From Bitcoin in a Taxi to 96 Conversations: MagoTalk EP96 Traces a Personal Path into Crypto
MagoTalk
Document type: episode recap, not a verbatim transcript. Personal experiences, judgments and market figures are presented as recollections and views expressed in the conversation.
October 1, 2026 — MagoTalk held its 96th episode on X Space, hosted by Mago and KCVision, with guest Steven Zhu. Instead of discussing short-term price movements, the three traced how personal growth connects with Crypto, NFTs and changes in the industry, arranging their experiences into a timeline that readers can examine.
The conversation opened with a distinction from KCVision: In Web3, being seen and being understood are two different things. Visibility comes from headlines and traffic; understanding requires a clear account of someone's experience: when they entered, what they care about, what they have done and what they plan to do next. Using his website, kcvision.space, as an example, he described research interests spanning crypto, blockchain, NFTs, AI, Bitcoin and privacy coins. He said meaningful collaboration starts when people can distinguish facts from opinions and recognize what is still developing.
An early entry does not guarantee a deeper understanding
Mago recalled first hearing the word “Bitcoin” in a taxi in 2013. The driver's family was mining it, but Mago was too busy with full-time work to follow up. He then spent roughly seven years, across two bull-and-bear cycles, on the sidelines. His actual entry came during the March 12, 2020 crash: Bitcoin nearly halved in a short period as the pandemic and cascading liquidations drove intense fear. He subsequently bought Bitcoin on an exchange and experienced both the excitement of 2021—Dogecoin nearly doubling in a day, astronomical prices for leading NFTs and DeFi Summer—and the sharp decline on May 19 that year.
KCVision's entry was later and more accidental. In 2018, he saw an investment poster on the street and went upstairs to hear the presentation, where he first learned about cryptocurrency. He began adding Bitcoin, Ether and Dogecoin alongside stocks and funds, and learned to invest a fixed amount at regular intervals. Soon after entering, he faced a steep decline, with volatility unlike anything he had encountered in equities. He stressed that he had never gone all in. Crypto later accounted for almost half of his assets at one point, but that proportion has since fallen.
Both agreed that entering early does not necessarily mean understanding deeply. Understanding comes from repeatedly organizing and reflecting on one's experience, rather than simply naming an entry year.
NFTs as communities and IP, rather than just pictures
KCVision made clear that he was not among those who rushed into Bored Ape NFTs in 2021. He began buying in earnest in late 2022 and early 2023, exploring Hong Kong projects, allowlists and airdrops. In his experience, NFTs have worse volatility and liquidity than major cryptocurrencies, making both buying and selling difficult. In 2024 and 2025, he acquired a small number of leading profile-picture NFTs at relatively low prices. His aim was to join holder communities and understand what their members were thinking, rather than capture a short-term price spread.
He attended a small gathering in Hong Kong with roughly ten to twenty people, including people working at listed companies, university teachers, students and independent project builders. The conversation rarely revolved around who had made the most money. Instead, people showed their work, told stories and discussed turning IP into products. His assessment was that very few projects were still building consistently and might survive. What matters is effective action in the market, rather than recruiting people to promote a token or collection.
Mago said he had bought Captain, MAYC, Pudgy Penguins and Azuki's second series mainly to experience different communities. Prices have fallen substantially, but he believes demand for collecting remains. Whether a project can recover in another cycle depends on whether it continues doing substantive work.
Industry memories arranged into a broader sequence
Mago linked events from 2020 to 2026: the March 12 and May 19 crashes; the collapse of an algorithmic stablecoin, failures of major funds and a leading exchange crisis in 2022; and Bitcoin reaching roughly $15,000. He then recalled the crypto winter spreading to traditional banks during the interest-rate tightening cycle, along with fears surrounding a dollar stablecoin losing its peg. He also referred to simultaneous declines across global assets in 2024 and extremely deep altcoin drawdowns following the tariff shock in 2025. These figures reflect recollections from the conversation, rather than independently checked market data.
He also discussed acquiring privacy coins during the bear market with encouragement from the community. KCVision suggested that growing discussion of “selective disclosure”—the idea that not all information must be fully public—helps explain renewed interest in privacy. Both recalled earlier MagoTalk episodes on the subject, while recent price volatility had brought it back into focus. KCVision emphasized that this episode was not investment advice; it merely noted an overlap between earlier conversations and subsequent market attention.
Steven Zhu: growth means choosing how to respond to established beliefs
Steven Zhu joined the conversation in its second half. He described growing up along a conventional family path: school, university and a nine-to-five job. For a time, he assumed that was simply how the world worked. Meeting people with broader experience, both inside and outside the industry, helped him realize that personal growth involves challenging existing beliefs and deciding whether to become a different version of oneself.
He said schools teach little about investing. He viewed the education system as a mechanism that turns people into cogs, and said he had left his related role. His introduction to investing came through Rich Dad Poor Dad, after which he gradually learned to distinguish assets from liabilities. Cars and watches often become liabilities when someone cannot afford the burden, and property prices do not only go up. Because his family was slow to accept new ideas, he missed Bitcoin at lower prices.
He used a memecoin trade to illustrate human behavior. On the eve of an inauguration, he saw related information while scrolling and initially suspected an account had been hacked. By the time he confirmed the news, the price had doubled. He made a small purchase, watched his paper profit grow quickly, then stayed because he thought the price could rise further—and watched it fall back. He wanted to focus less on the amount than on the difficulty of keeping greed, anger, delusion, pride and doubt as merely abstract ideas when faced with an enormous temptation. KCVision said he bought that day and sold everything before dinner, using the day's profit for a family meal. To him, the narrative spreading into family members issuing coins was already a sufficient warning sign.
Mago brought their conclusions together: Exercise, investing and learning all run against human instincts. Steven added an old Chinese saying: “First destiny, second luck, third feng shui, fourth the accumulation of virtue, fifth study.” Information is abundant; what is scarce is the portion within the noise that can actually be used.
After 96 episodes, they continue to build through regular output
The conversation returned to MagoTalk itself. The program had reached episode 96, with at least one episode almost every week for more than a year. Mago said his first reason for making the show was to improve the person doing the speaking. Topics often concern things he still wants to understand. Explaining them helps turn them into his own knowledge, in a process similar to the Feynman learning technique. He had not initially expected to keep going for so long.
KCVision and Mago also discussed ABAB News: more than a hundred daily news briefs and several opinion and in-depth articles each week. They said it had so far operated without relying on paid advertorials. Its coverage spans finance, technology, AI and crypto, aiming to avoid an information bubble centered on a single region. KCVision said that, outside social platforms, he now mainly scans headlines to catch the day's key developments.
The episode offered no recommendations to buy or sell. All three repeatedly returned to the same point: put personal experiences into a timeline, distinguish facts from opinions, then decide how to be understood within the industry.