I just came across a really interesting personal story and wanted to share it with everyone. This guy, named Guo Yu, is a person many people may have heard of—at 28, he left ByteDance completely, achieved financial freedom, and then settled in Japan to begin a completely different way of life. Now at 34, he’s still on the move, but his mindset is very different from five years ago.

Guo Yu’s experience is actually quite inspiring. He spent his childhood in a mining area in Jiangxi. As a left-behind child, he found comfort for his mind through writing and faith. Later, when he studied at Shenzhen Senior High School, he realized one key point—that choice matters more than effort. This realization changed the entire course of his life. He taught himself programming, joined Alipay, then worked at a startup that was later acquired by ByteDance. From there, he benefited from stock options as ByteDance’s valuation surged—Guo Yu simply seized the opportunity that belonged to him in the tide of the internet.

But what’s most interesting is his observations of the crypto world. Starting in 2013, when he first got exposed to Bitcoin, Guo Yu experienced the entire cycle of the crypto market. Recently, he posted a passage on social media, which resonated with a lot of people in the crypto community. He said that many investors easily fall into the strange loop of obsessively watching charts and trading, losing touch with reality. Bet it all on this, go All in on that—what they end up losing is not only money, but life itself. These words sound simple, yet they hit right at many people’s pain points.

Guo Yu has also analyzed Bitcoin’s price discovery mechanism in a systematic way. He believes that from the OTC trading era, to the centralized exchange order book stage, and now to the Wall Street turnover stage after Bitcoin ETFs, Bitcoin has gradually lost the original intention behind its design. He even said bluntly that this four-year cycle has already entered its final chapter. Of course, he himself still holds those early purchased crypto assets to this day, and never cashes out. The reason is simple: he says the money is enough to spend, and cashing out would mean paying taxes.

Stepping back from the crypto world into real life, Guo Yu’s daily routine has become vivid and full of scenes. During the pandemic, he traveled all over Japan, stayed in 530 hot spring ryokan, and knows the distinctive features of hot springs in different places like the back of his hand. In Tokyo, he maintains a kind of “comfortable detachment”—in the morning he cleans the room like a meditation, in the evening he limits himself to watching the charts for only two hours, and the rest of the time is travel, writing, and experiencing new things. A sailing license, learning to ride a motorcycle—these are all on his life checklist.

Writing has always been Guo Yu’s habit, from childhood diaries to high school essays, and now to records on social media. He even publicly wrote love diaries, discussing open relationships candidly. To some extent, this transparency and honesty reflects his understanding of freedom—not escaping from something, but placing himself through continuous exploration.

What’s most interesting is that Guo Yu says he’s not someone naturally lucky. He emphasizes that financial freedom does not equal absolute freedom; more importantly, he realized this early in life. Money can be earned and spent, but the life you lose can never come back. This might be the core point he most wants to convey when he turns 34. Today, Guo Yu no longer chases the next destination; instead, he searches for a more authentic self in every departure. In the process, it seems he has found true freedom—an existence beyond identity and time.