博链《直面大佬》第二期：李笑来（文字实录删减版）

Broadchain "Face the Bigwigs" Episode 2: Li Xiaolai (abridged transcript)

> By Li Xiaolai · 2018-11-23 · [Original link](https://www.panewslab.com/zh/articles/866) (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)** If you were compared to an animal, which animal do you think you'd be closest to?

In the past I'd have found this kind of question rather childish. (But) today I think it really is a good question. It's like this: I'm very much like a frog, an analogy from English: Leaping Frog.

A frog keeps hopping about; it doesn't go in a straight line. My life's trajectory is pretty much like that too. I studied accounting, did sales, became a teacher, and later went into investment. And where to hop to next, I'm thinking about it.

**(Q)** After your first book was published and you received the royalties, you said you'd begun to achieve "income while you sleep," and then quickly achieved financial freedom; do you feel you went through any twists or difficulties in the process of writing books?

To tell the truth, there really weren't any. My first book sold very well as soon as it came out, and the next few books all sold very well too. So there were no difficulties in writing.

In dealing with readers, there were no difficulties either. This business of writing, from when I started publishing to the very end, seems to have gone very smoothly. In fact, I had already been writing for a long time before, just not publishing it publicly (that's all).

On the whole, writing went very smoothly. Basically it was smooth sailing.

**(Q)** Then will you make some writing plans for yourself going forward? Like publishing so many books in so many years?

I once did, not much later they were all interrupted [Translator's note: the original writes 不多后来都中断了; 不过 ("but") may be meant for 不多; translated as written]. For example, one book a year.

In 2012 I even posted something like this on Twitter: let's see whether this year I can achieve "one yuan per character per year."

Write a book of 300,000 characters, and it produces 300,000 for me a year.

Then came 2013, because the composition of my wealth underwent a major change.

**(Q)** Later you set up an investment fund company, and 2018 counts as its 6th year; it should be a harvest year?

"7 years is a lifetime"—what that says isn't a hard number, 7 years. Over the past 7 years I went from outsider to insider.

In the blockchain industry I've also done many things that failed. Many that outsiders don't know about, and even many that outsiders know about that I don't want to admit either.

Over the past few years, of the companies I myself actively went deep into, the 2 most successful: one is Yunbi (云币网), which closed last year.

At the time a financial reporter asked me: why, when the state told you to close, did you just close; why are you so obedient? I said your question isn't well put; it makes it sound as if everyone else was disobedient.

Embracing regulation is one way of putting it; I have no need to do anything I've been required not to do. There's no need for us to, so when we were required to close, we closed.

In addition, there's also BitFund (比特基金), which few people know about. It was originally registered to do a blockchain project that would disrupt the copyright industry.

In 2013, there was no concept of blockchain yet at that time. So the wording at the time was "use the principles of bitcoin to disrupt the copyright industry."

Looking at it now, it was too early; many conditions weren't mature, and it didn't produce anything. The team was put together, but the problems couldn't be solved; distribution could be solved with blockchain. But for copyright determination, decentralization doesn't work; it wasn't solved at the source.

So [Translator's note: the original writes 所有, literally "all"; 所以 ("so") is meant; translated by the intended sense], in the end it turned into something like a fund, called BitFund. We had money, and we went and invested in projects. This fund also went through life and death several times; it died quite a few times.

At the time we took a heavy position in a "listed company" in the bitcoin world—the Kaomao (烤猫) stock—and later that company vanished, so the losses were heavy. And later still, we invested in one doing quantitative trading, which got liquidated.

It died once, I paid out of my own pocket to top it up and start over, it died again, and I paid to start again.

In September 2018, the first phase of this BitFund was liquidated. In fact I rarely talk about this to the outside world. This may be the thing I've done in these years that I'm proudest of.

Because in this world, getting a return that outruns bitcoin is very difficult, matching it is very difficult, and even getting half of it is still very difficult. So our BitFund's performance should count as quite good.

In this world, very few have made it to today on their own strength, over as long as five years, with a very good outcome.

In the future BitFund should be a rare brand; a brand is something that carries history. And history is steeped in time. Time can't be traded for gold; it's not something you can just throw money at.

**(Q)** Have you been following bitcoin's recent market?

Because I've invested in several exchanges, I have no choice but to know the price of bitcoin.

I don't think anything strange has appeared in bitcoin's recent market.

**(Q)** Then do you think there will be a big bull market this year?

I don't make judgments about the short-term market. For me, any judgment within a year is a short-term judgment.

All short-term judgments are about the same as flipping a coin. I've never felt I'm unusually gifted in this respect.

**(Q)** Can this be understood as: you don't say irresponsible things?

It's that I don't say things I can't be responsible for. There's no way to be responsible for these words.

**(Q)** There may be people who hear what you say and then go make investments?

All these situations that exist are to be blamed on them; they can't be blamed on what I said.

Of course now I'm slowly coming to accept that before, I always felt: my mouth is on my own body, so I'll say what I like. Whatever I have, I say it.

And for a long time I really did say whatever I had to say. But in these two years I've found that this doesn't seem right either.

**(Q)** The more you say, the more you get wrong?

It's not that the more you say the more you get wrong; it's that a considerable number of people really have changed some decisions because of things I said.

And these decisions were ones they themselves couldn't bear, and seeing that makes me feel terrible. This has not half a cent to do with me.

So now I'm training and learning the skill of saying less.

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