The Rise and Fall of Li Lin and Xu Stars
Editor's Note: This article is from:chain catcherEditor's Note: This article is from:
chain catcher
(ID: iqklbs), author: Wang Aci, editor: Li Zhao, reproduced by Odaily with authorization.
Yang Linke, Li Lin, Xu Mingxing, Li Xiaolai, Zhang Shousong, Liu Jingchao, Deng Di... As the first wave of gold diggers in the Chinese trading market, what have they experienced? What kind of difficulties did you face? How did they survive the big and small cycles of 7 years across bulls and bears?
The process of discovering business opportunities, taking risks to break through, and establishing barriers seems to be the only way for every entrepreneur. Chain Catcher (ID: iqklbs) tries to inspire practitioners by presenting the rise and fall of the first batch of exchange entrepreneurs in China.
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Discover business opportunities
If the lens is pulled back to 2011, everything will be cast in the color of "Genesis of the Gods". The blockchain trading market was barren, and later all-powerful figures grew here secretly. With enthusiasm for new things, they created new ways of playing, trying to secure the first batch of users by staking the land.
At this time, 26-year-old Xu Mingxing was still the CTO of Douding.com. When watching an American drama called "The Good Wife", he remembered a line: Bitcoin is the future, real is gonna change, and he began to pay attention to Bitcoin; 29-year-old Li Linzheng runs the "golden development period" group buying discount website "Ren Ren Zhe", earning the first pot of gold in his life. Based on his sensitivity to numbers, after reading the Bitcoin white paper for the first time, he was attracted by the principles of cryptography. Attractive; 39-year-old Li Xiaolai came into contact with the Bitcoin white paper at the same time. After reading it, he couldn't help sighing that "this thing will be reversed when it comes out", and began to hoard a large amount of coins...
This year, Chinese bitcoin players were still trading through Taobao and QQ groups, while overseas bitcoin trading websites headed by Mt.
Different from other people’s hesitation, after a simple understanding of the operating mechanism of Bitcoin, Yang Linke decisively saw the vacancy in China’s Bitcoin trading market, spent tens of thousands of dollars, and recruited Huang Xiaoyu, and built it in only one month. The first bitcoin exchange in China - "Bitcoin China".
Yang Linke
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Yang Linke
Keen business sense and quick execution ability fully demonstrate Yang Linke's characteristics as a businessman in Wenzhou. Before he came into contact with Bitcoin, he did not go to college. After the expiration of his military service, he chose to go north to do business. He opened a hotel and sold steaming equipment. The restless blood in his bones has always pushed him to make a difference in the Internet industry. , But helplessly, there are many Internet giants, and there has been no chance to display it. The establishment of Bitcoin China has fulfilled his dream to a certain extent.
However, because there were very few people in China who knew about Bitcoin at that time, the price of Bitcoin remained sideways for a long time, and only a few thousand yuan of handling fees were recorded in the account every month. Yang Linke had to run Bitcoin China while also taking care of the sweaty business.
Until the beginning of 2013, the popularization of the concept of Bitcoin had a remarkable effect. The price soared from more than a dozen dollars to 1,000 dollars, and the trading volume of Bitcoin China rose accordingly. On April 10, the number of Bitcoin transactions reached 28,600 pieces.
Seeing the benefits of the Bitcoin market, a large number of long-coveted entrepreneurs began to enter the exchange field. At the same time, Li Lin and Xu Mingxing, who later occupied the top positions of the exchange, entered the market.
On May 15, 2013, Li Lin purchased the domain name "huobiwang". In order to avoid the sensitive term "currency", he named it Huobi.com. On September 1st, Huobi.com started operations, and within half a year, it received a capital investment of US$10 million in Series A from Sequoia Capital.
In October of the same year, with 5 million angel investments from Jiang Tao, Cai Wensheng, Pre-Angel Wang Lijie, Leifeng.com founder Lin Jun and others, plus his own 1 million, Xu Mingxing founded the bitcoin trading platform OKCoin.
However, the main routes of the two are different. Li Lin started from the Internet thinking and announced the permanent exemption of transaction fees. Although the platform page is simple, it opened up the situation with this advantage and became the largest bitcoin trading platform in China.
Xu Mingxing seized the opportunity of Litecoin and vigorously promoted it with the gimmick of low currency price, high profit, and in place consulting services. As of December 2013, the transaction volume of Litecoin on OKCoin reached 8.5 million, creating a global electronic currency transaction at that time. The highest record of the platform.
Although the styles of play are different, they come from the same family - both of them have "triggered" in the Internet industry and are well versed in Internet thinking.
