Dreams Shattered in the Encryption World: The Rise and Fall of a Pioneer

In the summer of 2017, Andy Tian reunited with Charles Thach in Saigon, Vietnam. Charles's family was prominent in Vietnam, and he studied in the United States from a young age, later making a name for himself on Wall Street. He began to get involved with Bitcoin in 2015 and invested in some encryption projects.

As the ICO boom swept across the globe, a number of blockbuster projects emerged in the Asian region. Charles keenly noticed that if Uplive could be packaged for an ICO, the prospects would be limitless. At that time, the Chinese P2P lending industry was facing frequent crises, venture capital funding was becoming cautious, and competition in the domestic live streaming industry was intense. Under this double pressure, Andy and Charles came together.

Thus, a project based on blockchain technology, featuring a reward mechanism for content contributors across social platforms and a mall system at its core—Gifto, has begun its journey.

Gifto stands for "Gift Protocol" and is a universal protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. It provides an autonomous and self-sufficient system for creating, curating, purchasing, sending, and exchanging virtual gifts across major global content platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Any content creator can customize and trade these virtual gifts, purchasing them by selling tokens.

At that time, AIG faced three challenges: insufficient technological reserves, lack of endorsements, and policy risks. To fill the technological gap, Charles brought in William Nguyen as an encryption technology expert and invited blockchain talents, including Kyber founder Loi, to serve as consultants. Gifto established a research and development center in Vietnam, and Andy also had the Chinese team learn the relevant technologies.

Considering future development and financing needs, Andy decided to establish the Gifto token issuer in the Cayman Islands, while setting up companies in Hong Kong and Singapore to operate the project. He also invited Yingyu from TAYLOR VINTERS VIA as a legal advisor to ensure that the project structure is more "compliant".

Gifto attracted significant attention upon its launch. According to public information, Gifto received support from 11 top VCs including Pantera, BlockVC, Node Capital, and Signum Capital in December 2017, raising $20 million in institutional financing. Gifto's advisory team is impressive, including industry giants such as Shen Bo from Distributed Capital, Loi from Kyber, former Google executive Tom Duterme, and Xu Yiji from Neo.

On September 4, 2017, the People's Bank of China, together with seven ministries, issued a notice clearly prohibiting ICO activities. Eleven days later, the Beijing Financial Stability and Development Committee summoned virtual currency platforms, requiring them to stop trading and new user registrations. This was a huge blow to Andy, but fortunately, Gifto had not yet issued tokens on trading platforms and had already laid out plans overseas.

At the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Hong Kong, AIG executives discussed subsequent public offering plans with private equity round investors. Andy met CZ in Shanghai, facilitated by Shen Bo, which led to the first fundraising in the history of encryption led by an exchange - IEO.

On December 14, 2017, Gifto conducted a public offering on Binance, targeting $10 million, accepting $5 million each in ETH and BNB. The oversubscription rate reached as high as 1066 times. Four days later, GTO was listed for trading on Binance, with its price skyrocketing by 10 times.

The morale of the Gifto team, who have just tasted the fruits of victory, is at an unprecedented high. They completed a $30 million financing in just 4 months, overturning conventional understanding. Subsequently, Andy and Charles began to leverage their influence, serving as advisors for multiple projects or participating in private placements. Charles is responsible for Gifto's external investments, with Gifto's presence in several well-known Southeast Asian projects.

In addition to investment, the Gifto team has also attempted to venture into the exchange business, creating the Kryptono Exchange. This exchange is backed by the NEM ecosystem and attracts a large number of users from Vietnam and the Philippines through its unique listing strategy.

In February 2018, Gifto collaborated with photographer Kevin Abosch to launch "Forever Rose", becoming the world's first blockchain artwork, priced at 1 million dollars. Gifto frequently released new business news and performed well in the secondary market.

However, in the second half of 2018, the cryptocurrency market entered a bear market, and market liquidity sharply decreased. Gifto's business had no breakthroughs, and user growth and operational data declined. Kryptono fell into a slump and eventually closed in July 2019.

From 2019 to 2021, Gifto entered a "dormant period" and closed almost all external channels. In April 2021, the GIFT team classified Gifto as a "dead/inactive" project.

In 2022, Gifto re-emerged as "Gifto Metaverse" and received a $2.5 million strategic investment from Poolz. In January 2023, it announced a token swap, upgrading GTO to GFT.

On February 6, 2023, Andy Tian passed away in Beijing due to illness. Two days later, GFT was launched on Binance, briefly leading the market.

In November 2024, Binance announced the delisting of GFT. On November 28, 12 billion tokens of GFT were suddenly added on the BNB chain, causing a stir in the community. Binance advanced the delisting of GFT to December 3, setting a historical precedent.

In February 2025, GFT announced a merger with the GOTG project, requiring the completion of token exchanges by April 30.

A once-promising Web3 project has vanished at the end of people's trust.