The Celestial Dragon | I Ching The Living Story
**Updated Aug. 3rd, 2023**
TL;DR Section:
(These are just the key points for a quick read. Scroll down for full story.)
đ on 3/20/23 The Celestial Dragon I Ching Token launched on ETH. It had burnt LP, a renounced contract. A community started a TG channel. He endorsed it by linking to it on the Twitter account and website. Dev began communicating through tweets.
đThe project is based around Neyma Jahanâs book, The Celestial Dragon I Ching. A logo image with the Shiba face inside of it hints at a connection to SHIB. There is also a possible connection to TSUKA. Dev has a wallet with 28T SHIB in it. News article showed 25T SHIB was moved off exchanges and into cold wallets the day before launch. There was another reference to Neyma Jahan and the wealth he had accumulated. Dev tweets encouraged the young and fragile community that started from nothing.
đ Additional connections to TSUKA and SHIB were presented. Dev continued to encourage the young community. An Etherscan message and Dev tweets clearly established CHING as âthe prequel.â There were hints about AI. The official CHING Twitter account began following the Twitter accounts of Neyma Jahan and Maziar Sadri, both executives at Unification.
đ Despite having no tokens or marketing money, a full-size static banner ad showed up on cntoken.io, a Chinese version of CMC. The ad linked directly to the TG channel. The ad inspired a Chinese channel. Then the ad dropped. Dev tweeted a video about AI allowing computers to make decisions that humans shouldnât. Hexagram 08 was introduced, encouraging us to hold.
đA Dev tweet hinted at a possibility of a mistaken or misused identity. Dev then hinted at a potential market cap of 64B for CHING by citing tweets from Binance. A series of tweets provided inspiration and encouragement.
đDev tweets revealed possible connections to the original 64 Bitcoin miners. The tweets hinted that moving forward, its possible that the CHING community would need to work together for the sake of the success of the project. Tweets continued to suggest a connection to Bitcoin that perhaps it was âthe prequelâ that should have been what Bitcoin became. There was then an indication that perhaps CHING served as an oracle of some kind.
đ Dev posted on July 29th, âStay well, continue. #Chingâ
Chapter 1: The Launch
On March 20, 2023 an ERC20 token quietly launched on the Ethereum Mainnet. In the moments after launch, a few friends in a trading group realized that there was no Telegram Group. A community member quickly created the channel. The search for answers began. Etherscan quickly revealed that the LP was burnt and contract ownership was renounced.
Many on the admin team joined the TG during those first hours of launch. We set the logo as the channel image, set up channel bots, and the community started coming together. We had a feeling, even then, that this was something special.
We then discovered what appeared to be the official Twitter account and a website that it linked to in its description. We noticed that the account was opened in April 2022 and had lay dormant until launch day when Dev sent the two tweets shown below.
As the chat progressed, we began digging into the symbols and quickly saw a connection to the I Ching and the 64 Hexagrams (There is much more about these later in the story). For most of us during those early days, all of this was very new. The unraveling of the mysteries had just begun.
Launch day delivered its next surprise. It was a response from the controller of the Twitter account, who, moving forward is referred to as Dev. He saw that we had created a TG channel and linked to it. Later we would find out that Dev also linked to it on the official website. Communication with Dev through Twitter had begun.
The communication continued throughout the day. The next tweet showed that as we were searching for Dev, perhaps he was also searching for us as well. He was looking for the organic creation of a community around CHING that was forming from nothing. We were looking for the Dev behind what we would later understand to be the future of crypto.
The next tweet officially released the official website, but gave us our first potential clue as to the identity of Chingâs Dev.
The partial image above took some digging, but eventually we found that it is a partial image from the book cover for The Celestial Dragon I Ching by Neyma Jahan. It was published in 2012 by Watkins Publishing/Penguin Random House.
The search for more information about the author began. We put together a biography of Neyma Jahan. We see that he is the founder and CEO of Unification. We found his Twitter account. We learned that it was opened in April of 2008.
Dev then sent us the message above. That indicated that he as been gone for some time and has returned. Dev also shared that he had a partner or partners previously, but is pursuing âhis own path.â There will be good fortune for those involved in CHING.
Next came a tweet that continues to mystify us. It was an image of the logo with a faint almost holographic-looking image of the Shiba Inu Token logo embedded within it. Look closely. It also showed the contract address for CHING and stated that we were to interpret the meaning.
This left us with many questions. Was Dev part of SHIB? Was he one of the founders? Does CHING have a greater connection to the Shiba Ecosystem? Some of those questions have answers now. Some remain a mystery.
It was initially this tweet above that led us to believe that there was some connection to Dejitaru Tsuka. This ominous-sounding tweet clearly stated that the TSUKA price was unnaturally high. And that TSUKA holders may soon experience regret. The price of TSUKA will not last long. Also we saw that by using a dragon, the âimitationâ is a compliment toTSUKA and its community.
