Perhaps the meme coin PvP of this cycle has become too boring, the market has fallen into aesthetic fatigue, and people are beginning to reminisce about the golden age that truly shaped crypto history: the ICO craze created countless rags-to-riches stories, the Bitcoin fork wars led to a hashrate showdown, the "HBO" trio staged a power play among exchanges, the afro-haired SBF shone brightly with Wall Street connections and high-frequency trading capabilities...

Those who once stirred up storms in the crypto world, the "OGs of the Coin Circle," are now scattered across parallel timelines, becoming topics of conversation over tea: Li Xiaolai just released a new book on brainpower and focus, Wang Chunhao spent $200 million on a space ticket, Sun Yuchen and Li Lin staged a "toast reconciliation" drama at a Hong Kong banquet, CZ joked about "Brother Sun's Olympic champion girlfriend" at an event. At Hong Kong gatherings, the old timers of the crypto world mingle, raise toasts, and share smiles...

"Where is Wu Jihan?" someone couldn't help but ask.

The one who enlightened the industry as the first translator of the Bitcoin whitepaper in the Chinese world, the founder of Bitmain empire, seems to deliberately hide away from the spotlight, becoming increasingly low-key and mysterious. Many know that after Bitmain's split, Wu Jihan took the mining pool sharing business and overseas mining farms to establish BitDeer.

Few have noticed that during this "split," Wu Jihan also took away Bitmain's Executive Director and Senior Investment Director, the then twenty-something-year-old Ge Yuesheng, giving birth to Matrixport, a crypto asset management company.

Left: Ge Yuesheng; Right: Wu Jihan

The Prehistoric Era of Matrixport

"My first internship, General Wu was an investment manager and also my internship mentor, he introduced me to Bitcoin and mining." In a conversation with BlockBeats, Ge Yuesheng unconsciously stroked the texture of the pillow, as if touching the memory of 2013.

Let's go back twelve years, to that summer of Hangzhou, when a 21-year-old graduate in business administration couldn't have imagined that the Bitcoin evangelist he met during an internship at a VC firm would completely change his life trajectory.

At that time, Wu Jihan was already a Bitcoin evangelist, having co-founded the earliest Chinese blockchain media, 8btc, with Chang Jia and others. Ge Yuesheng, who had been interested in hardware and computers since childhood, naturally had a curiosity about Bitcoin. One preached, the other sought knowledge, and the daily conversations between the two became increasingly filled with mining, Bitcoin, and blockchain-related content.

「So the two of us thought about it and decided to go mining.」 Later, they together invested in Bitcoin mining machines, built a mining farm, and played until they decided to create their own mining chip. They found a technical partner, Micree Zhan, and thus founded Bitmain. Micree Yin served as a director and investment director at Bitmain and witnessed the entire process of this hash rate revolution.

We mostly know what happened next. After several years of lurking, Bitmain became a giant in the cryptocurrency world, covering various businesses such as mining machines, mining pools, mining farms, and trading platforms, attracting investment from major capital firms such as Sequoia Capital China. By early 2018, Bitmain had become the world's largest cryptocurrency mining machine company. At its peak, for every ten Bitcoin mining machines globally, seven were from this company; and for every ten bitcoins mined, over half came from its mining farms.

These glorious achievements were once Bitmain's medals of honor, but its blocked IPO, asset shrinkage, and management turmoil also brought criticism, leaving indelible scars. The harsh winter of late 2018 was especially chilling—when the price of Bitcoin dropped below $4,000, this hash rate behemoth faced its darkest hour: a failed Hong Kong IPO, ammunition spent in the BCH hash rate war, and founder disputes gradually coming to light.

After a night of discussion, Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan chose to leave the old camp with a new spark. In February 2019, Matrixport was established in Singapore, positioning itself as a cryptocurrency asset management platform, with Jihan Wu as Chairman of the Board and Micree Zhan as CEO.

After Bitmain, Jihan Wu and Micree Zhan's Second Entrepreneurship

At that time, the main battleground of the crypto world consisted of two major sectors—the mining industry filled with the roar of mining machines and the exchange battleground shrouded in smoke, with virtually no one venturing into true asset management services. In the eyes of most people, "asset management" was still a term exclusive to traditional finance. As Micree Zhan stated, "We were among the first in the industry to start asset management. Before that, the crypto world didn't really have the concept of asset management; it was a very niche track."

This meant that for Matrixport to engage in crypto asset management was like planting trees in a desert, with no reference point. "Industry recognition" is a very abstract term, and when paving a new path, the role of industry recognition becomes apparent.

