"My family has been mining for three generations!"

When he first came into contact with Wei Ge, he told us this.

1.

Wei Ge's mine is rooted in the mountains deep in Kangding, Sichuan. Our first meeting was in a teahouse in a nearby town. The first sentence he said to us was: "You can interview me. My family has been passed down for three generations. mining!"

At the request of Wei Ge, he cannot be photographed

I thought that "a person lives up to his name" and Wei Ge would be a social person with "a big gold chain and a small watch", but Wei Ge is a low-key and enthusiastic person. He also explained the name for a long time: At that time, his parents were not well-educated, so the fortune teller gave him this name. That's how it came. He asked us to call him "Winston" in English, adding "Winston" to "Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill". "

Because the family is rich, Wei Ge studied his undergraduate degree in London, England, and then went to work on Wall Street in the United States for a few years. When his grandfather passed away in 15 years, Wei Ge went home to attend the funeral for the old man, and then he simply never went back.

When talking about "the three generations of the family have been mining", Wei Ge introduced that from his grandfather's generation, his uncle, second grandfather, and third grandfather were all workers in the coal mine in the town. Because of the large number of children, the money that my grandfather earned in a day at that time could barely maintain food and clothing. Fortunately, the brothers of the father's generation were upbeat and took the opportunity to contract a vanadium mine. Later, the family improved. Wei Ge's generation People who live here have no worries about food and clothing, those who should study abroad should buy villas, and those who should buy villas.

2.

Wei Ge studied finance in the UK. He introduced that when he was about to graduate in 2012, he accidentally came across Satoshi Nakamoto's thesis, and it has been out of control since then. When I went to Wall Street, I still couldn’t forget it. At that time, there were many early Bitcoin offline salons in the United States, and I had more opportunities to contact them after work. "Bitcoin was our main focus at that time, and few people talked about blocks." After a year and a half of in-depth study, he finally had a sufficient understanding of the architecture of the entire Bitcoin system.

The paper version of Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper collected by Wei Ge

After a deeper understanding, I took root in the blockchain out of control. From the community to the wallet, from the public chain to the exchange, from the game to the maintenance of the mining pool, every aspect has been contacted, and finally returned to the original intention, "inherited the father's business" and went home to dig mines.

"At the beginning, my family was opposed to it." How did the high-achieving students who spent so much energy in the family engage in "pyramid selling" activities? Mining on the blockchain is different from mining in the traditional sense. It is invisible. It didn't matter, my family once thought I was involved in a pyramid scheme, and when I showed them the balance in my bank account, they didn't say much. However, "so far they don't think what I did is meaningful, but I'm too lazy to explain to them," Wei Ge added immediately.

3.

The second time we met, we followed Wei Ge to the mine deep in the mountains. This is a well-regulated mine.

Weige took us into the "hum" workshop for a visit, where there were only one or two workers maintaining it. Facing the various mining machines on the shelf, Weige pointed to the shelf and said: "The ones here are from ants. Mining machines, the honeycomb over there, the panda over there, and the one over there I bought in Russia..."

The mining machine is still humming, the other half is empty

Walking out of the workshop, Wei Ge introduced to us that the factory over there was originally full of mining machines, but after the market went bad, they were all transferred out. Only the dilapidated protective nets on the windows seem to testify and tell the glory of the past.

The most I have is more than 20 people and almost 10,000 mining machines. At that time, there will be three shifts, and the operators need to maintain the mining machines and overhaul the mining machines. At that time, there was also a back kitchen to cook for the employees.

But now there are less than 10 people. One is that there are fewer mining machines. Another reason is the price. He is the one who gets the highest salary." When it comes to mining, Wei Ge has a lot to say in his eyes.

4.

Walking into Wei Ge's office, the most impressive thing is the four big characters on the wall of "Honor and Goodness". Wei Ge said that this was specially made by a classmate of Tuo Xue Design.

