Veteran crypto figure Jia Yueting

Written by | Sleepy.txt

Editor | Lin Wanwan

Jia Yueting has figured out the crypto world.

On October 8, he posted a picture of a car with "BNB" printed on it on X, with the caption "Drive a Binance car, enjoy a Binance life." The meme coin of the same name, "Binance Car," saw its market cap soar in response, rising to 30 million USD within just a few hours.

As the hype reached its peak, Jia Yueting personally came forward to clarify: he had never issued any coins.

Image source: X

Jia's car-making efforts are still stalled, but he clearly knows how to stir up waves in the crypto world. However, this time his play on the Binance meme was not accidental.

Just a few weeks ago, in September 2025, the crypto asset fund C10 Treasury managed by Jia Yueting announced its latest returns, with a floating profit of about 7%. A few days later, he made an even bigger move, spending 41 million USD to acquire Nasdaq-listed company QLGN.

If the shareholders' meeting passes, QLGN will be renamed CXC10 and pivot to cryptocurrency and Web3 business. According to the plan, C10 Treasury will also begin allocating to the top ten crypto assets.

From content and automobiles to finance, Jia Yueting has always been searching for a stage to continue his narrative. This time, he has once again tied himself to the crypto world.

More than a decade ago, the lights of LeEco's Beijing headquarters often stayed on late into the night. It was an era of ambition, with Jia Yueting standing on stage shouting "ecological disruption," aiming to piece together a vast future blueprint with hardware, content, and finance.

He was like a dream maker, building the future with concepts and visions. Investors and media in the audience were ignited by slogans like "disrupt television," "redefine mobile phones," and "create China's Tesla."

Now, based in Los Angeles, the returns of C10 Treasury and the QLGN acquisition plan have become new narrative material. He is building a larger story framework with data, compliance, and capital.

Whether Jia Yueting's transformation is a true metamorphosis or just old wine in a new bottle, the story must start from his fourteen-year entanglement with the crypto world.

The Era of Frenzy

In 2011, Jia Yueting was on the rise in his life.

Jia Yueting speaking at a press conference; Image source: Huxiu

LeEco had just gone public on the ChiNext board, becoming "China's first video stock." That year, the company's revenue was 598 million RMB, up 151% year-on-year, and net profit was 131 million RMB, up 87%. But his ambitions went far beyond a video website; he wanted to build an ecosystem spanning content, terminals, platforms, and applications.

That year, Li Ming entered his sights. Li Ming was the technical lead of LeEco Cloud, and in his spare time liked to study bitcoin, running nodes on his home computer. At that time, WeChat had just launched, Alibaba was preparing for its IPO, and Baidu was still the center of the traffic kingdom. Almost no one paid attention to this digital currency experiment.

But Jia Yueting took notice. He was always sensitive to new technologies, able to sniff out new directions amid the noise. That intuition made him notice the potential of blockchain earlier than his peers. He started talking to Li Ming, asking about the underlying logic of bitcoin, and probing whether this little-noticed technology could become part of the LeEco ecosystem.

From 2012 to 2013, Jia Yueting's "ecological disruption" reached its climax.

He first launched the first-generation Super TV, and then the following year launched the LeEco Box. The logic was simple: use hardware subsidies to gain users, charge for content to recoup costs, and amplify returns through platform effects. This approach was unique at the time; while others were still troubled by copyright fees, he had already figured out how to offset costs through hardware sales.

At that time, bitcoin's price broke through 1,000 USD for the first time. Li Ming sent Jia Yueting an email proposing to add mining functionality to the LeEco Box and LeEco TV, allowing users to use mined coins to offset the annual 499 RMB membership fee.

This plan involved hardware, software, networks, and finance—far more complex than conventional products. But it tied hardware, content, digital currency, and user incentives into one system, which was exactly Jia Yueting's taste. Later, he directly named Li Ming to lead the project at a strategy meeting, breaking the company's normal reporting chain. "Normally, the big boss shouldn't personally assign someone to a project," Li Ming later recalled.

