OKX Founder Star Xu: Earned About 10,000 Bitcoins Through Algorithms, Misjudged Ethereum
Star Xu, founder of OKX, stated in a lengthy interview aimed at the French community that around 2012 to 2013, he researched public liquidity pools and random mechanisms on the on-chain dice platform Just-Dice, creating his own market-making algorithm: increasing positions when the platform lost and withdrawing when winning, ultimately earning about 10,000 Bitcoins; at that time, a single bet could reach 500 Bitcoins. The platform wrote the house edge as approximately 51% for the dealer and 49% for the players into verifiable logic, which he likened to later automated market-making pools.
Inspired by an American TV series in 2011, he read the white paper, opened an account on Mt. Gox, and attempted mining using servers he controlled. After founding the exchange in 2013, he was one of the first to list Litecoin globally, gaining traffic. In the interview, he referred to the period when Bitcoin was still seen by many as a gaming chip, stating that programmers were placing heavy bets on public mathematics through code.
In the same interview, he admitted to a misjudgment in 2017: as a Bitcoin supporter, when Ethereum became popular and Vitalik approached him to discuss listing it, he responded, "It's a garbage coin." He later stated that the value of an exchange lies not only in what assets it lists but also in its ability to continuously produce products that enhance user efficiency, mentioning later product lines such as unified trading accounts.
The 10,000 Bitcoins is based on his oral account, not an audited wallet proof; Just-Dice later shut down, and in 2013, the site experienced an operational error that allowed users to win about 1,300 Bitcoins, which is not the same as the market-making he described. The judgment of garbage coins has been contradicted by price history, and the interview serves as a reminder that it is necessary to remain in the market and adapt products.
In market mechanisms, this is the founder using early excess returns and public acknowledgment of mistakes to build brand credibility. The narrative sold is that of an exchange that only lists coins, while the premium bought is for a founder with a technical background who can adapt products. The funds do not move due to the interview; the beneficiaries are the retail mindset of OKX, while the pressured are competitors who still view the coin listing as the only moat.
Early heavy bets cannot be replicated as the official strategy of a compliant exchange.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Star Xu describes his first bucket of Bitcoins as statistical arbitrage on public randomness and liquidity pools, rather than mining machines or angel checks. The dice platform allowed coins to be deposited into the dealer's pool, with a structure similar to later AMMs, just with a simpler random seed. The 500 Bitcoins per bet indicates that the fiat anchor for coins at that time was very light, allowing code to act as leverage. Misjudging Ethereum reflects the same Bitcoin fundamentalism that collided with the smart contract wave in 2017: after successfully listing Litecoin, he locked himself into a filter of "non-Bitcoin is altcoin."
The capital path is: profits from the gaming pool turned into exchange equity, Litecoin traffic became the user base, and after misjudging Ethereum, competition shifted from coin types to accounts and efficiency. The unified account integrates spot, perpetual, and options into the same margin, compensating for the narrative of the public chain that was missed.
A similar path is that early operators of dice platforms later opened exchanges, and platforms that refused new assets were later overtaken by newcomers using coin listings to capture market share. The industry has transitioned from the chip era to the infrastructure era: misjudging a chain can be survivable, but misjudging product forms can hand traffic to others.
This represents a transfer of pricing power. The mechanism is that early asymmetry came from public mathematics and thin liquidity, while later asymmetry arises from compliance licenses and account experiences; the misjudgment itself has been turned into a license for continued charging.
ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
When chips are still cheap, code is leverage
Mislisting coins can be compensated, but locking in filters cannot be compensated
Exchanges survive by adapting products, not just changing rhetoric