The trump card for AI companies to go public: get together to build a core, what is the odds and the risks?

 Interpretation of the opportunities and risks behind the recluse of AI companies' core-making enthusiasm.

The prelude to the new wave of AI listings has just begun.

What are the common characteristics of these companies sprinting for IPO? Chips are obviously a topic that cannot be avoided.

Branch board has been disclosed in the prospectus cloud-known sound and in accordance with plans of Science and Technology , has started listing counseling cloud from science and technology , the sky Li Fei , and has started Pre-IPO round of financing will think Chi , are involved in AI chip research and development.

The research and development of chips seems to have become the business standard of this AI listing wave, and it is also a key shining point for AI startups to attract capital.

Unlike pure AI chip companies, these celebrity startups who have been cultivating AI algorithms for many years do not use the sales of chips as their core source of revenue. Instead, they hope that chips, algorithms, and applications can form a synergy to achieve higher competitiveness. Combination punches.

Behind this cross-border core-making craze for algorithm companies, what kind of chess are AI companies playing?

01  Positioning changes, core AI companies are not just algorithm companies

From the beginning of the chip research and development plan, AI startups can no longer be simply called AI algorithm companies.

In the prospectus, in accordance with plans he calls himself a world- leading AI companies to AI chip technology and algorithm technology as the core technology, research and development and sales force calculation includes AI hardware and software solutions, including AI. 

In addition to the layout of computer vision, speech recognition, and natural language understanding algorithms, Yitu launched the cloud AI reasoning chip "search" in May 2019. The chip has passed Yitu's urban vision center, smart community, and "one face connects the city." And other solutions are applied.

Yitu focuses on the cloud, while several other companies focus on terminal chips.

Focusing on intelligent voice, Yunzhisheng began to deploy end-side AI voice chips in 2015. In 2018, it was the first to deliver the "Swift" series of chips and "Hummingbird" series of chips for home scenarios. In 2019, it launched the car-grade "Snow Leopard" chip.

The first two types of chips have been mass-produced, and "Snow Leopard" has entered the Geely Automobile product stability test and vehicle regulation test stage. After passing it, it is expected to be launched on Geely Automobile's mainstream platform.

Among several other AI vision startups that are still waiting for their listing applications to be accepted, Yuntian Lifei launched its self-developed neural network processor chip "Yuntian Chuxin DeepEye1000" in November 2019. This SoC chip has a built-in neural network processor with independent property rights, Alibaba Pingtou Xuantie 810 embedded processor and a dual-core vision DSP processor, which can track 1,200 faces per second.

Clouds from technology not officially declared the official chip R & D program, but in 2018 the Ministry announced the integration of artificial intelligence and the real economy depth list of innovative projects, from cloud technology "based on self-developed SoC chip Micro Motion Accuracy face recognition industrialization Application" is impressively listed.

Spitz, which launched the Pre-IPO round of financing, also launched its first voice terminal AI chip Shen Cong TAIHANG series in January 2019, hoping to achieve the integration of algorithm + chip.

It can be seen that these AI startups unanimously regard AI chips as a core element to enhance future competitiveness.

For companies engaged in the AI ​​industry, the main benefits of self-developed chips are threefold: one is to improve the utilization of computing power through the collaboration of software and hardware, the other is to optimize functions for specific application scenarios, and the third is to save costs and improve cost performance.

In addition to some AI startups, many cloud computing giants and technology companies at home and abroad have begun to try self-developed chips, or cooperate with traditional chip manufacturers to develop chips.

And if the competition hard power, technology giants in reserve funds, personnel gather energy collecting aspect force, floor scale, etc. all have natural advantages, it also means creating AI companies large investment, high risk, long payback periods in road-making core, Often face greater pressure.

02 How much blood does AI chip research and development shed?

The development of AI chips inevitably requires heavy investment.

The prospectus documents of two AI startups, Yunzhisheng and Yitu, both show that AI chips account for a considerable proportion of their R&D investment.

