In the face of the temptation of rapid wealth growth, no class can escape the fate of becoming a leek.

01

It is difficult for leeks to escape the fate of being harvested

In China, a land of wealth, a large number of billionaires have been created in just a few years, and a large number of leeks have been born. This is the largest leek plantation in the world.

The harvest of leeks is based on the number of "crops". "Seven losses, two draws and one profit" is known as the iron law of the Chinese stock market. Most of the simple and kind-hearted small investors cannot escape the fate of being trapped. The martyrs left the market at a loss, and new forces joined the front line, one after another. The harvest sickle rarely leaves empty.

However, leeks are no longer limited to small investors in the stock market. In the past three years, we have ushered in a flashy and noisy financial boom, which always coexists with bad debts. As a result, bad investment debts and running away are everywhere, and wealth anxiety is spreading rapidly to all levels of society. As long as you start to worry about your assets and the future and fear something, and take action, you may become a leek. Of course, even if you don't take action, you still can't escape the fate of a leek, but the harvester has become time.

On November 17, 2017, the central bank’s official website released guidance on the asset management business of financial institutions, which clearly proposed to break the rigid redemption. When redemption difficulties arise, financial institutions shall not advance funds for redemption in any form.

In other words, China will enter a real "risk-taking" era in the future. Even if investors are engaged in formal financial management, the government will no longer do everything possible to settle the matter for them. The investment logic has changed. It is foreseeable that due to the previous chaos, China will usher in an era of credit defaults. This is a systematic correction, and the pain of investors has just arrived.

In fact, the leeks have already been harvested, regardless of their status. Whether you are a wealthy person at the top of the pyramid or a beginner at the bottom of society, as long as you are anxious or greedy for the exponential growth of wealth, there will always be a trap designed for you, swallowing up your hard-earned money like a black hole.

No class can escape the various tools of harvesting.

02

Private equity harvests stars

In recent years, many celebrities have rolled up their sleeves and joined the private equity investment trend in the primary market. Obviously, equity and listing have more magical power to turn around sex than hard work in filming and performing.

Rather than saying that the stars are very confident in their intelligence and abilities, it is better to say that they believe in this era and the attraction of the halo that has long enveloped them to fans. Therefore, when they can rely on their looks and acting skills, they still rely on their talents. For example, Ren Quan, Hu Haiquan, and Zhang Ziyi have all established or joined VC funds.

Among celebrities, the more cautious ones know that they lack professional investment knowledge and will choose to follow up with investment institutions with small amounts of money. Once one of them succeeds, both the celebrity and the project can gain both fame and fortune.

I believe that capital is also emotional and will directly throw the money to Jia Yueting, so he will inevitably be suffocated in the end.

Liu Tao returned to acting after her husband went bankrupt. She filmed more than 30 movies in 4 years, saved up her hard-earned money, and went to study at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. As a result, she was dragged into the LeEco ecosystem backlash and invested a huge amount of money in LeEco. Many people felt sorry for her. If she had known earlier, she would have used the money to buy a house in Beijing, and she would not have lost all her money now.

The Niangniang family also invested a lot of money in LeEco. Now Jia Yueting said that he could not fulfill his contract, and the real money invested by the stars has gone down the drain. With the big cake painted by LeEco in the past two years, the media hype and his wife Gan Wei's connections in the entertainment industry, according to media statistics, Jia Yueting has attracted at least a few dozen stars to invest:

Those who have been publicly reported by the media include Zhang Yimou, Guo Jingming, Sun Honglei, Huang Xiaoming, Li Xiaolu, Liu Tao, Qin Lan, Chen He, Jia Nailiang, Huo Siyan and others; 11 celebrities have invested in LeTV Sports, including Liu Tao, Sun Honglei, Jia Nailiang, Zhou Xun, Wang Baoqiang and others.

Although we cannot use Jia Yueting as an example to prove that these celebrities have good investment vision, after all, in addition to celebrities, there are also professional investment institutions that invested in LeTV. However, private equity investment itself is not suitable for individual retail investors, let alone celebrity tycoons who have almost no financial knowledge.

Perhaps because they saw Zhao Wei and others making huge profits by playing with capital in the past two years, celebrities seem to have a misunderstanding about private equity, thinking that with big IPs like their own, they can also find an investment channel to make money easily.

Little do people know that private equity in the primary market is riskier than stock investment in the secondary market, with less transparent information and not necessarily high returns. Professional investors have to verify project information from multiple sources and take the trouble to control risks, but celebrities are bold and confident that they can easily navigate the capital market because of their high skills and high money.

