Host: Colin Wu from Wu Blockchain

Guests: DiscusFish, founder of Cobo, John Ge, CEO of Matrixport, and Li Peicai, a senior miner

Colin Wu: I would like to invite the three of you to share your current thoughts or research on the bull-bear cycle. Has anything changed? How long do you think the bear market will continue and when will the next bull market arrive?

DiscusFish: Regarding the judgment and cycle of the bull and bear markets, I see no significant changes from my perspective.

There are several major factors to consider. One is the halving cycle of Bitcoin that the industry has been following every four years. Next year around April or May, we will enter another normal Bitcoin halving cycle. Typically, as history has shown, a new market cycle will commence around six months after the halving. This is a previously established narrative. However, the halving this time will involve a smaller amount of reduction, so its impact might not be as dramatic.

The second aspect to consider is industry innovation. The main focus currently lies in the expansion and performance improvement of the second-layer network. The launch of most of these core mainnets is also expected around Q1 or Q2 of next year, which aligns with the Bitcoin halving cycle.

The third point relates to the entry of funds into the market. Especially in recent weeks, we’ve seen a lot of promising traditional asset management companies applying for ETFs. The deadline for these ETF applications also lies in the first quarter, roughly coinciding with the above two timelines.

Another core factor is macroeconomic. We may see some interest rate hikes next year which might also affect the market trend. So, from various perspectives, I believe the next market cycle might depend on what happens after Q1 or Q2 of next year. We need to see if there will be new capital inflow and a new narrative logic.

Li Peicai: I also agree with Shenyu’s viewpoint. I believe the halving cycle acts as an anchor, but whether halving alone can support an independent cycle is still up for observation. Although we saw bull markets following the halvings in 2012, 2016, and 2020, we’ve only observed this three times. Whether this can predict the fourth time is questionable.

Historically, the market cycles have always been influenced by a combination of factors. For instance, the bull market of 2012 and 2013 was influenced by the Cyprus crisis and Bitcoin’s first entry into public view, especially in the Chinese community. In 2018, Ethereum’s narrative of ICOs was in play. In 2020 and 2021, the bull market was influenced by the narrative of DeFi Summer.

Whether there will be a new narrative in 2024 might also depend on a combination of factors. If it’s solely based on halving, I question how much support it can provide for a bull market. One significant factor could be the macroeconomic environment. We have observed the enormous impact of interest rate hikes on coin prices. If the Fed reduces interest rates and expands the balance sheet next year, it could further bolster the bull market.

However, another point to consider is whether there will be a new narrative or any new highlights in our industry that make people think it’s worth value. I think this is worth paying attention to.

Similar to the ICO in 2017 and DeFi in 2021, although not as hot as before, I think some valuable advancements are still being made, like L2, DAO, the Lightning Network, and BTC’s physical ETF. If these can all land further next year and even some application outbursts occur, the halving cycle of next year can be looked forward to.

John Ge: My opinion is similar. I’ve always thought that the next cycle should be in the first half of next year. I’d like to remind you that before such cycles, there is often a significant drop. Recently, after the SEC lawsuit, a strange situation occurred where the liquidity of each exchange was rapidly depleting, and the trading volume was very low. This was reminiscent of the situation on March 12. So at that time, I thought that there might be a trend similar to March 12th. However, a sudden surge in the US led to an increase. So I personally feel that there might be a bottom-finding process before the cycle, which will solidify the bottom. This will also make those who hold chips more confident to enter the market, which might also be the last opportunity for everyone to bottom out before the next cycle.

Colin Wu: The second question is for the three guests. Do you think the SEC’s current standard for determining whether cryptocurrency is a security will have a significant impact on the industry? Especially in this year, a lot of Tokens have been identified as securities.

DiscusFish: Personally, I may not be the most qualified to speak on this matter as it involves certain legal aspects. My viewpoint is that the recent surge in regulations may be a direct repercussion of the FTX shock. It could be a response from regulators reflecting on the destructive incidents that have taken place in the industry over the past year, leading to compensatory tightened supervision. During this process, there might be some collateral damage. As for listing certain coins as securities or delisting them from compliant exchanges, there are both advantages and disadvantages.