From 2017 to the first half of 2020, Yunzhisheng’s prospectus showed that its investment in AI dedicated chips was 5.5309 million yuan, 11.6693 million yuan, 60.711 million yuan and 17.55 million yuan, accounting for 5.5% and 7.6 of the total R&D investment in the same period. %, 23.5%, 18.99%.

In terms of specific research projects, Yunzhisheng has invested 96 people and 62.764 million yuan in the "Internet of Things artificial intelligence accelerator and chip research and development" project, and 112 people and 33,002,100 yuan. The combined investment has exceeded 95.46 million yuan, accounting for 15.8% of R&D investment in the same period.

Yitu did not separately list its investment in chips in the prospectus. As of June 2020, its "artificial intelligence chips and cloud-side computing power hardware products" project has invested 339.9 million yuan, an "artificial intelligence-based urban vision center platform" The project has invested 608 million yuan. Both projects involve chips and computing power-related products, which together account for 66% of the total investment in major research and development projects.

Looking to the future, in the two fund-raising plans, AI chip research and development projects account for the highest proportion of the total fund-raising.

Among the funds raised this time, Yunzhisheng intends to invest about 316.7 million yuan for the construction of the "artificial intelligence chip research and development platform construction project for edge computing of the Internet of Things" with a three-year cycle. This investment amount accounts for about the total funds raised. 34.7% of the amount, the highest proportion.

In fundraising purposes, Yitu plans to invest 2.318.2 billion yuan in the "New Generation Artificial Intelligence IP and High-Performance SoC Chip Project", accounting for 30.89% of the total fundraising. The "Edge Computing System Project Based on Visual Reasoning" also involves chips and hardware products for edge AI computing, with an estimated investment of 811.1 million yuan, accounting for 10.81% of the total funds raised.

03 Can core making drive up business performance?

After investing heavily in chip research and development, what kind of returns did AI companies get?

Judging from the data disclosed in the prospectus, Yitu's search chip was released in 2019. With the promotion and application of AI computing power hardware products based on the search chip and algorithm technology, Yitu's revenue in 2019 was more than twice that of the previous year. , Even with the new crown epidemic in early 2020, Yitu’s revenue from January to June 2020 increased by 50.62% year-on-year.

From the revenue share of each business, we can also see that the sales revenue of Yitu’s hardware and software and hardware portfolio solutions during the reporting period were 12.78 million yuan, 172.2 million yuan, 510.8 million yuan and 320.9 million yuan, respectively. The ratios were 18.60%, 56.59%, 71.25% and 84.31%, and the proportions were gradually increasing.

Yunzhisheng started to launch chips in 2018, and its revenue from 2017 to the first half of 2020 was 61,140,700, 196.6, 219.2, and 84,689,300 respectively.

The gross profit margin of the two companies has also increased year by year. According to the prospectus, the gross profit margin of Yitu during the reporting period was 57.39%, 54.55%, 63.89% and 70.99%. The gross profit margin of Yunzhisheng, which focuses on the intelligent voice track, is relatively low, being 11.41%, 24.97%, 26.28% and 31.66% respectively.

Yunzhisheng pointed out in the prospectus that one of the reasons for the significant rebound in gross profit margin in the first half of 2020 is the sales of the "Hummingbird" series of chips.

Due to the large-scale promotion of self-developed chip products and the abandonment of products with lower gross profit margins, in the first half of 2020, the direct hardware procurement cost of Yunzhisheng’s intelligent voice interaction products fell to 26.17%. In contrast, Yunzhisheng The corresponding cost ratio of sound in 2017-2019 is more than 60%.

It seems that the implementation of chips can indeed bring a positive impact on AI startups.

04 Where is the chip team formed? Subsidiary becomes the main force

Recruiting talents is the key to the success or failure of core manufacturing. The sources of chip development teams of several AI startups can be divided into different types.

