对话李笑来：区块链世界里老实做个好人就能赚很多钱（《财经》专访）

In the Blockchain World, an Honest Good Person Can Make a Lot of Money (Caijing interview)

> By Li Xiaolai · 2018-07-19 · [Original link](https://finance.sina.cn/chanjing/gl/2018-07-19/detail-ihfnsvza9414901.d.html) (Chinese)
> Only Li Xiaolai's own answers; lines marked (Q) summarize the question and are not the interviewer's wording.
> Our translation from the Chinese original.

**(Q)** A few days after the recording came out was your birthday. Was this birthday any different from before?

A lot has happened this year. This birthday I posted a Weibo about PressOne's progress, then watched a movie with my wife, and that was it.

**(Q)** Did the recording affair affect you?

It certainly had some effect. This year I've had a lot of trouble in this respect: someone faked a public-security Weibo post saying Li Xiaolai had been arrested, and my phone was flooded with calls for a full 48 hours. Situations like this came up quite a few times this whole year. But this time, how nervous were the friends and family around me? My mother actually didn't call me; she called my wife, and from this detail too you can see she was really especially worried; I spent a long time explaining to her.

I inevitably have to deal with the outside world, and this is rather time-consuming and laborious. Back when I taught at New Oriental I spoke even harsher than this, opening my mouth and saying... But people wouldn't produce large-scale negative coverage because of that. But now it's different: misunderstanding, distortion, even framing, all of it happens. If what you're doing isn't that big, then you won't have such big troubles.

**(Q)** Did you know at the time that you were being recorded?

No. At the time I was saying it privately to two people, and they had no malicious intent either; they didn't record it in order to maliciously expose it 5 months later. It's just that for a long time people have thought Li Xiaolai has value in this area, so they wanted to secretly record it, say, to share with their team. It got passed around and was used by people with ulterior motives.

I don't think so-called "harvesting leeks" is the best way to make money in this world; it's very inefficient and bad, and I think this world has more efficient ways to make money.

**(Q)** More efficient ways to make money, for example?

Holding coins without moving them. This is a fact that has already been proven. **In fact, can harvesting leeks get you 80 times? Can it get you 1000 times? You should know my average price for bitcoin was 1 US dollar; how high did it rise at most? At most it rose to nearly 20,000 US dollars; I ask you, can harvesting leeks get you 20,000 times? Holding without moving is obviously the more profitable method, so why would I do something that inefficient?

The word "leek," in my conceptual world, is simply something I don't use at all. The concept of a leek is wrong, so in a recording as long as more than 50 minutes I never mentioned the word "leek," and I never do so-called "harvesting leeks" either, so of course there's no such thing as "harvesting leeks." Whether as a pseudo-concept or as a real act, I don't endorse it, so that kind of talk can't come out of my mouth.

But it was distorted; the title slapped on that recording was "Li Xiaolai Teaches You How to Harvest Leeks," and that sentence appears nowhere in it. **Next I'm going to go to court; that's all I can do.** But even if I win after going to court, will the articles that now cover the sky and fill the fields disappear from the internet? No, and this is the awkwardness of being a good person. So what to do?

When you fight bad people, bad people can use any means, but you can't use those means. And in order to win, you even more can't use those means, because after you win using those means, in fact you've already been turned by the bad people into a partly bad person, so not only have you lost, you're even worse off than if you'd lost. So what to do? I came up with this move: I'll seriously write a book, and its title will be The Self-Cultivation of a Leek (《一根韭菜的自我修养》).

**(Q)** Don't you reject the concept of "leeks"?

I do reject it, but the phenomenon exists; that's where it's very paradoxical. **Suppose you take leeks to mean the people who have newly come in; then this concept doesn't need to exist. Suppose you take leeks to mean people who have lost money; you'll find they harvest themselves—buying is their own decision, and selling is their own decision too.** But this doesn't mean nobody makes money, nor does it mean that losing money makes you a leek. Facebook also fell below its offering price back then. People who sold after it fell below its offering price harvested themselves, right? Then those who bought and then saw it fall below its offering price, and have held Facebook until today, did they make money? They made a lot of money; whose leeks did they harvest? They didn't.

But are there people in this world who deliberately harvest leeks? There are. In fact in traditional securities markets there are many prohibited behaviors. For example insider trading. These are all things the law has cracked down on for a long time. What I mean is, even in the blockchain world, "harvesting leeks" is still not something I endorse, but if the public thinks harvesting leeks refers to these things, then I'll just write a book and explain to you in detail which possible leek-harvesting behaviors exist in this world, and that's that, isn't it?

**(Q)** What is the purpose of writing this book?

You must be stronger than bad people to be qualified to be a good person. Someone fabricated headlines on a large scale and spread them all over the internet, so I had no choice but to write content people like myself to dilute the content that slanders me.

