Interview: Zhang Wen & Jack, BlockBeats

Compiled by: Kaori, BlockBeats

As a Crypto trading and entertainment blogger, the old driver in the currency circle records his years of experience and operations in the industry on social platforms. Becoming a KOL seems to be a natural thing for him, who was originally responsible for brand KOL on the trading platform.

Like other industries, it is not easy to become a KOL in Crypto now. You can't become a KOL just by showing your orders. In order to understand the experience of the old driver in the currency circle, BlockBeats talked to him about his KOL journey, a post-95s cryptocurrency for 8 years.

BlockBeat: Please briefly introduce your work experience. When and why did you enter Crypto?

Old driver:I have worked on multiple platforms, including Huobi, Xinhuo Technology, etc., as a brand KOL leader, event organizer, etc., and have participated in the promotion of multiple digital currency brands. Now I have joined a new digital currency trading platform and am preparing to go online.

I majored in securities and investment in college, and every student needs to open a stock account. My family gave me 80,000 yuan to speculate in A shares, but I caught up with the stock market crash in 2015 and lost 30,000 yuan. When I lost money, I also tried futures and gold, but these require a lot of money. I don’t know enough about them, and I think they are relatively traditional and old.

I don’t remember which QQ group or forum I saw the news of Da Hongfei’s NEO private placement at that time. The issue price was one yuan. If I remember correctly, I bought 5,000 yuan. Then NEO opened abnormally, doubling directly. If you were speculating in stocks, you would be very happy if it doubled by about 10 or 20 points, but this market could double many times in a day. At that time, I thought this market was very interesting. At that time, 5,000 doubled to 10,000 yuan, and I happily withdrew my principal.

Because I graduated from a second-tier university, the big fund companies were unwilling to hire me. A boss wanted to transfer money to his son who was studying abroad. He accidentally discovered the speculative potential of Bitcoin and asked me about some private placement coins. Then I joined his small fund in my sophomore year and observed some hot currencies in the market with my boss. Not long after, TRX came out and rose an astonishing 100 times in about a month. From then on, I began to understand this market in depth.

BlockBeats: Does a financial background help you in Crypto?

Veteran:The knowledge taught in school is not very useful. However, I think the methods I learned from the fund boss before are very practical. For example, if you think a token has the potential to rise, go to his social group or community to check the latest announcements, dynamics, etc. Look at the active fans of this project. If it is a token that few people are interested in and has no trading volume, the probability of rising is small. I have been using this method to choose tokens.

I can share a very rough method to determine whether a project has money, that is, to see whether it is conducting activities on the trading platform. If the trading platform puts the token in the first few positions and conducts promotion activities very prominently, then the token must have sufficient financial support. You can consider buying some of these tokens, which actually has a lot of profit opportunities.

BlockBeats: What was your main job in the fund at that time, and what things improved your cognition for you?

Veteran:In fact, I think the only thing that can improve cognition is losing money. When you lose money in the market, you will seriously make up your mind to study some tokens and fields.

Compared to fund companies, I think my cognition may have been greatly improved after going to Huobi and following the leaders within Huobi. They gave me not only an improvement in investment direction, but more in some core values and worldviews of Crypto, because I was in charge of brand KOL and marketing activities in Huobi at that time.

BlockBeats: To be specific, what does this worldview refer to?

Old driver: Because many of them, whether they are veterans of Huobi or OKX, have accumulated a lot of experience in this market, and will share some stories, including some positive and negative experiences, as well as the performance of the project party, and how to do something in the market, such as marketing. Listening to these stories will make you have a better understanding of the market and look at things from different perspectives.

BlockBeats: What kind of opportunity did you have to go to Huobi at that time?

Old Driver:I have an article called "Putian Group Reborn in Douyin" with over 100,000 views. It was in the top 20 hot searches on Weibo at the time and was also interviewed by Tencent Research Institute. I was writing Internet public relations articles at the time. The reason why I wanted to enter Crypto was because Internet public relations is a high-risk profession. I have written public relations articles for Douyin, Pinduoduo, etc. before, and they sued me. After being sued, I felt that doing Internet public relations and entering Crypto were about the same risk.

