Recently, I came across the memoirs of an early investor, which mentioned a rather interesting anecdote.

June 2014, Shanghai. Back then, the blockchain community was still very small. At an unremarkable sharing session, two people who would later change the landscape of the industry met each other.

At the time, CZ had just left another project and was sitting in the audience listening to the talk. On stage, there was a woman discussing exchange operations, and her ideas were very clear. After the event, the two started talking—and that conversation lasted for 10 hours.

From the underlying logic of Bitcoin to how exchanges should approach user experience, from technical architecture to market strategies, the more they talked, the more they clicked. At that time, He Yi was in charge of global markets at a leading exchange, and she immediately extended an invitation: "Come be our CTO."

CZ later responded when recalling this experience...

(The place where this conversation happened has now become a "pilgrimage site" for Shanghai's Web3 community. Many people say that without those 10 hours that night, the story that followed might have been completely different.)

That's how the early crypto community was—a few key decisions, a few long late-night conversations, and the entire direction of the industry could be set.