One positive aspect is that it can strengthen everyone’s confidence in core assets like Bitcoin during bear market cycles, as regulators have explicitly indicated that certain tokens would not be classified as securities. In a bear market, most assets are indeed highly volatile. However, in the long term, merely holding core assets can be sufficient within the crypto space. We’ve also noticed that these core assets have not been listed as securities by the SEC. So from this perspective, especially for retail investors, this can serve as a form of protection, albeit a passive one.

On the other hand, this might impact industry innovation and frontier explorations. We’ve observed that some North American entrepreneurs are starting to shift their positions under this high-pressure environment. Even projects that originally planned to issue tokens have stopped doing so. Especially if such stringent regulations persist and continue for a lengthy period, it may negatively affect the innovation in the North American industry. Most early innovations in our industry occur in North America. This could potentially cause talent dispersion around innovation hubs such as Silicon Valley, and ultimately affect the emergence of innovation.

Nevertheless, the occurrence of regulations is inevitable as our industry continues to grow and expand. The peculiarity of our industry also means that many technological means and methods can’t be fully implemented by regulations. Therefore, regulations will adjust their pace according to the characteristics of the industry and adapt to the industry’s development. As many regulations seem one way but are actually impractical to implement, a new balance will eventually be reached. So I think the situation has both good and bad aspects.

Li Peicai: I feel that within the industry, indeed a large part of the currencies are highly correlated with securities. Other than the highly decentralized BTC and LTC that serve as consensus currencies, I feel that a lot of coins such as those in DeFi do hold some semblance of commercial equity. They have dividends, buybacks, and so on, which makes them quite similar to securities. The SEC has now clarified this matter, and I think it might actually be a good thing in the long run. If these are securities, then maybe they will be regulated as such in the future. However, as Shen Yu said, the industry has many technical means to avoid this definition.

Another point to consider is the issue of liquidity. We could turn to areas with weaker regulation, which might be a good thing. I am quite optimistic about this. It might be possible to clarify that BTC, LTC, BCH, and other currencies with low correlation to securities are not securities. This could potentially relieve them of regulatory pressure. Especially for BTC, it might even help future ETFs to be approved more smoothly. I think this is beneficial to the industry.

The rest, I feel, are functionally positioned. If you are an interest-bearing equity, then perhaps it will be traded as an equity. It might even be regulated as an equity in the future. Shareholders of these tokens might receive dividends as equities do. Disclosure and financial reports will be required, and the whole process will become more standardized. This could potentially benefit the industry. In terms of securities issuance, some regions might have stricter policies while others might be more lenient. More start-ups might choose to register their securities in countries with friendly regulation. But your on-chain transactions are competitive. In fact, as far as the issuer of the securities is concerned, it doesn’t matter too much where you registered your securities. As long as there is sufficient liquidity, it doesn’t matter too much where your securities are registered. This might mean that from a legal perspective, a project might need to complete some securities registration procedures. But from a technical perspective, there is no geographical restriction like in traditional markets. I might be able to register in a country with friendly regulation and conduct my transactions on ETH without any impact. But I feel that registration might be important to some extent.

I think it might also help to regulate some projects. It might reduce the number of scams. Because regulation is a balance for securities issuance, it’s an effective social technology. Without regulation, the industry would be a mixed bag. With regulation, there might be some positive changes. So, I feel that this matter is a good thing for BTC, which is positioned as a non-security. And for the remaining tokens, if they are securities and are regulated as such in the future, it might not be a bad thing to find a friendly place to be regulated.

John Ge: I quite want to view the issue of securities as part of the recent series of actions by the SEC and the developments in the United States. If we connect the dots, the sequence of events is quite interesting. The SEC first pressured Binance and Coinbase, then it tried to define what is a security, what is a token, and what is a commodity. It did not legislate, but it declared what it believes are securities and what are not.

