Conversation with three senior KOLs: Bitcoin’s four-year halving cycle, the new narrative of the next bull market, and Ethereum’s “dominant” position

Discussed with three senior KOLs: Bitcoin's four-year halving cycle, the new narrative of the next bull market, and Ethereum's "dominant" position.

Host: Wu discusses blockchain Colin Wu

Guests: Cobo founder Shen Yu, Matrixport CEO Ge Yuesheng, and senior miner Li Peicai

Colin Wu: I would like to ask the three guests to talk about their current thoughts or research on the bull and bear cycles. How long do you think the bear market will last and when will the next bull market arrive?

Shen Yu: In terms of judging the bull and bear cycles and their duration, my perspective has not changed significantly.

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Because of several major factors, one factor is that if you want to achieve a breakthrough, the entire industry has been following a cycle of halving every four years. Next year, May will be a normal Bitcoin halving cycle, and normally, from a historical perspective, a new trend will start about six months after halving. So this is a previous narrative logic, but this time, because the number of changes will be less, the impact may not be so severe.

Another perspective is that from the perspective of industry-native innovation, most of the core mainnets mainly revolve around the expansion of these second-layer networks and performance improvements, and most of the time will go online in Q1 and Q2 of next year, so this cycle is basically the same.

The third is to look at it from the perspective of entry funds. We have seen a lot of hopeful traditional asset management companies ETF applications in recent weeks, and the deadline for ETF applications is also in the first quarter, so these days basically coincide.

There is also a core factor of macro factors, which may also show some landing behavior of the turning point of interest rate hikes next year. So from several perspectives, personally, I think this cycle may have to rely on the period after Q1 and Q2 next year to see whether there will be new market funds inflows and new narrative logic.

Li Peicai: I also agree more with Shen Yu’s views. I think halving a cycle is an anchor, but whether it can sustain an independent cycle after halving alone still needs to be observed. Although we have seen a bull market after halving in 2012, 2016, and 2020, this matter has only been observed three times, and whether it can be used to predict the fourth time, I think it is a question mark. But from past experience, the cycle may never be dominated by one factor. There are often some narrative overlays, such as the bull market in 2012 and 2013, which I remember was also caused by speculation about the Cyprus crisis, as well as the first entry of Bitcoin into the public eye, especially the entry of the Chinese community. I think these may be related, and in 2018, Ethereum talked about an ICO narrative, and in 2020, the bull market in 2220 and 2021 had a new narrative of DeFi Summer. Will there be a new one in 2024? It may also be several factors superimposed. If there is only a halving, I think it may be a question mark as to how much support there will be for a bull market.

There may be a macro environment that needs to be observed, as we saw last year that the impact of interest rate hikes on the entire currency price was very significant. If the Federal Reserve enters a period of easing and expansion next year, it may push the bull market to a higher level, possibly even stacking it with the halving. However, there may be another factor at play, which is whether there is a new narrative or any new highlights in our industry that make people feel that there is more value to be found. I think this is also worth paying attention to.

It’s similar to ICO in 2017 and DeFi in 2021. I remember a few days ago, Mingdao wrote about some valuable things in this industry. Although people may not be as enthusiastic about them now, I think some valuable things are still moving forward, such as L2, DAO, Lightning Network, and BTC’s spot ETF. If all of these things can land further next year, even if there is an application explosion, I think the next halving cycle is still worth looking forward to. That’s my opinion.

Ge Yuesheng: My view is similar. I have always thought that the next cycle should be in the first half of next year, and I would like to remind you that there may be a major crash before such a cycle arrives. There was a strange situation after the SEC sued, that liquidity on various exchanges was quickly drying up, and trading volume was very low. At that time, if you looked at the data for that period, you would feel like you were reliving the past, just like during March 2019. So at that time, I felt that there might be a market movement similar to March 2019, but then suddenly there was good news from the United States and it pulled up. So I personally feel that there may be a bottoming out process before the general cycle, which will make the bottom more solid. This will also make those who have chips in hand more confident to enter the market, and it may be the last opportunity for everyone to buy low before the next cycle.

Colin Wu: The second question is, can the three guests discuss whether they think the SEC’s standard for whether cryptocurrency is classified as a security will have a very big impact on the industry? Especially in the case of a large number of tokens being classified as securities this year.