Left: Micree Zhan; Right: Jihan Wu, Image Source: Matrixport

In Ge Yuesheng's cognitive framework, wealth creation in the crypto world is divided into two forms: one is Market Beta Returns, such as "Bitcoin rose from $40,000 to $120,000, everyone became richer, paper wealth soared, this all-inclusive appreciation does not involve actual wealth transfer"; the other is Alpha Returns, "some win, some lose, wealth undergoes redistribution and financial transfers, essentially taking money from others' pockets."

Based on this understanding, Matrixport's early business blueprint was divided into two dimensions: at the Beta level, fees were charged through spot trading and custody services; at the Alpha level, participation in quant strategies and structured products led to profit sharing.

At a more specific product level, on the Beta side, Matrixport established an institutional-grade digital asset custody service provider called Cactus Custody; on the Alpha side, Matrixport launched a series of diversified wealth management products, which received significant focus in the later stages.

The First Bull Market, Matrixport Created a New Unicorn

Matrixport was born in a bear market. As crypto OGs, Ge Yuesheng and Wu Jihan have experienced multiple cycles and witnessed many in the crypto world suddenly becoming poor overnight. They are well aware that "crypto investment is nine times out of ten a gamble, or even ten times out of ten." Crypto users need more than just a higher leverage casino; they need a safety net to prevent their assets from going to zero, which is the true value of crypto wealth management services.

"Therefore, Matrixport aims to earn Alpha returns, while also helping users achieve more stable wealth management," Ge Yuesheng told BlockBeats.

To convince customers to move their funds from their wallets to the Matrixport platform, trust, like in all traditional asset management industries, is the first hurdle. Fortunately, the industry credibility they accumulated during their time at Bitmain played a crucial role. Those old miner friends who once spent nights debugging miners in the outskirts of Beijing became Matrixport's earliest cornerstone users.

The ones who understand miners' needs the best are still the miners themselves. As early-generation miners in the crypto world, Ge Yuesheng and Wu Jihan deeply understand the real needs of miners.

At that time, the miner community lacked effective hedging tools. On one hand, they wanted to accumulate Bitcoin, but on the other hand, they had to sell coins regularly to pay high electricity bills. They were also worried about price volatility affecting mining profits. To address this, Matrixport introduced the traditional asset management model of "DCI Dual-Coin Investment" to the crypto world for the first time.

Dual Currency Investment essentially combines a money market deposit with a currency option to provide a return higher than the standard yield. In the traditional foreign exchange market, purchasing dual currency products denominated in RMB and HKD can achieve an annual return of about 10%, while automatically managing the conversion risk between the two currencies. When applied to the crypto field, products introduced by Matrixport combine fiat and cryptocurrency.

For example, a miner who originally had to sell 100 bitcoins every month to pay a $3 million electricity bill can now set a conversion price 5% below the market price using this product. If the Bitcoin price increases, the miner can earn an 8% annualized return; if it decreases, they can exchange at the predetermined price into USDT to pay the electricity bill. This product belongs to the fixed-income contract category, with the return ratio agreed upon at the time of signing and delivered in different currencies upon expiration, a model later emulated by exchanges like Binance, gradually becoming an industry standard.

A bull market always comes with the fastest growth. In the 2021 bull market surge, Matrixport achieved a key leap, establishing a closed-loop product matrix from custody to trading, lending, and wealth management; structured products were gradually launched, the team size expanded from dozens to hundreds, and the client structure diversified from solely miners to family offices, hedge funds, and more.

It is this "Infrastructure + Strategy Ecosystem" model that enabled Matrixport to successfully attract investments from top institutions such as DST Global, C Ventures, and K3 Ventures in August 2021 at a $10 billion valuation, completing a Series C financing round, propelling the company into the ranks of Singapore's unicorns.

Survival Philosophy of Matrixport in a Market Crash

Everything always has two sides. The flip side of the cryptocurrency industry's wealth creation effect is the frequent market crashes and high-profile bankruptcy or rug pull events. Even the industry's "darling," FTX, suffered an overnight collapse due to poorly managing risks, leading to a single-day evaporation of billions of dollars in the crypto market's value. The once-glamorous institutions: Three Arrows Capital, BlockFi, Celsius, all have exhibited the cost of greed.

Since its inception, Matrixport has weathered two bull-bear cycles. Looking back on the journey thus far, Ge Yuesheng believes that the smartest thing Matrixport has done is sticking to a conservative operating philosophy.

As he puts it: "Be a conservative asset management institution, don't always think about how to make money, but leave a safety cushion for every business. This may be the reason why Matrixport still exists as a company to this day." The CEO, who has experienced Bitcoin halving more than ten times, speaks with a calm and firm tone, exuding convincing confidence.