There were two main reasons why I didn't enter Crypto right away. The first was that the Crypto market was not good at the time; the second was that I felt that Crypto was still a relatively dangerous industry. Later, I worked in Internet public relations and wrote articles, and found that there was also the risk of being sued by the company or even being sued, so I decided to switch to Crypto.

I wrote a self-recommendation letter to some friends I knew at Huobi before, telling me about my situation, why I wanted to enter Crypto, and what I could do. Since I had been in Crypto for a long time, I knew a lot of people, and I had been a KOL myself, so I had more resources. So I mentioned these in the letter, and Huobi was willing to let me go over to help deal with public opinion issues. In fact, I was also doing public relations at Huobi at the beginning, but later my boss found that I was more sensitive to KOL and public opinion, so he transferred me to be responsible for KOL.

BlockBeats: Your work during Huobi and Xinhuo may be similar. Do you feel there is any difference?

Old Driver:Actually, Xinhuo and Huobi are quite different. As a trading platform, Huobi had abundant cash flow at that time. When Mr. Li was there, the cash flow was particularly abundant. When we were doing marketing activities or planning, we could basically ignore the cost because of sufficient funds. Whether it was finding Internet celebrities or other promotions, they were done very well, and at that time Huobi had basically no public opinion crisis. It was not until around 2021 that Huobi slowly had some public opinion problems. But when we were in charge of the market, because the budget was relatively sufficient, there was basically no public opinion.

Xinhuo Technology also had sufficient funds, but because it was a compliant platform, it held a license in Hong Kong, so it could only find Hong Kong KOLs for promotion, which was more difficult to promote.

BlockBeats: What are you mainly responsible for in the current trading platform?

Old Driver:I am also the head of brand KOLs, responsible for the invitation of media and KOLs or the handling of public opinion for some brands. This position exists on every trading platform, such as Hai Teng of OKX and SiSi of Binance.

What is a day like for a KOL?

BlockBeats: How did you become a KOL?

Old driver: Being a KOL actually took a lot of detours. I remember that in the early days of the bull market in 2018, I was short and my position was blown up. After that, I bought some coins of DeFi projects, especially for some popular DeFi projects. In the end, RVN had the largest increase. At that time, the principal was not much, probably tens of thousands of yuan. But RVN increased by 40 to 50 times, which made me regain my confidence, and I have been playing in this market ever since.

At the beginning, I didn't think I could become a KOL. At that time, I just wrote some content about candlestick charts and market analysis. Later, my public account had more and more fans, and more and more people came to me for consultation. I gradually realized that this was actually a kind of accumulation of resources. Many opportunities would come to me on their own initiative, so I persisted.

BlockBeats: Do you learn trading in your spare time?

Old driver:Yes, when I am free, I will look at some operating ideas of KOLs such as Chuanmu and Hua Ge. Their ideas are usually very obvious. For example, they mention which coin may rise, and then you can find out their research direction and their ideas for judging whether the coin will rise by looking at the candlestick chart, trading volume, the latest hot news, and the information they posted on social platforms such as Telegram or Discord. In fact, every KOL will shout a coin or say which coin will rise. You just need to carefully study why he said so.

BlockBeats: So your learning ideas or paths are mainly to study other KOLs. Many people may have a problem, that is, they also follow Twitter, but when they open Twitter, they don’t know what to see today, and don’t know what to do specifically. Can you give them some advice?

Old driver: I generally don’t pay much attention to KOLs who are interested in buying and selling, because I am not very sensitive to the primary market and don’t participate in it. I mainly work in the secondary market, so I just browse the KOLs who are interested in buying and selling, see the hot projects they are paying attention to recently, and understand what coins they are buying. I won’t study them carefully.

I pay more attention to KOLs who focus on market conditions and macro analysis, and see what coins they recommend every day and why they call them like this. Some KOLs will also share their trading ideas and explain why they call for a certain coin. You need to understand their thinking process. Because most of the content released by KOLs is not random, they have a well-thought-out process.

At present, I mainly pay attention to some bloggers related to trading, as well as some new information officially released by some trading platforms. If you don’t understand some content, I remember that you have a weekly market analysis, which is very valuable for some novices to refer to. You can understand the market dynamics in the past week. I think this is very necessary for novices, because my own public account was also written in this way, which attracted many novice users. Such content is very helpful to them.

