Six Years of Cultivation, Writing a New Chapter in Finance, Matrixport's Advanced Journey from Crypto Asset Management to Super-Financial Account

Perhaps the memecoin PvP of this cycle has become truly boring, causing the market to fall into aesthetic fatigue. People are starting to reminisce about the golden age that truly shaped crypto history: ICOs littered the ground with money, creating countless wealth myths; Bitcoin fork wars sparked hashrate battles; the "HBO" triumvirate staged a power play among exchanges; the afro-haired SBF shone brightly with Wall Street connections and high-frequency trading capabilities...

Those who once stirred up storms in the crypto world, the "early elders of the coin circle," are now scattered in a parallel timeline, becoming topics of idle chatter: Li Xiaolai just released a new book on mental acuity and focus; Wang Chunhao spent $200 million on a space ticket; Sun Yuchen and Li Lin staged a "wine-sharing" reconciliation scene at a Hong Kong banquet; CZ jokingly mentioned "Sun's Olympic champion girlfriend" at an event. In Hong Kong's dinner parties, the elders of the coin circle mingled, toasted, and smiled brightly...

"Where is Wu Jihan?" someone couldn't help but ask.

The individual who once enlightened the industry as the first Chinese translator of the Bitcoin whitepaper, the creator of the Bitmain Empire, seems to deliberately hide from the spotlight, becoming increasingly low-key and mysterious. Many people know that after Bitmain's split, Wu Jihan, with shared mining operations and overseas mining farms, founded BitDeer.

Few have noticed that in this "split," Wu Jihan also took along Bitmain's Executive Director and Senior Investment Director, the then twenty-something Ge Yuesheng, giving birth to Matrixport, a crypto asset management company.

Left: Ge Yuesheng; Right: Wu Jihan

The Prehistoric Era of Matrixport

"My first internship, President Han was an investment manager and also my internship mentor. He introduced me to things like Bitcoin and mining," in a conversation with BlockBeats, Ge Yuesheng unconsciously traced the texture of the pillow, as if touching memories from 2013.

Let's rewind to twelve years ago, to that summer in Hangzhou, where a 21-year-old business management graduate could never have imagined that the Bitcoin evangelist he met during his internship at a VC firm would completely alter his life trajectory.

At that time, Wu Jihan was already a Bitcoin evangelist. He co-founded the Chinese area's earliest blockchain media outlet, 8btc, with Zhang Nian and others. Ge Yuesheng, who had been interested in hardware and computers since he was young, naturally had a curiosity about Bitcoin. One preached, one sought knowledge, and the two conversed more and more about mining, Bitcoin, and blockchain-related topics.

「So the two of us put our heads together and decided to go mining.」 Subsequently, they together invested in Bitcoin mining machines, built mining farms, and played until they decided to develop their own mining chips. They found the technical partner, Zhan Ketuan, and thus created Bitmain. Ge Yuesheng also joined Bitmain as a director and head of investment, witnessing the entire process of this hashing power revolution.

We mostly know what happened next. After several years of development, Bitmain became a giant in the token circle, covering all aspects of the business including mining machines, mining pools, mining farms, and trading platforms, and it received investments from major capital firms such as Sequoia Capital China. By early 2018, Bitmain had become the world's largest cryptocurrency mining machine company. At its peak, for every ten Bitcoin mining machines globally, seven were from this company, and for every ten Bitcoins mined, over half came from its mining farms.

These brilliant achievements were once Bitmain's medals of honor. However, its blocked IPO, asset shrinkage, management turmoil also brought criticism, leaving indelible scars. The end of 2018 was an especially harsh winter—when the price of Bitcoin fell below $4,000, this hashing power giant faced its darkest moment: a failed Hong Kong IPO, ammunition depleted in the BCH hashing war, and internal founder disputes gradually came to light.

After a night of thorough discussions, Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng chose to carry a new torch and leave the old camp. In February 2019, Matrixport was established in Singapore as a cryptocurrency asset management platform, with Wu Jihan as Chairman of the Board and Ge Yuesheng as CEO.

After Bitmain, Wu Jihan and Ge Yuesheng's Second Entrepreneurship

At that time, the main battlefields in the crypto world were only two sectors—the mining industry with roaring machines and the exchange battlefield shrouded in smoke. True asset management services were almost untouched; in the eyes of most, "asset management" was still an exclusive term of traditional finance. As Ge Yuesheng put it: "We were among the first in the industry to start asset management. Before that, the crypto world did not really have the concept of asset management; it was a very niche track."

This means that for Matrixport to engage in crypto asset management was like planting trees in a desert—there were no benchmarks. "Industry recognition" is a very abstract term, and when pioneering a new path, the role of industry recognition becomes apparent.

