circle is close to tens of millions. He smiled and said that he was still a "little leek" and could not compare with others who had made a lot of money. He no longer felt as cramped as he was more than three years ago when he was so anxious that he could not sleep over thousands of yuan in tuition fees.

After getting rich by speculating in currencies, I believed that "reading is useless"

Some people rush into this circle excitedly, while others quit when they see the opportunity. At least in the small circle of currency speculators on college campuses, this kind of thing happens often. After all, in the currency circle with surging undercurrents, a student who has just entered college will appear impulsive and reckless if he rushes in hastily.

In early April this year, 23-year-old Zhang Han purchased his first car for more than 300,000 yuan, with a down payment of 50,000 yuan. Every day, this senior student of Zhejiang University drives this brand-new electric car from his residence to the Zijingang campus. He even attracted the attention of many girls. It's nearly June, and Zhang Han, who is already a senior, doesn't have the anxiety of the graduation season. He plans to try the postgraduate examination again at the end of the year.

A large part of his calmness comes from his relatively abundant savings, especially this savings does not come from his parents, but mainly comes from his four years of college income in the currency circle.

On May 12, 2017, ransomware was rampant on the Internet. After the victim's computer is locked by a hacker, the virus will prompt you to pay the equivalent of $300 in Bitcoin (approximately RMB 2,069) to unlock it. At that time, Zhang Han, who was about to take the college entrance examination, noticed Bitcoin for the first time. "Maybe it's because I'm more interested in money." Based on this interest, after graduating from high school, Zhang Han broke into the currency circle with more than 20,000 yuan from relatives as a reward for his college entrance examination results.

As a novice with zero foundation, without anyone to guide him, Zhang Han can only rely on bloggers who follow the currency circle and dive in some group chats to accumulate his own experience. He also spends a lot of time sitting on the screen. Keeping an eye on the market, for fear of missing the opportunity to go long or short, Zhang Han would often curl up in his chair and fall asleep slowly at night when his roommate had already fallen asleep; Seemingly insignificant in the industry, Zhang Han tried the risky method of increasing leverage. Watching the numbers keep jumping, he admitted that he could not contain his excitement. "At that time, it was normal to make ten thousand or twenty thousand or lose ten thousand or twenty thousand a day."

Fortunately, after struggling for a while in such a dangerous day, he became one of the lucky few. In 2017, Bitcoin rose as high as 1,700% throughout the year. Zhang Han caught up with this bull market. When Bitcoin reached the highest price of $18,674 that year, Zhang Han held 2-3 Bitcoins in his hands. This was because he kept withdrawing cash to ensure that When you have met your monthly daily expenses.

What currency speculation brings to Zhang Han is more freedom to strive for goals in life. Before entering college, he had a dispute with his family. His parents wanted him to major in science, but he insisted on choosing a media major because he liked photography. Zhang Han's parents finally gave up their efforts, "Later on, they basically didn't care about me. I think a large part of the reason for this was because I didn't want living expenses. If you don't want living expenses, there is very little they can do."

Zhang Han's parents believe that virtual currency is often accompanied by high risks and various scams. However, considering that Zhang Han only tried it with a red envelope of 20,000 to 30,000 yuan from his family, he didn't expect to lose much. It wasn't until Zhang Han made money that his parents began to realize that their son was sitting in front of the screen all day long, not just for fun, and then began to support Zhang Han.

The gains from currency speculation are not entirely a good thing. This money once "affected Zhang Han's values". For a long time, he firmly believed in "the theory that reading is useless" and "the theory that hard work is useless", and believed that money was obtained by chance. At the same time, he also began to become unwilling to study. Frequent tardiness and skipping classes caused him to fail multiple classes. Later, because the returns from currency speculation were getting lower and lower, he gradually gave up his previous idea.

In 2018 and 2019, the cryptocurrency market was sluggish. Zhang Han felt that he was just a little leek without technology and capital. It would be difficult to make more money if he continued to stay, so he slowly faded out of the cryptocurrency circle.