In 2007, Li Lin, who joined Oracle, quickly became tired of the nine-to-five job. Influenced by the success of social media such as Facebook and Renren, he set up a joint venture with friends to create a "Friendship Network" while working part-time. Resource sharing is achieved by building an interpersonal network, but in the face of social giants like Tencent, they are quickly defeated.
By chance, he came into contact with Bitcoin. Through experience, he found that the Bitcoin exchange was very rough in terms of page design, interactive experience, and customer service. Li Lin, who is sensitive to the trend, thought that this was the gap left by the market, so he aimed at it. Bitcoin secondary exchange market, started the third venture.
Li Lin
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Li Lin
Coincidentally, as early as 2006, when group buying was in its infancy, Xu Mingxing contributed his first entrepreneurial attempt. He co-founded the group buying website "Wantuan.com" with another technician from a traditional industry, and finally failed. end. Then he joined Douding.com as a partner and served as CTO, which lasted for six years.
Later, he set his sights on the O2O field. After learning the lessons from the failure of the early group buying business, he decisively sold the house and invested two million to enter the catering O2O field, trying to combine the offline catering industry with the Internet. However, after several months of continuous losses, he realized that he had made a mistake in his judgment of the market prospect, and had to choose to stop the loss in time.
With previous entrepreneurial experience, Xu Mingxing became more cautious. Although I was very interested after reading the Bitcoin white paper, I only bought a few hundred to test the waters. Until the Bitcoin market was booming, he, who was born in technology, was convinced of the prospect of Bitcoin after careful research. "It is in the early stage of market development, and business models such as payment and funds are being constructed, and the prospects are bright." So he made another decision. Determined to start a business and embrace the exchange industry.
With the entry of these two people, and the vigorous development of other fields, the Chinese trading market was booming throughout 2013.
First, the information service website began to integrate with the exchange. In June of the same year, Huang Tianwei established the Bit Times. At the beginning, he relied on providing altcoin information services. In August, he opened the trading business of bitcoin and altcoins. Later, in the bit era where transactions and media are both grasped, a large amount of user traffic has been mastered. Its success has also opened a new chapter in the media layout of the exchange.
Secondly, many exchanges started to rely on altcoins. For example, Yunbi.com founded by Li Xiaolai, Btctrade founded by Zhang Shousong, Bijiu.com founded by Liu Jingchao, Yuanbao.com founded by Deng Dee, etc.
Zhang Shousong, who once worked for Microsoft Asia Research Institute and Alibaba, started to establish a website at the age of 15. In early 2010, he founded Tuan138 group buying network, which was later acquired. Yu Xin founded Aide Zhizhi Education Consulting Company in 2008 after 8 years at New Oriental.
When the Chinese trading market was still barren, they encountered Bitcoin by chance, and then relied on their extremely keen business sense to seize this business opportunity, and the clarion call for Chinese entrepreneurs to go to the trading market was sounded.
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adventure breakout
In fact, the entry of a large wave of gold diggers did not drive the appreciation of the price of Bitcoin from the beginning. Instead, due to various external forces, it promoted the arrival of another darkest moment for Bitcoin.
On December 5, 2013, the five ministries and commissions of the country issued a document clarifying that Bitcoin cannot and should not be used as currency in the market, let alone traded or used as a central counterparty to buy and sell Bitcoin. On the day the notice was issued, the domestic bitcoin trading price dropped from 7,004 yuan to 4,521 yuan; in March 2014, Mt.Gox, the world's largest bitcoin trading platform, was stolen and 850,000 bitcoins were lost. Subsequently, other exchanges took over the phenomenon of stealing coins. There was a mournful voice in the currency circle.
In order to ensure the normal operation of the exchange and pass this time smoothly, the founders of the exchange have extended their tentacles to other fields.
At the end of 2014, Li Lin designed the investment product "Caimao Network" for the investment users of Huobi.com from the perspective of the company, and then launched the first product stock allocation, which created a trading volume of 1 billion yuan in two months. However, as the regulators strictly investigated the off-site fund allocation, the stock allocation business of Caimao Network was forced to suspend. In February 2016, Li Lin acquired Bangu Technology, a company on the New Third Board, and then changed its name to Caimao Network.
In the middle of 2015, Xu Mingxing returned to the Internet field and established a social financial app that focuses on borrowing money from acquaintances.
Li Xiaolai founded the Bit Fund in 2013, focusing on angel investment in the Internet and Bitcoin related fields. In 2015, he established Qingfeideji Technology Co., Ltd. in Beijing. In 2016, he opened a column "The Road to Wealth and Freedom" in Luo Zhenyu's "Get". It is reported that during this period of time, the operation of Yunbi.com was entirely supported by Li Xiaolai's personal contribution.