Left: Ge Yuesheng; Right: Wu Jihan, Image Source: Matrixport

In Ge Yuesheng's cognitive framework, wealth creation in the crypto world is divided into two forms: one is Market Beta Returns, such as "Bitcoin rising from $40,000 to $120,000, everyone becoming wealthy, paper wealth soaring, this all-encompassing appreciation does not lead to actual wealth transfer"; the other is Alpha Returns, "some gain while others lose, wealth undergoes redistribution and financial transfer, fundamentally taking money from others' pockets."

Based on this understanding, Matrixport's early business blueprint was divided into two dimensions: on the Beta side, fees are charged through spot trading and custody services; on the Alpha side, earnings are shared through quantitative strategies and structured product participation.

At a more specific product level, on the Beta side, Matrixport established an institutional-grade digital asset custody service provider, Cactus Custody; on the Alpha side, Matrixport introduced a series of diversified wealth management products, which received significant focus in the later stages.

The First Bull Market, Matrixport Created a New Unicorn

Matrixport was born in a bear market. As crypto OGs, Ge Yuesheng and Wu Jihan have experienced several cycles, witnessing many in the crypto space becoming poor overnight. They are well aware that "crypto investment is ten bets, nine losses, and even ten bets, ten losses." Crypto users need more than just a higher leverage gambling venue; they need a safety net to prevent asset loss, which is the true value of crypto wealth management services.

"Therefore, Matrixport aims to make Alpha money and help users engage in more stable wealth management," Ge Yuesheng told BlockBeats.

To persuade customers to move their money from their own wallets to the Matrixport platform, like in all traditional asset management industries, trust is the first hurdle. Fortunately, the industry credibility they accumulated during their time at Bitmain played a critical role, with those old miner friends who once spent nights debugging miners in the outskirts of Beijing becoming Matrixport's earliest cornerstone users.

Those who understand miners' needs the most are still the miners themselves; as first-generation miners in the crypto space, Ge Yuesheng and Wu Jihan deeply understand the true needs of miners.

At that time, the mining community lacked effective hedging tools. On one hand, they wanted to hoard Bitcoin, but on the other hand, they had to sell coins regularly to pay high electricity bills while also worrying about price volatility affecting mining revenue. Therefore, Matrixport first introduced the "DCI Dual Currency Investment" model from traditional asset management into the crypto space.

Dual Currency Structured Investment is essentially the combination of a money market deposit and a currency option to provide a return higher than the standard yield. In the traditional foreign exchange market, purchasing RMB and HKD dual currency products can achieve an approximately 10% annual return, while automatically hedging the conversion risk between the two currencies. When applied in the crypto field, the product introduced by Matrixport combines fiat currency with cryptocurrency.

For example, a miner who originally had to sell 100 bitcoins every month to pay a $3 million electricity bill can now use this product and set a conversion price 5% below market price. If the price of bitcoin rises, the miner can earn an 8% annualized return; if it falls, they can convert at the predetermined price to USDT to pay the electricity bill. This product falls under the category of fixed-income contracts, with the yield ratio agreed upon at the time of signing and delivered in different currencies upon maturity. It has been imitated by exchanges like Binance and gradually become an industry standard.

A bull market always accompanies the fastest growth. During the 2021 bull market surge, Matrixport achieved a key leap, establishing a closed-loop product matrix covering "custody-trading-lending-wealth management"; structured products gradually went online, the team size expanded from tens of people to over a hundred; and the customer base transitioned from solely miners to diversified entities such as family offices and hedge funds.

It was this "infrastructure + strategic ecosystem" model that enabled Matrixport to successfully attract investments from top institutions such as DST Global, C Ventures, and K3 Ventures in August 2021, valuing the company at $1 billion, completing a Series C funding round, and becoming one of Singapore's unicorns.

Survival Philosophy of Matrixport in a Market Crash

Everything always has two sides. The flip side of the crypto industry's wealth creation effect is the frequent market crashes and high-profile liquidation events. Even the industry darling FTX suffered an overnight liquidation due to poor risk management, causing a one-day evaporation of hundreds of billions of dollars in crypto market capitalization. Those once high-flying institutions: Three Arrows Capital, BlockFi, Celsius, all demonstrated the cost of greed.

Since its inception, Matrixport has weathered two bull-bear cycles. Looking back on the journey of ups and downs, Ge Yuesheng believes that the smartest thing Matrixport has done is its conservative business philosophy.

As he puts it, "Being a conservative asset management institution, instead of always thinking about how to make money, one should leave a safety cushion for any business. This may be the reason why Matrixport still exists today." CEO Ge Yuesheng, who has experienced Bitcoin's more than ten halvings, speaks calmly and firmly, exuding a convincing confidence.