In 2015, LeEco reached its peak. Annual revenue was 13.017 billion RMB, up nearly 90% year-on-year, and its market value once exceeded 150 billion RMB, making it a star company on the ChiNext board. Super TV sales exceeded 3 million units, LeEco phones caused a market sensation upon launch, and sports copyright and car-making projects were rolled out simultaneously. Jia Yueting's "ecological disruption" showed its true power for the first time.

That year, he turned his attention to finance. Hardware and content supported the surface of the story, but to keep the whole system running, a new fulcrum was needed. Finance was seen by him as the real lever for ecological self-circulation.

In August 2015, former Bank of China vice president Wang Yongli officially joined LeEco as CEO of LeEco Finance. Jia Yueting put in a lot of effort to recruit him, painting a grand vision: making financial innovation the pillar of the LeEco ecosystem.

After Wang Yongli arrived, LeEco's financial sector expanded rapidly—payments, wealth management, insurance, credit investigation, and even blockchain were all put on the exploration list. Jia Yueting's task for him was clear: achieve "ecological disruption" in the financial sector as well.

In March 2016, under Jia Yueting's push, LeEco Finance announced the establishment of a blockchain lab. At that time, most domestic internet companies were still on the sidelines, and few had set up dedicated labs. Jia Yueting required the lab not to focus solely on mining or token issuance, but to look for application scenarios related to LeEco's existing business.

Thus, the lab began experimenting in several directions, such as embedding blockchain functions in LeEco boxes and TVs to make user devices into nodes; using blockchain to protect copyrights and incentivize content creators with tokens; and exploring blockchain-based payment, wealth management, and insurance services.

That same year, Jia Yueting began a major overseas expansion.

He set up a branch in the US, negotiated to acquire Vizio's TV business, and invested some funds in Faraday Future. Cross-border capital flows became an unavoidable challenge for overseas expansion. Traditional payment channels were costly, slow, and had to navigate layers of regulation. Blockchain offered another possibility: using decentralized networks for faster, lower-cost settlements.

In December that year, LeEco Finance and Stellar announced a strategic partnership. At the time, Stellar was one of the few blockchain public chains focused on payments, with fast transaction confirmations and low energy consumption, making it more suitable for commercial use.

LeEco introduced its blockchain ecosystem strategy in detail to the Stellar team, explaining the importance of blockchain technology in this strategy. This vision impressed the Stellar team, and the two sides quickly reached a cooperation agreement. This partnership marked LeEco's first step onto the international stage in blockchain exploration.

This layout gradually expanded into a complete blueprint: embedding blockchain on the hardware side, using tokens for settlement on the content side, exploring payment and wealth management on the financial side, and extending to identity authentication and supply chain on the application side. The vision was grand and the pace aggressive, but it was also extremely dependent on funding and internal coordination.

2016 was too early.

In the second half of the year, LeEco's cash flow began to tighten, the mobile phone business was losing money, car-making continued to burn cash, and overseas expansion kept draining resources.

In November that year, Jia Yueting admitted internally that the company needed to "hit the brakes." As cash flow tightened, the blockchain lab's plans were also forced to pause.

The Empire's Dusk

From 2016 to 2017, Jia Yueting reached a turning point in his life.

That year, the LeEco empire he built began to fall apart, and the once entrepreneurial idol quickly became a target of public opinion.

On November 6, 2016, he released the famous internal letter "LeEco's Sea and Fire: Will We Be Swallowed by the Waves or Boil the Ocean."

Image source: Weibo

In the letter, he admitted: "LeEco's ecosystem is facing major challenges. Our blind expansion and cash-burning pursuit of scale have come to an end."

The release of this letter was like a belated awakening. Jia Yueting began to face up to his decisions of the past few years: scale expansion, blind rollout, neglect of cash flow. In that almost out-of-control growth, he once believed that as long as the ecosystem was big enough, problems would be covered up by growth.