Dundee established Taiyi Cloud Technology Co., Ltd. in 2016, which is committed to implanting blockchain in social activities such as finance, commerce, personal and corporate credit, and providing digital asset query services.
Until Christmas Eve 2016, when Bitcoin soared, the founders shifted their focus back to the exchange.
Bitcoin trading prices of OKCoin, Huobi, etc. all broke records, breaking through 6,000 yuan, reaching the highest point after the sharp drop three years ago, and the Bitcoin market ushered in another hot scene. The rise of the altcoin exchanges represented by the above.
But the good times didn’t last long. In January 2017, the regulatory authorities of Beijing and Shanghai interviewed and inspected the three largest bitcoin trading platforms in China, Bitcoin China, Huobi.com, and OKcoin. Declare a cessation.
Immediately following the arrival of the September 4th policy, it is expressly prohibited that any organization or individual shall not illegally engage in token issuance and financing activities, and all types of token issuance and financing activities should be stopped immediately.
In response to the policy, on September 14th, the Bitcoin China website announced that it would stop all trading operations on September 30th; Announcements were issued separately to stop new user registration and fiat currency recharge.
Yunbi.com closed its trading function on September 20th; Bitcoin Trading.com stopped all site trading on September 30th; due to the large number of customers of BitTimes, Huobi and OKCoin, the closing time of trading was postponed to October 31st, 2017.
According to the domestic Bitcoin transaction monitoring report in July, OKCoin (accounting for 22.5%), Bitcoin China (accounting for 19.7%) and Huobi.com (accounting for 18.2%) have the largest transaction volume. The three together accounted for 60.4%.
Judging from the choices of the three after 1994, there are mainly two ways to deal with the results of this rectification. They are the obedience policy represented by Bitcoin China, the direct closure, and the transfer represented by OKCoin and Huobi. subject to overseas.
At that time, when the market environment was uncertain and most of the users were in China, moving overseas was undoubtedly a gambling behavior with unpredictable odds. Through the different choices presented in this rectification, we can indirectly see the gambler mentality of the founders behind it, as well as the different perceptions of the industry prospects, and this perception can be seen from the words of several people in the early years. .
Before establishing Bitcoin China, Yang Linke, a businessman from Wenzhou, had made it clear that he had a speculative attitude towards the exchange. He just thought he was interested in this profitable business opportunity. With the double harvest of money and money, in the face of policy supervision, it is the best choice to get out of the whole body.
In this way, the former "Bitcoin No. 1 person" lost the possibility of becoming the No. 1 exchange in the future. However, afterward, in an interview, Yang Linke also expressed regret that Huobi and OK were smart, "I don't know how they judged the situation so keenly. Is it luck or they have a lot of news? But in this circle, many decision-making It’s still about luck.”
As early as 2015, OKCoin started the road of evangelism. It invited 50 cadres from the "Seminar on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" of the Central Party School to visit. Currency" as the concept, introduce Bitcoin to the audience, and express the optimism that Bitcoin will move towards real life.
After Li Lin established Huobi, he has been preaching the development prospects of encrypted digital currency as an evangelist. In 2015, he also published "Current Development Status and Policy Research of Bitcoin Industry" in the authoritative financial magazine "Tsinghua Financial Review". It is the first time in China to publish suggestions on Bitcoin industry policy in a relatively influential magazine.
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build barriers
For Huobi and OKCoin, which have made great leaps forward, finding their own moat to stabilize their position has become the most critical issue in the face of uncertain policies and constant challenges from newcomers.
Xu Mingxing and Li Lin, two entrepreneurs with traditional VC support behind them, have built their own barriers through continuous investment in the early stage, but they have presented two completely different development paths.
In August 2014, Huobi acquired China's first multi-signature bitcoin wallet "Block Wallet" and a bitcoin block query website; in September, it launched DigCoin, a digital currency mining service platform; later, affected by changes in the general environment, Li Lin began to converge.
It was not until the beginning of this year that the ecological layout construction began with HT as the core. After the establishment of the Huobi Ecological Fund in March, the number of investments has increased significantly, and more than 30 projects have been invested in just three months to June.
At the beginning of June, Li Lin issued an open letter, revealing to the public for the first time the strategic thinking of Huobi Ecology: "Huobi Group has formed a digital asset trading platform Huobi Pro as the core, with exchanges from various countries and HADAX, Huobi Ecology, Huobi Capital, Huobi Labs, etc. are the ecological nodes within the group, and Huobi ecological partners are the ecological nodes outside the group for the entire industry ecological layout.”