Godfish: To be honest, I’m not very professional in this area because it involves some legal issues. From my personal perspective, I think that the recent increase in regulation is a direct result of the aftershocks of FTX, and it may be a reflection on the destructive events that have occurred in the industry over the past year. It may also be a compensatory strengthening of regulation, which may cause some unintended harm in the process.

Regarding the process of classifying these currencies as securities or removing them from some compliant exchanges, there are pros and cons. I think this is a good thing because it allows everyone to see that their confidence in bitcoin and other core assets has become stronger during the bear market cycle, because the regulation clearly states that some tokens will not be securities, so this is a good thing. Because in the bear market, most assets actually fluctuate quite a bit, so in the long run, as far as the cryptocurrency industry is concerned, it is enough to hold core assets, and we also see that these core assets have not been classified as securities by the SEC. So from this perspective, especially for retail investors, it is a protective effect, although it is a bit passive.

From another perspective, it may have an impact on innovation in the industry and some cutting-edge exploration. We have also seen some North American entrepreneurs starting to transition these battlefields under high-pressure environments. Even projects that originally planned to issue coins will not do so. This may especially be the case if regulation continues to be so high-pressure and lasts for a long time, and it may have a passive impact on innovation in the North American regions where most of the early innovations in our industry occurred. It may cause talent to begin to spread around the areas where innovation around Silicon Valley is clustered, and ultimately there may be some impact on innovation and emergence.

However, regulation is something that I think will happen gradually as the industry grows and scales up, and the special nature of our industry means that we have many technical means and ways that regulation cannot fully land, so regulation will also adjust its pace in response to the characteristics of the industry and adapt to its development, because in the end, many regulations may look like that, but they cannot actually be implemented, and ultimately, a new balance will be reached. So I think this is a state where there are pros and cons.

Li Peicai: I think that most of the currencies in the industry are closely related to securities, except for BTC, LTC, and other consensus currencies with high decentralization as a currency. Even from the perspective of the positioning of these currencies, many of the DeFi and other currencies have some properties of commercial equity, including dividends and repurchases. In fact, I think it is very similar to securities. Now that the SEC has clarified this matter, I think this may be a good thing in the long run. Since it is a security, everyone may be regulated in accordance with some securities methods in the future. However, I think this industry is like what Shenyu said, because it does have many technical means to avoid this definition.

There is also the issue of liquidity. We can go to some places where regulation is relatively weak. I think it may be a good thing. In addition, it is possible to clarify that BTC, LTC, BCH, and other currencies that are less associated with securities are not securities. This may relieve the regulatory pressure on these currencies, especially BTC, and may make it possible for spot ETFs to be launched smoothly in the future. I think this is a good thing for the industry.

As for many other currencies, if they are functionally positioned as income equity, everyone may trade according to equity, and even supervise them according to equity, distribute dividends to shareholders who hold these tokens, disclose them if necessary, and sort out financial reports if necessary. Then standardize these things. I think this may also be good for the development of the industry. For the issuance of securities, in some regions, its policies may be strict, while in some regions, they may be weak. More entrepreneurial teams may choose to register securities in countries with more friendly regulations. However, your Chain transaction is competitive. In fact, for the issuer of securities, you don’t know where the profit pool of your trading is, as long as the liquidity is sufficient. You don’t really care where your securities are registered. Right? I think this allows the project party that may need to complete some securities registration matters from a legal point of view. Technically, he has no way to completely say that, like before, I went to the US market for supervision is very strict, but I can have good liquidity, I go to a relatively backward developed and underdeveloped area, although they may welcome me to register securities there, but I have no way to get orders from the United States. However, I think there is no such geographical restriction on the public chain. Maybe I can go to a country with more friendly regulations to register, and then my transaction is still on ETH, and I am not affected by any impact, but I think the registration may be a little more.

I think it is possible to standardize some of the project parties, and maybe the malicious Ponzi scheme will be less. I think that regulation is also a relatively effective social technology for balancing securities issuance. If there is no regulation, it may be a mixed bag of fish and dragons. If there is regulation afterwards, maybe there will be some good changes. So my feeling is that this positioning of BTC as a non-security is a good thing in itself, and for the remaining tokens, if you are a security, if you are really regulated according to securities, it may not be a bad thing to find a regulation-friendly place.

