On July 4, a recording of a private chat between Li Xiaolai, a prominent figure in the cryptocurrency circle, circulated online. Reporters heard the recording, in which Li Xiaolai talked about the consensus value of blockchain. Li Xiaolai said that those who emphasize value investment are XX (an indecent word, omitted in the text as "XX"). If we talk about consensus value, XX consensus is also consensus. The recording caused controversy in the blockchain industry. Some people believed that his statement that "speculation and deception can lead to success" spoke the truth of the industry; but more people in the blockchain industry publicly expressed their dissatisfaction with him.
On July 4, Li Xiaolai posted on Weibo, "When I speak privately, I use a lot of swear words. I also like to study the way of saying swear words in various languages." It seems that he was responding to the incident. Blockchain and coin issuance are closely related, but "coin issuance" does not equal "blockchain". After ICO was stopped by domestic regulators, the problems of industry speculation and bubbles still exist. "The underlying technology of tokens is blockchain. Without blockchain, there would be no tokens, but blockchain itself is an independent and innovative technology with vane significance." Hou Tailing, deputy general manager of the legal department of China Construction Bank, said that, therefore, to correct the relationship between tokens and blockchain, we must guard against financial risks and support technological innovation.
In the audio of the "cutting leeks" speech, Li Xiaolai mentioned that he had helped a well-known public chain project sell "air coins" for six months. "I was the first person to sell him air coins. We sold him air coins for six months, otherwise he would not be where he is today. Looking back now, he is really an awesome scammer, handsome, and he goes around everywhere." When talking about the consensus value of blockchain, Li Xiaolai emphasized that those who believe in value investment are XX. If we talk about consensus value, XX consensus is also consensus. "Now I don't know what to say in the discussion in the three o'clock group. Telling them the truth will ruin their fragile little hearts. Whether it is investment or speculation, those who make money are successful. There is only one core goal, making money." Judging from the content of the recording, Li Xiaolai has a method for "cutting leeks" and is frank about his means of attracting fans, creating IP, and building communities to become a "cryptocurrency boss."
"I am actually an internet celebrity. I have a large readership. In this world (in the field of virtual currency), who has 1 million readers like me? So there was an explosion in an instant. In the bear market, I did another thing. I started writing columns. In a bear market, you can't make money, so you just accumulate popularity. I opened a WeChat public account.
The following year, Luo Zhenyu helped me sell books, and I immediately started a column with him. When the bull market came, my influence became even greater than before. The core competitiveness here is the flow of people. What's next? How do you fool people? Don't understand fooling people as a derogatory term. "Li Xiaolai was a star lecturer and best-selling author of New Oriental. Later, he joined the cryptocurrency circle because of his investment in Bitcoin. In addition to imparting experience, Li Xiaolai also "commented" on star blockchain projects such as Ethereum and EOS, and mentioned many industry insiders, "A liar is a liar to everyone." Binance co-founder He Yi responded on Weibo. On September 4 last year, after the central bank and seven other ministries and commissions defined the initial coin offering (ICO) as illegal fundraising and made a withdrawal requirement, domestic platforms were closed and most projects were refunded. Chen Weixing, chairman of Pancheng Capital, told reporters that the development of blockchain is now facing the problems of speculation and bubbles. "Some projects are capital plates, and some projects can be hyped up many times. Now in the industry, there is more of a speculative consensus on technical concepts rather than a consensus on the vision of solving problems. The market is seriously lacking in governance, and fraud is rampant. We want to do something truly valuable, a shared economy based on blockchain trust, and build a community of workers with mathematical trust." "Token" and "blockchain" Blockchain is a technology, not just a token. "The underlying technology of tokens is blockchain. Without blockchain, there would be no tokens, but blockchain itself is an independent, innovative technology with vane significance.
Hou Tailing, deputy general manager of the legal department of China Construction Bank, said that, therefore, it is necessary to correct the relationship between tokens and blockchain, both to prevent financial risks and to support technological innovation. He believes that, in many cases, blockchain is only used as a technology for making tokens, mainly because:
First, blockchain was born as the underlying technology of Bitcoin. Its inventor originally intended to create a digital currency to challenge the legal currency system, rather than to develop a new technology alone. Therefore, this technology has been regarded as a "currency" technology since its birth.
