A 50-minute long recording of China’s bitcoin tycoon Li Xiaolai leaked on to the internet this week is causing a big stir in China’s crypto community and social media, according to local media reports (in Chinese). Li was recorded going off on some of the most well-known players in the crypto space including NEO, Tron, Ripple, and Binance.
In the recording, Li slammed Binance as a “scam exchange” and that the main reason behind Binance’s success is because when all the exchanges were forced to shut down during China’s crypto ban last September, it managed to stick around. Li also unveiled the conflicting history between Zhao Changpeng, founder & CEO of Binance and Xu Mingxing, founder of OKCoin.
Li also made bold statements about NEO, a blockchain platform and cryptocurrency, saying that is a worthless project and its price was driven up thanks to venture capitalists who bought into the hype. Li said even Da Hongfei, founder of NEO and CEO of Onchain, is holding very little NEO.
In the recording, Li also revealed his own approach to “cutting leeks”, that is, using celebrity status to hype up projects and “harvest” retail and newbie investors. Li also exposed himself as having knowledge of some fraudulent crypto projects that are not backed by anything concrete. Li said to succeed in the blockchain space, the first thing is to figure out a way to become famous. The biggest value of blockchain is consensus—even if the project itself is worthless, if a lot of people still buy into it, it will eventually become valuable.
Li Xiaolai, founder of BitFund and one of the largest bitcoin holders in China, is an influential figure in the crypto space. His crypto VC company has grown to be one of the largest in the industry. Li recently led Press.One’s record-breaking ICO, raising $82 million in total.