The four big characters of "good morals carry things" are conspicuous on the office wall

In addition to these four characters, the most conspicuous thing in Wei Ge's office is the safe. Wei Ge enthusiastically introduced his safe to us. When I opened it, there was neither cash nor gold bars inside. There were only a bunch of hardware devices like USB flash drives and mobile phones. At first glance, it turned out to be a hardware wallet.

Wei Ge said: "Don't look at the smallness of this thing, all my wealth is stored in it. Since the price came down, I have not focused so much on trading and mining. At present, the mine is maintained by previous savings. Now The focus is on how to hoard coins safely.”

This is the French Ledger Nano S, the Czech Trezor, the domestic Kushen, and other recently released cold wallet devices. We counted and found that there are more than 10 kinds.

Wei Ge is very familiar with the names, places of origin, and functions of these cold wallets. Wei Ge explained that when the mine started construction, he had cold wallet equipment sent to him by his partners, but he didn’t take it seriously at that time. Coins, Japan lost coins, Britain lost coins, and the United States lost coins, it seems that the whole world is losing coins. Even after studying cold wallets overnight, I have a deeper understanding of them, and now I basically put coins in cold wallets.

When we asked Wei Ge how much assets he has now, Wei Ge waved his hand and said helplessly: "Forget about this problem."

5.

When we asked which wallet we were most satisfied with, Wei Ge thought about it for a long time, and replied: "The Kushen 3 is slightly better, with a good hand feel and a large screen, so you don't need to rely on the computer."

Some hardware wallets of Vigo

Wei Ge showed us the family portrait series of Kushen Wallet. From the first generation to the second generation to the upgraded version of the second generation to the current third generation, "Last time my partner gave me a gold version and I didn't want it. You see, all the bigwigs in the currency circle have one, and you can use it to install X. ’” Wei Ge joked.

When we asked why we were satisfied with this product and dissatisfied with other wallet devices, Wei Ge thought for a while and stopped.

"Actually, I am quite satisfied with the products of other wallets, especially Ledger and Trezor." They are all international first-line brands, and they have been engaged in asset storage quite early. However, I am very good at using it. When recommending it to others, those miners can’t teach it at all. If I don’t understand English, I won’t say it. The key is that the people in our factory don't know how to operate it, and they still get stuck after teaching it many times. "

Later, Ledger was hacked by a 15-year-old hacker, and I was a little worried. Although I didn’t understand the principle very well, I always felt that it was not safe enough. Now, I don’t put a few coins in my Ledger Nano S. But Kushen is actually inconvenient to use. Although there have been no security incidents, the 2nd generation product has to scan the QR code many times every time. Every time I do it myself, it's too laborious, and I have to watch it more or less if I let others do it.

Now that the third generation has come out, it is much more convenient to use the NFC function. When trading, just paste the mobile phone and it will be synchronized. "But this machine does not support the iPhone. I specially equipped it with a Huawei, which supports domestic production!"

"As far as we know, they are quite expensive. I remember correctly that it should be more than 4,000." When our reporter asked this question, the reporter and Wei Ge looked at each other and smiled. "Haha, this amount of money is nothing to Wei Ge."

6.

When talking about the future at the end, Wei Ge still had a lot to say.

"Actually, I still admire "Satoshi Nakamoto". His Bitcoin drove the blockchain and gave me a lot of inspiration, but it's not working now, and I almost forgot all the financial knowledge I learned." , Wei Ge believes that he will firmly go down the road of mining.

A corner of the mine

In case... there is a day when everything is calm, Wei Ge said that he may look at other projects, but he is not sure if it is the blockchain field.

Before leaving, Wei Ge looked at the roaring workshop and said: "I am still very cheerful. To borrow a popular saying, "My family has a mine! The old man has been urging me to go back to inherit my father's business, but he is in good health. I think he can do it for a few more years. "

After the interview, Wei Ge sent a WeChat message: Mining is just a project for me to make a living. In fact, I am a believer in Bitcoin. And asked us to change to his English name "Winston" when we meet next time.

(Source: Babbitt Forum)