Second, blockchain has not yet reached the mature stage of replacing existing technologies. Being tied to tokens can not only attract capital and aggregate wealth, but also stimulate technology research and development, thereby promoting the continuous improvement of the technology itself. Therefore, most blockchain projects after Bitcoin have adopted the model of issuing tokens, resulting in the continuous improvement of blockchain technology and the continuous strengthening of its "coin-making" function.
Third, enterprises can use blockchain to conduct ICOs, circumvent regulatory systems under the banner of financial innovation, raise funds publicly, or even raise funds illegally. Therefore, the financing function of blockchain has been hyped and exaggerated, and the price of tokens has skyrocketed. People pay much more attention to tokens than the technology itself. However, this technology itself is being recognized and adopted by various industries. The "2018 China Blockchain Industry Development White Paper" released by the Information Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that as of the end of March 2018, the number of companies in my country whose main business is blockchain business has reached 456, covering upstream hardware manufacturing, platform services, security services and downstream industrial technology application services, as well as various fields such as industry investment and financing, media, and talent services to ensure industrial development.
Professor Yang Dong of Renmin University of China believes that the new interest structure and distribution mechanism carried by blockchain technology will bring about a higher-dimensional economic format or regulatory policy change. Because it is actually convertible and exchangeable, identifiable, traceable, and tamper-proof at the digital, monetary, and legal levels, including a very big breakthrough in value, proof of rights, and social consensus. Chen Weixing said that blockchain plays three main roles. The first is to witness the ledger: decentralized ledger record witnesses to replace bookkeeping intermediaries. The second is to witness the contract: decentralized contract execution witnesses to replace contract intermediaries. The third is to protect the value of privacy data: return the value of data to every user. In his view, relying on the trust of blockchain technology encryption algorithms, reducing the cost of trust intermediaries, redistributing profits, and allowing labor producers to obtain 80% of the labor value. How to regulate the development of blockchain, supervision undoubtedly plays an important role.
Talking about my country's regulatory attitude towards blockchain and digital currency, Yin Zhentao, deputy director of the Law and Finance Research Office of the Institute of Finance of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that "the attitude is very clear. ICO is illegal, transactions are prohibited, and blockchain technology is supported. Regarding Bitcoin, as a virtual currency, it is not prohibited. If there are some transactions around Bitcoin or virtual currency, there are precedents at the court level to support it, and it has a clear legal status. Just like assets like Q coins, users can also file complaints, but its application scenarios are different." The chaos of tokens needs to be regulated, and blockchain technology needs to be supported.
Hou Tailing believes that a set of effective rights protection and interest confirmation mechanisms, a sufficiently open and well-managed "data property rights exchange" can not only improve the financial regulatory mechanism, but also promote the leap of blockchain technology, and also form a huge attraction for innovative technologies and venture capital around the world, thereby achieving the effect of gathering advanced technology and international capital. What should be paid attention to in the process of blockchain development? Chen Weixing said, "Blockchain will undoubtedly change the world, greatly save the cost of trust intermediaries, and solve the risk of the middle-income trap, but it must be standardized, must be transparent, must protect information-disadvantaged civilians, must gradually make all value processes blockchain-trusted programmable, and must be aimed at stimulating actual wealth creation.
"Chen Weixing said that the focus in the future will be the trading market. In the future competition among economies of various chains, whoever can control the community and grasp greater value will be more competitive. He is currently launching a project with Yang Jun, the former co-founder of Meituan, to use blockchain technology to match drivers and passengers in the commercial behavior of taking taxis. Huang Zhangkai, an associate professor of finance at Tsinghua University, believes that "emerging things are always accompanied by various chaos: bubbles, speculation, fanaticism, lies, and even fraud. The emergence of transformative fields in history all have these characteristics. But if we seek stability in everything and ban everything, we will lose the future while eliminating risks." Therefore, he called for the release of regulated ICOs and digital currency exchanges in the country as soon as possible, both from the perspective of promoting innovation and from the perspective of maintaining macroeconomic stability.