Ge Yuesheng: I want to put the issue of securities in the recent series of actions by the SEC and what’s happening in the United States. Actually, it’s quite interesting to look at the whole action of this market. First, the SEC suppressed Binance and Coinbase. Second, it defined what is a security, what is a token, and what is a commodity. It tried to define it without legislation, but it claimed which things it thinks are securities and which are not.

At the same time, a edx-like thing on Wall Street has emerged, which has collected more than half of the banks and investment institutions that we usually see in the news media. This whole series of things put together I think is very American. Because the SEC is a regulatory agency, most of the people in it are law students. It is usually not so concentrated to cooperate with a new exchange to release and do these actions, but it just cooperated with a new American institutional exchange to do this action, and its entire rule design is very similar to Nasdaq. That’s right, SEC decides to register and then says whether you can go up or not, right?

First, if you want to list on Nasdaq, you have to pass the SEC’s test first, and then you can go up to the exchange, right? It’s like today, first you have to be recognized by the SEC and say that you are not a security, and you may be able to go to the American exchange, and at the same time, it has done its best to suppress the competitors of this exchange in the American market. Then, accompanied by the news of the new exchange’s public launch, I think there may be two possible results. One possibility is pure coincidence, and the second possibility is that this matter is the operation of the American elite. This kind of thing is quite common in the United States, and if it is the latter, it will still have a very profound impact.

One thing is that after the FTX incident, I felt that US regulation had become very toxic, and I never allowed crypto companies to open US dollar accounts and various suppressions, to the point where you go to the US, especially to New York to talk about Crypto. There is even a kind of atmosphere, to what extent, after the FTX incident, because at that time, because of some other things, I originally made an appointment with the bank to chat, but the other party suddenly said that it disappeared and so on, and I once felt that it was not in the US. Completely turned into negative opinions on this matter, but the launch of Edx and a series of actions recently taken by the SEC gave me a guess, that is, they are not, all the actions done before are laying the groundwork, and actually they still want to regain the ground in Crypto world, and this time the means are even stronger, and the degree of intervention by regulatory agencies is even deeper.

Of course, even if this is the situation, there is no harm in my opinion, because if you don’t go to Nasdaq, you can go to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. This world is not just the United States, it’s just that if you want American investors’ money in the future, you want to go to American exchanges, you may have to be approved by the SEC. What standards does the SEC use to approve this matter? It has become a problem that can be left or right in the entire legislative process, and there are many choices. So I feel that if it is the latter I am talking about, the second possibility I guess is indeed that some people in the United States are playing chess, and this event will actually become a very iconic event in Crypto history.

Colin Wu: Do you think the Hong Kong situation is significant for this industry or the Chinese community? What are the significant or valuable aspects you think are worth paying attention to?

Ge Yuesheng: I think that in accordance with the narrative logic of the conspiracy theory I just mentioned, Hong Kong’s capital market used to be one of the top three hot capital markets in the world. The hottest capital market is still in the United States, but Hong Kong is definitely ranked high. Now Hong Kong is so welcoming to Crypto and is trying to build a Crypto market, which includes exchanges, funds, a series of their ETFs, and so on.

For the Crypto community, this is definitely a good thing. Competition in the capital market promotes industry growth. However, this time Hong Kong has not completely landed yet, so we cannot see what the specific rules are. As a new and emerging technology, Crypto is actually quite difficult in terms of regulation. I give an example of Hong Kong’s regulation, which is a bit counterintuitive to our intuition as old coin circle people. They require every exchange to have its own custody company because Cobo and Matrixport do custody, and we know that the cost of custody is high, the responsibility is great, and the technology is difficult. It seems that letting each exchange do its own custody is not a correct direction on a technical level. So I think the starting point is good and the future is worth looking forward to. However, regulating a new thing and establishing a set of rules that really conform to the market order is still a big challenge for Hong Kong’s legislators, and hopefully it can succeed. If there are any mistakes, they can be corrected as soon as possible.