Hackers sneak into the laboratory and fry the computers

In colleges and universities, people like Zhang Yan and Zhang Han who achieved financial freedom through currency speculation are a niche existence. On university campuses, young currency speculators and miners consciously avoid contact with outsiders. Speaking of which, young people on university campuses are not the middle class in society after all. They have urgent needs to maintain and increase value. As a group of students, they only see that the opportunity to change their destiny is to read good books.

At the end of April this year, a user who claimed to be a "graduated senior from Zhejiang University" shared his experience of using 1 million principal to speculate in real estate, currency, and stocks after graduation, and successfully earned tens of millions to achieve financial freedom after graduation. Although this is just an ordinary experience exchange post, it has received resistance and abuse from a large number of students in the comment area. The reasons are nothing more than "spread anxiety" and "no social value."

The sensitivity of college students to virtual currencies comes from, on the one hand, the comparison of the living standards of their peers. Those peers who have become rich through currency speculation have aggravated the anxiety of the college students, making them naturally reject the cryptocurrency community; on the other hand, the popularity of virtual currencies The word often appears in cases of anti-fraud propaganda, and college students also consciously refuse to accept information from the currency circle. Those who make money are regarded as gamblers who "have no social value."

When the currency community enters the campus, conflicts between students who speculate in currency and mining and ordinary college students will inevitably occur in daily life.

A month ago, Hu Wei, a student from a university in Shanghai, entered the currency circle and chose to move out and rent a house off campus. In the school dormitory, the sound of the fan during mining will disturb the roommates. At the same time, others cannot stand the hot air blown out by the computer case. Moreover, once it is discovered that mining is taking place, it is easy to have conflicts with roommates over the settlement of electricity bills. In the school library, some students began to complain because they suspected that the neighbor’s laptop was stealing electricity and mining because the fan kept making noise.

Due to the lack of mainframes, many novices in the university currency circle will also choose computers at workstations in on-campus laboratories, although everyone understands that this is obviously using public electricity bills and public resources to the detriment of the public and private interests. Hu Wei learned that many students use laboratory workstation computers to mine. In addition, some computer experts in the school have also begun to use technical means to frequently invade the laboratory to speculate on coins.

According to people familiar with the matter, in July 2020, multiple laboratories at Zhejiang University were attacked by hackers. Xiao Shao, a student from the School of Aeronautics and Astronautics of Zhejiang University, recalled that at that time, a classmate in the laboratory found that the computer at his workstation became abnormally laggy and the memory was full. After inspection, it was found that a mining Trojan had been implanted.

An insider at Zhejiang University said that a lot of such things happened last year, including in the Ocean College and the School of Computer Science. These laboratories often have high-configuration computers, and students lack security awareness and are easily attacked by hackers without knowing it.

Xiao Shao, who was furious, called the maintenance personnel from the school information center and started tracing the source of the hacker's code. He found that the IP source of the Trojan was located on the Yuquan campus of Zhejiang University, which is also where Zhejiang University's strongest majors in computer science and engineering are located. of campus.

However, this information could not determine whether it was a Trojan implanted by students on campus. He could only send this code to the campus forum to alert other students. Fortunately, the information center quickly solved the problem and Xiao Shao gave up. A few days later, the school information center issued an "Early Warning Notice on Preventing Ransomware and Mining Trojan Viruses", reminding laboratories to strengthen their awareness of prevention. After that, the situation of laboratory computers being hacked improved.

Shanghai Jiao Tong University also encountered a similar incident. In early April this year, a teacher who does numerical calculations and machine learning purchased a 2080ti graphics card for the server (one of the most suitable graphics cards for mining at the moment). Later, the server was invaded by hackers and implanted with a ransomware virus, making it unable to work. The hacker sent an email demanding 5 Bitcoins, otherwise all data in the server will be deleted. The teacher finally handled the incident by calling the police. After this, Jiaotong University began to prohibit off-campus IPs from accessing the servers of on-campus laboratories.

