The vent is constantly changing, and the scythe is always new

From helicobacter pylori to metacosm, the discussion around the vent and hot spots has never stopped.

Leaving aside the proposition of true wind or pseudo-demand, it seems that there has always been such a group in domestic listed companies: the concept is played hot, the story is skilled, but it has never stirred up a substantial wave.

In the case of Zhangzidao, the story of its scallop separation still remains in the memory of shareholders.

Despite the absurd story, it was eventually brought to an end with regulatory involvement and Zhangzidao being punished. But the "witty" Zhangzidao has borrowed the mouth of pre-made dishes to use "chasing the wind" as a wealth code for the "post-story era".

A generation of "story kings" eventually entered the ranks of "wind chasers".

First, the stock market chaser

Flipping through the history of the A-share market, from the blockchain to the metaverse, there are not a few players who belong to the same part of Zhangzidao.

In 2017, the concept of blockchain was on fire, and Chen Lei, head of Xunlei's cloud computing business, took over the POSITION of CEO, launched the Playke Cloud through its company Netxin Technology, and released the virtual currency "Play Guest Coin", leading Xunlei to the road of blockchain.

The concept of explosion, the endorsement of Thunderbolt, the price of playing guest coins has risen to dozens of times under the cluster, and the price of "mining machine" playing guest cloud has also been speculated from a few hundred yuan to a maximum of more than 3,000 yuan. At its peak, reselling the cloud of players even became a business.

Feedback on the data, Xunlei's stock price soared by nearly 300% in 2017, and in the fourth quarter of 2017, when Playke Cloud was hot, the revenue growth brought by Xunlei cloud computing and other Internet value-added services was as high as 431.6%.

The thunderbolt that ate the crab grew fat, which made many companies quite hungry, and a number of imitators appeared in the market.

In January 2018, Renren announced that it would launch the blockchain project Renrenfang and token RRCoin; in July of the same year, Le rongzhixin, a subsidiary of LeTV, cooperated with the same chain technology to launch a mineable chain box, trying to reproduce the "miracle" of Xunlei.

The big fish chased the wind outlet, and also drove the small fish and shrimp rice. However, for companies that are still small, the wind outlet may only stay in the category of storytelling.

Zhongqingbao, as a regular customer of regulatory inquiries, is a good storyteller. At that time, Zhongqingbao entered the blockchain track with a combination of self-developed mining machines, shared cloud pools, and blockchain board games, but the grand blueprint drawn did not unfold as expected.

Taking the blockchain board game as an example, Zhongqingbao has said that the expected development time of the game is 3-6 months, but in many statements since then, the game has been in the exploration stage and feasibility study stage, and has not landed for a long time, and finally lost the following together with the so-called shared cloud pool.

It can be said that the blockchain path of Zhongqingbao can be called constipation, neither technical disclosure nor achievement landing, as if it has become a black box. Xunlei, who seems to have put the blockchain into practice, has also been exposed that the blockchain technology consultant expert of Netxin Technology is a relative of the hometown of Dong Cod, former senior vice president of Xunlei - a 60-year-old peasant couple from Hegang, Heilongjiang.

Obviously, a story without practical support will naturally move quickly to an end.

After the decline of the blockchain outlet, the stock price of Zhongqingbao went all the way down, falling from the former outlet, and everyone was lost. Under the tightening of supervision, the "miner + coin issuance" model has gradually disappeared, and the blockchain bubble has begun to burst.

However, the insatiable end of the blockchain does not seem to have stopped the pace of heat-seekers, and the metaverse that flourished in 2021 seems to be their next destination.

If Facebook's renaming of Meta is "All In", and the meta-universe projects of giants such as Ali, Tencent, and Baidu are "layout", then the likes of Zhongqingbao are still "storytelling".

In September 2021, Zhongqingbao announced that it would launch the meta-universe game "Brewing Master", which transformed into a meta-universe concept stock.

Unsurprisingly, the stock prices of the concept stocks that have successively "painted the cake" on the meta-universe dinner plate have soared again, although the actual progress is still far from the "prototype".