Unlike some companies that suffered from one-sided market-making, Ge Yukun can't remember what he was doing on the day of an extreme market event. For Matrixport, although market impact is inevitable, the impact has always been firmly controlled within an acceptable range. "We ourselves will not face any liquidity crunch because we don't use leverage, we don't need to top up margin, even in an industry-wide crash, the money is still there."

Matrixport has established an internal risk control committee, relying on a rigorous risk model and high-standard operational processes, to properly manage funds even in extreme market conditions. Faced with a scenario of large redemptions due to panic or strategy adjustments, the company has long prepared corresponding plans that can meet clients' needs for bottom fishing or adding positions during liquidity crunch while avoiding endangering overall security due to excessive market speculation.

"For our asset management institution, the most common scenario in an extreme market event is clients redeeming their assets, leading to a liquidity shortage. The liquidity shortage could be due to two possibilities: one is for bottom fishing, and the second is for adding positions. For these two possibilities, we have launched corresponding products that can directly assist clients in their operations."

Security and risk control are actually things that many people have talked about to exhaustion, but in fact, many peers still suffer losses in these two areas. Ge Yukun understands deeply that "security" and "risk control" are the two cornerstones of the asset management industry, and it is on this foundation that service quality and product competitiveness are built.

When asked about the client attraction strategy during a bear market, Ge Yukun's response was quite unexpected: "We don't take specific actions to attract clients."

In his view, regardless of a bull or bear market, the change in Matrixport's asset scale is not significant. Because the fluctuation in coin prices only changes the total market value measured in USD, Matrixport does not make significant operational adjustments in either a bear or bull market, only normal iterations.

"The underlying logic of the asset management industry is actually very simple: help clients make money, and then take a portion of the money earned. Unlike traditional asset management models where a fixed management fee is charged even if clients lose money, the unique high volatility of the crypto industry means that crypto asset management, unable to simply replicate this logic, also has its profit ceiling constrained. Regardless of how sluggish the market is, no product can achieve high returns; even in a bull market, the profit potential is also limited by the actual profit level of clients. Crypto asset management is essentially a collaborative relationship where interests are closely tied with clients."

In Ge Yukun's view, true asset management demand has never been related to market trends: "That's how the asset management industry is – even Buffett doesn't make money every year, but that doesn't stop him from being the richest man."

Compared to the price volatility, Matrixport is more concerned about changes in the interest rate market. Once the interest rate market heats up, the growth rate and yield of the asset management industry will both increase significantly.

However, similar to the growth rate data provided by some trading platforms, Matrixport also feels that, based on the current situation, the current bull market—from last year to this year—is significantly less heated compared to the previous cycle.

"During the violent expansion period from November to early December last year, the interest rate level reached its peak, but then quickly declined. Compared to the previous bull market, not only was the duration shorter, but the peak level was also significantly lower," Ge Yuesheng mentioned some data support, the level of interest rates that long parties are willing to borrow reflects the speculative enthusiasm and the situation of the interest rate market.

Through two bull and bear cycles, Matrixport steadily develops

After weathering the storm, Matrixport has entered a new stage of steady development. In Matrixport's customer portrait, cryptocurrency investors are clearly divided into two types of people: one is hands-on trading, participating in DeFi mining, chasing meme coin trends, the adventurers who "treat this as a casino and playground"; the other is those who view cryptocurrency assets as part of their portfolio, the allocators who "treat it with the same calmness as buying gold ETFs," and the difference between these two types of customers is quite significant.

"Our main customers are still the second type, who can accept a reasonable pricing between returns and risks, and then entrust their funds to us." From the earliest group of miners to now, Matrixport's main users have transitioned to high-net-worth individuals and institutions, who are more concerned about long-term annualized returns than tomorrow's Bitcoin price fluctuations.

In terms of global strategic layout, Matrixport adheres to the operating principle of "where the money is, we go." "Financial institutions have a strong local presence, and if you live in the United States, you will definitely prefer to keep your money in a local bank," as Ge Yuesheng put it. Starting from Singapore, Matrixport has expanded to Hong Kong, Bangkok, and multiple points in Europe. Matrixport's global compliance layout has begun to take shape, securing multiple financial licenses in different regions. As of now, Matrixport's compliance map spans three continents:

Asia: Hong Kong Trust Company License, Money Lender License; Singapore MAS Major Payment Institution License (acquired by subsidiary Fly Wing in 2025);

Europe: UK FCA Compliance Authorization, Switzerland FINMA SRO-VFQ Membership; in 2024, acquired the Swiss CFAM license and upgraded to MAM (Matrixport Asset Management AG);

Americas: US MSB Money Services Business License.

Facing the question of "Why not enter the Middle East," Ge Yuesheng gave a rational answer: "The Middle East is very special, and in fact, today the vast majority of fund management for Middle Easterners is actually in Switzerland."