For high-level leeks, they naturally need a top-notch scam. It is well worth it for them to fall into the trap of Jia Yueting, the movie emperor.

03

The “wind outlet” harvests the middle class

Who are the most miserable people in China? Of course, it is the middle class, who are known as the backbone of society. They pay taxes, support their parents and children, and buy houses. They are forced to make a living and are the most anxious at the slightest disturbance.

The class defense battle within the middle class has been the most frenetic local war in recent years. From the fences separating commercial housing and affordable housing in Beijing communities, the marriage price lists in Shanghai blind date corners to the scramble for educational resources in Chengdu school district rooms, the more absurd the story is, the more one can feel the anxiety of this class.

To harvest the middle class, you have to hit their pain points hard and understand their most desired dream: breaking down class barriers.

The middle class are mostly intellectuals who are at the forefront of the Internet, have access to the latest information, are more sensitive to wealth trends than ordinary people, and will not fall for pediatric scams.

Then just set up a trap at the "windward" place, because the middle class has reached a consensus: only by standing on the windward place and taking a chance can you master huge wealth and have an unimpeded journey on the upward path.

These scams often apply high-end concepts in the financial sector - they are covered with high-tech cloaks such as "blockchain", "quantum chain", "ICO", and "digital currency", and use some copycat coins and pretentious projects to disguise themselves as new financial tools, deceiving a group of middle-class people to wander in the regulatory vacuum.

Cryptocurrency traders missed out on the crazy rise of Bitcoin and Ethereum in the past two years and feel regretful. They are eager to invest in new types of tokens to catch up with this wave of wealth trend. Many participants even do it despite knowing that there is a bubble, unable to escape the mentality of "I can definitely escape the scam before the bubble with my wit and cleverness."

Some people deeply understand the psychology of the middle class, so the road to financial freedom is here.

Li Xiaolai, known as the "richest man in Bitcoin in China", launched the Press.One blockchain project in July this year, which had no white paper, no written plan, and no technical innovation. It was said that Li Xiaolai wanted to do a decentralized content distribution project, but he felt that few people would understand the white paper, so he was too lazy to write it. Except for him and his partner Xue Manzi, no one really understood what this financing project was going to do.

Devout believers who followed him to achieve financial freedom ignored these. Li Xiaolai successfully raised $200 million through crowdfunding. This ICO (initial coin offering, similar to the initial public offering IPO) stunned outsiders. What a crazy profit-seeking capital game.

In September 2017, ICO encountered strict regulation, and Li Xiaolai, who was at the center of the storm, finally faced a crisis of trust. Is he an angel or a liar? The leeks couldn't help but ask questions.

Blockchain and digital currency do have very good application prospects and imagination space, but not every leek who can't read code, doesn't understand white papers, and doesn't understand the investment logic in the field of high-tech can get a handful. You think it's a gamble, but you don't think it's a reaper waiting for you to come, specifically harvesting the IQ tax of people with high IQ. The leeks who were harvested by the copycat coin OneCoin probably have forgotten the pain, so it can be said that the memory of leeks is only 7 seconds.

04

P2P harvests financial novices

There is also a scam designed specifically for high net worth individuals who have money but nowhere to spend it.

Financial novices and elderly people who have a large amount of savings have only a vague understanding of "financial management", but they are also actively participating in the investment boom. To harvest this batch of leeks, you only need to master one skill: packaging. Package it in the most impressive and impressive way.

Being reported by CCTV is a big deal, so spend money to get CCTV certification; Internet celebrity economists are the most popular these days, so let Professor Lang and Teacher Song help you no matter what; set up the office in the most expensive and landmark office building; lend the investors' spare money to producers, P2P is to respond to the country's slogan of "serving the real economy"; the company has state-owned enterprises holding shares or injecting capital...

In short, as long as there are enough authoritative platforms, enough credit endorsements, and high-end enough conceptual packaging, there is no need to worry about this batch of leeks not growing.

Add to that a few simple, crude, tempting and deceptive slogans - "Annualized returns are as high as 25% to 32%. You can get 9 yuan of interest a day on 10,000 yuan, and the interest is credited to your account every day. You can withdraw the principal at any time after 30 days." Upon hearing this, the leeks would think they have encountered a great opportunity that is guaranteed to make money.

In the past three years, many P2P platforms have run away or gone bankrupt, with hundreds of billions of private assets at stake. P2P online lending works well abroad, but why has it become a Ponzi scheme in China? It all comes down to the credit reporting system. Investors have no way of knowing where the money has gone, whether the lending companies are reliable, and credit is completely unknown to financial novices who are eager for quick success.