Li Peicai: I also agree with everyone’s views. I think that at least from the industry and the Hong Kong government’s intentions, they are really sincere and they do want to do something in this area. But I think the underlying motive may also be that they actually think that this area is a measure that can strengthen Hong Kong’s financial center. Because now these financial markets, although Hong Kong used to be one of the top three financial markets, with the passage of time, its position is also being challenged by many places. So Singapore and Dubai, right? They are all competing for this position, and they think there must be some pressure, so they also want to use Crypto RWA and other things to possibly snatch back some of their share through these new markets and even give themselves some new competitive advantages. I think this attitude is okay, but it is indeed a challenge to regulate this industry, right? There may be some technical difficulties, and there may be some differences from the original financial market, and there are many problems, such as money laundering, scammers, Crypto, KYC, etc., which may not be effectively solved by your original regulatory rules. You may have to formulate some new regulatory rules for the market, which is quite a test of regulatory level. In addition, I think it is indeed possible that the result of iteration may be to first come up with a financial policy, and then adjust on this basis. I think at least recently, there have been some news disclosures one after another, saying that some policies are landing one after another. For example, some Hong Kong banks allow customers to buy BTC futures ETFs, and some banks are relatively friendly to digital currency companies. In the past, if you opened an account and told them that your money came from the Crypto industry, they might directly reject you. Now, many individuals, institutions, and corporate users have heard that it is easier to open an account in Hong Kong. I think it is definitely helpful to the industry, so I still have a relatively cautious and optimistic attitude towards this matter. I think it is always a good thing, which is definitely more favorable to the industry than a one-size-fits-all approach like in China. As for whether it will be very beneficial or to what extent it will be effective, we may need to observe the regulatory policies and the implementation and launch of these specific measures.

Shen Yu: In my opinion, this is definitely a good thing, because although crypto has a history of more than 10 years as a newborn thing, it actually survives in the game and survival dilemma under the regulatory environment of various countries. So some regions and countries began to support it, and then it was the government that made a big effort to promote it. Especially, we have had a big problem in various industries in the past, that is, the problem of fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, especially after the small banks in North America went bankrupt in March and April this year. In essence, the few large fiat currency deposit and withdrawal crypto-friendly banks in Silicon Valley have also gone bankrupt. So this is also a big problem faced by the institutional side of the entire industry. Now we also see that the Hong Kong government is making a big effort to force large banks in Hong Kong to innovate and welcome the opening of crypto accounts. In fact, this is very rare.

So from this perspective, I think that Hong Kong’s policies, including the innovation of some banks in Singapore, actually have a very promoting effect on the entire industry, because only small innovative banks in North America will try to do this business, but in Hong Kong and Singapore, it is actually at the policy level, the government is pushing these large banks to try and let traditional finance access the blockchain. So from this perspective, I think it is a very positive signal. Just now the two guests also mentioned that there are still many things to learn and grow in the process of regulation and government dealing with the industry. I personally feel that this should be done relatively well, because the Singapore government is actually a typical example, because it has had a relatively large contact with the industry since 2017, and in this process, it has also spent two or three years. Basically, we can also see some growth in the regulatory level and some policies that are more suitable for the industry. The Hong Kong government has made a very big effort this time, and we also expect that there will be further landing of some policies that are more matched with the industry in the future.

Colin Wu: How do the three guests view the future development prospects of Bitcoin’s inscriptions?

Ke Yuecheng: I actually haven’t looked at it seriously myself, and I happen to have a friend who is quite obsessed with it, and he told me about it. After listening to him talk, I still don’t understand why this thing is such a valuable or necessary thing. But he talked to me about a concept at the underlying technical level, and he did mention a very niche thing that I think is really unique, which is that you can issue NFT on Bitcoin instead of BRC20, because B2C20 is Token. If you issue NFT, because the structure of Bitcoin can make NFT have some time and space concepts. If there is a Satoshi in the first block, or the first 1,000 blocks, and I do an NFT on it, it obviously becomes very valuable because it is very difficult to obtain as a raw material, and at this time, because these Satoshis have some time nodes, it may be combined with some historical events, which may make NFT have a unique sense of history.