The core technical personnel led by Yunzhisheng to build the core are mostly technical experts in the field of speech processing. Its chairman and deputy general manager Liang Jiaen led the team to realize the optimization of AIoT interactive chips; its director and senior vice president of research and development Li Xiaohan began to build Yunzhisheng's chip research and development team in 2016, and successively launched three AI voice chips for the Internet of Things; Director and R&D Director Li Peng has participated in the research and development of Yunzhisheng’s first IoT AI chip since 2016.

Yunzhisheng also co-invested with Geely Holding Group’s strategic investment and independently operated technology innovation company Yikatong Technology to jointly invest in the establishment of Xinzhi Technology , and Xinzhi Technology announced in January this year that its first automotive-grade full-stack voice AI chip was successfully taped out. .

In addition to independent research and development, Yunzhisheng also cooperates with Duke University to research AI chip compression and quantization technology and non-Feng new AI chip computing architecture. It invests US$50,000 in the project every year and the project cycle is 3 years.

Spitz and SMIC jointly invested in the establishment of Shanghai Shencong Semiconductor Co., Ltd. in March 2018. It began tape-out in August of the same year, lit up verification in November, and officially launched its voice AI chip in January 2019.

The core figure in making the core according to the map is also an algorithm expert. Its director and chief architect Lin Chenxi led the team to complete the research and development of AI computing products such as smart servers and solutions for smart cities and smart commerce, and overcome major engineering issues such as AI chip architecture and the productization of algorithm technology.

Yitu’s first-generation AI chip search is a joint research and development with AI chip startup Yizhi Electronics. As of August 2019, by signing an agreement with Yizhi Electronics, Yitu has obtained 100% intellectual property rights for the first-generation search chip and hardware system. And any related rights. Starting from April 2020, Yitu AI chips will be fully self-developed, and all the work from design to post-production verification can be completed within the company.

According to the prospectus, Yizhi Electronics has become one of Yitu's 19 domestic holding subsidiaries, with 28.92% of the shares held by Yitu Networks.

Yuntian Lifei laid the chip earlier. In 2014, it had a complete "machine learning and visual intelligence processor" AI chip solution. The research and development of the first generation of deep learning neural network processor NNP100 was completed in 2016, and the second generation of IPU Filmed in August 2018.

The founder and CEO of Yuntian Lifei revealed that its chip R&D team is the top domestic ASIP vector processor chip design team. The main backbone team members have rich vector processor and complex SoC chip design experience, and the average design experience exceeds 10 year.

For example, Li Aijun, the head of Yuntian Lifei’s chip team, was once the head of ZTE’s mobile phone chip research and development. He led the development of the first 28nm mobile phone chip in China and the first domestic LTE multi-mode mobile phone chip. The chief processor architect has also served as architects in international chip giants such as NVIDIA and Intel.

Yuncong Technology has not disclosed the background of its core-making team. Perhaps we will see more information in the prospectus to be disclosed in the near future.

05 Four advantages of AI company core making

Whether it is focusing on algorithms or chips, AI startups have reached a key node that has withstood the test of the market.

In general, AI companies involved in chips can reap multiple benefits from policy, capital, landing, and business expansion.

1. Policy advantage: dual policy support

In the freshly released "14th Five-Year Plan" and the 2035 long-term goal, it is clearly pointed out that it will target the frontier fields such as artificial intelligence and integrated circuits and implement major national scientific and technological projects.

The continued increase in policies is obviously very beneficial to AI startups with two-wheel-drive algorithm chips.

2. Capital advantage: investment is tilted towards AI hardware

In the past two years, the overall investment scale of the AI ​​industry and the number of financing incidents have dropped significantly. According to ICBC Investment Bank data, the total investment and financing amount of the AI ​​industry in 2019 was nearly cut to 172.1 billion, and the number of transaction incidents dropped to 1,050, becoming more and more heady Or concentration of high-quality enterprises.

The AI ​​hardware industry is showing the opposite trend. In 2019, the domestic investment in AI chips alone reached 5.857 billion yuan, an increase of more than 90% year-on-year.

