Original Article Title: "From Manus Xiaohong's Story, Those Interns in the Crypto Industry Who Came to the Table"

Original Article Author: Lin Wanwan, Doooncha Beating

On the last day of 2025, the biggest news in the tech world came from Meta: Mark Zuckerberg spent billions of dollars to acquire an AI company called Manus, which had been founded less than a year ago. This marked Meta's third-largest acquisition in history, behind only WhatsApp and Scale AI.

A few days after the announcement, people discovered that in his bio, he noted himself as a BTC Holder (Bitcoin holder).

A tweet appeared on Twitter. The person who tweeted, with the pseudonym "Godfish," real name Mao Shihang, was one of China's earliest Bitcoin miners, with a net worth well over tens of billions:

"Manus founder Xiaohong is a BTC Holder, which is not surprising—back in 2013, he was one of the interns we recruited at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, where we worked on OneBit together."

2013. OneBit. Huazhong University internship.

Xiaohong, born in 1993, from a small town in Ji'an, Jiangxi. Before becoming the Vice President of Meta, his most well-known roles were as the founder of the AI products Monica and Manus. However, few knew that his first proper internship was at a Bitcoin media company called OneBit.

That year, he was just starting his sophomore year, tinkering with various student projects at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences of HUST, such as WeChat drift bottles, WeChat walls, and campus second-hand trading platforms. As the vice team leader of the innovation team, he was already a somewhat famous tech geek among his peers. But Bitcoin was still a completely new world to him.

OneBit was one of the earliest Bitcoin-focused media outlets in China, located in Beijing's Galaxy SOHO. The founding team included Godfish and several equally young idealists, doing very simple things: translating foreign Bitcoin information, writing educational articles, and trying to help more Chinese people understand this new phenomenon, which was then labeled a "Ponzi scheme" by the mainstream media.

What Xiaohong specifically did at OneBit is now hard to verify. But looking back twelve years later, the significance of this experience has long transcended a mere internship itself.

The Bitcoin community in 2013 was a club of early participants in a large-scale social experiment. There was no regulation, no price anchor, no mature business model—only a group of young believers in the principle that "code is law," huddling together in the face of mainstream media ridicule. Those who could enter at that time were either gamblers or truly understood what was going on.

Xiao Hong clearly belongs to the latter camp. Decentralization, permissionlessness, code is law. These ideas may have seemed like geeky self-indulgence at the time, but they constituted a framework for understanding the world. Twelve years later, as AI begins to reshape the boundaries of human-computer interaction, this framework may become discernible.

From Bitcoin to AI Agent, the technological forms are vastly different, but the underlying logic is consistent: it's all about enabling machines to operate autonomously, establishing cooperation in trustless environments, and using code to replace intermediaries. Those who understood Bitcoin in 2013 will need little extra cognitive load to grasp AI Agents in 2025.

In that tweet, Shenyu used a term: 'identification vector'.

"Over a decade, from Bitcoin to AI Agent, the times have changed, and a company's boundaries are blurred. It's more about identifying vectors than hiring employees..."

What is a vector? Direction times speed. The 2013 Xiao Hong was a sophomore willing to bet time on a 'unreliable' field. This choice itself was a filter—it sieved out those who only see immediate certainty, leaving behind those willing to pay for long-term possibilities.

Twelve years later, this vector pointed to the position of Meta's Vice President.

In the cryptocurrency industry, which intertwines the myth of getting rich quick and overnight resets, there is a hidden path to success: finding the right person in your early twenties. Around 2013, a group of the smartest and most daring young people surged into this rapidly expanding world. Some had just dropped out of school, some hadn't graduated yet, following the era's wildest entrepreneurs, working at the grassroots level in exchanges, mining pools, and media companies.

Their bet was a form of cognition. This cognition enabled them to identify opportunities faster than their peers in every tech wave ten years later.

Buffett once said, "Life is like a snowball, all you need is wet snow and a really long hill."

The cryptocurrency industry in 2013 was precisely that long, wet hill. And for those who embarked on this hill in their early twenties, their snowball has been rolling for twelve years.

Xiao Hong is one of them. But he is not the only one.

An Intern on a Cap Table

One day in 2013, in an office building in Beijing's Zhongguancun, two young people were discussing something crazy.

Wu Jihan, 27 years old, holds dual degrees in Psychology and Economics from Peking University. He had just resigned from a venture capital firm and had been investing in Bitcoin and promoting it for the past two years. He translated the Bitcoin whitepaper into Chinese, which remains the most widely circulated version to this day.

