During this period, readers often express confusion and bewilderment in the comments at the end of the articles.
I believe that much of this confusion stems from a certain misunderstanding and resistance to common sense.
The views I share in these articles are reflections on investments and the crypto ecosystem over the years. These reflections are mainly based on common sense and the original nature of things summarized from mature past cases.
What are the common sense and original nature of investments?
It is the free cash flow that enterprises/companies/projects can generate in the future.
I believe this applies to investments in any ecosystem, whether traditional or crypto, whether venture capital or value investment.
However, for many participants in the crypto ecosystem, our experience over the years has been vastly different from this common sense: it seems that many "investments" in the crypto ecosystem in recent years do not require this common sense, do not need to discuss project profitability, and do not need to discuss the free cash flow that projects can generate in the future.
Just by telling stories, just by meme coins, one can "get rich quickly".
In my view, this is purely because we happened to encounter its bubble period, and on the other hand, it precisely proves that the market is increasingly heading towards a detour without positive incentives.
Duan Yongping said (roughly): You can see this in a casino in Macau.
And such bubbles and such detours cannot exist for long, let alone be the fundamental driver of healthy ecosystem development.
He also said another sentence (roughly): If someone wins a billion-dollar lottery, can you learn from him? Can you repeat his story?
As investors, it's fine to play the lottery for fun, but if we try to understand and interpret lottery winning as a path to success, that would be troublesome.
In fact, not only in the crypto ecosystem, but in mature fields like stock investment and venture capital, similar bubbles have long occurred, and similar "get-rich-quick" stories have long been staged. It's just that our generation, our group, mostly hasn't experienced them.
But there are some areas where our generation has experienced them. For example, in the past 20 years, there were two unshakable myths worldwide:
One was that Chinese housing prices would never fall, and the other was that the US stock market would never fall.
In the past, anyone who dared to puncture these two myths would face great risks and be severely criticized.
However, the first bubble burst just like that.
There are no eternal bubbles - this is common sense, we just don't know when the market's madness will burst.
But we cannot truly believe that bubbles will always exist just because they haven't burst, and even become immersed in them, ignoring common sense and eternal objective laws.
Since we know bubbles are problematic and we don't have the ability to navigate them, we should honestly return to the original and return to common sense.
There's a sentence in Duan Yongping's Q&A that left a deep impression on me when I first saw it:
The easiest person to fool is oneself.
This sentence is worth sharing with all readers.
If we don't want to continue fooling ourselves, we must face the facts, return to common sense, and return to the original.
Some basic facts are:
When I review the development and performance of Bitcoin over the years, I increasingly cannot see it as a "hedge asset" or "digital gold".
At least not now.
Since it's not that now, but it has value, what is it? The only thing I can think of is that it's a valuable luxury collectible.
If Bitcoin is a luxury collectible, what will drive its future value appreciation?
It can only be the value spillover produced by the prosperity of the crypto ecosystem.
And what is the ultimate manifestation of the crypto ecosystem's prosperity?
It can only be a large number of projects that create real value, provide genuine services, can sustain profitability, and generate free cash flow.
Otherwise, what is the prosperity of the crypto ecosystem?
Is it meme coins?
Or just narratives that can never be implemented?
And when the crypto ecosystem's prosperity wants to share its prosperity and benefits with investors, what specifically will be shared?
Is it governance tokens with only governance functions, no actual equity, and no use value?
If these are governance tokens with only governance functions, can their real value compare to stocks? Compare to equity?
If they can't compare, aren't these tokens' current prices artificially high?
If these tokens want to genuinely appreciate, wouldn't they have to become assets with real equity value or assets with use value?
I think these are not difficult to understand or deduce, as long as we don't fool ourselves.
Similarly, based on common sense, returning to the original nature of things:
The world we live in is a centralized world. Although it brings efficiency and speed, at the same time, in many cases, we sacrifice personal freedom and personal interests. Our data and rights are often arbitrarily abused and exploited by centralized forces, and sometimes our lives are even arbitrarily disposed of by centralized forces.
That's why generation after generation of predecessors have fought their entire lives for decentralization. These predecessors tried to create a decentralized world through the power of technology, to counter the oppression of centralization, to release the human soul, to not kneel to authority, and to not submit to power.
It is precisely because of this that we have Bitcoin, Ethereum, and today's crypto ecosystem. Without the decentralization of these basic platforms, we would never have such a free world in the future.
Now, to even doubt the decentralization of these basic platforms (L1), isn't this deviating from common sense and the original nature of things?
Moreover, we are about to enter a world of fragmentation and self-isolation. If we still believe that human interconnectedness cannot be interrupted, and still believe that a neutral world can prosper in the future, then what platform can support such a world? What assets can be trusted by all of humanity?
If you can't figure it out, just think about what assets and platforms our isolated northeastern neighbor and the empire ruling the western hemisphere can both hold and use with peace of mind?
Returning to common sense, many issues in the crypto ecosystem can be clarified.