Many people who are trading have quite muddled thinking. Guess what they enter the trading market to do? They just want to make money, but their minds are confused again; they think making money is harvesting leeks. Then all their subsequent behavior is wrong, and how big the future mistakes caused by this will be.

Let me give an example. Confusion of concepts has always been the beginning of misfortune; when we were in middle school, how many kids did we meet who thought going to school and learning were the same thing? Because they hated going to school, they refused to learn, remember? Spend ten or twenty years, sink two or three social strata, and not know why? This is the decision-making error brought by confusion of concepts, and its bad consequences in life.

In life, confusion of concepts takes ten or twenty years to show its results, and the person involved may not even know it. In the trading market, retribution comes in this life: do it today and it can come tomorrow. In the trading market, the result of confusing concepts is that you have to put up money: put up money to buy, and sell to get money back.

**(Q)** Many people accuse you of inducing some people to invest because they believed in you.

The key here is: did I induce them or not? This is very important.

If when you do this kind of thing you don't clearly disclose the risks to the public, you're not only inducing, you may also be committing a crime. You clearly disclosed the risks, but the other party turned a blind eye; for you this is somewhat a very helpless thing.

And there's one thing that I find especially frustrating: readers who know me, students who know me, I lecture, write books, write blogs, what do I teach? I teach writing; what does writing teach? It teaches independent thinking. What does independent thinking mean? What I say is what I say; you listen to the reasoning.

**My consistent position is that you should think independently; if I buy and you follow me and buy, can you handle it?** My money can be thrown in and never taken out my whole life and it'd be fine; why? I have royalties to earn; can you? I bought, you followed me and bought, but you bought with borrowed money, and in two months you couldn't hold out, and then you say I induced you; none of this is right.

**(Q)** In the recording you said dumbfucks are the people who support you.

My original words were that retail investors are the most badass [Translator's note: 傻逼 (shabi) and 牛逼 (niubi) are vulgar slang; 傻逼 is rendered "dumbfuck(s)" and 牛逼 "badass" throughout this piece]; why? The biggest difference between blockchain and the traditional world outside is that it's a more thorough form of crowdfunding. In this world, if you find one person who invests 100 million in you, you're not badass; what's badass about that, only one person recognizes you. If 100 million people actually each invest 1 yuan in you, then you're badass to the skies, right?

**The dumbfucks I cursed are certainly not leeks, not retail investors; who was I cursing? Exactly the ones I just mentioned—stupid in the head and blaming others, spreading rumors everywhere, and peddling conspiracy theories every day—I mean these people.** A normal retail investor is the backbone of this world; cursing them is absolutely wrong. What I cursed is those who have retail investors' support and still call retail investors dumbfucks. So the logic here has gotten all scrambled, and of course nobody cares about any of this. A headline like "someone harvested leeks" attracts more traffic; everyone knows that.

**(Q)** Why is everyone saying "Li Xiaolai bloodily cleaned out the leeks"?

This fits people's long-standing wrong guess. Let me ask you a question: is the money you make in the stock market or a trading market money that others lost? This is the thinking trap of the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people think trading is a zero-sum game: if I lose money then someone must have made money. So why did so many people lose money while someone made money? He must have done something improper to be able to make money; that's the chain of reasoning.

**But the actual situation is this—trading in securities markets is absolutely not zero-sum, because that leaves economic growth out.** Why does everyone make money in a bull market and nobody loses? Because there's economic growth. Then why does everyone lose money in a bear market? Why? Because the economy is declining. Why do value investors all make money in the long run? There's a time limit in here. Only people with the ability to span economic cycles are worthy of talking about value investing.

There's another misunderstanding in that recording: I talk to people about value investing every day, but in the recording I cursed value investors as dumbfucks. My original words were these: if you blindly believe in long-term investing, you're a dumbfuck. Value investing is right in the long run, but do you have the ability to hold out to the long run? This is a very serious question. Why can I go long? I've lived on royalties for a long time.

**(Q)** How much do you earn from royalties?

Since 2003, my royalties have never been lower than 150,000 a year, and later more and more. All these years I've lived on royalties; my after-tax royalties each year are roughly around 1 million. I have a lot of books, and add to that last year's column. Since 2011, my after-tax royalties have never been lower than 300,000.

**(Q)** When did the huge controversy over you begin?

It began last August. Last year on September 4 I came back from Japan, and on September 7 and 8 I gave media interviews. As of today, I'm actually very confident that I'm in the right, about last September when the relevant authorities asked us to refund. Look across all of China: as of today, apart from us, who has achieved a one hundred percent refund? One hundred percent, not 60%, not 99%.