At the same time, a new player with a significantly impressive background, edx, seems to have gathered more than half of the banks and investment institutions we usually see in the news and media. Putting these things together, I find it very American. The SEC is a regulatory body, and most of its people are lawyers. It would not usually concentrate so much on supporting the launch of a new exchange, but it did precisely that, supporting a new US institutional exchange about to go live. And its rules are designed very similarly to a NASDAQ stock exchange. The SEC decides who gets to register and whether you can go on the exchange, right?

First, if you say you want to go public on NASDAQ, you have to pass the SEC first, then you can go on the exchange, right? It’s like today you first have to be approved by the SEC, saying you are not a security, and then you might be able to go on a US exchange. At the same time, it has made every effort to suppress all the competitors of this exchange in the US market, along with the news of the public launch of this new exchange. I think there might be two possible outcomes. One might be that it’s purely a coincidence, and the second possibility is that this is a maneuver by the American elite. This kind of strategy is quite common in the US. If it’s the latter, this will have a very significant impact.

After the FTX incident, I felt that the US regulations became very toxic. They did not allow Crypto companies to open US dollar accounts, coupled with various kinds of suppression, and the atmosphere of discussing Crypto in the US, especially in New York. It even reached a point where, after the FTX incident, I had previously scheduled a meeting with some bankers to chat about some other things, and they suddenly said they wouldn’t meet, etc. I once wondered if the US had completely turned negative on Crypto. But the launch of edx and the series of actions recently taken by the SEC give me a hunch that they are not. All the previous actions were just a prelude, and they still want to recapture the position of the US in the Crypto world. And this time the methods are more forceful, and the level of regulatory intervention is deeper.

Of course, even in such a situation, I don’t see any downsides. If you don’t go to NASDAQ, you can go to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. The world is not only the US. It’s just that in the future, if you want American investors’ money, if you want to go on a US exchange, you may have to go through the SEC’s approval. What standard the SEC will use for approval becomes a very flexible question in the legislative process, with many possibilities. So, I feel that if the second possibility I speculated is true, and some people in the US are indeed playing this game, this event could actually become a very symbolic event in Crypto history.

Colin Wu: How significant do you think the situation in Hong Kong is for the industry or for the Chinese community worldwide? What are the implications? Or what do you think are the areas of concern or value?

John Ge: In my opinion, if we were to frame the situation in Hong Kong using my conspiracy theory narrative, the Hong Kong capital market used to be among the top three hottest capital markets in the world, with the hottest still being the United States. But Hong Kong has always ranked highly. Now, Hong Kong is so welcoming to Crypto and is attempting to build a Crypto market that includes exchanges, funds, and a series of ETFs.

I think this is definitely a good thing for the Crypto community. The capital market needs competition to promote growth. But Hong Kong’s initiative hasn’t fully landed yet, so we can’t see the specific rules they have implemented. Crypto, as a new technology, is indeed quite challenging to regulate. An example of Hong Kong’s regulation that doesn’t quite align with our seasoned Crypto community intuition is their requirement for every exchange to have its own custodial company. Given the high cost, responsibility, and technical difficulties of custody, requiring every exchange to have its own custody doesn’t seem like the right technical direction. So, while the initiative is promising and the future is worth looking forward to, the challenges faced by Hong Kong’s legislators in regulating a new field and establishing a set of market rules are significant. I hope they succeed and can quickly correct any errors.

Li Peicai: I also agree with everyone’s views. At least from the industry and the Hong Kong government’s intention, they are sincere and want to make a difference in this area. But I think the underlying motive might be to strengthen Hong Kong as a financial center. Hong Kong, as Ge Yuecheng mentioned, used to be one of the top three financial markets, but over time, its position has been challenged by many places, such as Singapore and Dubai.

They all are competing for this position and must be under some pressure. So, they want to regain some of their market share and even gain new competitive advantages through these new markets such as Crypto, RWA, and the Metaverse. Their attitude is certainly commendable, but regulating this industry does face some technical and many other difficulties. Issues such as money laundering, fraud, Crypto, KYC, etc., cannot be effectively solved by the existing regulatory rules, so new ones need to be established, which is quite a test for regulatory skills. Also, it might be an iterative process: first roll out a financial policy, and then adjust it based on that foundation. I think this is also possible. But overall, the intention is good. Recently, there have been reports of policies gradually being implemented. For example, some Hong Kong banks now allow customers to buy BTC futures, ETFs, etc., and are more friendly to digital currency businesses. Previously, if you mentioned that your money came from the Crypto industry when opening an account, they might reject you outright. Now I hear that it’s much easier to open an account in Hong Kong, whether you are an individual, institution, or business user. This is certainly beneficial to the industry. So, I am cautiously optimistic about this and think it’s a good thing. It’s definitely better for the industry than a complete ban like in mainland China. As for how beneficial it will be or to what extent it will be beneficial, we may need to observe the implementation and roll-out of regulatory policies and specific measures.

DiscusFish: From my perspective, this is definitely a good thing. Although Crypto, as a new thing, has a history of more than 10 years, it actually survives in the gap between games and life under the regulatory environment of various countries. Therefore, it is certainly beneficial for regions and countries to start supporting it, and for the government to push it hard, especially as there has been a big problem in our industry, which is the issue of fiat money inflow and outflow. Especially after the bankruptcy of these small banks in North America in February and March this year, in fact, the world’s most core banks that are friendly to Crypto’s fiat currency inflow and outflow have all gone bankrupt, so this is a major difficulty facing the entire scale industry. Now we also see that the Hong Kong government is forcing these large banks in Hong Kong to do these innovations, and to accept Crypto’s opening of accounts, which is really rare.

From this perspective, I think Hong Kong’s policies, including the innovations of some banks in Singapore, are indeed very promotive to the entire industry. Because in North America, it is only very small innovative banks that will try to do this business, but when it comes to Hong Kong and Singapore, it is actually the policy level, and the government is pushing these large banks to try it out, allowing traditional finance to access blockchain events. So from this perspective, I think it is a very positive signal. The two guests just mentioned that there are still many places to learn and grow in the process of regulation and government dealing with the industry, I personally think this part should be done better, because the Singapore government is actually a very typical example, because it has been in contact with the industry since 2017, and in this process it has also spent two or three years, and we can basically see some growth at the regulatory level and some policies that are more suitable for the industry. This time the Hong Kong government’s effort is very great, we also look forward to the future, there may be some policies that match the industry further landing.

Colin Wu: What do the three guests think about the future development of Bitcoin inscription?

John Ge: I actually haven’t taken a serious look at it myself, and I happen to have a friend who’s really into it, and I just listened to him talk about it. After listening to BRC20, I didn’t get why this thing is valuable or necessary. But he told me about a very niche concept at the underlying technology level, he mentioned something very niche, which I think is quite unique, which is issuing NFTs on Bitcoin instead of BRC20, because B2C20 is a Token. If you issue an NFT, because of the structure of Bitcoin’s Satoshi, it can give the NFT a concept of time and space. If there is 1 original block of Satoshi, or the Satoshi of the first 1000 blocks, and I make an NFT on it, it obviously looks valuable.

Because the material it was created from is hard to obtain, and because these Satoshis carry some time nodes, it could possibly coincide with some historical events, making the NFT have a unique sense of history.

I think after listening to him, this thing might have a little bit of uniqueness. In other respects, I don’t quite get why there needs to be a more expensive one, and a higher fee, and a longer time, I don’t think there is any very necessary reason from a technical perspective that one has to run to the Bitcoin chain to issue it if it’s a homogeneous Token. But I didn’t study it in depth, and maybe I made some mistakes technically, but that’s how I feel at the moment.