Unlike some companies that suffered from one-way price slippage, Gao Yue-Sheng can no longer remember what he was doing on the day of an extreme market movement. For Matrixport, although market impact is inevitable, the impact has always been firmly controlled within an acceptable range. "We won't experience any liquidity crisis ourselves, because we don't use leverage, we don't need to top up margin, even in an industry-wide crash, the funds are still there."

Matrixport has established an internal risk control committee, relying on a rigorous risk model and high-standard operational procedures, even in extreme market conditions, it can properly manage funds. Faced with scenarios of mass redemptions due to panic or strategic adjustments, the company has long pre-set corresponding plans that can meet customers' needs to bottom fish or add to positions during liquidity crunches, while also avoiding jeopardizing overall security due to excessive market speculation.

"For our asset management institution, the most common scenario in extreme market conditions is customer redemptions and liquidity shortage. If they lack liquidity, there are two possibilities: they want to buy the dip or they want to add to their positions. For these two possibilities, we have corresponding products to directly assist customers."

Security and risk control have been talked about ad nauseam, but many peers still suffer losses in these two areas. Gao Yue-Sheng understands deeply that "security" and "risk control" are the two cornerstones of the asset management industry, upon which service quality and product competitiveness are built.

When asked about the customer acquisition strategy during a bear market, Gao Yue-Sheng's answer was quite surprising: "We don't take special actions to attract customers."

In his view, whether it's a bull market or a bear market, the change in Matrixport's asset size is not significant. Because price fluctuations only change the total market value measured in US dollars, Matrixport does not make significant operational adjustments in bear markets or bull markets, only normal iterations.

"The underlying logic of the asset management industry is actually very simple: help customers make money, and then take a part of what we earn from it." Different from the traditional asset management model where a fixed management fee is charged even if the customer loses money, the unique high volatility of the crypto industry means that crypto asset management cannot easily replicate this logic, and its profit ceiling is therefore limited. Regardless of how the market performs poorly, no product can achieve high returns; even in a bull market, the profit potential is also constrained by the actual profit level of customers. Crypto asset management is essentially a cooperative relationship where interests are closely tied.

In Gao Yue-Sheng's view, true asset management demand has never been related to market trends: "That's how the asset management industry works. Even Buffett doesn't make money every year, but this doesn't prevent him from being the richest man."

Compared to price volatility, Matrixport is more concerned about changes in the interest rate market. Once the interest rate market heats up, the growth rate and yield of the asset management industry will increase significantly.

However, similar to the growth rate data provided by some trading platforms, Matrixport also feels that, given the current situation, the current bull market—from last year to this year—is significantly less heated than the previous cycle.

"During the violent surge in November to early December last year, the interest rate level reached its peak, but then quickly declined. Compared to the previous bull market, not only was the duration shorter this time, but the peak level was also significantly lower." Ge Yuesheng mentioned some data support, with the level of interest rates that long traders are willing to borrow reflecting speculative enthusiasm and the situation in the interest rate market.

Crossing Two Market Cycles, Matrixport Steadily Develops

After weathering the storm, Matrixport has entered a new stage of steady development. In Matrixport's customer profile, cryptocurrency investors are clearly divided into two types of people: one is actively trading, participating in DeFi mining, chasing meme coin trends, the "adventurers" who see this as a casino and playground; the other is those who view cryptocurrency as part of their investment portfolio, the "calm allocators" who treat it like buying gold ETFs, and the difference between these two types of customers is quite significant.

"Our main customers are still the second type, who can accept a reasonable pricing between returns and risks, and then entrust their funds to us." From the early mining community to now, Matrixport's main users have transitioned to high-net-worth individuals and institutions. They care more about long-term annualized returns rather than tomorrow's Bitcoin price fluctuations.

In terms of global strategic layout, Matrixport adheres to the operating principle of "where the money is, we go." "Financial institutions have strong local characteristics. Those living in the United States would definitely prefer to keep their money in local banks," as Ge Yuesheng mentioned. Starting from Singapore, Matrixport has expanded to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and multiple points in Europe. Matrixport's global compliance layout has taken shape, obtaining multiple financial licenses in various regions. As of now, Matrixport's compliance map spans three continents:

Asia: Hong Kong Trust Company License, Money Lender License; Singapore MAS Major Payment Institution License (acquired by subsidiary Fly Wing in 2025);

Europe: UK FCA Regulatory Authorization, Switzerland FINMA SRO-VFQ Membership; Acquired Switzerland's CFAM license in 2024 and upgraded to MAM (Matrixport Asset Management AG);

Americas: US MSB Money Services Business License.

When asked why Matrixport hasn't entered the Middle East market, Ge Yuesheng provided a rational answer: "The Middle East is very unique, in fact, today most of the fund management for Middle Easterners is in Switzerland."

