Author: Yuanshan Dongjian
Zhang Xue arrived 20 years earlier. How much earlier were Saylor and Tom Lee?
Zhang Xue's motorcycle photos went viral, and after doing some digging, I couldn't help but think of our cryptocurrency version of Zhang Xue.
He didn't graduate from junior high school, lost his father at the age of 10, and at 19, he rode a beat-up motorcycle in the rain for three hours to chase a TV station's car, just to be filmed on camera while riding.
Zhangxue Motorcycle was founded in 2024, and the first batch of vehicles was delivered in 2025.
By 2026, they will have crushed Ducati, Yamaha, Kawasaki, and other European, American, and Japanese giants who have dominated the track for decades in the WSBK World Superbike Championship.
Two wins in two days, with a lead of nearly 4 seconds. But what really made me uneasy wasn't the inspirational story, it was the data.
Last year, the company's output value was 750 million yuan, R&D investment was 69.58 million yuan, and the annual loss was 22.78 million yuan. In January of this year, it raised 90 million yuan in Series A funding, valuing the company at 1.09 billion yuan.
The 820RR starts at 43,800 RMB, while imported motorcycles with the same configuration cost at least 100,000 RMB. Within 100 hours of pre-orders opening, 5,543 units were reserved.
A company that was losing money built a car that outperformed a century-old giant, sold it for less than half the price, and still had orders piling up.
Then I discovered something even more interesting.
Some people in the crypto world are doing the exact same thing: losing money and then frantically adding to their positions.
- Saylor of Strategy holds 738,000 BTC, but last week he spent $1.28 billion to buy 17,994 BTC.
- Tom Lee of BitMine held 4.4 million ETH, with a paper loss of approximately $7.4 billion. He was adding to his position every week in February and March.
Zhang Xue, Saylor, and Tom Lee—three people on three different tracks, but their underlying strategies are exactly the same: when everyone thinks he's crazy, he's using losses to gain leverage.
But the difference lies in the verification speed.
Zhang Xue's answer came out in two days.
Leading by 3.669 seconds in the first round, they won again in the second. Every penny spent on R&D was directly rewarded by the track.
Saylor and Tom Lee's answers are still pending. There's no clear path to trade BTC and ETH; only time will tell how long it will yield returns.
But after learning about Zhang Xue's experiences, one detail left a deep impression on me.
He founded his company in 2024 and delivered his first batch of vehicles in 2025. There was only one year in between. During that year, he was losing money building the cars, and nobody believed him, saying, "What are you, a middle school graduate, doing building motorcycles?" Then last weekend, the answer came.
Before the answer is revealed, "madman" and "pioneer" look exactly the same.
Most people in the world who bet against the trend do indeed lose in the end. But there are a few exceptions; they're not crazy, they just arrived early.
Zhang Xue arrived 20 years earlier. How much earlier were Saylor and Tom Lee?
