Written by: Heavenraven
My dear brother, Huang Licheng, if you care about NFT, you must have heard of this name.
In Blur's "points-earning" activity, Huang Licheng's points often rank first. Recently, Huang Licheng sold a total of 1,010 NFTs including BAYC in two days, making a profit of 11,680 ETH (about 18.6 million US dollars), which disrupted the entire NFT market. BAYC fell by more than 8% and even affected the liquidation of many NFTs on BendDAO, allowing everyone to see the big brother's strength and influence.
From Mithril Coin in the ICO wave in 2017, to CREAM in DeFi Summer, to Monkey Bank in the NFT wave, Huang Licheng has always been at the forefront.
How was Big Brother made?
With this question in mind, we would like to share with you an interview conducted by fashion media Heavenraven with Huang Licheng in 2022 to talk about NFT. The following is the full text:
Whether you are a fan of hip-hop music or a blockchain player, Huang Licheng aka Maji Big Brother is an extremely famous name.
In 2003, the hip-hop group Machi emerged, and the phrase "My Machi Chidao" became a popular catchphrase on the streets at the time; after leaving, the market-savvy Big Brother began to expand his business territory to other fields, from clothing brands, nightclubs to live broadcast platforms, and each of his businesses was very successful.
In recent years, he has gradually shifted his focus from the entertainment industry to the blockchain industry. Today we will listen to the story of how he began to invest in cryptocurrency and NFT.
How did you get started in the crypto space?
Huang Licheng: In 2017, when I was still doing 17 Live, cryptocurrencies started to become popular and a lot of people were doing ICOs. I told my shareholders that this was the trend and we should do this! But they all said it was a scam, so I decided to do it myself.
In 2018, we created Mithril (MITH) and launched social mining, encouraging users to upload photos or videos to mine. We were very advanced, but because we were too advanced, we didn’t think through many details, and the price of the coin collapsed. It was a pity, but we also learned a lot of experience, and later we created CREAM.
But wasn’t CREAM hacked before?
Huang Licheng: Yes, that was really terrible. It was an expensive lesson for me and I realized how deep the Defi waters are. At that time, we were hacked and lost nearly 140 million US dollars, but later we found a way to compensate our customers, and now CREAM continues to make profits.
In November 2020, I chose to transfer the control of CREAM to Andre Cronje, the founder of Yearn. This was a good decision because Andre is really awesome and I felt relieved to hand over CREAM to him. After the outbreak of the epidemic, I had nothing to do at home and began to focus on NFT.
Yes! We just want to hear the story of NFT.
Huang Licheng: I first came into contact with NFT in 2018. At that time, I thought about cutting music into NFTs and selling them online, but it was too early, so I started to engage in DeFi. The reason why I really invested in the NFT market was that one of my friends was a Taiwanese girl named Emily Yang, who was a very famous NFT artist. At that time, she had a project to sell paintings and donate to the#StopAsianHateorganization. Of course, such a meaningful thing should be supported! So I called on a few friends to form an organization under Emily's nickname pplpleasr, and "PleasrDAO" was born.
At first it was just for fun, but as more and more influential people or entrepreneurs with financial strength joined PleasrDAO, we decided to turn this DAO into a decentralized art investment organization. A while ago, Edward, a hacker, launched an NFT called Stay Free, which we thought was very valuable. No matter how much the opponent offered, we had to bid for it. But the process was extremely thrilling. I thought there was no hope, but in the last five minutes, a friend suddenly asked how much he was still short of and he could help, so we were able to successfully bid for $5.4 million, and we also have the NFT of the Doge meme.
What about BAYC?
Huang Licheng: I have actually been observing BAYC for a long time. There were many days when you could mint. On the last day, I minted 40 monkeys by myself at midnight, and then called friends to buy. The founder of 17, Sam, was very aggressive! He minted 120 monkeys at random. WTF! I couldn’t lose! I was determined to continue chasing. After minting, I went to the secondary market to buy. Others bought one or two ETH. In the end, I received nearly a hundred monkeys. When the PleasrDAO members woke up in the morning, they all said they didn’t buy any. I thought it would be fun if everyone came to play, so I gave away more than 30 monkeys without thinking. "
It was you who started the monkey trend in the entertainment industry, right?
Huang Licheng: I remember the first artist I gave it to was Kai Kai (Ko Chen-tung). I also gave Bolin the monkey. Bolin has a good eye and he picked the most limited edition one in my collection, which I think is in the top 50! It wasn’t as expensive as it is now, but it wasn’t cheap either, probably more than 10,000 US dollars. "
Then you see Stephen Curry bought it, Snoop Dogg bought it, and even Eminem bought it. This is the power of the community, and it is also the interesting part of Crypto. Although BAYC is not my project, everyone who likes it can contribute to it. You can use your influence to infect others and let more people know about it.
But besides changing avatars, what else can NFT do?
Huang Licheng: NFT (Non-fungible tokens) means non-fungible tokens, which can be used in a wide range of applications. Real estate certificates, art copyrights, and even identity certificates can be NFTs. These technologies have been mature for a long time. The problem is on the policy side. Does the national government have this awareness or intends to move in this direction? This is a question mark.
In addition, the public also has a mentality of watching the fun. In addition to thinking that this is a scam and a bubble, they only care about how much the coins and NFTs in their hands can increase. Who cares about decentralization? This is all normal. When Web 1.0 first came out, it was impossible to imagine how it would grow in the future. Everything is a process.
Brother, can you reveal the NFT assets you have?
Huang Licheng: Talking about numbers is vulgar. The interesting thing about blockchain is that the accounts are public. You can just go and look at my wallet.
Note: Huang Licheng’s wallet address is machibigbrother.eth (0x020cA66C30beC2c4Fe3861a94E4DB4A498A35872)
As of February 21, it has more than 15 million US dollars in on-chain token assets, more than 3,100 NFTs, and the cumulative assets in a single wallet exceed 50 million US dollars.
Finally, please give some advice to newbies who want to participate in NFT.
Huang Licheng: People often say: NFA (Not Financial Advice). When you make money, no one will be grateful to you, but when you lose money, everyone will hate you. The advice I can give is that if you are interested, hang out on Twitter, Medium, and Discord to see what everyone is talking about. If you don’t understand, Google it. Once you understand it, you will naturally know where the news is and which direction the trend is going. Even if you lose money and get hurt, it is all experience.
This is the same as learning to skateboard or hip-hop. You keep asking questions and worrying about whether it is dangerous. How can you know the tricks if you don't try it yourself? Set a risk range you can tolerate, and then study hard!
postscript:
When we finally asked Brother Maji if we could take a few photos, he said that he didn’t like taking photos because he was old, but we could use his virtual avatar (Bored Ape avatar) instead. “Everyone knows Bored Ape, and they also know that I will always support Bored Ape. I even made a joke before, saying that I am “ChairApe of the Bored”. Let the virtual return to the virtual, isn’t this the real fun of blockchain?
“So, don’t take pictures, just use my Instagram and the monkey on my wallet.”