Li Peicai: My views are quite similar to John Ge’s. I feel the popularity of NFTs on BTC might be more favorable. The reasons are quite alike. Tokens on ETH are actually written through contracts, which means they can be proliferated in great numbers. In contrast, BTC theoretically has an upper limit, although it’s a staggeringly high one at 21 million. But anyway, there are some halving and special Satoshis involved which I find quite interesting.

As for BRC20 tokens, I can understand their surge because I think their issuance method may be more friendly to retail investors. They are fairly minted, and the initial issuance price is also very low. Plus, I believe the industry itself is looking for some new highlights. Perhaps the success of BRC20’s IC0 that year gave everyone some good expectations. Moreover, BTC itself is a huge pool, with a market value of hundreds of billions of dollars. Perhaps a little overflow from this pool can create a small market, so I can understand this. However, I am not yet clear about the long-term value of BRC20. It might be easier to understand the NFT part, and I would like to hear Shen Yu’s opinion. My viewpoint is roughly like this.

DiscusFish: The emergence of this hotspot on Bitcoin, in my opinion, is basically due to the fact that, as Wu just mentioned, we saw some developers clamoring not to recommend it, but the core of it is that these core developers can only clamor and do nothing. Therefore, the Bitcoin network is a more decentralized and open network state. So, on such a network, after it carries the concept of rare Satoshis, it does some inscriptions and some NFTs on the Satoshis. It can better preserve and sediment some of these classic art creations compared to other networks. So from this perspective, in fact, we see the concept of these rare Satoshis on it, and then there are many of these project parties and some real artists. They begin to hoard these rare Satoshis, and then issue projects on it. This is the starting point.

From this perspective, I think the development of Bitcoin inscriptions over the past few months has a significant meaning. The rapid speculation of BRC20, in fact, I personally think it may be because the market or the entire market cycle has reached a low point with no topic, and everyone is relatively calm and needs some topics and some outbreaks. Then BRC20 happened to appear at that time and brought some wealth effects, so it triggered a wave of enthusiasm.

But in the long run, this underlying technology is not suitable for issuing on the Bitcoin network. It might be more suitable on the Lightning Network or other second layers of Bitcoin. Therefore, from the development process, my personal opinion is consistent with the previous two guests. I think the issuance of this kind of Token on the Bitcoin network may not be that significant because the Bitcoin network is not designed for this purpose. It was originally a peer-to-peer cash system. It’s just that everyone is opportunistic, using some new features, and can barely issue, but its user experience, and your GAS fee, are a very expensive cost. On the contrary, for the NFT market, I think some classic works on Bitcoin, some works with strong collection value, so I personally still favor some special art pieces on these rare Satoshis. I have also hoarded some.

Colin Wu: Has Ethereum’s ecosystem already completed a grand unification of public chains or basic infrastructures? And do other public chains no longer have a chance?

DiscusFish: I think whether there’s a grand unification of public chains, or if we consider Vitalik Buterin’s technological route, we can see that historically, Vitalik has proposed many technological paths that ultimately didn’t get implemented. This industry is essentially driven by the spontaneous emergence and trial-and-error of the open-source community’s technical routes, not dictated top-down by one person or team. Although some aspects might be discussed by developers, they’re not clearly defined from day one. So, who eventually monopolizes and what technical route gets implemented is uncertain; it still needs time and market choice. Therefore, I think other public chains, including some new innovations, still have a chance. We’re not at the endgame yet. Recently, there haven’t been many interesting projects because the market is in a relatively bearish state. Some emerging prospects are around the zk ecosystem, with some products being developed and tested in areas such as hardware acceleration. I believe that next year, these may bring some new directions and opportunities for profit in the PoW area. Perhaps some projects that accelerate hardware in Layer 2 to mine Ethereum may appear.