After listening to him, I think this thing may be a bit unique, but I don’t really get it in other aspects, why it needs to be more expensive, and the handling fee is higher, that is, the time is longer. It seems that there is no very necessary reason from a technical point of view. If you really just want to issue a Token, there seems to be no need to run to the Bitcoin chain to issue it. If it is a homogeneous Token, but I really haven’t studied it deeply, and there may be some mistakes in technology, I currently feel this way.

Li Peicai: My point of view is similar to Ke’s. On BTC, the popularity of NFT will be better, and I think the reasons are similar. I think that the coins on ETH are actually written with contracts, and they can actually write many things, but on BTC, there is a theoretical ceiling, although the ceiling is very high at 2.1 trillion. Anyway, there are some halved Satoshis and some special Satoshis that are related to them, and I think it’s really fun.

I can understand why the BRC20 token is rising, because I think its issuance method may be more friendly to retail investors. It is fairly cast, and the initial issuance price is also very low. In addition, the industry may be looking for some new highlights. Even the success of BRC20 in the IC0 year may have given everyone some good expectations. In addition, I think BTC itself is a very large pool with a market value of tens of billions of dollars. Maybe this pool needs to overflow a little, which can cause a small market, so I can understand this part, but indeed I have not thought too much about the long-term value of BRC20. Maybe it is easier to understand the NFT part of it. I still want to hear the opinion of the Godfish, and my own opinion is like this.

Shen Yu: There has been a hot topic on Bitcoin recently. From a fundamental perspective, as Wu mentioned earlier, some developers are shouting that it is not recommended. But we can also see that these core developers can only shout and can’t do much. So the Bitcoin network is actually a more decentralized and open network state. Therefore, after carrying these rare Satoshis, it has done some inscriptions and made some NFTs on them. It can better preserve and precipitate some more classic artistic creations compared to some other networks. From this perspective, we actually see these rare Satoshis, and then many of these project parties and some real artists, they started hoarding these rare Satoshis, and then issuing projects on them. This is actually such a starting point.

From this perspective, I think the development of Bitcoin inscriptions over the past few months actually has a relatively large significance. The wave of rapid speculation in BRC20 was actually because, in my opinion, the market cycle reached a low point without a topic, and everyone was relatively calm, and needed some topic and some outbreak. Then BRC20 happened to appear in that time period, and also brought about some wealth effect, so it caused a wave of hype.

But in the long run, such underlying technology is not very suitable for issuance on the Bitcoin network. It may be more suitable on the Lightning Network or other second layers of Bitcoin. Therefore, from the development process, I personally still agree with the opinions of the first two guests. I think the issuance of tokens on the Bitcoin network may not be that significant, because the Bitcoin network was not designed for such a goal. It was originally a peer-to-peer cash system. It’s just that everyone is taking advantage of it, using some new features, and can barely issue it, but its user experience, and your GAS fee are all very expensive costs. On the contrary, in the NFT market, I think some classic works on Bitcoin, some works with strong collection value, so personally, I am more optimistic about some special artworks on these rare Satoshis, and I have hoarded some.

Colin Wu: Has Ethereum’s ecosystem completed the unification of public chains or infrastructure? Are other public chains out of the game?

Shen Yu: I think the unification of public chains or V God’s technical route is something we can see. In the past, V God has proposed many technical routes, but none of them have been implemented. This industry is based on the emergence and trial-and-error of technology routes from the open-source community, not defined by one person or team from top to bottom. Although some of them may be discussed by developers, they are not clearly defined from day one. Therefore, I think the final landing of technology routes and who can obtain a monopolistic position is uncertain and still needs to be chosen by the market over time. Therefore, I think other public chains, including some new innovations, still have opportunities. It is not yet in a final state, and there are not many interesting projects recently because the market is in a relatively bearish state. Recently, some products have begun to emerge and try out in the upstream and downstream of zk, such as hardware acceleration, which I think may bring some new directions and emerging revenue opportunities to the pow field next year. It may be possible to accelerate mining Ethereum by doing some hardware acceleration on the second layer.