AI companies such as Yuntian Lifei, Yitu Technology, Spitz, and Horizon, which take into account both algorithms and chips, have all received a single financing of more than 100 million yuan in the past two years.

3. Landing advantage: there are specific application scenarios

Compared with pure AI chip companies, one of the major advantages of AI startups to build cores lies in their proximity to application scenarios and deep cultivation of AI algorithms, so they can have a deeper understanding and grasp of the computing power demands of different applications and models, and also grasp a certain scale of implementation. Application resources.

An industry source said, the algorithm will self-developed chips and packaged algorithms, are often able to tap more Dolly profit space.

4. Business development: building a new moat

Now that the AI ​​industry is still in its infancy, no one can assert which business model is more feasible. For AI startups, getting involved in chips also means widening the moat.

Take Yunzhisheng as an example. In the past two years , as technology giants such as Baidu and Xiaomi have increased their investment in consumer-grade smart hardware, Yunzhisheng’s profit margin in the field of intelligent voice interaction has been squeezed. In this regard, Yunzhisheng has turned to vigorously promote the voice module solution based on self-developed AI chips, looking for new growth points in white appliances, which are relatively less competitive.

Affected by this, the shipment volume of Yunzhisheng's intelligent voice module has dropped sharply in the first half of 2020, and the self-developed chip has passed the stability test of a number of small home appliance manufacturers and gradually mass-produced, and the sales situation has gradually opened up. In the first nine months of this year, its cumulative chip shipments reached 924,400.

06 The risks behind recluse in core making

For AI startups that invest in chip research and development, the problem is also obvious. Core making is a high-risk thing. Once it fails, the tens of millions of dollars invested will be wasted.

In other words, if AI startups want to persist, they must solve the problems of money, talent, and landing.

To create chips optimized for core application scenarios, professional chip design capabilities and practical experience are the key. Therefore, most of the founders of AI chip entrepreneurs are industry veterans who have been in the chip field for more than ten years, and the chip design team should try their best Absorb elite and powerful generals.

Considering that software is the link with customers, several AI startups involved in core manufacturing have far-reaching plans. On the one hand, they promote chip research and development, while on the other hand, they strive to improve the ease of use of the adaptation tool chain and application middleware.

For example, in order to lower the development threshold, YITU provides a full set of development middleware such as high-performance computing libraries and high-tech tools. It is also advancing the decoupling of the platform algorithm layer from the hardware layer, data layer, and application layer. Pluggable AI chip vision innovation platform architecture.

At the same time that Yuntian Lifei launched the end-side AI chip last year, it proposed an open AI ecological plan of "complete hardware in one week, adaptation algorithm in one week, docking service in one week, and finally AI capability completed in one month."

After the chip is built, even if it achieves the expected more suitable performance and higher cost performance, there are still many challenges.

From the perspective of product portfolio, if the end-to-end vertical integration solution of "chip + algorithm" makes it easy for customers to use, the continued use of subsequent customers will bring stable income to AI companies, but in case there are some shortcomings in the chip, such as If the iterative update of the algorithm is well supported, then the customer may also abandon the entire solution due to performance issues.

From the perspective of the competitive environment, the competitors facing AI startups include Internet giants that gather high-quality data and talent teams, and chip giants that have accumulated abundant customer resources and invested in algorithm research. Some AI chip startups have also begun to expand their business to AI algorithms and finding differentiated positioning in the market are crucial to the long-term survival of AI startups.

From the environment point of view, despite a favorable domestic policy, but a number of AI record companies have been included in the US list of entities, such as Kagome country's exports further tighter controls may affect the company's future business.

07 Conclusion: The road to core making still needs time to verify

As the AI ​​industry gradually returns to its commercial nature, every AI company is about to face the big test of survival of the fittest in the market. Core making may become a powerful assistant for AI companies to strengthen their core competitiveness , or it may become a "golden beast" that drags down cash flow. Whether it can bring more profit through core manufacturing depends on the strength of the products that are ultimately delivered to the market.