Sitting across from him was a person named Zhan Ketuan, 34 years old, a graduate of Shandong University with a master's degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences Institute of Microelectronics. With over ten years of experience in integrated circuit development, he was widely recognized in the industry as a chip design expert.

But this story also has a third protagonist.

Ge Yuesheng, 21 years old, had just graduated from Huzhou University a year ago. Before joining Bitmain, he was a colleague of Wu Jihan at a private equity fund in Shanghai, where he was an intern doing investment analysis alongside Wu Jihan. Under Wu Jihan's influence, Ge Yuesheng began to explore Bitcoin.

Among these three individuals, Ge Yuesheng was the most unremarkable. He did not have Wu Jihan's industry insights or Zhan Ketuan's technical background.

But he had one thing: money. More precisely, the resources of a family business—funds, mining farms, and power.

At that time, both Wu Jihan and Zhan Ketuan did not have much money. According to a disclosure by a former senior executive of Bitmain, Ge Yuesheng's family had invested a lot of money early on, and several family members became shareholders. Wu Jihan's founding of Bitmain was to a large extent due to Ge Yuesheng's investment and assistance. This intern can be considered one of the earliest angel investors in Bitmain.

The division of labor among the three individuals was clear: Wu Jihan was responsible for industry judgment and the market, Zhan Ketuan was in charge of chip development, and Ge Yuesheng provided funding and resources.

To persuade Zhan Ketuan to join, Wu Jihan offered an astounding condition: Zhan Ketuan would not receive a salary, but if he could develop an ASIC chip that could efficiently run the Bitcoin encryption algorithm in the shortest time possible, he would be given 60% of the shares.

In just half a year, Zhan Ketuan developed the BM1380, a 55nm Bitcoin mining chip, and the first-generation Antminer based on this chip.

In October 2013, Beijing Bitmain Technology Co., Ltd. was formally established. Corporate records showed that in the earliest shareholder structure, Zhan Ketuan held 59.2% of the shares, while Ge Yuesheng held 28%—and Wu Jihan's name was not even on the list of founding shareholders at that time.

This detail was later repeatedly interpreted. Why could 21-year-old Ge Yuesheng receive 28% of the shares?

In 2013, Bitcoin was far from mainstream. In April of that year, the price of Bitcoin broke $100 for the first time; in November, it surged to over $1000; then in December, the price halved, beginning a two-year bear market.

Most people FOMOed in at the peak and panic sold at the bottom. Many had the means, but Yuesheng Ge chose to enter the industry in its earliest and most chaotic days, tying himself to that ship.

It required not just money, but a certain intuition for trends and the courage to bet in the face of uncertainty.

The later story is well known: these three individuals, in less than five years, turned Bitmain into the world's largest mining company, at one point controlling over 70% of the global Bitcoin hash rate, with a valuation reaching as high as $15 billion. In 2018, on the Hurun Blockchain Rich List, Jihan Wu became the "post-85s self-made new richest man" with a net worth of $16.5 billion, and Yuesheng Ge became the "post-90s new richest man" with a net worth of $3.4 billion.

In 2019, together with Jihan Wu, they left Bitmain and co-founded Matrixport. Yuesheng Ge became the CEO of Matrixport and continues in that role to this day.

A 27-year-old evangelist, a 34-year-old tech genius, a 21-year-old intern-turned-angel-investor, all bound by the same vision at the right moment.

First Cohort of "OKCoin Whampoa Military Academy" Students

If Yuesheng Ge's story is a classic case of an intern transforming into a co-founder, the next story demonstrates another possibility: from the first employee to being acquired at a high price by the former employer's competitor.

One day in 2013, a young engineer named Mr. W walked into an office in a Beijing skyscraper.

The office was small, with basic furnishings, more resembling a temporary outpost of a startup. A whiteboard on the wall was covered in system architecture and flow charts. A few tables were pushed together, seating fewer than ten people.

This was all OKCoin had.

Founder Star Xu was troubled by hiring. At that time, Bitcoin in China was still in a gray area, with mainstream media either calling it a Ponzi scheme or a "money laundering tool." Engineers willing to forgo offers from big tech companies and join a "crypto-trading company" were almost non-existent.

Mr. W was the first brave soul.

As OKCoin's first employee, he had to build the entire tech stack from scratch. There were no ready-made solutions to copy, no mature open-source projects to use, and even few competitors to reference. Everything was a blank slate.

This represents a significant challenge, but also a significant opportunity: If this can be accomplished, he will become one of the most technically savvy individuals in the industry.

Over a period of two years, Mr. W almost single-handedly built OKCoin's core trading system. The performance of that matching engine was considered groundbreaking in the industry at the time. "Many exchanges couldn't even handle basic levels of concurrency in their systems," he later recalled, "and would freeze up with just a few more people trading simultaneously."

