Kong Jianping: From Law School Dropout to Nasdaq Executive on Bitcoin, BNB, and Web4

Kong Jianping, co-president of Canaan Technology and founder of Nano Labs, shared his journey from dropping out of law school to becoming a two-time Nasdaq-listed company executive. He discussed his opinions on Bitcoin as a macro anchor, why his listed company chose BNB over Bitcoin as its strategic reserve, and where he sees the next big opportunity in what he calls 'Web4.'

Kong first encountered Bitcoin in 2012, when it was still considered a scam by many. Despite graduating with a law degree, he never practiced law, opting for entrepreneurship from his first year of university. His early ventures included organizing recruitment drives for campus guide schools, earning hundreds of thousands of dollars per month before he stepped back to reassess.

Kong helped Canaan Technology go public in 2019 after a six-year journey through A-shares, the NEEQ board, Hong Kong stocks, and finally US markets, setting two Nasdaq records for live attendance and online viewership on listing day. He convinced institutions like Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank to back an entity whose product 'merely connects to become money', language initially met with regulatory skepticism for potential Ponzi schemes.

The second listing, Nano Labs in 2022, was completed in a much more challenging environment: Chinese concept stocks were effectively frozen after the Didi incident, coinciding with a broader crypto winter and US market crash. Despite this, Nano Labs succeeded due to its solid legal and regulatory foundation, which Kong credits to luck rather than judgment for both results.