BlockBeats: So what is your own trading style? For example, some people are coin holders or long-term, and some people are pure short-term, holding positions for a few minutes or one or two days.

Old driver:I don't play pure short-term trading. Pure short-term trading is too frequent and too tiring. Basically, I just look at the 15-minute to 1-hour line. I am not that kind of short-term trader. I will not be a complete coin holder. I will not hoard a coin at one time and hold it for a year. My trading style is almost mid-term. I will sell the coin after holding it for two or three months and switch to the next coin. For example, if Ethereum is upgrading now and it is upgraded in January, I will arrange some OP and ARB three or four months in advance, and then wait for hot spots.

It can be understood as speculating on coins with hot news. For example, BAYC has risen again recently, so I may buy some APE and other tokens recently, and then APE has a large release volume, and I dare not buy more. Maybe I will count it as my own position.

BlockBeats: From the perspective of news, what is your daily process of receiving information? For example, today I open WeChat and see what is being said in the group, and then Twitter, telegram, discord and so on.

Old driver:First, I will check WeChat and browse the messages in various groups. It takes about 20 to 30 minutes to browse the messages of some groups I follow. Then, I will check Twitter to understand what everyone is discussing, what some KOLs are buying, and what KOLs in the primary market are paying attention to. This process of browsing Twitter takes about ten minutes.

Then go to the Telegram group. I mainly pay attention to the activity of the Telegram group. If a certain project’s Telegram group has a lot of messages on the screen, which exceeds the usual number, then I will focus on it to see what happened and what they are discussing. For those chats that are not particularly prominent, I usually don’t pay attention to them. I only look at the activity level and the number of people chatting every day.

I will also check Discord, because Discord usually releases some important official news, and the information classification is relatively better. I will browse the important news and understand what content they promoted today. Then I will check the project parties I follow to understand what they are doing recently, what they are playing, and whether there are any important announcements.

Finally, I will read the news from Rhythm and Planet to understand what important events have happened in the market and whether there is any important information push. If there is important information, I will record it in the memo to remind myself that there may be important information today and I need to think about its possible impact on the market.

BlockBeats: After several rounds of market conditions, many KOLs come and go. Those who were very popular before disappeared later, and then a new wave of people came up, and the next wave disappeared again. Many people opened paid groups or promoted private currencies. So I don’t know what you think of the current ecology of Chinese KOLs on Twitter or everyone’s various operations?

Old driver: I think this is actually very normal. In the Crypto market, as long as there is good content, it can grow quickly. For example, Sha Po Lang, he specializes in comparing and analyzing new coins, and there is also Phrex Ni, who does macro analysis. They have a lot more fans than me since they were young.

I am not against paid groups. Newcomers to Crypto need education and guidance, and paid groups are the first lesson. Although many paid groups are not very useful, they do meet the entry needs of newcomers. This market does not have a complete learning system like the stock market, and there is not much information on the Internet, so newcomers may need guidance from teachers. The price of paid groups is not expensive, and the tuition fee of three or four thousand yuan is acceptable. So I think these are all normal phenomena in this market. If there is demand, there will be supply.

Is the platform currency a wealth code?

BlockBeats: Can you reveal what the current larger holdings are?

Old driver:Now I will keep a small position, about 10% of the funds, to follow some of Chuanmu's short-term operation ideas, because I think his short-term trading is very powerful. That is, I choose the top three coins with the largest trading volume and the largest increase every day. At the same time, there will be a small position of 10% to rush some popular tokens on Binance.

I will arrange some projects myself. For example, I bought a lot of OP. Based on Coinbase using it as gas fee and OP cooperating with many projects, everyone's expectations for OP are not as high as ARB, so I bought some OP. I have some APE and SAND in the GameFi sector.

I have more configurations of platform coins, because I think most of the currencies have no real support. The only one with support is the platform coin. Every bull market, the increase in platform coins is very large. This year I bought some MX at around $1.2, and then I sold it when it rose to more than $2. Now I regret it a little. I won't buy more BNB and OKB, because the market capitalization of these two is too large. I prefer to buy some currencies that are in the top 200 or 300 in terms of market capitalization.

BlockBeats: So how do you usually view trading opportunities?

Old Driver:In addition to being a KOL, I will also learn other people's ideas. For example, some people are good at high leverage chasing ups and downs, and their winning rate is very high, so I will study their practices. For example, today a certain coin rose by 17%. When it callback to 15%, they used a 100U position to open a high leverage bet that it will continue to rise the next day. If the position is liquidated, it will be liquidated. If it is not liquidated, continue to open positions to chase ups. I will observe their ideas and opinions, and then try to apply and integrate them into my own ideas.

For example, Chuanmu adopts the idea of chasing up and killing down. This method is very effective from the perspective of right-side thinking. He may also combine K-line to operate. Buying some currencies that have been at the bottom for a long time but suddenly increased in volume can be called the right-side thinking operation method. And the newly started currencies will not only pull one wave, but often pull two or three waves in a row, so he will take advantage of the trend to eat up the gains in the middle.

Chuanmu's approach is to pay attention to the top three gains on Binance every day, the top three with the largest trading volume, and the top three with holdings close to 80% of the market value. He will choose to buy these currencies. I remember that he publicly released the idea of buying coins on Twitter, and I will save that screenshot as a reference.

I will use a small position to test the trading opportunities. The second is that I will buy some hot coins based on some hot spots. The largest holding is actually ETH.

BlockBeats: Half of the people think that we may have entered a bull market or are in the early stages of a bull market, while the other half think that risks still exist and may continue to fall. What is your current view of the market?

Old Driver: I conducted a survey on Twitter on assets ranging from $25,000 to $35,000, which is the current proportion of profit, loss and short position. The results show that the current profit is 30%, the loss is 40%, and the short position is 30%. This wave is indeed before the Bitcoin halving, but from some macro factors that I discussed with Teacher Phrex Ni, I think Bitcoin's entry into a bull market depends on when the Federal Reserve starts to release water.

Halving is only one aspect of the positive, and the Federal Reserve's interest rate cuts and water releases are the key to pushing Bitcoin into a bull market. I remember that Teacher Phrex Ni said that there are still opportunities next year and the year after, so I will also buy a larger position recently according to his advice.

Regarding the market view, I think there has indeed been a round of bull market recently, but this round of bull market is more emotional, because the Cointelegraph intern released false information, causing everyone to now look forward to the news of ETF approval.

I remember that Teacher Ni said that Cathie Wood will have a final approval for an ETF in January, which will have a significant impact on market sentiment and may be a time point for digesting emotions. If that ETF is approved, BlackRock may also pass the subsequent approval. So I think this is an emotion-driven market, which belongs to a round of bull market, which is a little bit different from the previous violent bull market.

BlockBeats: From a fundamental perspective, before the ETF is approved, market participants may look for some new narratives to hype, such as RWA, Bitcoin ecology, etc. How do you view these emerging narratives?

Old driver:In fact, I have consulted some friends about the coins I bought, such as Hua Ge and DeFi miners. They are not optimistic about these new coins and think that they have limited impact on the industry. But I have also discussed with Chuanmu, Jingxiang, and Naizige. They think that any new thing is worth investing in, just like Uni when DeFi first appeared. Although it was very slow at the beginning and there was no trading platform, it was still able to soar in the later period. I think we need to have some awe in Crypto. Many things that we don’t understand or think are not easy to use now may become very good in a year or two.

I invested in ordi before, but I have sold it now because I can’t see any substantial progress in the Bitcoin ecosystem. If there are more optimizations or explosive applications in the future, I may buy it again.

Regarding the RWA market, many people have actually invested in it, including Sun Ge who bought US Treasury bonds and some big guys I know. I can only say that it is indeed very attractive and has a very high yield. In Crypto, everyone’s goal is to make money. As long as there is a yield and expectation, I think this thing is still good.

But I think RWA has some risks, because many people don't trust Crypto now, so many RWA are current, and the annualized rate of return you give is very high, which leads to great risks in current products.

In this way, some funds may be temporarily deposited with you just to make money, and they will leave after a few days because they feel that the annualized rate of return is not high enough. But if you deposit a fixed-term product in the U.S. Treasury market, you may not have enough funds when it expires, which will lead to a deficit.

BlockBeats: Do you have a narrative that you are optimistic about now?

Old driver: I am more optimistic about the field of GameFi, because I think it has great potential combined with cryptocurrency and NFT. I also like to play games and am very optimistic about GameFi.