At the time the relevant authorities asked this: "If you were made to refund, may I ask what difficulties you would have?" I said there were no difficulties. They were all very surprised: why no difficulties? I said, we require project teams to report their progress; once your project is done, I give you the money; there's no problem with that. If your project hasn't even started, it's just an idea, and then you take all the money away, that's irresponsible.

**(Q)** Why so obedient?

Why not be obedient? This is different from what most of the people outside who question us or speculate about us think. **In the blockchain world you can make a lot of money just by honestly being a good person; what do I do? I just bought some bitcoin and left it there untouched for several years; if you honestly make correct decisions, correct behavior can make a lot of money.**

**(Q)** Why did you resign as managing partner of the Xiongan Fund?

Blockchain is a new world; it's not just speculating in coins as everyone thinks. Long ago I said that in the future blockchain world the biggest scenario isn't coin speculation at all; that's just a single hair from nine oxen. The biggest scenario is public affairs, like ID cards, driver's licenses, marriage certificates, diplomas, equity registration, business registration, interbank notes; which of these can the public take part in? None of them. But it's the biggest component of this world. **In my bones I really believe blockchain will certainly change the world, and especially change China.**

We set up the Xiongan Fund (雄岸基金), and the city of Hangzhou strongly supported it. **Three years ago I said that if a blockchain center emerges in China, it will certainly be Hangzhou. Why? People, money, land: money is the most important. Where the money is, the people go, and so that land works.** If you just fence off any piece of land to make a blockchain industrial park, isn't that a joke? But Hangzhou doing this is reliable, so later when there was an opportunity I was of course willing to cooperate with them. And then the leaders strongly supported it.

Now some people are deliberately distorting me like this, depicting me this way through the media. I don't want this matter to bring confusion and obstacles to the rare people in government who can understand the future and support the future, so what to do? I quit; I resigned on my own initiative, but the Xiongan Fund should carry on as before. Since 2015 I've announced that from now on Li Xiaolai doesn't earn money for himself; the outside world just doesn't know it. But I have to keep supporting them, and can't let them face such great resistance under a misunderstanding.

**(Q)** In this industry, who are the good people and who are the bad people?

There's no one hundred percent bad person in this world. There are only good people and partly bad people; it's just that how large that part is isn't fixed. We rarely even see someone more than 50% bad; that would already be rotten through.

We do things according to reason. Investors' money: a project team taking it whenever it says so doesn't accord with reason. Once you've made your thing and everyone thinks it's not bad, they give you the money; that accords with reason, so we do things according to reason.

**(Q)** Why do many people in the blockchain circle dislike you?

In the blockchain world it's not really about liking me or disliking me, but many people take me seriously. Sometimes you can't just look at the "negative reviews"; you have to look at the "negative-review rate." I can tell you an example from outside the circle, and conversely you can understand things inside the circle. For example, Li Xiaolai gave a talk on Zhihu with a 1-yuan fee and 120,000 listeners; search on Zhihu for how many people trashed me because of this talk: so many, more than a thousand. But there were 120,000 listeners; what's the negative-review rate? 1%. So are there more people who like me, or more who dislike me? In the circle, I'm someone with many true friends. But as far as I know, the vast majority of people don't have any true friends, only communities of interest.

**(Q)** Then where does the outside world's sentiment come from?

Sentiment in the secondary market has always come from whether the market is a bull market or a bear market; as soon as there's a bear market, sentiment gets big. Where does sentiment come from? It comes from here. Why is sentiment bad now? From January until now it's been a continuous bear market, and everyone has lost money.

**(Q)** Did you lose money?

Of course. It's the same for us; for us coin holders it has all evaporated; bitcoin has evaporated by 80%. The paper wealth we had last December has likewise evaporated by 80% now.

**(Q)** Are you still the richest man in bitcoin?

No, I never said Li Xiaolai was the richest man in bitcoin; I didn't.

**(Q)** But you did reveal that you had a 6-digit number of bitcoins.

Right, people asked me, so I said it. In the circumstances at the time, a 6-digit number of bitcoins was a little over 100,000, and that number may not even have been the most in China. When did I myself ever say Li Xiaolai was the richest man in bitcoin?

**(Q)** Do you still own the 6-digit number of bitcoins you mentioned before?

Not anymore, because in the course of investing we still used up some.

**(Q)** We hear your assets now exceed 5 billion?

Actually I don't really know anymore; my assets are all virtual assets, so in a bear market they evaporate quickly. My main assets are all virtual assets. Because the prices of these virtual assets fluctuate too much, the result is that that figure at any given moment doesn't actually mean much. Moreover, their "liquidity" actually isn't strong.

**(Q)** You haven't invested in the stock market, primary or secondary?

Fairly little; I bought some before, but haven't touched it for a long time. My life relies almost entirely on my royalties.

