Thoughts on the Interview with Sister Wood

I watched a recent interview with Wood Sister over the weekend. After watching, I suddenly began to reflect on a past experience of mine. Upon further thought, I realized that there is a significant difference between being able to understand a principle and being able to reflect on it.

In this interview, Wood Sister talked about her initial experience researching Bitcoin.

Speaking of her initial experience with Bitcoin, I recently came across a video where the legendary investor Mai Gang from Pop Mart explained Bitcoin in 2013.

In that video, Mai Gang discussed how Bitcoin could become digital gold and predicted that its development would undergo a cognitive process that progresses from individuals to institutions and then to nations. Based on this understanding, he was very optimistic about Bitcoin's investment value.

After watching the video, my first impression was one of admiration for Mai Gang, admiring his profound and high-level understanding at that time.

However, that thought was limited to just that.

In the video where Wood Sister explained Bitcoin, she recalled some details of her first encounter with Bitcoin:

When she first saw Bitcoin, she immediately asked a professor from USC to study the Bitcoin white paper.

After reading the Bitcoin white paper, the professor was very shocked and told Wood Sister that Bitcoin was exactly what he had been waiting for, something that could become part of the world financial system after the U.S. government closed the gold-dollar exchange window in 1971. He believed that Bitcoin fully possessed the three attributes of currency: store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account.

After hearing his explanation, Wood Sister was also very shocked and asked him how big the potential of Bitcoin might be. The professor replied that the value system of Bitcoin could be as large as the dollar system.

Then Wood Sister made a rough estimate. It was 2015, and at that time, the dollar system was about 4.5 trillion dollars. Converted to Bitcoin's unit price, that would be 210,000 dollars. However, at that time, the price of Bitcoin was only 250 dollars.

So Wood Sister made her first purchase of Bitcoin, and she has held onto the portion she privately bought until now.

After watching this video, I had a reaction that was clearly different from my previous reaction after watching Mai Gang's video:

This time, I didn't just stop at admiring Wood Sister's foresight; instead, I immediately recalled my feelings when I first read the Bitcoin white paper. More accurately, it was my feelings after reading both the Bitcoin and Ethereum white papers for the first time.

What shocked me the most was the thought: if we use an unbreakable network like Bitcoin as a database to store humanity's most precious knowledge (such as the human genome), it would be a treasure for all humanity; if all law enforcement could be placed on Ethereum, then law enforcement for all humanity could not only be just and transparent but also greatly reduce costs.

But Mai Gang and that professor read something completely different:

They directly associated Bitcoin's potential value as a financial asset.

Wood Sister took it a step further:

She immediately thought about how much value Bitcoin could have as a financial asset. Not only did she think that way, but she also quickly quantified the potential maximum return on investing in Bitcoin at that time.

"There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes."

This phrase is very vivid in this case.

We read the same thing, but the feelings we derived from it were completely different. I only thought about potential practical uses, while Mai Gang, the professor, and Wood Sister saw potential investment value.

Reflecting on my reactions to projects over the years, it seems that my first focus has never been on potential financial value, but rather I would arrive at financial value after a lot of reasoning and detours.

As an investor, this reaction is still somewhat dull; I completely lack their sensitivity.

Moreover, I didn't think of this point when I first watched Mai Gang's video; it wasn't until I saw Wood Sister's video this time that I realized this obvious gap.

On Saturday, July 12th, at 7:30 PM, we will have an online discussion. Everyone can post their questions in the thread below:

https://x.com/Dao_Views/status/1941136815173566847