Li Peicai: My view is that Ethereum is currently in a very leading position in the public chain race. However, whether it has achieved grand unification or if there’s no chance for others, I believe it’s too early to conclude. We were chatting with a friend the other day about regional public chains they are planning, and I found their idea reasonable. After Ethereum switched to PoS, the cost of creating a public chain is not as high, and PoS can accommodate a larger number of public chains. Indeed, some big regional business users might switch to regional public chains due to their attributes aligning with corporate and regulatory policies. For instance, due to its friendly regulations, Hong Kong has helped projects like CFX gain traction, and similar phenomena have occurred in India and Japan. Local governments and corporations may be willing to clone their own public chain. Technologically, I don’t think it’s too difficult, especially if they are just copying Ethereum’s performance. Ecosystems like DEX, lending, DeFi, etc., can be fully duplicated, and I don’t see any problem with that. I haven’t delved too deeply into this issue, but I thought I’d share these views from a friend who has invested in many public chains. I partially agree, but I think it needs further observation, to see if Ethereum’s Layer 2 can take off completely and solve the TPS problem. Another thing to watch is whether new ecosystems will emerge on the public chain, which may require high performance. For example, we were discussing another topic this morning: when the DeFi Summer clogged Ethereum, many small public chains, including BSC, rose. Even after the bear market, chains like BSC still have users, and the gap with Ethereum is not very big. Although the TVL is still much larger on Ethereum, the gap in active users does not seem that big.

John Ge: Logically speaking, if we’re discussing grand topics like WEB3, current blockchain users may number around 200 million based on various estimates. But considering the world population is between seven to eight billion, it’s premature to say that Ethereum has achieved dominance. From a user acquisition perspective, Ethereum still has a huge room to grow. I definitely believe that other public chains have tremendous opportunities. However, it may not be like the wave in 2017 and 2018 where just publishing a whitepaper or a technical breakthrough was enough to gain recognition. Now, people care more about whether a new chain truly has applications and real users. This could become a more important part of the competition among public chains, rather than just focusing on technology.

Regarding blockchain applications, I want to share my recent observations, which aren’t frequently discussed in the community. People often ask: what is the KILL APP of the blockchain? I have a growing feeling that the KILL APP for Crypto may have already appeared, namely stablecoins. We’ve seen that the Crypto trading volume has been shrinking recently, but the amount of USDT being minted keeps rising. This is quite odd because we used to think USDT was mainly for trading. Why else would I need USDT, right? During my recent travels around the world, I found that many people are using USDT for cross-border remittance or international trade, especially in the Middle East and Hong Kong. Stablecoins, especially USDT, seem to have become the default currency for these money dealers. It’s also interesting that credit cards based on USDT are becoming very popular. I think these developments will significantly impact the Crypto community. Imagine if you had a credit card — something you’d use and generate transactions with every day — it’s an application closely tied to everyday life. Whether it’s for international remittance, trade, or other activities, using stablecoins makes it less about investing and speculating, and more about integrating blockchain technology into daily life and business operations. Moreover, it has the advantage of quickly spreading blockchain infrastructure, particularly wallets, to people who fundamentally aren’t interested in investing or speculating. This wave of change, although not at the center of Crypto discussions, is spreading incredibly fast.

We can reasonably hypothesize that when the next bull market comes, due to this application, hundreds of millions more people around the world will know how to use wallets and transfer funds to others. This would provide a solid foundation for the next bull market. And it makes the development of things like SocialFi and GameFi much easier because everyone already has a wallet. To some extent, such a KILL APP can also determine the future of public chains. Take Tron as an example — USDT single-handedly sustains Tron, contributing a significant amount of transaction fees and profits, and resulting in a high volume of genuine transactions on that chain. So, I think the competition among public chains will depend on this KILL APP. I currently believe that stablecoins could be the next KILL APP, or even the ongoing KILL APP.

Colin Wu: Is there anything interesting that happened when you first entered the industry that you’d like to share with us for a light-hearted ending?

John Ge: I’ll share a story between Fishpond and me, though he probably doesn’t remember it. The first time I was mining with a GPU and I didn’t know how to set it up, people in the group said there was a big shot named Rainbow Fish who could help with the configuration. So I got to know Fishpond quite early, though as online friends. He probably didn’t know me; he only knew my online username. This was back at the end of 2012. So Fishpond is truly an OG among OGs. At that time, he was the first miner in the mining circle, back in the GPU era.