In the early stage of development of the AI industry, R & D and market development will take time, short-term profit and loss does not mean anything, but to find the right technical direction and business model, really positive solutions to customer problems, an AI will be about the future of the company.

Air coin trader dictated: renting a luxury house, pitting school girls, I cut leeks and made 20 million yuan

 After the project ended, I paid off millions of debts, and I also had an extra string of Buddhist beads in my hand.

Blockchain and virtual currency have rewritten the lives of many people.

Some people lose money and lose their fortunes because of this, while others are free and "get to the pinnacle of life."

Tokens, crowdfunding, white papers, exchanges...the constantly scrolling numbers on the screen, and the endless heated discussions in group chats all confirm human nature's most primitive greed for money and wealth.

People work hard to sniff and perceive the new trend of market changes, but they forget that they often lead to traps before getting rich.

Bloody and cruel is the consistent background color of capital games.

The microscopy story in this issue is personally told by an air coin trader:

In the BOX33 project he participated in, how did he choose the "leek" crowd, rent luxurious office buildings in the city center, decorate the clubhouse, and introduce the king into the urn, and then cut them down when they were most greedy.

After the end of the project, the trader achieved a comeback in his life. He not only paid off the millions of debts he owed, but also had a string of Buddhist beads in his hands.

The following is the true story about him:

Text | MacKenzie McAvoy

Edit | Yuanyi, Qinghuai

Embarking on the "road of no return" for debt

On the eve of college graduation, I lost millions in bitcoin fry

I graduated from the finance department of a certain three universities. If I take the conventional path, I can only move bricks in the job market.

I don't want to live a life that is poor and tired, and I don't see a way out. I take the initiative to find opportunities to make quick money when I go to school.

In the past few years, I have done various project promotion, such as POS cash-out, campus loan, face-scanning payment, etc., slowly, I also met some so-called "financial bigwigs".

Those "big guys" are doing innocent activities, but often improper is the fastest way to get money.

Seeing that they bought a house and car in just a few years, and went in and out of high-end clubs at will, I dreamed of being like them: doing a few "projects" and making a lot of money.

The first opportunity came in the second half of 2017. That year I was in my senior year and the price of Bitcoin saw its first round of surge: from $3,000 to nearly $20,000, an increase of 634%.

I have a hunch that the opportunity to get rich is here!

At that time, mainstream virtual currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum had risen to tens of thousands of RMB each, which was a huge sum of money for students.

It would be too risky for me to enter the market alone, so I joined a few classmates who are usually keen on stocks to share the cost and risk.

In the early stage, we did make money. The money we made in one or two months can match the income of fresh graduates in one or two years.

The authorities are fascinated, and we, who were dazzled by huge profits, did not believe that the money was made by luck. It was a bull market at that time. As long as our brains are online and our eyes are closed, we can make money.

From my heart, I believe that I have excellent skills and feel that the virtual currency market has only technical aspects and almost no fundamentals.

What's more, we are students majoring in finance and have natural advantages. Looking at the K-line and Bollinger channel operation, coupled with the already smooth market, it is simply a fish in water.

Seeing the continuous growth of the assets in the account, I have begun to plan for the future. I plan to make a lifetime of money before the age of 25, then wash my hands and retire, and play games and drink for the rest of my life.

In order to make a few big votes before the end of the bull market, we put all the money earned into the market.

With the addition of off-site funds and underground bank loans, a total of one million yuan has been raised and 20 times leverage has been applied.

Figure | Transaction records at the time

The past gains have made us confident, but also blinded our eyes, allowing us to selectively ignore risks.

In February 2018, Bitcoin plummeted to US$7,000, and the bull market was over. We suddenly became high-ranking players.

If the short order was closed at that time, some losses could be recovered, but we still had the illusion that it would rise back later, and watched the account be forced to liquidate, and the principal lost everything.

So far, not only did I fail to achieve financial freedom before graduation, but I also had millions of foreign debts.

It is good for young people to have ideals

But there is no need to have trouble with money

The currency circle is cold, and I have to raise money from other places to pay off the debt.