For Matrixport, Asia as a huge market and the important region for localized operations in Europe and America both occupy a pivotal position in the company's strategic vision. Through the Swiss license, the company can not only cover the entire European market but also radiate to the Middle East region with its unique advantage. As for the higher compliance costs and more competitive US market, the company is adopting a steady and gradual approach.

In terms of product matrix construction, Matrixport continues to innovate and has gradually launched a series of products that can meet the needs of different people with different risk appetites, forming a complete product system.

Basic and Advanced Asset Management Solutions: Matrixport provides a diverse and comprehensive wealth management solution. This includes basic wealth management such as current deposits and fixed income that are suitable for stable returns; structured wealth management products such as dual-currency, shark fin, trend win, seagull, snowball, installment purchase, DNT, etc. tailored to different income needs; ETH Staking and Restaking on-chain wealth management that meet the needs of on-chain rewards; as well as strategy investment products targeting public and private domain traffic seeking diversified returns;

Comprehensive Institutional Service Support: Matrixport provides comprehensive professional support, covering over-the-counter trading services (OTC), institutional-grade custody services (Cactus Custody), bulk brokerage services, etc.;

Tokenization of Real-World Assets: Matrixport has also built the RWA platform Matrixdock and issued short-term US bond tokens STBT and gold tokens XAUm. This allows investors to hold excellent assets from the traditional financial markets on-chain, further optimizing asset allocation. Although FTX has also attempted similar products in the past, most competitors do not focus on this niche market. Compared to this area where other platforms rarely venture, Matrixport has shown remarkable foresight in the RWA sector.

Powerful Trading Experience: Matrixport has also enhanced the trading functions of its platform, creating a smooth spot trading system and contract trading functions that rival top exchanges in depth and breadth;

Professional Research Reports to Aid Investment Decisions: Leveraging its professional analytical capabilities, Matrixport regularly produces high-quality industry research reports, delving deep into market dynamics, emerging trends, and providing valuable market information to its users. Its reports' accuracy has gained popularity in the community. Whether you are a novice trader or a seasoned player, you can use the Matrixport App to complete full-circle operations in the cryptocurrency financial field, enjoying a convenient, efficient, and professional cryptocurrency financial experience.

Matrixport started with asset management but has always been committed to becoming a one-stop super account entrance for users to enter the Web3 field. By continuously enriching its product categories, Matrixport has effectively lowered the barrier for users to enter the Web3 field, providing users with one-stop encrypted financial services, truly achieving multidimensional value creation.

At the same time, the company has experienced explosive data growth. According to Ge Yuesheng, the latest market data shows that Matrixport's managed and custodied assets have reached $6 billion, and from the perspective of the balance sheet, core data remains stable at around $4 billion. This achievement is a strong proof of the company's rigorous risk control and sound business philosophy.

Standing at This Moment, Looking at the Next Six Years

Six years have flown by in the blink of an eye, from initially envisioning the Bitcoin miracle in a cold night at the mine to now a global compliance layout and a stage of continuously extending financial services. The birth and growth of Matrixport have witnessed much history.

"I hope to become more compliant and to become a public-listed company." This year marks the sixth year of Matrixport's existence. While envisioning the next six years, Ge Yuesheng confidently outlines the company's blueprint: Matrixport not only aims to become the authoritative entrance for encrypted assets but also aims to extend to a broader financial field, providing customers with one-stop encrypted financial services covering OTC trading to diversified asset management.

For all companies in the encryption industry, when a company grows to a certain scale, there are two ways out: a traditional IPO or the trendy IDO. However, Matrixport has chosen the traditional IPO route because the purpose of going public is not only for cashing out but also to enhance credibility and reduce customer trust costs. Just as the different interest rates offered by traditional financial institutions' deposits symbolize, credibility comes with a cost. It is this openness, transparency, and authority that make customers willing to entrust millions of dollars here.

As the wheels of history roll forward, we will always remember these moments that shape destiny. Just as Ge Yuesheng reflected, "The development of anything follows its objective laws, and the same goes for the encryption industry; what we pursue is not a momentary novelty but long-term stability and profound trust."

Just like its name, Matrixport, derived from Wu Jihan's favorite movie "The Matrix," implies a matrix full of infinite possibilities, while "port" symbolizes an entrance. This not only represents the birth of a company but also serves as a gateway leading investors into the encrypted world.

When Three Arrows Capital sank in the leverage game, when BlockFi collapsed due to liquidity drying up, when trillions of "old money" passed through this gateway, people will finally understand: true asset management never relies on the leverage myth, true asset management is not the frenzy of a bull market, but rather the watchmen who stay committed to the industry long-term regardless of market conditions.