ScalingX Founder's Account: Respecting the Market, A Decade-Long Crypto Adventure
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ScalingX Founder's Account: Respecting the Market, A Decade-Long Crypto Adventure
In the next two years, how will you position yourself to embrace this overwhelming fortune?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Jayden WΞi
2024, and in a few months I’ll be turning 33—exactly a decade since I fully committed myself to the blockchain space. I remember when I was applying for Australian permanent residency as an international student, the scoring system deducted five points once you passed 32. By that logic, perhaps I should feel “old” now.
But I believe our generation can easily live to 100, which means I’ve only lived one-third of my life. If a human life is a 24-hour day, I’m still the sun rising at eight in the morning. Whenever I think this way, I feel my prime is far from here. In fact, I often have this irrational confidence that 95% of my wealth will be earned after I turn fifty.
Some people assume I must’ve been a rich kid to study in Australia. But I wasn’t. During my studies, I often struggled financially. My business school experience turned into something more like “adult night school.” I scheduled all my classes in the evening and spent my days hustling—running startups while pulling all-nighters to finish assignments. I wasn’t a top student either—had some childhood smarts, sure, but nowhere near North America’s academic elites. I just didn’t know any better back then, so I managed to scrape through graduation, and Australia happened to accept me.
Back in 2014–2015, I started organizing Bitcoin meetups in Melbourne and became a minor local influencer. To this day, my team and I still host regular in-person gatherings at our office on Collins Street. The crypto scene in Australia is small—I was probably among the handful of Australians I knew who held the most Bitcoin and Ethereum at the time.
By the time I graduated from business school at 26, my company had already been operating for a while. Right after graduation came the insane bull run of 2017, and by conventional standards, I briefly achieved “financial freedom.” But making money for the first time isn’t real wealth—especially when it’s luck-based. Money made with luck tends to be lost with skill. Like any typical founder, I later faced betrayal from team members, fraud from partners—the usual traps entrepreneurs fall into. The toughest period was late 2018 to mid-2019: I hadn’t cashed out during the bull market, held mostly altcoins, had little cash, and had to sell valuable tokens at low prices just to keep the team afloat. From that bear market, I learned one profound lesson: You must maintain sufficient reserves. When the market is bleeding, survival goes to whoever still has cash.
Luckily, crypto gives reckless young people like us plenty of room to fail and try again. Then came the pandemic and the Fed’s massive liquidity injection. Though I missed the DeFi Summer despite getting an early start, the bull market eventually arrived, giving me much-needed breathing room. As my net worth hit new highs and I entered my thirties, I grew less arrogant and more humble. The market taught me. Meeting truly exceptional people made me realize how naive and unprepared I’d once been.
A quick personal update for friends who’ve been wondering about me these past few years:
2021 brought another explosive bull run, finally delivering solid returns on ICO investments I’d made back in 2017–2018. I exited FILCOIN around $120; Polkadot around $42; and of course, ICP… (somehow I participated in every single “doomed-from-the-start” ICO back then). I made money, yes—but zero sense of accomplishment. Looking back, it was pure luck with no coherent investment logic—like a blind cat stumbling upon a dead rat. But exiting at the right moment? That was the hard-earned skill of “pulling out without regret,” paid for with countless tuition fees. Cashing out gave me peace-of-mind capital and ten years’ worth of team salaries saved up. I decided to take a break, travel a bit. After years of pandemic lockdowns, I nearly slipped into depression.
By the end of 2021, I stayed in Singapore for a while and fell in love with the place. Although my family remains in Australia, I’ve chosen to spend two-thirds of each year here. Over time, Singapore evolved into Asia’s Web3 hub—not just attracting Chinese entrepreneurs, but also Australian exchanges seeking licenses. It’s becoming a true bridge between East and West in Web3, which aligns perfectly with what I’ve been doing all along.
After the pandemic ended in 2022, more and more friends relocated to Singapore. In 2023, my Singapore office—the OGBC Innovation Hub—was finally renovated. I don’t need much personal workspace; instead, I designed it as a gathering spot for the community. I call it an Innovation Hub. Our mission is simple: keep hosting events, repeat the basics, support founders and investors.
We’ve hosted numerous high-quality global projects for Asian roadshows. Worldcoin even approached us to deploy their first Orb in Asia—we’ve become a genuine Web3 hub in Singapore. During major crypto events in the city, our space is always packed. Personally, I love that energy—the buzz of people connecting.
I’ve met many outstanding founders and investors face-to-face—some who rarely show up at public events but appear at my office. One moment stands out: the CEO of Nansen visited, and I realized that when Nansen started, the co-founders had never met in person. I might’ve seen their CEO more times than his own co-founders had. That thought made me smile. As an ENFJ, I’m easily satisfied.
In early 2022, I visited Silicon Valley and ran into a friend who’d failed at a startup and was searching for direction. We hadn’t seen each other in years, yet we talked for hours. By the end of 2022, we reflected on our past failures and decided to build something to help other founders—a Web3 accelerator. That’s how ScalingX began. Mid-2023, my partner joined a rising VC firm in North America. In Q1 2023, ScalingX co-hosted a hackathon with Gitcoin, Ethereum’s largest developer community, then ran two accelerator programs with Western VCs, making encouragement-driven investments into over a dozen early-stage projects. Helping these startups led us to form an outstanding new team—one I’m deeply proud of. Just yesterday, reading the team’s 2023 year-end review, I realized we’d hosted over 60 events online and offline. Turns out, most of our time lately has been event-running.
Now, several of my closest colleagues are preparing to launch their own ventures—things they once wouldn’t have dared dream of. I’ve always encouraged talented people to found companies. (Funny—my mind just flashed to “One bold move, three generations wealthy”???). In 2022, a colleague who’s worked with me since 2017 started building a liquid venture fund. I became his first investor. He named it Greythorn. Not a bad name—I noticed anything with “Gray” tends to do well: Grayscale, Graylock. So Greythorn growing into a giant tree isn’t out of the question, especially because the person behind it is solid… Greythorn hasn’t disappointed—it’s one of my highest-return funds, catching nearly every hot alpha in 2023, outperforming both Bitcoin and Ethereum. (Of course, I did contribute to many investment decisions—just blowing my own horn here.)
This industry reshuffles constantly. Only relentless learning keeps you from falling behind. I’ve seen so-called “gurus” vanish into obscurity, while young talents shoot to fame overnight. That’s the magic of this space. Once, I was that “rising star” others looked up to. I used to be cocky, but now I carry more reverence.
Respect the market: Learn risk management through its ups and downs, master survival in this field. Respect the driven OGs still grinding: Their experience lights our way; learn from their insights, contribute alongside them. Respect talented young builders: Help them succeed whenever possible—they’re tomorrow’s leaders. Having founded before, I want to lift up those ready to start.
I believe the next two years will bring another massive bull market in crypto. How will you position yourself to seize this fortune? And once you’ve secured your wealth, how will you give back?
I once built a following of nearly 100K on Weibo, but due to China’s increasingly restrictive policies, many bloggers left—including me. After moving to Twitter, I rarely posted in Chinese. In 2024, I’m setting a goal: write more in Chinese, make new friends :)
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