“In the end, Bitcoin’s rise will definitely convince you.”

In this round of Bitcoin turmoil, the sharp fluctuations once again caused a large amount of financial losses. According to data from Bitcoin Home Network, on May 23, a total of 242,175 people liquidated their positions, and 9.646 billion yuan of funds were wiped out. The price of the world’s largest cryptocurrency has dropped by more than 50% from its peak around mid-April.

Zhang Han was unscathed because he had withdrawn from the currency circle, while Zhang Yan had mixed emotions, but when asked if he planned to cut his flesh, he said no. This big boy who tried hard to persuade people to join the industry when he was interviewed a few days ago is determined, "It is impossible to cut off the flesh, not even in this life."

Hu Wei, a rookie, joined the "Mining Leek" communication group of a group of college students. As more current students and alumni joined, there are now more than 100 people, and the group name has also become "Coin Circle" Chinese chives".

Many people in the "Currency Circle Leeks" group are the same, knowing that speculating in currencies is risky. They spent the whole night discussing the trends of Shitcoin and Dogecoin, complaining to each other about the escape of Orangutancoin, and had a great time. But they won’t discuss the blockchain or the value of Bitcoin. They just use their idle living expenses to participate in “small gambling” and earn some pocket money when the overall market environment is good. Almost no one knows how to "go to the top", and they don't have the capital to "go to the top".

Therefore, every time a new person joins the group, Hu Wei will forward a conversation, recording the tragedy of another person having all his assets wiped out overnight due to his contract, in order to warn the new person to stay calm. However, the currency circle has experienced several ups and downs. Among all financial markets, the blockchain industry is the only market that allows people to have faith. Different people have different opinions. The chapter letter calls it "Bitcoin Faith" .

The idealism of Bitcoin is inherent, and blockchain technology was also born out of Bitcoin. However, later people often believed: "Blockchain technology is the truly valuable thing, and the cryptocurrency represented by Bitcoin It is just an immature bubble that may be replaced at any time."

As a student studying blockchain technology and as a "leek" who has gained nearly ten million in the currency circle, Zhang Yan has always been optimistic about the value of Bitcoin. He mentioned concepts such as "fighting inflation" and "decentralization", and believed that Bitcoin will become a tool for future great power games to break through financial controls. This belief also supported him to continue to persevere after being cleared many times.

He argued fiercely with his classmates about the value of Bitcoin. After many times to no avail, he could only say harshly: "It's best if you don't understand. It's best for us to make a fortune ourselves. In the end, Bitcoin will definitely rise and convince you." , and no longer hopes that others will understand the "value" he refers to.

Conflicting views in the currency circle are also continuing: cracking down on Bitcoin mining, but not all types of mining; cooperating with supervision does not mean giving up the business; cracking down on mining does not mean that foreign mining cannot be done; policies do not allow If we dig, we won’t dig, but that doesn’t mean we will stop digging…

The reaction of practitioners in the industry is similar to Zhang Yan’s point of view, “Whatever doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.” As a practitioner in the industry, Wang Jiajian laments the long-standing prejudice against Bitcoin from all walks of life. For a long time, Bitcoin has been regarded by the public as a scourge, often linked to fraud and pyramid schemes. Even though Bitcoin-related institutions have gone public in recent years, people still confuse virtual currencies with high-risk, high-yield investments such as stocks and futures. , or related to the Ponzi scheme of "beating the drum and spreading flowers".

Zhang Han once believed in "Bitcoin belief". He believed that Bitcoin was a tool to fight against the hegemony of the US dollar and a symbol of freedom. However, as time went by and he saw that the carnivales in the circle ended up in vain, he finally gave up this enthusiasm.

He said that currency speculation is just a way to make money, and making money is just to give yourself more time to do the things you like. He has become accustomed to gradually moving away from mining and currency speculation, and began to shoot and edit videos part-time for others, earning considerable income.

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