I roughly calculate it. I have to earn at least RMB 30,000 per month to reach the minimum repayment amount. Otherwise, I will face violent collection and my family will be implicated.

With my education and background, it is impossible to find a white-collar job with such a high income, but I really want to be a courier brother, and I don’t think it's face.

More importantly, I have boasted several times in front of my classmates and friends, saying that I have made a lot of money by doing finance.

If I let them know that I did something wrong, I would never be able to look up in front of them.

After thinking about it, there is still a lot of oil and water in the gray industry, and the possibility of a turnaround is high. If you really want to pay off the debt, you have to start with this.

At this time, the boss who took me to do the cash-out project of POS machine happened to approach me, saying that he had taken a fancy to the leek field of blockchain and was preparing to make a new virtual currency (token) project.

Figure | Screenshot of the project at the time

As soon as I looked at the project introduction, I knew that it was a pretense to scam money, but it was just a well-packaged fund disk.

Although the campus loan I used to do is not glamorous, I can at least convince myself that people who borrow money are voluntary, and there is no wickedness.

Selling tokens is intended to defraud other people's money. The two are completely different in nature. For a while, it is difficult for me to cross the barrier of conscience.

But the boss only used a few words, so I quickly " wanted ".

He said: "In today's society, either you earn others, or others earn you. There is no need for young people to struggle with money."

I thought about it, people who have no money can hardly move forward. This society laughs at the poor but not at the prostitution. With money, most of the troubles are no longer troubles.

Although the project in front of me lacks morals, the commission is high, and I have experience. It is simply a road to wealth tailored for me. The desire for wealth has flooded in and once again defeated morality.

I advise myself, isn't it the same with stock market makers?

In the financial market, you love me, I can only blame myself for being deceived. It's not wrong to deceive people, it's wrong to be caught. As long as I plan carefully, I won't be caught.

I became a partner in the token project.

There are countless opportunities to be a bastard in a person’s life

I just grabbed one of them

Our token projects are mainly located in second- and third-tier cities in Guangdong. All I have to do is to convince investors to buy our tokens and get a commission.

We packaged this project into a "financial product" similar to a fund. There are 50 preparatory phases, one per day, with a steady increase of 1.7% per period.

Although it doesn't sound high, if you make a full position from the first period , the final yield can be as high as 85%, which can double.

Figure | "Wealth management products" will undergo 50 phases of preparations

Moreover, we claim that this token will eventually be listed on a virtual currency exchange.

I explained to my clients that we always use the analogy of stocks as new stocks. New stocks will almost certainly rise at the opening of the market. If you subscribe for it, you will earn a profit. The listing of virtual currency is also a steady profit.

People who know this statement will know that it is untenable.

First of all, new stocks have also plummeted. Second, the virtual currency market mechanism is far less complete than the stock market. The price of virtual currency can be said to be unsafe.

But the person who will issue such a question is not our target customer.

The design idea of ​​the entire project is that it looks tall at first, but after a little pondering, you will find loopholes everywhere.

The white paper seems to be quite pretentious, but it is actually copied directly from another scam project, even the name is not changed much, as long as you search on the Internet, you will find the flaws;

The video of the project founder’s speech on the official website only invited a foreigner to read a manuscript before the green screen. It doesn’t even know the grammar, and the so-called Australian headquarters does not exist;

The company also rented a two-story office building next to the city's most prosperous business district, nearly 200 square meters. The outer floor has just been renovated and looks impressive, but the rent is very cheap.

We packaged this area into a "clubhouse" where customers can use the purchased tokens to consume in the clubhouse. Coffee, wine, and light meals are all available. At first glance, it looks like that.

In fact, red wine with a price tag of several hundred yuan is nothing more than a supermarket product with a torn label and a bright "VDT (table wine)" logo.

The coffee was bought on Taobao, and 19.9 yuan a pound also included free shipping. After entering the clubhouse, it became a high-end coffee for 4 to 50 yuan.