Li Peicai: My view is that ETH is definitely in a very leading position in the public chain race, but it is too early to draw conclusions that there are no other opportunities in other aspects. A few days ago, we were chatting with a friend who talked about the concept of regional public chains that they are currently laying out. I think it seems reasonable because after Ethereum changed to POS, the cost of making a public chain has become not so high, and POS may be able to tolerate a relatively large number of public chains, and there may be some large regional enterprise users who may run to some regional public chains because of their attributes of these big enterprises or regulatory policies. CFX was fired up because Hong Kong’s regulatory policies were relatively friendly some time ago, and there are similar phenomena in India and Japan. They may have many local governments and enterprises who are willing to replicate their own public chains. First of all, I don’t think it’s that difficult technically, especially if you only copy the performance of ETH, and the ecology above, such as DEX, lending, DeFi, etc., can basically be completely copied. I think it doesn’t matter. I really didn’t study this issue deeply. It’s just that this friend has invested in many public chains before, and he just gave his points of view to everyone to share. I partially agree, but I think it may need further observation to see whether this round of bull market, one is whether ETH L2 can be fully implemented and completely solve the TPS problem, and the other is whether there will be new ecology on the public chain, and whether the performance requirements for the public chain are relatively high. Because this morning we were also discussing another topic, which was also the DeFi Summer. After ETH was blocked, many small public chains emerged, including BSC. After the bear market, public chains like BSC still have users, and they have not opened up a big gap with Ethereum, although the TVL compared to Ethereum is still large, but from the perspective of active users, it seems that there is no big gap.

Ke Yue: I think that logically, if we’re discussing the broad topic of WEB3, there are various estimates of the number of blockchain users, but I think it’s safe to say that there are around 200 million. However, there are 7-8 billion people in the world, so it’s still too early to say that Ethereum has achieved dominance. From the perspective of user adoption, there is still a lot of room to grow. Other public chains definitely have great opportunities, but it may not be like the wave of 2017-2018 where people recognized projects just by reading a white paper or without revolutionary technological breakthroughs. Now people care more about whether a new chain has real applications and actual users. This could become a more important aspect of the competition between public chains, rather than just talking about technology.

Then, regarding blockchain applications, I can share my recent observations. It’s not commonly discussed within the community, but people are asking what the KILL APP of blockchain is. I have a feeling that the KILL APP of crypto may have already appeared, and it’s stablecoins. Recently, we’ve seen that Crypto trading volume has been shrinking, but the amount of USDT issuance has continued to rise. This is quite strange, because we used to think that USDT was mainly used for trading. Otherwise, why would I need USDT? Also, I recently traveled around the world and found that many people are using USDT for cross-border remittances or international trade. It’s very common in the Middle East, including Hong Kong. Stablecoins, especially USDT, seem to have become the default currency for these money changers. Another interesting thing is that credit cards based on USDT are very popular now. I think these things have brought a lot of impact to the Crypto community. If it’s a credit card, I’ll use it every day for daily consumption, and it will generate a lot of transactions. It’s a very close combination with my daily life. Including international remittances and international trade, it’s really not about investment and speculation, but about using blockchain technology in daily life and business operations. The great thing about this is that it quickly brings the blockchain infrastructure, such as wallets and exchanges, especially wallets, to those who fundamentally don’t want to invest or speculate. Because you need to use a credit card, or you need to remit money, or your merchants need to settle accounts, so you download a wallet, and then you learn how to use the wallet to use Bitcoin. This wave of trends is actually not at the center of the discussions in the Crypto community, but it’s spreading very quickly.

We can reasonably assume that during the next bull market, because of such an application, there will be hundreds of millions of people in the world who know how to use wallets and transfer money to others, which will provide a solid foundation for the next bull market. Then it becomes much easier to develop SocialFi, GameFi, etc., because everyone has a wallet. And to some extent, this KILL APP also decides which public chain he will use in the future, and which public chain can be so popular. For example, Tron, right? USDT basically keeps Tron alive single-handedly, contributing a lot of transaction fees and profits, and the true trading volume of that chain is also very large. So I think that the competition in the future supply chain will still depend on this KILL APP, and I am currently optimistic that stablecoins will become the next KILL APP, which is happening now.

Colin Wu: Do any of you have any interesting stories to share with us when you first entered the industry, to end on a lighter note?

Ge Yuesheng: I’ll share a story between me and Shen Yu. Shen Yu probably doesn’t remember. The first time I mined with GPU mining, sometimes I couldn’t figure it out, and then the group said that there was a guru named Seven-Color Immortal Fish, who could help with parameter configuration. So I got to know Shen Yu very early, actually as a netizen. He probably didn’t know, just knew what my screen name was, this should be the end of 2012, so Shen Yu is really an OG among OGs, and he should be the first person to mine in this circle, or in the GPU era.