More importantly, he nurtured the entire technical team from scratch. Many key technical members of OKCoin (and later rebranded as OKEx, OKX) were mentored by him.

However, by 2016, Mr. W chose to depart.

There were many rumors within the industry about the reasons for his departure: disagreements with the founder's vision, internal power struggles, dissatisfaction with the company's direction... Mr. W himself has never publicly responded to these claims.

His first stop after leaving was a brief collaboration with another former OKCoin executive. That individual was Zhao Changpeng, who later founded Binance and became the world's richest in cryptocurrency.

In early 2018, Mr. W, along with two former colleagues, founded a cryptocurrency options exchange. The timing was particularly delicate. In January 2018, the price of Bitcoin had just begun to plummet from its all-time high of $20,000, causing devastation throughout the industry. While most were fleeing, Mr. W chose to enter against the trend.

The exchange received investments from Huobi and Golden Finance. Just one year later, in 2019, Binance announced full acquisition.

This marked a quite dramatic conclusion: The first employee of OKCoin, founding a company that was acquired by Binance.

Through twists and turns, these individuals all came from the same origin.

Hence, a saying has circulated in the crypto community to this day: OKCoin is the "Whampoa Military Academy of the cryptocurrency industry."

Vectors, Windows, and Survivors

Now, let's return to Xiao Hong.

In 2013, he was just a sophomore intern at Yibite. This internship may only occupy a small portion of his life's resume—after all, his main storyline later revolved around WeChat ecosystem entrepreneurship: Yiban, Weiban, Nightingale Technology, ultimately sold to Mingling Technologies.

But some things leave a mark.

Xiao Hong's self-introduction is "BTC Holder." This means that from 2013 to today, he has been involved in and paying attention to cryptocurrency. In a market where prices fluctuate by hundreds of times, being able to hold on for twelve years is a skill in itself, or rather, a belief.

More importantly, the brief internship in 2013 may have shaped some kind of methodology for him: not pursuing technological disruption from zero to one, but being good at finding gaps on existing large platforms and creating value through product capabilities.

From 1T to being a One Companion in the WeChat ecosystem, then to AI browser extension Monica, and finally to general AI Manus, perhaps the underlying logic of this path is consistent: find a large platform that is booming and create the most useful tool on that platform.

The stories of these three interns reveal some common patterns:

First, timing is more important than effort. They all entered the cryptocurrency industry between 2013 and 2017. That was the "chaotic period" of this industry. Early enough that most people had not yet realized the opportunity's existence; but not too early, before the infrastructure was fully established. Those who entered during this window of time gained disproportionate room for growth. By 2020 and beyond, the industry had matured relatively, making it much more difficult for newcomers to replicate the same path.

Second, who you choose to follow is more important than what you choose to do. Ge Yuesheng followed Wu Jihan, Mr. W followed Xu Mingxing, Xiao Hong followed Bitfish. These big shots are not necessarily the most famous, but they were a group of people with the most judgment and execution power at the time.

The benefits of following the right people are not just about learning but, more importantly, entering a high-quality network. After leaving OKCoin, Mr. W was able to quickly secure investments and be acquired by Binance, largely due to the reputation and connections he had built in the industry.

Third, the ability to bet on uncertainty is scarce. Joining a Bitcoin company in 2013, sticking with a DEX project in the bear market in 2018, or giving up a stable job to start a business in 2020—these choices seemed risky at the time.

But risk and reward are symmetrical. Those who were willing to bear uncertainty ultimately received returns commensurate with the risks they took.

Of course, these are survivorship bias stories.

Most young people who entered the industry around 2013 did not become billionaires. Many of them exited during the bear market, missed out during the bull market, and went to zero during the extreme price fluctuations. But this does not prevent us from extracting some valuable lessons from the stories of survivors.

On the last day of 2025, Xiao Hong tweeted, "To succeed in creating a good product in a globalized market, there are many troubles that do not come from the business itself and the user value itself. All of this is worth it."

From a One-Bit intern in 2013 to a Vice President at Meta in 2025, Xiao Hong took 12 years.

During these 12 years, his former boss Shen Yu, went from a 23-year-old graduate school dropout entrepreneur to a billionaire industry godfather. Shen Yu's former partner, Wu Jihan, transformed from an advocate to the founder of a mining empire, then left amidst internal strife, started anew, and rose again.

The pace of this industry is too fast. Fast enough that a decade is enough for a person to go from an intern to a billionaire, and fast enough that a giant can fall from the peak, only to rise again within a decade.

So, treat every intern around you well. Because you never know, in ten years, who you'll need to take out for a meal.

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