The sky has fallen for the people of Po County.

Overnight BTC continues to fluctuate around the 30-day moving average of 105k. Today, the 6.5 teaching chain internal reference "The First Stablecoin Company Circle's US Stock IPO" mentioned another major industry event, which is that the financial regulatory agency MAS in Singapore issued a new regulation at the end of May, significantly tightening the access to the encryption/web3 industry. The new regulation will take effect at the end of June, without any buffer period, showing a quite tough attitude!

From the so-called "encryption paradise" to the expulsion order, this drastic policy adjustment inevitably makes the encryption industry exclaim that the web3 retreat in Po County is about to arrive.

The sky has fallen for the people of Po County.

Why do you say that?

Jiaolian still remembers that more than three years ago, in February 2022, the Supreme People's Court issued a judicial interpretation (Fa Shi [2022] No. 5), which listed "illegal absorption of funds by means of virtual currency transactions and other means" as one of the ways of illegal fundraising, and for the first time included virtual currency transactions in the scope of regulation of illegal fundraising at the criminal legal level.

This is to plug a loophole. Previously, illegal fundraising and fundraising fraud only recognized RMB (as well as some legally recognized forms of property). In other words, you would only be considered illegal if you received RMB from someone else; receiving BTC, USDT, or any other virtual currency is not considered illegal. Why is that? Because we are a civil law system country, and we only recognize legal statutes. If the legal statutes do not specify it, then it does not count.

Illegal fundraising and fundraising fraud are crimes under criminal law, and once violated, they will face the most severe criminal sanctions. However, it is precisely because of such a loophole that those who issued air coins and raised BTC and USDT from retail investors managed to exploit the legal loopholes and remain unpunished.

And it is precisely because of such a loophole that our country's judicial crackdown on some coin fund-raising scams in those years is far weaker than that of the United States on the other side of the Pacific. The United States is a system of the law of the sea, and it does not rigidly copy the law, but focuses on flexibility. So you don't see, the SEC directly moved out of the net of Haowei testing, and caught a lot of big fish and small fish at once, directly accusing you of the crime of illegal issuance of securities, and you should be caught, sentenced, and punished, so unhappy.

Of course, how to strike a balance between protecting innovation and combating fraud is truly an art. The US SEC has taken strong measures for several years, successfully provoking resentment throughout the entire encryption industry. After the encryption industry strongly promoted the ascendancy of Trump, the first action was to oust SEC Chairman Gary Gensler. This is a later story and will not be discussed here.

Speaking of our judicial interpretation, the most critical issue for the major players here is that it is a judicial interpretation, not a revision of the legal provisions.

Those who understand the law know that there is a legal principle called "the law does not have retroactive effect." This means that the legal provisions amended today only apply to the future and cannot be used to retroactively address past matters, punishing yesterday's actions based on the provisions amended today. Otherwise, it would be terrifying; the entire society would live in fear, and the principle of "what is not prohibited by law is allowed" would completely lose its meaning, because you would not know if tomorrow the actions of today would be redefined as illegal. Without certainty, society would fall into chaos.

However, there must be exceptions to the principles. The principle of non-retroactivity of laws only applies to amendments of legal provisions, not to judicial interpretations. In other words, if a judicial interpretation expands the existing legal provisions, then it is theoretically permissible for it to have retroactive effect. This means that the judicial interpretation issued in 2022 can theoretically be used to combat coin issuance activities from 2017.

Thus, the big cuts that everyone within the country has been shouting against have almost scattered overnight, fleeing at the sight of the wind.

The great mutters who had escaped looked around. The world is so big, where is the place? Going to the United States? I'm afraid of being eaten and wiped clean by the American-style iron fist. Going to Dubai? I'm afraid of being kidnapped and scared. Looking at it, the big cutters invariably take a fancy to Po County, which is mixed with China and foreign countries and has loose supervision. Except for the high cost of living, other aspects are almost the same as living in China (such as language, jet lag, etc.), which makes the wandering people feel a lot less homesick. As for the cost of living, for those who have become billionaires, it is naturally sprinkled with water.

The key point is that Po County and mainland China do not have a bilateral extradition treaty, which makes the big scammers feel quite relieved. Furthermore, Po County has adopted extremely lenient policies towards fundraising through coin issuance since the bull market cycle in 2017. In simple terms, it means you can issue coins and scam as you like, as long as you block people from Po County and do not scam them.