Rumor in the world says Xiaolai "harvests leeks," so let me give you an example. A project I invested in was terrible, with the kind of team that could make me die of anger. Back then I gave them money and they issued me tokens. **This is the one good thing about blockchain: there are public addresses, you can see where the coins went, and I can prove to you I didn't sell.** More than 70 million of them, of which 15 million were from friends I brought in to invest, so of the tokens they gave me, that same day I gave those 15 million to those two friends, and the remaining more than 50 million haven't moved to this day, so how could I be harvesting leeks? I didn't sell high and buy low, and I didn't buy low and sell high either; after listing it was sold too, and it rose too [Translator's note: the original writes 也卖过 ("was sold too"); 也跌过 ("fell too") may be meant; translated as written], and I didn't sell.

This is the good thing about blockchain: you can produce evidence. The token transfers mentioned in the example above can be looked up at this address: 0x14a248cde50873bfbffeaa4e8fe7d37c19366bcb

**(Q)** Why not sell?

My investment principle is: if I'm bullish on something, I buy, and if it hasn't risen 30 times I don't think I should sell. I made my decision, and then whether it rises well doesn't actually determine whether I make money in the future, because I've made a dozen or so decisions like that, and it's enough if one of them takes off; this is my strategy. But if I put my own time and attention on buying or selling, I can't do anything else, so buying and selling isn't worth it for me.

**(Q)** Have you invested in non-blockchain internet projects?

I have, but they all failed.

**(Q)** Is this kind of judgment good, then, or not?

In specific fields it's very good. **In the blockchain world this trend is very good, because nobody can compete with me in this respect.** In 2011 I got bitcoin, in 2015 I got Ethereum—although I wasn't bullish on it, my partner got it. In 2017 I got EOS; of all the top projects in this world I haven't missed a single one. Do you think I'm not good? Again and again and a third time: my judgment is very good. But in the outside world it's not good, quite possibly because I simply don't have experience in that area, and haven't spent long enough there learning.

**(Q)** When you do something, do you think it through especially completely before you begin?

In the real world, I'm someone who can think for a long time, that is, see very far. All the advantages I've gained in this life come from this. **But in the blockchain world, I think a bit further ahead than others, but because it itself develops too fast, it's often of no use, and there are also many cases where thinking too far ahead actually puts you at a disadvantage.**

For example, I thought decentralized exchanges were a trend, so I was the first investor on Earth to invest in a decentralized exchange, in 2013. But it was useless [Translator's note: 然并卵, internet slang for "but it was no use"]; it failed. And that led to my later investing in two or three more that also failed, because I saw it too early and thought too far ahead, and the result was that I mistakenly believed this world would develop very quickly.

**(Q)** Some people say your especially great ability is stirring up people's emotions and arousing their desires in a short time?

If you're someone good at public speaking, that's an ability you must learn. All the good teachers you met in classrooms while growing up were people able to stir your emotions; this is an ability all public speakers and teachers must seriously learn.

But whether you look at my articles or my books, I'm the one who removes emotion; that is, I rarely stir people's emotions in my articles or talks. Even when I'm responding to controversy, after writing I wait three hours and read it again, and remove every word with emotion in it.

People may think I have this ability; of course, having been a teacher for so many years, of course I have this ability. But would you be willing to actively use this ability to do things? No, because you quickly learn that what this kind of thing attracts isn't good.

**(Q)** Are you an idealist or a realist?

I'm not someone with ideals; I dislike that thing. Because I know very clearly that in reality many unexpected things come up every day. **For example, in talks in the past, university students asked what the meaning of life is. Where would life have meaning; life has no meaning. But in the final conclusion, the meaning of your life is something you live out yourself.

Many people ask me, Xiaolai, what value have you created? My thinking is this: I guess I'm creating value, but what value exactly I've created isn't for me to decide; in the end everyone will see. Look again in another ten years.

I invested in EOS; its value to the blockchain world is certain: it emerged, and it let everyone see that DPOS is possible, community is possible, super nodes are possible; all of this is value. But what did I contribute? We invested in it and gave it the greatest support; the creator is it. But at the starting point, and in the process of these years, nobody could see this value, but in another two or three years maybe someone will see it. But it's also possible that in two or three years it will be dead. I know I'm creating value, but I think value, in the end, really is judged by others, so I say it's no use.

**(Q)** You don't have any sense of mission or sense of responsibility either?

A sense of responsibility I have; a sense of mission I don't. I'm willing to be responsible for myself, but I feel I'm not capable of being responsible for this world.**

**(Q)** What is your biggest motivation in blockchain?

Of course it has to do with money, it certainly does, but more importantly no other field can satisfy my curiosity the way this field does.**

**(Q)** What is your bottom line?

Be a good person, I'd say.

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