In addition, I am also optimistic about the field of platform tokens. I have positions in platform tokens such as Bitget and MEXC. In a bull market, platform tokens usually perform well, unlike other fields that need to wait for the development of applications. Once the market heats up, platform tokens are likely to strengthen quickly, which is why I have always been optimistic about this field.

As for the Hong Kong concept, I am not too optimistic about it. I have discussed some situations with others in Hong Kong, and I feel that if you want to develop in a compliant market, the government's regulatory restrictions will be very strict. Therefore, in my opinion, the Hong Kong sector may face some difficulties in these areas.

The most held by me recently are ETH and OP. I am going to bet on whether the upgrade will boost the market.

Views on the current crypto market

BlockBeats: Do you think new trading platforms still have a chance to break out?

Old driver: Definitely, because this market is still in its early stages. Take FTX for example. It can go bankrupt as the world's second largest trading platform, which shows that even small trading platforms have a chance to rise. Not many people knew Bitget last year, but it rose all of a sudden from last year to this year.

So I think this market still has a lot of opportunities, whether it is a decentralized trading platform or a centralized trading platform. As long as any decentralized trading platform does a good job of optimization and market, it can survive in this market. The profit margin of the trading platform itself is very large. As long as the market is well grasped, the cash flow will be continuous.

BlockBeats: I see. You just said that small trading platforms can rise if they find an opportunity. But now Binance and OKX may have already made most of the products that can be thought of. So are there any new or targeted markets that can be opened for these new trading platforms?

Old driver: For example, Binance gave up the Russian market because of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. At that time, Huobi's overseas market was not doing well. Seeing Binance give up the Russian and Ukrainian markets, we went to grab this wave of people. In about two weeks, Huobi's trading volume in Russia accounted for about 80%.

So although Binance and OKX occupy a very large volume in many regions, they will give up many markets due to compliance issues. At this time, if other trading platforms grab these abandoned markets, many of them can rise.

For example, when Binance gave up the Korean market, Bitget went to play in the Korean market. It invested a lot of money to find Korean KOLs, do market PR and local activities, and then directly took over this market. As long as a large trading platform gives up a market, it will be very, very likely for other trading platforms.

BlockBeats: This is quite interesting. I heard that MEXC and KuCoin are doing well overseas?

Old driver: MEXC's main trading volume is still in Asia. Judging from MEXC's market optimization, it is indeed playing in the overseas market, but it should not be as good as KuCoin. Because KuCoin was vigorously promoted when the market was particularly good last year, but MEXC, like Huobi, only transformed into blockchain after the withdrawal tide in 2017. KuCoin also entered the overseas market much earlier than them, and their volume is definitely not as large as KuCoin.

BlockBeats: So from a global perspective, if Binance is still the first, who do you think are the second to fifth trading platforms?

Old driver: The second is definitely OKX, and there is no doubt that the trading volume of Coinbase and Kraken is also quite large among overseas trading platforms. I think it is hard to say the fifth place. The fourth and fifth places may be Bybit, which is doing very well overseas.

All trading platforms want to do business in Asia, because the volume in Asia is very large. You know, Asians love to gamble. The volume in the United States is more from Wall Street and some consortiums and foundations, which are more formal. So the trading volume in Asia is actually quite large. Now the major trading platforms are competing mainly for the Asian region. Binance and OKX basically don't touch funds like those in Europe. The first reason is compliance issues, and the second reason is that the volume there is actually not as large as in Asia.

A trader who doesn’t know how to do public relations is not a good KOL

BlockBeats: Do you have a specific plan now? What goals do you plan to achieve?

Old Driver:I really like the position of KOL manager because I can establish connections with many KOLs and handle some public opinions. Because I am very interested in the public relations industry and like to interact and chat with people, especially in the field of cryptocurrency, this position will receive more information than others. So my future goal may still be to develop in the direction of public relations.

BlockBeats: As a KOL in the Crypto industry, its value leverage is actually quite high.

Old Driver:Yes, if you are a very successful KOL, it is quite easy to jump to some trading platforms, because many trading platforms need someone to help them promote. Whether it is to handle public opinions or help them promote activities, many trading platforms are very welcome to KOLs.

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