Li Peicai: The first day I got into mining was quite amusing. I saw Bitcoin had risen quite high and didn’t dare to buy it, so I decided to mine instead. But I entered the scene relatively late, so by that time I could only mine Litecoin, not Bitcoin. The first post I saw was also by Rainbow Fish. I clearly remember that you had to pay 50 RMB to read the post, which was pretty funny. The early big shots also sold some paid services.

Audience question 1: These financial products are usually issued by centralized institutions. I want to ask, after the bankruptcy of FTX, many people have lost confidence in these products. Are these riskier?

Li Peicai: I think when it comes to financial management, it’s generally the case that your risk and return should match. Generally speaking, the market’s benchmark for risk-free returns is U.S. government bonds, or basically the government bonds issued by each country. This is the baseline for risk-free returns in all financial markets. For instance, if you now buy dollars, the baseline return is around 5.5%. If you have the ability to directly buy U.S. government bonds and you feel the return is satisfactory enough, then that’s OK too. The rest is about finding a balance between the extra risk you take on and the returns. For example, the returns from ETH staking may have two sources: one is the appreciation of the ETH currency itself. If you are bullish on ETH and want to buy it, and since you’ve already bought ETH, wouldn’t you want to take the returns from this part of ETH? I think the answer is relatively simple for most people. It’s just like buying dollars, I definitely want to take the interest on government bonds. But at this point, for this little return, how much risk do you want to take? As Fishpond said earlier, you can go on-chain and take STETH, as long as you believe that LIDO will not act maliciously. With millions of ETH in this project, if you feel reassured, you can take this approach. Alternatively, you can also trust Binance, right? If you think there are also risks in keeping your private keys safe, then you can put your assets on Binance. This risk is certainly not zero, it depends on how you assess it. So, I think it’s about how to strike a balance. In the end, it’s about making decisions based on your own risk assessment, similar to driving a car. There’s definitely a risk involved, right? The probability of an accident per million kilometers driven is definitely not zero. But as long as you correctly follow the traffic rules, and if you want to enjoy the freedom that driving brings, these are risks that I think you can bear. That’s my point of view. It’s impossible to reduce risk to below zero; we can never achieve that.

Audience question 2: I would like to ask Fishpond, when do you think the NFT market could improve slightly? Or what catalyst could turn it from a bear market to a bull market?

DiscusFish: I think the NFT market is such a thing, it’s a very fast emotional cycle, and because of some events, it’s in a relatively negative state where everyone is pessimistic. First of all, it has to get out of this state. Also, the logic around the NFT market in the past two years has been about traditional collectibles and speculation. It still needs to find some practical application scenarios for NFTs, such as in some GameFi applications, game props, and some offline rights and interests. These need to have some practical application and exploration. So, in the short term, it may just need to come out of an emotional cycle, and when some hot products come out, everyone’s emotions will be ignited again. In the long run, we need to find practical scenarios.

I think this thing has value, especially when combined with traditional WEB2 or some traditional membership programs. It can noticeably bring more incremental users, and the barrier to entry is lower. It can be converted into Crypto native users without taking it too seriously. But now, due to the performance of the chain, application scenarios, and wallet support, there are still some infrastructure improvements to be made. I buy NFTs and basically don’t sell them, they all go to zero, hold them until they go to zero.

Audience question 3: Can Bitcoin rise to 100,000 by the end of this year? I’ve changed my screen name to “rise”.

John Ge: Personally, I feel that there’s no solid evidence to prove it, but I think it’s the first half of next year. When I started sharing, I mentioned that before the start of a cycle, there’s a good chance of a plunge, like the 312 during the last bull market. But it will also recover quickly, establish a bottom, and then enter the next cycle. So the overall trend is upward, it doesn’t mean that the process will be smooth or without bumps.

Audience: I’m all-in on Bitcoin.

John Ge: I wish you wealth.

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