Recently, once the meta-universe big brother Meta financial report was announced, the market value shrank by more than 230 billion US dollars, setting a record for the largest market value decline in the US stock market, and the ripples of the bubble bursting have been flooded.

Perhaps, just like the blockchain tide in the past, once the soaring stock price is filled with holes, it is inevitable to break and escape. And from the crazy influx to the race to escape, what kind of logic is behind the concept of speculation.

Second, the logic behind it

Regardless of the external packaging and speech, the logic in the bottom of corporate behavior is only to make money. Therefore, the dark side of the various players who are heating up only has differences in motivation.

Among them, Xunlei, Renren, LeTV and a number of companies that make the blockchain "real" have all fallen into losses and internal friction, and urgently need to transform.

All along, the difficulty of user traffic monetization has always been the crux of Xunlei's operating model, around the download business, Xunlei introduced advertising pages, but also launched a membership service, but still thin, only by exploring new commercialization scenarios, in order to seek greater growth space.

Long before the rush to blockchain, Xunlei began to try to transform. However, from the perspective of Xunlei, we can see that Xunlei games, whether it is the cost of copyright, or the level of game production and operation, Xunlei cannot collide with the giants who are crazy to burn money, but once fell into the dilemma of loss.

At the head of the dilemma, Xunlei turned to the To B track in the name of Netxin Technology, and then later led to the blockchain business, more like another attempt to transform.

This helplessness is also established on Renren Network and LeTV. Around 2017, Renren has gradually declined under the run on new social platforms. LeEco is in the "ecological anti" after the broken "thunder" node, after the next three years, LeEco continued to lose money, and finally delisted in May 2020.

From the current point of view, Xunlei's blockchain fanaticism is tantamount to drinking doves to quench thirst, but standing at the time node at that time, Xunlei's "rejuvenation" through blockchain seems to be a good road.

The difficult brothers quickly followed, more or less permeated with a sense of illness and chaos. It can be seen that behind the heat is the helplessness of a group of lonely giants.

The purpose of another group of hot players to actively lean towards the popular track may not be simple.

An industry insider pointed out: "From the company's point of view, the concept of speculation is conducive to raising stock prices. As the stock price rises, the major shareholders can reduce their holdings and cash out. After the completion of the reduction, the previous disclosure plan does not meet expectations or does not work, and the stock price will naturally decline and harvest leeks. ”

In November 2021, Zhongqingbao, which enjoyed the dividends in the meta-universe campaign, disclosed a draft stock option incentive plan to grant 10.6 million shares to no more than 21 core personnel. Among them, Li Ruijie, chairman of Zhongqingbao, and Li Yilun, director of the company, received 5.26 million stock options, accounting for about 50% of the number granted in the incentive plan.

Some insiders pointed out: "The performance appraisal requirements of the equity incentive of Zhongqingbao are low, and there are only assessment indicators for operating income, but it ignores elements such as net profit, which is extremely awkward." ”

Therefore, as soon as the equity incentive plan came out, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange immediately issued a letter of concern to ask whether there was any profit transmission?

Coincidentally, during the same period of this year's acquisition of Zhongqingbao HK$0, it also issued an announcement that shareholders intend to reduce their holdings, and Li Ruijie will reduce his holdings by no more than 3% of the total number of shares in the company within 3 months after 15 trading days from the announcement date.

On the one hand, it is equity incentives, on the other hand, it is a reduction, and there seems to be some unspeakable meaning in the middle.

Based on this reasonable speculation, before the completion of the reduction, Zhongqingbao may continue to tell its meta-universe story. After all, the fundamentals are weak, and if you stop "drawing the cake", the market value will inevitably collapse.

On the other hand, if no one pays for the story, the ambitions of the wind chasers will not be fulfilled, but even if the so-called layout of Zhangzidao and Zhongqingbao is "fake at a glance", it does not prevent investors from paying for it.

"I know it won't work, but I can bet on a short-term trend, as long as it is closed in time and does not extend the cycle." A shareholder friend revealed.

Therefore, investors may know that the above companies themselves have no investment value, but it is undeniable that running at the forefront of the popular track gives them short-term speculative value, which is enough to attract the market.

