Even Satoshi Nakamoto would have to pay homage to the God of Wealth.

Source: TechFlow (Shenchao)

Every year on the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, Xiaobing gets up early and heads to the Tianxia No.1 God of Wealth Temple on Beigaofeng in Hangzhou.

He thought he would be squeezing in with aunties and uncles. Instead, when he arrived, he found that amid the thick incense smoke, everyone kneeling there was a familiar face.

On his left was a well-known whistleblower KOL; on his right, a community operator behind a trading “plate.” Nearby were several rising stars of the tech scene who usually talk nonstop about “decentralization.” At that moment, however, they were all bowing devoutly, knocking their heads against the ground with resounding thuds. In that instant, algorithmic consensus and Federal Reserve policy signals meant nothing compared to the three sticks of incense in their hands.

In recent years, metaphysics has become a “prominent discipline” in the crypto world. If you are still staring at candlestick charts, it means you are a classical retail trader. The real veterans are now studying birth charts.

One crypto trader well-versed in macro indicators eventually turned to metaphysics as well. He recently calculated Bitcoin’s bazi and came to a grim conclusion: fire clashes with the wealth vault, and 2026 (the Year of Bingwu) will be Bitcoin’s darkest hour. I was startled enough to immediately check my wallet. Luckily, there was nothing in it to begin with.

Even so, this trend is hardly new. Alen, a partner at crypto VC y2z Ventures, once said bluntly that one of the fund’s core competitive advantages is “reading faces.” In the past, due diligence focused on code audits and business models. Now it starts with whether the founder looks like they have a “money-losing face,” followed by whether the project’s name clashes with feng shui.

On a recent trip to Shenzhen, it became clear that traders and KOLs no longer rely on data terminals as their standard equipment. Standing behind them is often a “feng shui consultant.”

You may laugh, but this approach does work in crypto. Xiaobing knows the owner of a Hong Kong–listed company who is a devout feng shui believer, donating real money to temples—possibly more than the company spends on R&D.

The result? Call it feng shui attracting benefactors. Starting in 2023, he began buying Bitcoin and made hundreds of millions of dollars by accumulating it. Later, riding the narrative wave of DAT (crypto treasury reserves), the company’s stock price doubled again. Everyone knows this is survivor bias, but it does not change the fact that he made a fortune.

There are counterexamples as well. A whistleblower KOL known for a frog avatar also consulted a feng shui advisor, who told him not to trade recently. He ignored the advice, scratched his trading itch, and played derivatives anyway—ending in a clean and total liquidation.

This phenomenon is not purely superstition.

Traditional land-based civilizations emphasize farming: sow one seed in spring, reap thousands in autumn. The core is certainty. But what do maritime civilizations face? Storms and unknown seas.

Why do people along China’s southeastern coast worship Mazu? Not out of ignorance, but because on the open sea, beyond experience and technology, you need something more.

At its core, the crypto market is a modern version of the Age of Exploration—facing bottomless waters and sudden storms. Humans are like this: the greater the randomness and volatility, the stronger the need for a supernatural psychological anchor.

When candlestick charts fail, and a single tweet from Musk, Trump, or CZ can move markets, feng shui becomes the final psychological line of defense. This is not ignorance; it is an instinctive human response to extreme wealth volatility.

After all, when your assets can fluctuate by 50% in a single day, you have to believe in something just to sleep at night. As for whether the God of Wealth understands blockchain—does that really matter?