CCTV has exposed nearly 400 pyramid schemes. To this day, countless people who have been trapped in pyramid schemes are still running around to defend their rights. In fifth- and sixth-tier counties where inclusive finance and the Internet are booming, countless villagers are foolishly becoming the next wave of leeks.

05

Cash loans harvest newcomers to society

In the past few years, every crop of leeks that should be harvested has been harvested, and now it is finally the turn of the leek roots.

If the above-mentioned "schemes" reap the money in the pockets of the leeks now, then cash loans reap the future money of the little leeks.

Recently, because two Internet financial companies, Qudian and Paipaidai, rang the bell at the New York Stock Exchange, the controversy over cash loans has not subsided. This is a huge venture capital investment in the future potential of young people. Some people are celebrating the violent capital market with valuations of more than 10 billion yuan. This is also a usury black hole that makes young people see no hope for the future. Some people are deeply trapped in the swamp of borrowing to pay off loans, and even use death to pay off debts.

These "little leeks" harvested by cash loans are college students who stay in the ivory tower, or junior white-collar and blue-collar workers who should have worked hard for three to five years when they first entered the society. Most of them do not have enough credit to use credit cards. Under the consumption upgrade frenzy and desire, they have no plans for the future and consumption, but are full of desire and are very easy to be tempted. Online loans have become their only channel.

It is very easy to get money from online loan platforms. There is almost no need for verification. With just an ID card, you can borrow money from multiple platforms. If you can't pay back the money on one platform, you can borrow new money to pay off the old one. Getting a new loan is like completing a game, and you feel a great sense of accomplishment. You think you have made money, but you don't think about how to pay it back.

According to Nandu, a 24-year-old Beijing girl named Xiao Jing narrowly escaped death a month ago because of a high-interest cash loan. Xiao Jing was obsessed with cats. Since February this year, she had borrowed money from online loan platforms to buy cats on the recommendation of a couple who sold cats. In the end, she had 81 cats and owed a huge sum of 700,000 yuan. Bombarded with debt collection calls every day and suffering from severe depression, the girl chose to end her life. Fortunately, she was rescued in time.

The predecessor of cash loans, "campus loans", was once exposed to use "naked loans" to threaten college students. They held the borrowers' ID information, family information, and indecent videos, and used violent debt collection to prevent young people from refusing to repay.

Death is the bottom line of cash loans. When a person dies, the debt is cleared, which is why it is called "bloodthirsty cash loans".

How did such a tragedy of wealth come about? On an online loan platform called "Cash Man", a late payment fee of 20 yuan is charged for one day of overdue payment, which sounds like just the price of a cup of milk tea, but for a loan of 1,000 yuan, the repayment amount will double if it is overdue for 50 days.

This wave of leeks is so ruthless that according to incomplete statistics, the average interest rate of domestic cash loan products is 160%, and the highest is even 800%. Cash loan companies can completely ignore risk control, and some media even broke the news that "a well-known large platform had a bad debt rate of nearly 50% at the beginning, but it can still earn 30 million yuan every month."

This year, the cash loan industry is facing a life-and-death crisis. The sword of supervision is hanging over its heads and has yet to fall. It seems that it is choosing the right time to pull cash loans back from the edge of madness and out-of-control.

This situation brought a devastating blow to the small investors, but for some people, this lesson was obviously not profound enough. Some people expected a one-size-fits-all regulation and began to plan how to defraud money from multiple cash loan companies.

06

Conclusion

The older generation recalls the scams they encountered 20 years ago. Now they all seem to be minor scams, such as "honey traps", "chess stalls", fraud, and winning a BMW in a lottery. They are nothing more than using a few simple tricks to cheat you out of the little money in your pocket.

Nowadays, Chinese people's wallets are fatter and Internet finance has developed. Not only are there more scammers, but they are also smarter, and small scams have become complex and large scams.

In the jungle society, life is calculated, the harvesters will never be gentle to the leeks, and traps are everywhere. We never know where things will go wrong, and if we are greedy, we will step into empty space.

Fortunately, this year, the most stringent financial regulatory storm in history has hit, and regulatory policies for private equity funds, ICO, P2P, and cash loans have been gradually implemented. Taking advantage of regulatory arbitrage and brutally harvesting the leeks of the whole people will gradually become a thing of the past.

But the leeks must always remember that in the era of unified supervision, the state will no longer cover for you. Whether you invest in fake P2P or buy fake financial products, you are responsible for your own gains and losses. The rules for the safe survival of the leeks will not change in the future - improve your IQ and control excessive greed, so that you can walk on the road to prosperity.

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.