For Matrixport, Asia as a vast market and a key region for local operations in Europe and the Americas hold a pivotal position in the company's strategic vision. Through a Swiss license, the company not only covers the entire European market but also leverages its unique advantages to extend its reach to the Middle East. As for the U.S. market, which has higher compliance costs and fiercer competition, Matrixport is adopting a steady and gradual approach.

In terms of product matrix construction, Matrixport continues to innovate and has gradually introduced a series of products that form a comprehensive system to meet the needs of different demographics with varying risk appetites.

Basic and Advanced Asset Management Solutions: Matrixport offers a diversified range of wealth management solutions. This includes basic financial products such as flexible savings accounts and fixed income products for stable returns; structured financial products like Dual Currency, Shark Fin, Trendy Win, Seagull, Snowball, Installment Purchase, and DNT for differentiated income needs; Ethereum Staking, Restaking for on-chain financial management to meet the staking demands; and diverse strategy investment products tailored to public and private domain traffic seeking diversified returns;

Comprehensive Institutional Service Support: Matrixport provides comprehensive professional support covering over-the-counter trading (OTC), institutional-grade custody services (Cactus Custody), block trading, and more;

Tokenization of Real-World Assets: Matrixport has also built the RWA platform Matrixdock and issued short-term U.S. Treasury bond-backed token STBT and gold-backed token XAUm. This allows investors to hold excellent assets from traditional financial markets on-chain, further optimizing asset allocation. Although FTX has previously attempted similar products, most competitors do not focus on this niche market. Unlike other platforms that rarely venture into this area, Matrixport has shown significant foresight in the RWA sector.

Powerful Trading Functionality Experience: Matrixport has also enhanced its platform's trading capabilities, creating a smooth spot trading system and contract trading capabilities comparable to top exchanges in depth and breadth;

Professional Research Reports to Aid Investment Decisions: Leveraging its professional analytical capabilities, Matrixport regularly produces high-quality industry research reports that delve deep into market dynamics, emerging trends, providing valuable market information to its users. The accuracy of its reports has made them very popular within the community. Whether a beginner or a seasoned player, users can use the Matrixport App to complete a full-cycle operation in the cryptocurrency field and enjoy a convenient, efficient, and professional cryptocurrency experience.

Matrixport, born in asset management, has always been committed to becoming a one-stop super account entrance for users to enter the Web3 field. By continuously enriching its product categories, Matrixport has effectively lowered the entry barrier for users to enter the Web3 field, providing users with one-stop encrypted financial services, truly achieving multidimensional value creation.

At the same time, the company has experienced explosive data growth. According to Ge Yuesheng, the latest market data shows that Matrixport's managed and custodied assets have reached $6 billion, and from the perspective of the balance sheet, core data has remained stable at around $4 billion. Such achievements are a strong proof of the company's rigorous risk control and sound business philosophy.

Standing at This Moment, Looking at the Next Six Years

Six years have passed in the blink of an eye, from initially envisioning the Bitcoin miracle together in a cold night at the mining farm to the current stage of global compliance layout and continuously extending financial services. The birth and growth of Matrixport have also witnessed many histories.

"I hope to become more compliant and to become a publicly listed company." This year marks the sixth year of Matrixport's existence. While envisioning the next six years, Ge Yuesheng confidently outlines the company's blueprint: Matrixport not only aims to become an authoritative entrance to crypto assets but also to extend into a broader financial field, providing customers with one-stop encrypted financial services covering OTC trading to diversified asset management allocation.

For all companies in the crypto industry, when a company grows to a certain scale, there are two ways out: a traditional IPO or the trendy IDO. Matrixport has chosen the traditional IPO path because the purpose of going public is not only for liquidity but also to enhance credibility and reduce customer trust costs. Just as the different interest rates on deposits in traditional financial institutions imply, credibility has its cost, and it is this openness, transparency, and authority that makes customers willing to entrust millions of dollars here.

As the wheels of history roll forward, each moment that determines destiny will always be remembered. Just as Ge Yuesheng expressed, "The development of anything has its objective laws, as does the crypto industry; what we pursue is not a momentary novelty but long-term stability and profound trust."

Just like its name, Matrixport, derived from Wu Jihan's favorite movie "The Matrix," symbolizes a matrix full of infinite possibilities, and "port" symbolizes an entrance. This not only represents the birth of a company but also a gateway that leads investors into the crypto world.

When Three Arrows Capital sank in the leverage game, when BlockFi collapsed due to liquidity depletion, when trillions of "old money" passed through this matrix gate, people will eventually understand: true asset management never relies on the leverage myth, true asset management is not the frenzy in a bull market, but the watchman who has been deeply rooted in the industry for the long term, regardless of bull or bear.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia