Someone in the crypto world might be as famous as many project founders—this is Bao Er Ye, whose real name is Guo Hongcai. If you talk about his rise to wealth, it’s truly a legendary story starting from zero.

At first, Guo Hongcai ran a beef business in Shanxi’s Pingyao. In 2013, he and his wife Jin Yangyang went to Beijing to learn e-commerce, and as a result they met Li Xiaolai at Garage Coffee. That Bitcoin talk meeting changed everything. Jin Yangyang, who was pregnant at the time, listened and then decided to spend several hundred thousand to buy Bitcoin. At first, Guo Hongcai thought his wife was being fooled by a pyramid scheme, but later he was also “brainwashed,” and he went all in on Bitcoin instead.

At the end of 2013, Bao Er Ye started an online show called “Step by Step Teaching You How to Play with Bitcoin,” and from then on, the crypto world gained a person like this. In 2014, he built what was then the world’s largest Bitcoin mining farm in Inner Mongolia. Every day the electricity bill alone was 500,000, and it could mine 100 Bitcoins. Later, he also bought the BTC123 Bitcoin navigation platform for 5,000 Bitcoins.

Starting in 2015, Bao Er Ye drove a stretched domestic car and toured the country giving lectures. He preached Bitcoin everywhere. He never hid his image as an “overnight rich” person; instead, he felt that the crypto world was grassroots culture. So his marketing approach was the most straightforward of all: “Blow your own horn first—what if it actually comes true?” The statements he made, such as “Bitcoin will reach 1 million US dollars” and “Buy one Bitcoin and give it as a gift when your child gets married,” were all things he said.

In 2016, Bao Er Ye attended the Davos Forum. Wearing big boxer-style shorts and slippers, he almost got blocked from entering by security. After he got in, seeing a room full of financial people in suits, he fired back in half-baked English, claiming that “Bitcoin’s value is equal to the value of all countries’ GDP in the future.” After that video was leaked, Bao Er Ye became a sensation for good.

When the ICO craze came in 2017, Bao Er Ye became highly sought after. He started endorsing all kinds of projects; in three months, he did more than 30, and the total market value exceeded 400 million. He publicly said he didn’t invest—he only provided endorsements. The endorsement fee was 1%, and he didn’t even conduct due diligence on the projects. The moment Bao Er Ye appeared, investors rushed in, but the problem was that many projects would skyrocket as soon as they launched and then crash hard. For example, when Achain launched, it surged from 1.5 yuan to 4.4 yuan, and the very next day it fell by 52%.

In response to criticism, in August Bao Er Ye established the “Crypto Circle Huangpu Military Academy,” saying it would select excellent ICO projects, but in reality, the project quality was uneven. He also swore up and down to endorse domain chains, saying they would rise 250 times. As it turned out, when domain chains launched, it surged wildly and then collapsed just as wildly. In the end, they were bought back at cost, and investors were viciously harvested.

On September 4, 2017, regulation arrived, and Bao Er Ye stopped endorsing projects. But he didn’t stay idle—he started hyping FT and forked Bitcoin. The fork he created, Bitcoin God, was once traded up to 5,500 yuan, but later it crashed to 90 yuan, a drop of more than 98%.

On the last day of 2017, Bao Er Ye recorded a video at the airport, saying he had flown 290,000 kilometers that year, and then went to the United States. After that, he basically didn’t appear in China anymore. The reason was that he had invested in too many projects, the country was cracking down hard, and he was afraid of getting caught.

In the United States, Bao Er Ye’s show of wealth went up another level. In 2018, he bought a 100-acre mansion in Silicon Valley, and also put a sign at the gate reading “Leek Vegetable Manor.” He really planted a bit of leek there in the manor. He also bought two Rolls-Royces—one cost 60 Bitcoins, a limited edition that was only available in the entire United States, and the other was bought with 25 Bitcoins as a gift for his wife.

Interestingly, the crypto community’s assessment of Bao Er Ye is sharply split. Some praised him as free-spirited and unconstrained, while others cursed him as an upstart who is skilled at harvesting leeks. But no matter what, this grassroots figure who once sold beef really grabbed the Bitcoin wave. From a kid from a small town, he transformed into a figure in the crypto world that can’t be ignored. Bao Er Ye’s story, in a certain sense, is a snapshot of the crypto world of that era.