We also packed a few cars and announced to the public that we are planning to launch online car-hailing services in the future, which can only be paid with project tokens.

In fact, these cars are all private cars of employees and bosses. They are just affixed with the project logo and will not actually go out to take orders.

We deliberately made the traces sufficiently obvious so that experts can be excluded. People who know the trade have a little bit of patience and connections, and it is troublesome to gather together to defend their rights.

Figure | Screenshot of my circle of friends at the time

Only those who don't understand anything, have nowhere to avenge justice if they are cheated, they are excellent materials for leeks.

We are recruiting sales came from the bottom, there are people in urgent need of money, someone wants to make a career change fate, in short, regard the money as a top priority .

Their social circle covers students and practitioners in the service industry. Their income is less than the tax threshold, and they have little exposure to financial products. They are our target customers.

There is a part of my client is the same school mentees - although our high school tuition, but students family in general, there are usually anxious to make money, or to repay student loans money, or support their parents.

This kind of urgency can easily cause them to lose their minds in high-return projects, and it is easy to get the bait when they see the influential white papers and the credit endorsements of seniors.

Figure | Our project Box33 official website

We also set up a distribution system to allow customers to invite new members, and the layers of fission will accumulate more money.

With the advancement of the first phase of the project, the day for the project party to harvest leeks is getting closer.

Although I repeatedly brainwashed myself, sometimes I was a little bit unbearable to see my younger brothers and sisters being taken into the pit step by step.

On the eve of the token landing on the exchange, a younger sister invited me to a birthday party on her birthday.

I know that she put all her savings into the project and pulled me down several times. Her mood was a bit complicated. She could only drink one cup after another, and she quickly became drunk.

In my drunken eyes, I heard the younger sister gratefully reminisce about the past that I took her to do projects to make extra money, and finally couldn't help but say her heart's words through the wine:

"The follow-up operation of the listing is a bit complicated, and you have no experience, you may lose money. Now you have made a little money, it is better to withdraw early."

In fact, in order to avoid risks, the project party reserved a small fund from the beginning. In the middle and later stages, if someone sees something wrong, they will use the fund to buy back the tokens in their hands.

At the same time, clearing people out is equivalent to giving a hush fee, so as not to cause other people to be alert.

This is the only chance for Leek to retreat.

As for whether the school girl seized this opportunity to go ashore, I can't control it. After all, I still have to keep my performance.

Not long after the birthday party, the project party fulfilled its promise on time and went public on a well-known virtual currency exchange. However, it was not on the main board, but a sub-platform under the exchange.

Almost all on this platform are air coins and capital plates. Looking at the huge amount, it is actually no different from Mingbi.

The project party originally planned to withdraw after the increase to 400%. Unexpectedly, the operation was too fierce. After the opening of the market, the increase was about 100% every day, and the highest increase was as high as 2200%. The goal was exceeded and a small number of retail investors were successfully locked in a high position.

The first batch of investors to profit up to 4070%, even on the block chain line industry headlines.

Figure | A blockchain website, not related to this article

The active members of my "consortium" are clamoring to buy me a drink in the clubhouse, thanking me for taking them to make a lot of money, and some people are starting to worry about how to spend such a huge fortune.

The "investor" I was more impressed with was a hairdresser. At first he invested only a small amount of spare money. Later, he was overwhelmed by the income on the book. He took the wedding house and car he bought at home as mortgage, and all went into the project. in.

After the token was listed, he suddenly became a "millionaire", and he showed off in the group every day from morning to night: to buy a new house in the city center, change a new car, and embark on the peak of life.

But until he finished viewing the house and testing the car, the tokens in the virtual account could not be transferred.

Figure | Screenshot of Consortium Group Chat

We tell investors that if selling is allowed now, it will cause retail investors to trample and the price of tokens will fall. Although this explanation does not follow the preface, but the clumsy professional terms still bluff them.

During this period, the project team completed the cash out and was ready to run away.