However, speculative value based on track properties does not map exactly to companies. Taking Chinese Online as an example, if you only launch the meta-universe essay contest instead of investing in research and development into the meta-universe, it is likely to become a pseudo-concept stock, and it will decline after the dividends fade in the early stage of the concept.

In 2020, Xuanya International will rub the stock price from 12 yuan to 50 yuan through live broadcasting with goods and internet celebrity economy. However, with the decline in the popularity of live streaming, its stock price has returned to the original range. At present, Xuanya International has appeared in the number series of the metaverse.

Therefore, the value of storytelling will eventually return as the market becomes rational. The bursting of the bubble is inevitable after all.

Third, fragmentation and momentum

Countless cases in the past have tried to prove that chasing the wind and rubbing heat will eventually escape the endgame of falling.

Enterprises that lack empirical evidence and underlying logic can be transformed into concept stocks with a little trick, which is absurd.

In fact, what supports the absurdity itself is not the company's hard rubbing and investor participation, but the wave of momentum around related technologies and concepts, after all, the latter creates the reason for speculation.

Investor Li Zhaoge told Photon Planet: "Momentum is the action of the technology owner, which is media rendering, and then evolving into public discussion, which is conducive to gathering a large number of social resources and concentrating on the technology/concept itself." ”

It is not difficult to see that the momentum is the inevitable development of technology and the landing of concepts, but it tends to be fanatical in the situation of capital and investors "biting the fat meat".

Once overheated, it is very likely that the momentum will deviate from reason and go to extremes, becoming the soil that breeds wind chasers. Looking back on the past, the extreme blockchain and meta-universe track have also given Zhongqingbao and Chinese room for online hype.

"After the momentum, people often find that many things have not met the expectations they once had, which is actually because of the error caused by the upward adjustment of public expectations in the extreme trend of thought." Li Zhaoge explained.

Looking back at the Internet wave of the past few years, from bioengineering to blockchain, from 5G to artificial intelligence, it is inevitable that they will eventually struggle in the commercialization scenario and break away from the once public imagination.

Last year, the price of virtual currencies represented by Bitcoin and Ethereum climbed, and a large number of retail investors entered the market and pushed them out of the circle. For a time, keywords such as Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and Musk were repeatedly on the hot search.

However, as the wave of virtual currencies grows higher, the sword of Damocles also slowly falls: regulation falls, and virtual currencies go to dusk.

It can be seen that whether it is a momentum or a concept of speculation, it is impossible to escape the objective laws and rules of technological development. But the fading of the wind and the decline of heat do not mean that the extreme trend of thought is a fallacy.

Admittedly, without the fiery meta-cosmic track, there might not have been an obvious product of the purpose of "Master Brewer", but Zhongqingbao may tell the story of other concepts.

However, for the technology itself, which is still in the early stages, it requires huge social resource investment to take off, and without the impetus of fanaticism, it is bound to face greater uncertainty - high cost is difficult to cover, and technical ecology is difficult to build.

However, the existence of players with ulterior motives should not negate the value of momentum. The end of the momentum is not an empty basket, but a fate field full of choices.

Once the industry expands, it is bound to create a lot of value. Even if you are in the long-term operation of the investor's perspective, there will always be several high-market capitalization companies in the process of building momentum, even if this process will be accompanied by countless disappearing shadows in the track.

Therefore, the debate around the momentum should not focus on the momentum itself, but on how to effectively use social resources to create more excellent enterprises, rather than going to the unknown in the undercurrent.

end

The wind chasers who speculate on the concept have become "demon stocks" in the eyes of a group of so-called stock analysts, soaring and plummeting.

Bet on short-term players, in the drumming game full of pots, or everyone is in danger, after all, no one knows whether they will become the final receiver.

Objectively speaking, no one can impose right and wrong on this controversy, and even if there are indeed illegal acts such as profit transmission, it should be judged by the regulatory authorities.

At this moment, it is not known whether the former's gameplay will be stopped by supervision, nor does it know whether the latter will disperse when the harvest horn blows, but under the wave of momentum, the crazy story will continue to be staged.