In July, the Huobi Cloud service was officially launched. In September, Huobi China was established and settled in Hainan Ecological Software Park. It is positioned as a one-stop service platform for the blockchain + industry. It integrates Huobi Research Institute, Huobi University (China) and other sub-business divisions to provide training, consulting and Incubation and other businesses.
On October 28, launched lending, options, pledge, custody, bulk, HB10 index; recently launched a financial derivatives platform.
At present, the investment and business layout of Huobi has covered capital, media, exchanges, communities, wallets, stable coins, various financial derivatives based on encrypted digital currency, etc., basically covering the upstream and downstream of the blockchain industry. A "Huobi Forest".
However, Xu Mingxing seems to disagree with this, and instead rejects the possible "OK series".
In an interview before, he also specifically answered this question: "We have also invested in many companies and cooperated with many companies, but we did not ask them to stand in line, nor did we call ecology, and did not call the concept of OK." He even Straightforwardly, "I don't like the word "OK" or "ecology", but I prefer "industrial win-win". "
As Tian Ying, the founding partner of OK Capital, mentioned when talking about OK’s investment criteria, investing more around technological productivity and only investing in understandable projects. These standards and models are more like an ordinary VC, investing upstream and downstream, but without too much personal touch.
In February of this year, Xu Mingxing resigned as the CEO of OKEx and was responsible for the research and development and application of OKChain full-time. His identity was transformed into the "Founder of OK Blockchain Engineering Institute".
Since then, Xu Mingxing has taken this title to preach and popularize the underlying knowledge of the blockchain, hoping to let ordinary users understand the value of the blockchain and the significance of OK's research and development of the public chain.
Li Lin, who pays attention to the ecological layout, is more like an enclosure in this industry. With the rapid growth of the exchange business, Huobi has completed the accumulation of the most primitive resources and status in a very short period of time, and then looks for breakthroughs in areas that can break through. Opportunities to maximize the value of available resources.
This model is very similar to the gameplay in the Internet field. However, the follow-up hidden dangers brought about by expansion often lead to a series of adverse reactions from enterprises. There are countless negative teaching materials in the Internet field. Among them, China Blog Network, which lost its advantages due to excessive expansion, is the most typical. .
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Fang Xingdong
In 2002, Fang Xingdong established Blog China on his own, and received a US$10 million investment led by Softbank Asia in just three years. The number of employees expanded to four to five hundred; the introduction of a senior management team including ten vice presidents; the expansion of multiple business lines, even extended to the game field.
However, if there are too many things, the cart will be turned upside down, and Fang Xingdong has embarked on a dangerous road that consumes a lot of resources and is seriously overdrawn. It turned out afterwards that in the face of Sina Blog’s attack, Blog.com was the first to experience internal turmoil: the rapidly growing workforce was not effectively restrained and guided, management was chaotic, and high and middle-level teams left one after another.
Corresponding to the situation of Huobi, in just one year after September 4th, the number of Huobi employees has expanded from 200 to 1,300, the business layout is also vigorously expanding, and internal management disputes are even more undercurrent... These All these have laid hidden dangers for the development of Huobi.
On the other hand, Xu Mingxing, who pays attention to the underlying technology, seems to have found the possibility of realizing his technological ideals in the exchange. According to Chain Catcher (ID: iqklbs), before the rights protection incident, Xu Mingxing basically lived in the office and engaged in research and development. However, judging from the market situation and the frequency of liquidation, the technical team led by Xu Mingxing is also facing a lot of difficulties.
First of all, Xu Mingxing is focusing on the public chain field, and he entered the market late. OK has no first-mover advantage in occupying the commanding heights of the technical community and application ecology. Secondly, as an old-fashioned exchange that has gone through 5 years, OK’s underlying technology, trading rules, and financial product mechanisms are relatively complete. Now the actual transaction volume carried does not match, and system bugs frequently occur.
According to people familiar with the matter, OK has actually been spending a lot of effort to fill in the previous technical pitfalls, but because the distance between the exchange and money is too close, a series of small code improvements may lead to huge losses, and even lead to It will lead to the troubles of the whole body.
Not only that, judging from the resignation of OK's executives, Xu Mingxing, who is not good at interpersonal relationships, is facing considerable difficulties in recruiting talents. Without the help of a well-equipped R&D team, OK is more like moving forward with a heavy load, and the process is slow.
OK and Huobi, which survived from the first batch of exchange gold diggers, have become giants in the world of blockchain. They not only need to solve their own survival problems, but also have every move related to the development of the industry.
