It is not the dream of decentralization, but rather account freezes, capital risk control, fraud allegations, and the unsolvable cases.

Author: Liu Honglin

Only by walking in the vastness can one know the insignificance of a person. Only by wandering through history can one understand the brevity of life. Walking and daydreaming help us clear away external distractions and discover our own smallness. Knowing that truth is not easily grasped, one no longer resorts to sophistry. Understanding that all things have spirit, one no longer claims superiority.

This is what director Jia Zhangke wrote at the beginning of his book "Jia's Thoughts," set in the sandstorm-laden Dunhuang.

Starting from Linfen, Shanxi, to Dunhuang nearly two thousand kilometers away, the journey is long. My bedtime reading comes from this native of Fen Yang, Shanxi. Reading about his life starting from Fen Yang, those memories revolving around video halls, tapes, and county art troupes, he says that the county town is the most authentic and substantial part of Chinese society; it is his starting point and also the lens through which he observes China.

Thus, Jia Zhangke's films always revolve around county towns. His films do not focus on skyscrapers but on the people of Linfen, Fen Yang, and Taiyuan. In the documentary "Fen Yang Kid Jia Zhangke," he recalls a time when his teacher made the whole class watch "Dong Cunrui," and the girl class leader cried, prompting everyone to learn from her. At that time, he did not know that "expression" could become a profession, but the pace of change was too fast, and reality was more intense than the script. What he does is merely use a county town as a viewfinder to reshoot those out-of-focus frames in China's transformation.

The county town is China's intermediate state, neither a traditional village nor a first-tier city. You can see government buildings, department stores, and well-decorated wedding companies, as well as tricycles by the vegetable market, utility poles plastered with "certificate application ads," and elderly people in floral cotton jackets. The county town has the atmosphere of a commercial society and the stickiness of human relationships; it has the skin of modernization and the skeleton of traditional society. It is the most authentic mixed reality of China.

But in this reality, the Bitcoin we know hardly exists.

In cafes in Shanghai and Shenzhen, people discuss Bitcoin as a technological revolution, a global value network; you can hear entrepreneurs talking about RWA, L2 scaling, DAO governance, on-chain settlement; Web3 conferences, licensing in Hong Kong, compliance in Singapore, token economics… It seems we are witnessing a wave that is about to replace the old world. But once you step into a county town, the reality of virtual currency is entirely different.

A friend of mine who works as a lawyer in a county town told me that in recent years he has taken on many cases related to "virtual currency," almost all occurring in prefecture-level cities and counties in the northwest or central regions. He mentioned a real case: a young man from a small town who helped people exchange USDT for RMB through a "side job" on WeChat, earning dozens of yuan in fees for each transaction. He was in his twenties, had little education, and had never been exposed to any financial knowledge. He thought this "side job" had a low threshold and low risk, just a few WeChat messages, a card, and a few hundred yuan in fees, "I’m just helping people exchange currency, not scamming anyone." It wasn't until the police came knocking that he realized he was a funding channel in a fraud chain. When questioned by the judge, he couldn't even clearly explain "where the funds came from and where they went."

This story is not an exception. The "Bitcoin" in county towns is not the dream of decentralization, but rather account freezes, capital risk control, fraud allegations, and the unsolvable cases. There is no demand for USDT cross-border settlement, no entry into the Web3 ecosystem, and certainly no KOLs explaining cold wallets and MetaMask. The first time people hear about "virtual currency" is often because someone was scammed, someone couldn't leave a group after joining, or someone’s money was transferred out and never returned.

Over time, the impression of virtual currency among county residents is not about technology or the future, but two words: "scammers."

This creates a visible fracture: virtual currency within the Fifth Ring is about entrepreneurial financing, policy observation, and speeches at Web3 summits, discussing compliance, stablecoins, Payfi, and tokenization; while outside the Fifth Ring, virtual currency is about account freezes, group exits, police reports, and court cases, and conversations like "Do you know that villager who deals with coins?"

County towns are not lacking in smartphones or information channels, but they lack the trust foundation and usage scenarios to understand these technologies. Here, Bitcoin is not "digital gold," but a "high-risk synonym"; saying Ethereum is an asset issuance platform sounds like some kind of scam code here; claiming Web3 is a decentralized ideal governance method might evoke thoughts of "pig butchering" in others' minds.

In the information dissemination system, such misunderstandings are only amplified. In the social circles of big cities, you see who completed a Pre-A round, which project made it to the TechCrunch homepage, and who spoke in Singapore about "global asset circulation"; while in county town WeChat groups, painful experiences circulate like "a female college student lost 600,000 yuan in a coin scam," "local police remind not to participate in virtual currency trading," and "bank cards frozen for three months cannot be unblocked."

County towns are not backward; they simply live in a different order. In this context, Bitcoin and Web3 are difficult to explain clearly, even if they indeed have technological content and global potential. But reality does not automatically grant you a positive perception just because you have technology.

This is also why, when we discuss compliance paths, infrastructure construction, and the global settlement capabilities of stablecoins within the industry, we must acknowledge that this industry operates in a "layered manner" in China. Inside and outside the Fifth Ring are two financial languages, two information systems, two risk perceptions, and two life orders. People in county towns are not outsiders, but they are often the "last ones to be told."

Bitcoin can enter county towns, but we have yet to find an appropriate way to tell the story. When facing grassroots public servants who are exhausted from dealing with cases of "USDT money laundering" or "electronic fraud channels," discussing what a token economic model is seems distant and powerless; for families that have suffered losses in funding schemes, even the most advanced technology is unlikely to earn a second trust.

But sometimes we also need to think from their perspective: for many grassroots law enforcement officers, they are not against technology, but they lack the extra energy to understand it. The cases they handle daily have already worn them out—electronic fraud, money laundering, cross-border funds, account freezes; each line involves countless families' losses behind it. They cannot see the future of "blockchain technology," only the reality of "on-chain funds" leading to bankruptcy. They do not want to understand; reality simply does not give them the time to understand.

Ordinary residents of county towns also find it difficult to discern which marketing pitches are scams. The difference between stablecoins and pyramid scheme coins, the boundary between platform coins and points, the distance between on-chain projects and funding schemes—most county users have almost no judgment tools. This lack of "financial literacy" is the deep-seated reason why scams repeatedly succeed. When you see someone around you being deceived, you naturally label the entire industry.

If technology wants to truly enter life, it must first learn to speak the language of life. County towns are not marginal areas but rather a reality context we have yet to engage in serious dialogue with. It is not about making it adapt to our vocabulary, but we should also try to understand the language there. Perhaps the story of Bitcoin, besides being told at Web3 conferences and financing news, should also happen in more ordinary places.

The wave of technology will eventually come, but it must pass through not only the yellow earth and sandstorms but also misunderstandings, vigilance, and silence.

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