The Secret Behind a Market Value of 300 Billion: The Crypto Stories of Moore Threads' Founder

Moor Threads, touted as the “No. 1 domestic GPU stock,” debuted on the STAR Market on December 5, with its stock price skyrocketing 468.78% at the open, soaring from the issue price of 114.28 yuan to 650 yuan. Its total market cap instantly surpassed 300 billion yuan. A-share investors are celebrating wildly: those who won the IPO lottery earned a net profit of 267,000 yuan per lot, E Fund has an unrealized gain of nearly 1.9 billion yuan, and early investors like Tencent and ByteDance have made over 35 times their investment. One called Peixian Qianyao even achieved a staggering 6,200 times return.

But behind the glamour, co-founder Li Feng’s dark history in the crypto world has been dug up.

Back in 2017, Li Feng, together with crypto heavyweights like Li Xiaolai and Xue Manzi, launched a project called “Malege Coin” (MGD), claiming to be “the first blockchain performance art piece in human history,” and crowdfunded 5,000 ETH. The whitepaper was filled with grand claims—a star-studded team of CEOs, CTOs, CFOs, PhDs, returnees, and investment banking elites, and a promise to reserve 10% of tokens until 2100. In reality, most of these backgrounds were fabricated, but the project still completed its fundraising in a week.

Even more outrageous, because the project’s name was deemed too sensitive, they were summoned by regulators and quickly rebranded it as “Alpaca Coin MGD.”

The bigger scandal broke in June 2018. The founder of a leading exchange, Star, publicly accused Li Feng on social media, claiming that Li Feng borrowed 1,500 BTC from him in 2014 (worth 80 million RMB at the time) and not only failed to repay when due, but also disappeared altogether. Star posted the loan contract and video evidence, stating he would sue in both China and the US and apply for asset preservation. Note that by mid-2018, those 1,500 BTC were worth about $10 million USD, and today their market value has risen to $135 million.

Li Feng responded that the money was not a loan, but Star’s investment in the MGD project, and that Star tried to withdraw after the project failed to launch.

According to the agreement, the initial “Bitcoin Lending Agreement” was signed on December 17, 2014. When it matured in 2016, an extension was granted due to “the borrower’s personal reasons.” On March 30, 2017, it was renewed under Hu Zhibin’s guarantee, with the loan period extended until the end of 2017. However, whether this debt was an investment or a loan remains disputed by both parties to this day.

Now that Moor Threads’ market cap is 300 billion yuan, will these old debts be dug up again?