Recalling the fervent ICO wave of 2017-2018, various innovative methods of launching coins were invented, including fork coins, public chain coins, and ERC-20 coins. Even pure air coins were issued at a speed that couldn't keep up with the frenzy of retail investors. If you got in, you made a profit; the so-called private placement quotas had to be obtained through connections and backdoors. Buying at a low price and then selling it to the next buyer yielded profits of several times over. The entire encryption market fell into an irrational frenzy, which only cooled down with the harsh losses of the deep bear market at the end of 2018, bringing the heated minds of investors back to reality.

In such a crazy market, there may be only two types of people: one is a gambler, and the other is a fraudster. There may also be some people who are both gamblers and fraudsters.

No one can remain calm in front of the vivid examples of their loser friends becoming rich overnight. Nor can anyone hold a sickle and watch billions of wealth lay before them without harvesting it. With a weapon in hand, the urge to kill arises. Moreover, in such a market where everyone loses their rationality, the so-called weapon is just a silver tongue.

Everyone is lost in the swirling money. "I'm not gambling, nor am I cheating; it's a shame not to earn money" has become the motto and life creed of many.

There is no feast in the world. The joy of violence will surely usher in a violent end. When the drumbeat of drumming and passing flowers suddenly stopped, the stampede began to appear, the private placement cut the public offering, the project side cut the private placement, and the sickle cut each other became the last return to the light before the industry died in the bear market. The one who locks the position becomes a fool. The one who sells at a high level becomes the winner. The big cut of coin fundraising made a lot of money, and the gamblers who chased the price at a high level lost their bottoms.

Gamblers accuse scammers of manipulating the market without honor. Scammers accuse gamblers of not adhering to casino rules and not accepting losses.

At that time, the so-called "compliance" that was popular was to go to Po County to register a so-called foundation as the main body of coin issuance. This so-called is in line with the rules of Po County, and it is the people from the mainland who are cut. But among the leeks that are harvested, which one is not sent thousands of miles away? Go out of the wall and register a fake identity, just to exchange the precious pie in your hand for other people's air coins. Which one is not blinded by lard, and wants to take low-priced chips and sell them at a high price to the stupid leeks in the back, so that he can cut off a handful of descendants and get rich?

Zhou Yu beats Huang Gai, one is willing to hit, the other is willing to endure. In the end, neither is more pure than the other, neither is more kind than the other, nor is either more just than the other.

So the big cuts of that year were also harvested with a clear conscience - "They are all unscrupulous gamblers, cutting them is also acting on behalf of heaven!"

Whenever retail investors want to make a big move, they will be met with a big setback. A small retail investor like you won't attract the attention of the heavens. There are plenty of ways like major sell-offs, hackers, exit scams, telecom fraud, and so on, to harvest you.

The mantis stalks the cicada, unaware of the oriole behind. As the saying goes, the cycle of heaven is fair, and the heavens do not overlook anyone.

In February 2022, the judicial interpretation arrived, and the big splitters fled with their heads in their hands.

In a short period of time, a large number of people gathered in Po County, with voices discussing web3 and encryption topics everywhere in cafes and five-star hotels, either in Chinese or a mix of Chinese and English. Numerous KOLs on various social platforms also praised the thriving scene in Po County, and did not forget to criticize Hong Kong, which was still struggling with strict regulations at the time, claiming that due to insufficient openness in thought and regulation, it might miss the status of Asia's financial center in the web3 era.

The unfortified areas of Po County embrace encryption, possibly just because they have not suffered from the market's brutal blows and have not felt the power of the bottomless harvesting by the big cuts.

In November 2022, the once-popular darling of the market, FTX, the world's second-largest encryption trading platform, collapsed. The fortunes of countless investors vanished overnight. Temasek, a sovereign wealth fund fully owned by the Singapore government, invested a total of $275 million in FTX in two rounds from October 2021 to January 2022. After FTX declared bankruptcy, Temasek announced a complete write-down of its investment and admitted that its trust in founder SBF was a "judgment error."

In addition, there are a number of other cases related to encryption fraud, money laundering, and so on, which may have prompted the government of Slope County to reconsider whether its past unprotected policy attitude was truly beneficial.

These reflections ultimately culminated in the new regulations issued at the end of May 2025, the "Guidelines for Licensing Digital Token Service Providers." The wild era of unlicensed web3 operations in Po County has thus come to an end.