But reality quickly proved that every part of LeEco's business was draining from the same lifeblood. When too many projects drew blood at the same time, the huge system became an unsustainable cycle.

On July 4, 2017, more than half a year after that internal letter, Jia Yueting boarded a flight to the US. He said it was a short business trip. He never returned.

To the outside world, this was a hasty escape. LeEco was mired in debt, suppliers were blocking the headquarters, and pressure from investors and regulators was mounting. From his perspective, it was a strategic shift. Faraday Future's headquarters were in Los Angeles and needed his presence; the US capital market was more open, with a clearer regulatory framework. He believed that the opportunity for a restart might be there.

At that time, the US was in the midst of a blockchain and cryptocurrency frenzy. Bitcoin prices were hitting new highs, the ICO market was expanding rapidly, new projects emerged daily, and capital and concepts were chasing each other—a stage ignited by desire.

A year later, the wave reached China.

China's blockchain industry also experienced a brief carnival. ICOs became the hottest financing method, and almost every industry tried to stick a "blockchain+" label on itself. Against this backdrop, LeEco's subsidiary Lerong Zhixin and Yilian Technology launched the "Yilian Box" on July 11.

Yilian Box; Image source: Smart TV Network

This was a TV box priced at 599 RMB with built-in blockchain functionality. Users could earn OC (OneChain Token) by sharing idle bandwidth and then exchange it for goods on the LeEco Mall. For LeEco, already in turmoil, it was more like a hasty self-rescue than a well-thought-out plan.

Soon after the product launch, the Shenzhen Stock Exchange issued an inquiry letter, questioning whether LeEco was using the blockchain concept to hype its stock price. Regulatory intervention cast a shadow over the project overnight.

Jia Yueting originally wanted to prove the commercial value of blockchain with the "Yilian Box," but was instead accused of "concept hype." LeEco quickly clarified that it was not involved in token issuance or trading. But such explanations did not change the public's perception. The "Yilian Box" soon faded away, becoming LeEco's last appearance in the blockchain field.

The failure of this project actually reflected the limitations of the entire blockchain industry at the time.

In 2018, the technology was still in its early stages, application scenarios were scarce, and users were still skeptical of digital currencies. Regulatory policies in various countries were uncertain, and projects were born with high risks. It was an era full of concepts, but if execution lagged even a little, the hype would quickly dissipate.

This episode also gave Jia Yueting a more realistic understanding of blockchain. He realized that the technology was still far from real-world application, requiring both a compliant environment and a more mature market mechanism. LeEco's attempt may have been too early and too fast, but it made him see the real gap between business and technology. This understanding became a reference point for his later restart.

The LeEco crisis took away both capital and people. Interestingly, many of the employees who left later entered the blockchain industry. According to public information, at least 17 former LeEco employees entered the crypto world in those years, continuing to chase that unfinished dream.

The Second Half of the Gamble

In the Faraday Future factory, Jia Yueting spent the most low-key years of his life.

Faraday Future factory; Image source: Tencent News

From 2019 to 2024, he almost disappeared from public view, mired in the minutiae of car manufacturing—technical bottlenecks, tight funding, market competition, regulatory restrictions—none could be avoided. Faraday Future faced multiple financing obstacles in the US, and mass production plans were repeatedly delayed, making him truly experience the complexity and slowness of manufacturing.

The logic of the internet is speed, but the logic of car-making is patience. This experience made him face a different pace, learning to trial and error, review, and correct step by step. Between speed and risk, he had to slow down.

Meanwhile, the crypto world entered a new cycle. Tesla announced the purchase of 1.5 billion USD in bitcoin, shaking global markets. Subsequently, MicroStrategy, Square, PayPal, and other companies entered the space. The large-scale influx of institutional funds gave this market, once dominated by speculators, the characteristics of a compliant asset.

Between 2019 and 2024, the blockchain industry itself underwent an unprecedented iteration.