Li Peicai: My first day of mining, it was also fun at the time. At that time, Bitcoin was already very high, but I was too scared to buy it, so I wanted to mine it. At that time, I came in relatively late, and at that time, I could only mine Litecoin because I couldn’t mine Bitcoin anymore. But the first post I read was also Seven-Color Immortal Fish. I remember very clearly that the end of that post said that you had to pay 50 yuan to see it, which is also an interesting thing. Early bigwigs also had to sell some fee-based services~

Question from the audience 1: These financial management tools are usually released by centralized institutions. I want to know that since FTX went bankrupt, many people have lost confidence in such things. Will the risks of these things be greater?

Li Peicai: I think in terms of financial management, generally speaking, your risk and return should be matched. The benchmark for risk-free returns in the market is usually US Treasury bonds or basically the government bonds issued by every country. Basically, this is a benchmark for the risk-free returns of all financial markets. For example, if you buy US dollars now, the benchmark return is about 5.5%. If you have the ability to directly buy US Treasuries and you think the yield is satisfactory, that’s also okay. The rest is just finding a balance between the additional risk and return you take on. For example, the income from ETH Staking may come from two sources. One is the appreciation of ETH itself. If you are very optimistic about ETH and want to buy ETH, since you have bought ETH, do you want to take advantage of the income from ETH? I think the answer to this question is relatively simple for most people. It’s like buying US dollars. Of course, I want to collect interest on government bonds as well. But at this point, how much risk do you want to take for this return? For example, you can go to the chain and take STETH, like what Shenyu just said. If you believe that LIDO will not do anything wrong, and this project is so big, with millions of Ethereum in it, do you feel secure enough to take this? You can also trust Binance, right? If you feel that there is a security risk if you keep the private key yourself, you can put this thing in Binance. This risk is definitely not zero, it just depends on how you evaluate it, right? So I think it’s all about finding a balance. Ultimately, you should make a decision based on your own risk identification, a bit like driving. There is certainly risk when you go driving, right? The probability of accidents per million kilometers is definitely not zero. But as long as you master the traffic rules correctly, and you want to enjoy the benefits of freedom that driving brings you, I think you can bear these risks. This is my point of view.

Question 2 from the audience: I would like to ask Shenyu, when do you think the NFT market will be slightly better? Or what kind of opportunity can it take to turn from a bear market to a bull market?

Shen Yu: I think the NFT market is such a thing, that it’s a fast-emotional cycle, and now it’s in a relatively negative emotional state because of some events, so we first need to get out of this kind of state. In addition, the logic of the NFT market in the past two years has still been some traditional collectibles and hype conclusions. In fact, it still needs to find some application scenarios and usage scenarios that NFT can land, maybe some applications in GameFi, and then game props, and some offline rights and interests combined, maybe these also need some landing and exploration, so short-term may have a emotional cycle to get out, some explosive products will come out, and then everyone’s emotions will be ignited again, and in the long run, it is necessary to find landing scenarios.

I think this thing is valuable, especially when combined with traditional WEB2 or some traditional membership programs, it can be clearly felt that it can bring more incremental users, and it is relatively low threshold, without taking it too seriously, it can be converted into Crypto-native users, but now it is subject to the performance of the chain, the application scenarios, and the support of the wallet. There is still some basic infrastructure to be improved. I basically don’t sell the NFTs I buy, they all go to zero.

Question from the audience 3: I would like to ask if Bitcoin can rise to 100,000 by the end of this year? I have changed my net name to a “rise” word.

Ge Yuesheng: I personally feel that there is no very solid evidence to prove this thing, but I feel it is the first half of next year. When I first shared it, I mentioned that there is a possibility of a sharp drop before the start of a round cycle, just like 312 in the last bull market, but it will quickly recover, then solidify a bottom, and enter the next cycle, so the overall trend is upward, which does not mean that this process will be smooth or without bumps.

Audience: I am holding Bitcoin in full position.

Ge Yuesheng: Wish you get rich.

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