Recently, I came across an old story from the crypto world, and I think it's worth discussing. Speaking of Bao Er Ye Guo Hongcai, this name is quite well-known in the crypto circle; many have heard of his legendary experiences.

It's a bit surreal to tell, but this brother originally sold beef in Pingyao, Shanxi, and was responsible for sales at Pingyao Beef Group. In 2013, he and his wife went to Beijing to learn about e-commerce, and they ended up attending a lecture at Garage Coffee in Zhongguancun. His wife was pregnant with their third child at the time, and she spent tens of thousands of yuan to buy Bitcoin. Guo Hongcai initially thought he was scammed by pyramid schemes, but after chatting with Li Xiaolai, he gradually got into it himself, and from then on, he went all-in on Bitcoin.

This guy is straightforward by nature, never hiding that he's in it to make money. At the end of 2013, he started a show online teaching people how to play with Bitcoin, and from then on, he earned the nickname "Bao Er Ye" in the crypto world. In 2014, he built what was then the world's largest Bitcoin mining farm in Inner Mongolia, burning through 500k yuan in electricity daily, producing 100 Bitcoins. Later, when the bear market hit, he shifted to running BTC123 navigation site, and even bought a stretched limousine to give speeches and promote.

Bao Er Ye is most famous for his mouth. In 2016, he went to the Davos Forum dressed in shorts and slippers, and security wouldn't let him in. Once inside, he challenged well-dressed financial professionals questioning Bitcoin, directly firing back in half-broken English, claiming that Bitcoin's value is equal to the total future GDP of all countries. Once that video went viral, Bao Er Ye became a household name.

2017 was a turning point. That year, ICO fever was crazy, and Bao Er Ye leveraged his fund reputation to endorse over 30 projects in three months, with a total market cap exceeding 500k yuan. His logic was very straightforward: I don’t invest, I just endorse, charging a 1% endorsement fee, and I don’t care about the projects’ quality. This approach worked well—any project endorsed by Bao Er Ye would attract retail investors en masse.

But the good times didn't last. When the bear market arrived, these projects either failed to deliver, went to zero, or stagnated. Bao Er Ye endorsed over 100 projects; some surged 6-7 times in a day after listing on exchanges, then plummeted shortly after. Take Achain, for example: launched at 1.5 yuan on August 17, shot up to 4.4 yuan the next day, then crashed 52% on the 19th.

In response to skepticism, in August 2017, Bao Er Ye launched a "Crypto Circle Whampoa Military Academy" to evaluate ICO projects, claiming to help grassroots entrepreneurs. The first batch attracted over 20 projects, but their quality varied greatly, and no outstanding ones stood out. He also endorsed domain chain projects, confidently claiming they'd rise 250 times, but on the first day of launch, domain chain shot up and then crashed, eventually returning to cost price, completely cutting a wave of retail investors.

On September 4, seven ministries issued regulatory documents, after which Bao Er Ye stopped endorsing projects. But he couldn’t stay away for long—by the first half of 2018, he was feverishly promoting FCoin’s FT token on Weibo, which then plummeted from $1 to less than a dollar, a decline of over 95%. He even forked Bitcoin himself, creating Bitcoin God, which once surged to 5,500 yuan, then crashed to 90 yuan, a drop of over 98%.

On the last day of 2017, Bao Er Ye recorded a video at the airport saying he had flown 290k kilometers that year, then boarded a plane to the US. Since then, he’s been abroad "laying low." Some say he ran away after making enough money; Bao Er Ye’s own explanation was that he had invested in too many projects and was worried about being caught.

In the US, Bao Er Ye started flaunting his wealth wildly. In March 2018, he bought a hundred-acre mansion in Silicon Valley, even hanging a sign at the gate that said "Leek Farm," and planted some leeks on the estate. He also bought two Rolls-Royces, one costing 60 Bitcoins, and it’s said that there’s only one in the entire US.

Looking back at this history, Bao Er Ye truly seized the wave of Bitcoin and blockchain, rising from a small-town beef seller to a prominent figure in the crypto world. Although opinions about him are mixed—some say he’s free-spirited and straightforward, others say he’s just a master at cutting leeks—there’s no denying that he changed his destiny.