Guo Yu's Freedom Experiment: From the Wave of the Internet to the Exploration of a Second Life

At 28, Guo Yu, an internet veteran who retired from ByteDance, defined what it means to “exit the market in time” through his actions. Now 34, he has spent over five years in Japan living a different life—filled with travel, writing, and new experiences. His understanding of wealth, freedom, and life has deepened continuously through this long-term experiment.

This is not a story of escape, but a story of choice.

Opportunities Given by the Era: How Guo Yu Seizes Them

During his childhood in a remote mining town in Jiangxi, Guo Yu found spiritual sustenance through writing and faith. These early habits of self-expression later became his way of observing the world.

In high school, he attended Shenzhen Senior High School, where he first felt a core truth—the power of choice often exceeds effort itself. Surrounded by children of entrepreneurs, he saw very different life trajectories, which sparked his reflection on fate: life is not passively accepted but actively rewritten through choices.

In university, majoring in Politics and Administration, Guo Yu discovered a mismatch between his studies and reality, and decisively chose to self-study programming. This decision became a turning point. After graduation, he joined Alipay, riding the wave of the internet boom and successfully reaching the forefront.

In 2014, Guo Yu’s startup was acquired by ByteDance. At that time, ByteDance was valued at only $500 million, but he chose to believe in the company. Over the next six years, ByteDance’s valuation skyrocketed a hundredfold, and the stock options held by Guo Yu as an early employee also appreciated significantly. Wealth accumulation was almost an inevitable result of his correct choices.

To outsiders, Guo Yu is seen as a “lucky one” of the internet era. But he would tell you that this “luck” comes from sharp judgment and timely action.

A Decade in Crypto: Guo Yu’s Calm Observation

If internet wealth provided Guo Yu with a material foundation, then the crypto world became his “spiritual playground” to keep his mind vibrant.

Since first encountering Bitcoin on Alipay in 2013, Guo Yu has played dual roles as participant and observer in this market. He experienced OTC trading in the early days, witnessed the evolution of centralized exchange order books, and saw how futures and perpetual contracts distorted price mechanisms.

On the night of the crypto market crash in October 2024, Guo Yu systematically explained his understanding of Bitcoin’s price discovery mechanism on social media. He broke down this process into three stages:

The first stage is the OTC trading era. At that time, trading volume was small, prices were dispersed, and the mining costs of farms essentially determined Bitcoin’s intrinsic value.

The second stage is the era of centralized exchange order books. Efficiency improved, but problems arose—futures and perpetual contracts gradually became main business lines, causing the price mechanism to drift away from true supply and demand.

The third stage is the current Wall Street turnover phase. Guo Yu believes that Bitcoin’s story has entered its final chapter at this stage.

“Since the Bitcoin ETF was approved, Bitcoin has lost its original purpose—helping everyone resist unlimited debt inflation. Because from then until now, every day, Bitcoin is being exchanged into Wall Street’s hands.”

He observed that the spot holdings and trading volume on exchanges have sharply shrunk, and trading no longer reflects true prices. The next step for Wall Street is likely to turn mainstream tokens into yield-generating assets, with prices stabilizing. “The four-year cycle of Bitcoin is over.”

Unlike short-term profit-driven investors, Guo Yu still holds early crypto assets he bought and has never sold. He laughs and says the reason is simple: “Cashing out is complicated by taxes, and I have enough money.”

But more importantly, he has long transcended the obsession with returns and shifted to recording phenomena themselves.

More Concerned with “Living” Than Making Money

Recently, a tweet from Guo Yu in the crypto community resonated widely:

“Many friends in the crypto world have no concept of money—they go all-in today, and all-in tomorrow. Long-term trading, watching charts, staying in front of the computer—it’s easy to lose touch with reality. I suggest everyone read ten thousand books and travel ten thousand miles, spend money on life experiences. You can buy luxury goods, earn money, but don’t get trapped in it.”

This speaks to many people’s dilemma: they begin to lose common sense about money, forgetting that its fundamental purpose is to improve life. Guo Yu exemplifies this with his actions.

After leaving his job in 2020, he settled in Japan, turning travel into his main lifestyle. During the pandemic, he traveled almost all over Japan, staying in 530 hot spring inns. From Kurokawa Onsen in Kyushu to Kusatsu Onsen, he knows each hot spring’s特色: some excel in scenery, some focus on pH and minerals, some preserve Meiji-era mixed bathing culture.

Every place is like an algorithm waiting to be solved.

Now, Guo Yu maintains a “comfortable detachment” in Tokyo. Mornings are for cleaning his room as meditation, and evenings are limited to two hours of market watching. But once he starts traveling, these routines are completely broken. Writing remains a consistent habit—from childhood diaries to high school essays, and now Twitter records—its core of recording and reflection has never changed.

He openly discusses open relationships, even writing “love diaries” publicly. In Tokyo, he enjoys the freedom of being an “invisible person”—self-checkout at convenience stores, registering at hot spring inns under a pseudonym, with no one paying attention to his identity.

He even made a “fun list” for himself: getting a sailing license, learning to ride a motorcycle, trying adventures he never imagined. An INFJ personality, outwardly introverted and restrained, is actually constantly challenging the boundaries of life.

Guo Yu’s Redefinition of “Financial Freedom”

After more than five years of experimentation, Guo Yu has gained a new understanding of that popular concept.

He once thought that financial freedom equaled absolute freedom. Now he realizes that was a mistake. Material foundation is just a prerequisite; true freedom comes from early awareness of what matters in life—realizing what is important at a very early stage.

What does this mean? It means that at 28, Guo Yu had the courage to say “no” to his current life. In his resignation letter, he wrote: “I choose to retire at the end of 28, to embrace mountain springs and canyon winds.” Four years later, this sentence was rediscovered, sparking online discussion. Some envied, some questioned, but most saw him as a “reverse example”—someone who chose to turn around in the tide of the times.

But Guo Yu wants to say that this is not escape, but an active choice.

Today, he no longer obsessively pursues destinations. Every departure is not to run away from something, but to arrive at a more authentic self. Every coordinate on his journey marks the passage of time. Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Maldives… these places witness his ongoing exploration of freedom.

The true meaning of freedom is not to escape something, but to learn to settle oneself through continuous arrivals. Guo Yu’s five-plus years of life experiment offers his answer. And this answer also inspires those still pondering “what kind of life do I want.”