Ethereum's smart contracts gradually matured, DeFi protocols' capital scale jumped from hundreds of millions to tens of billions USD; NFTs brought digital art and virtual assets into the mainstream; DAOs made community governance a new organizational model.

Looking back at Jia Yueting's "ecological disruption" vision during the LeEco era, these new technological paths bear a familiar shadow, but the context and tools are now completely different.

By 2024, the industry's infrastructure was worlds apart from six years earlier. The entry of institutional funds, the maturity of stablecoins and DeFi, and the integration with AI all made the market more robust and more operable.

Compared to the "Yilian Box" of the past, the ways and environment for testing the waters are now completely different. To return to this track, one must build on clearer market logic and a more restrained execution path.

On August 17, 2025, in Pebble Beach, California, Jia Yueting once again took the stage, announcing the launch of the "EAI + Crypto Dual Flywheel" strategy.

Unlike previous press conferences, the highlight was not a new car, but an entirely new business framework, binding EAI (Electric AI) with Crypto to form a two-way cyclical growth system.

The logic of this strategy is not complicated. EAI represents Faraday Future's electric vehicle and AI business, serving as the cash flow source for the real economy; Crypto is the other pole, opening up a larger space for crypto asset management and the digital economy. The two feed each other: EAI provides cash flow support, and Crypto returns flow back to drive manufacturing and R&D.

C10 Treasury is the starting point of the "dual flywheel" strategy. It is a crypto asset management platform that adopts an "80% passive + 20% active" strategy. Most funds are strictly allocated to the top ten cryptocurrencies (excluding stablecoins) according to the C10 index, while the remaining portion is managed flexibly by the team.

Passive investment is like the foundation, maintaining structural stability; the active portion retains room for offense. As of September 18, 2025, C10 Treasury managed about 10 million USD in assets, with a floating profit of seven percent.

On September 20, Jia Yueting made another move. Faraday Future acquired Nasdaq-listed company QLGN for 41 million USD and plans to rename it CXC10. QLGN (Qualigen Therapeutics) was originally just a small biotech company; what attracted Jia Yueting was not its main business, but its compliant status as a listed company and its financing channel.

That means a ready-made capital shell.

Jia Yueting at the CXC10 press conference; Image source: Faraday Future official X

In this acquisition, he personally invested 4 million USD, holding about 7% of the shares and voluntarily locking them for two years. On the day the news was announced, QLGN's stock price soared 255%, with pre-market prices jumping from 2.8 USD to over 10 USD.

More importantly, a new name appeared in this acquisition: the SIGN Foundation. SIGN is a blockchain technology company backed by top institutions such as Binance Labs and Sequoia Capital. Its involvement not only brings capital, but also provides technical and resource endorsement. For Jia Yueting, this means regaining a ticket to the industry's core circle.

Compared to the LeEco era, Jia Yueting's posture is clearly different. This time, he is building a new story with capital structure, compliance paths, and institutional alliances. Whether this shift is a true transformation or a more sophisticated cycle, only time will tell.

The Unfinished Road

Looking back from the present, Jia Yueting's business trajectory resembles a circle.

In the LeEco era, he told the story of "ecological disruption"; at Faraday Future, he painted the future of mobility with electric vehicles; by 2025, he put the "EAI + Crypto Dual Flywheel" on stage.

Every pivot landed on a key node of the era, and each was accompanied by controversy.

The real test still lies ahead. C10 Treasury's floating profit has benefited more from market conditions, and whether it can withstand volatility remains to be seen; the "dual flywheel" logic sounds complete, but has yet to be tested by a full cycle; more crucially, whether he has truly learned restraint from past failures or is simply telling the story in a new way—no one can answer.

From LeEco's headquarters in Chaoyang, Beijing, to the factory floor in California, USA, and then to the Nasdaq capital stage, this story spans both geography and industry.

In the crypto world, stories never have a final ending—only the next chapter waiting to be written.

Jia Yueting's story continues.

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