The high price in the initial stage of the token listing was speculated, and there was no trading volume at all. After the project party’s funds withdrew, the token price plummeted by 6150%, which was lower than the first phase of the preparatory stage.

Some people in the "consortium" are unwilling to wake up, believing that this is only a short-term price correction caused by technical problems of the project party. Once the price returns to the peak in the future, they will become big dealers.

Some people even stepped up to meet the difficulties and took advantage of the opportunity to "buy the bottom", and our account continued to add tens of thousands of dollars.

Figure | The rare "understanding" in the group at that time

As time passed and the token price dropped to close to zero, their fantasy was finally shattered by reality.

The barber's house was confiscated by the court. He was forced to run away by the loan shark himself. Before he left, he was still in the group crying sorry for his parents and shouldn't believe my human face.

Figure | People in the group realize that the wealth dream is shattered

I told myself that the 85% of the project’s promised early return and the exchange listing have been achieved. I have never guaranteed the price after the listing, nor have I guaranteed that the tokens on the investor’s account can be sold in time.

Before the project went public, there were already overwhelming articles exposing us, and even unfamiliar people turned to the "consortium" group.

He chose to ignore it himself. Who can blame it?

The total revenue of the entire project is conservatively estimated to be no less than 20 million yuan-this does not include the income from cutting leeks on the exchange.

Although compared with the project party, I can only take a sip of soup at most, but this sip of soup is enough for me to pay off several million yuan in debt within 3 months and move from the village in the city to a high-rise apartment in the city center. , The project team’s record speaks for itself.

Figure | When leeks want to withdraw tokens, most of them are already in a "rejected" state

When this batch of leeks was making trouble, the project team changed the office early and people went to empty buildings.

However, the boss behind the project did not intend to stop, and reorganized the team, ready to continue to expand the business.

The new company is still doing blockchain, and even many customers are selected from the previous project.

The customer service will call those who still have money and are eager to turn over their books, bring them into the "insider group", and say that a professional trader teacher will lead them to make money.

To put it bluntly, it is the old way of shouting for single groups in stocks, just changing the shell of virtual currency.

Figure | After listing, it is a conventional routine to pull the market and then plunge

The so-called "teacher" will first take them to earn a little money, and then induce them to join the "disciple class" and transfer to the designated platform for operation.

As long as users are willing to transfer to this platform, it is equivalent to becoming meat on the cutting board of the project party.

The project party's left hand and right hand can set off the ups and downs of virtual currency prices. With a leverage of 135 times the starting point, users are forced to close their positions in minutes.

I occasionally visit these single-call groups, and I found several old customers who were enthusiastically discussing how to transfer money from the platform. It seems that they haven't discovered that they have been cheated twice by the same team.

Such a mind still wants to make a lot of money, it is estimated that it is only deceived.

However, I don't like these small retail investors anymore.

Now I follow up with major clients. They invested a lot of money in the previous project and have never dealt with me. They are suitable candidates for the next wave of leeks.

These customers are not that easy to cheat. I switched to the "investment consulting" model-borrowing their money to speculate in digital currencies on a formal platform, earning a 50% rake, and losing them at their own risk.

If you can't do it one day, the company will circle them to a small platform it controls, and let them lose money before running away with the money.

I occasionally think of the younger sister who invited me to celebrate my birthday. Although we still keep each other's WeChat messages, she never replied to the message I sent to her, too. Needless to say, everyone understands.

Now the amount of money I deal with is getting bigger and bigger, the proportion of share is steadily increasing, and my life is getting better every day.

I know that the real boss always hides behind the scenes, and I do the dirtiest and most tiring work. Whenever the Dongchuang incident happens, I must be the first to be pushed to block the gun.

But I can't look back anymore. Once people experience the sense of accomplishment brought by making quick money, it is difficult to settle down and work for others in a down-to-earth manner.

It's just that now I have more beads in my hand, and occasionally I visit the temple, hoping that the day when I am defeated by desire can come later.

There are countless opportunities to be a bastard in a person's life, and I just grabbed one of them.