On launch day, the tweet above made very little sense, but as time has passed since then, we have learned a great deal more. In this case, the âlinesâ represent young and developing crypto ecosystems such as projects around SHIB and the Shibarium and the related projects around O/CAW/QOM. This tweet foreshadows a time when these projects will be forever âcorrect and firm.â Perhaps they will be unified under a massive ecosystem where they all work together. Through this, they will all be strong and stable. Perhaps CHING is at the center of all of it. âA great consummationâ is like a joining, or being finalized, or complete.
This tweet above clearly showed the difficulty that the CHING community will face as growing from nothing. He advised us to âdo it rightâ and build a strong, healthy community. The directive was to use humility as our guide and to stick to the plan that was being laid out for us. With that, many people will join us. On this first day of launch, the TG group was only a few dozen people. They were strong words of encouragement.
The encouragement continued into the day after launch. This indicated that we still had much more work to do. He then finished with what seemed to be words directed right at the community that was forming.
This next communication combined screenshots from both the CHING Twitter page and Neyma Jahanâs Twitter page. So once again, we were given another reference to Neyma. If you subtract the two years, 2022 and 2008, you get the number 14. The 14th Hexagram means abundance. Dev used the terms, âA great harvest.â We interpreted this as meaning that over the 14 years, Dev has acquired great wealth.
The tweet above offered guidance that directed us to grow. We interpreted that as getting an admin team set up and to begin small Twitter raids to begin spreading the word.
This was the first image used from the book in a Dev tweet. The meaning was clear. We needed to just keep going. It was challenging during those first days. There were only a handful of us online at any given time. Keeping the chat active and lively required great efforts. The project was only days old and was fragile and delicate. The omnipresent Dev saw this and tweeted again.
To offer the community encouragement, Dev used a passage from the book. âHoarfrostâ are those little delicate ice crystals that form around blades of grass when the temperature is below freezing. The passage showed that over time, the delicate ice crystals would soon become strong ice. This inspired great hope for the community. There was a vision, and we were playing our part of it.
This Dev tweet provided a great deal of information. It appeared to be a screenshot of a wallet. Because of how itâs shown, the screenshot looked like it was taken from the screen of the owner of the wallet. We then saw that perhaps Dev held 28 Trillion SHIB. It showed a market value of over $300M USD. On the same day that this tweet appeared, we discovered a published news article that spoke about a SHIB wallet moving 25T SHIB out of exchanges and into ghost wallets over six transactions. This basically showed that Dev has access to over $300M USD worth of SHIB.
There is perhaps a clue in the fact that there were six transactions. These screenshots also show the total market cap. of SHIB at the time, which was 6.46B. Dev references the 64 in that number and says, âperfectly balanced timing,â indicating perhaps that SHIB needed to reach a certain market cap before CHING plans could be implemented. This was an additional clue that CHING may be related to SHIB and Shibarium in some way.
These two tweets served as both encouragement and explanation as to why CHING was not ready for massive exposure yet. The all-volunteer admin team had been working 12â16 hour days building and keeping the chat going. It felt like a tech start-up where ideas were presented, and something new was built out of that idea. These tweets served as inspiration to keep going.
The 2nd tweet above indicated that the âpreviously gifted would receive more than their fill.â That is when we realized that CHING was intended for the average person. It was not for âwhales,â rich âcallers,â or âinfluencers.â This tweet communicated that CHING was a chance for the normal person to acquire life-changing wealth. It takes time to build up a strong and faithful base of holders. Dev wanted to give many opportunities for traders to have the opportunity to buy and hold CHING. Even as these words are typed, there is a great entry at a market cap of about $130k. (5/4/23)
This above tweet appeared to serve two purposes. It hinted, once again, at a connection to TSUKA. This connection to TSUKA remained a mystery. The Tweet also began an education in the I Ching, and the 64 Hexagrams. Trigrams are the horizontal lines that make up each Hexagram. Sometimes the are âbrokenâ with one shorter line on each side and a gap in the middle. Others are âunbrokenâ that show a solid line all the way across. The state and location of each trigram is significant and carries great meaning.
The combination, 683 remained a mystery, but we learned that the Hexagram 3 meant difficulty during the beginning of something new. This communicated that Dev empathized with us as the still-young CHING project was building. This helped us to understand that we needed to âstay the course,â and more would be revealed soon.
This tweet represented the first reference to an relation to Bitcoin. Dev made a connection between the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching, and a $64k Bitcoin price. Dev then included âPerfectly balanced timing.â This phrase became a common thread as Dev tweets continued. It indicated that perhaps there were many moving âpartsâ to CHING, and that the timing was very important.
The above tweet spoke directly from Dev to the community. âYou are doing well.â The chart had made some gains that day. It was perhaps one of the first âpumpsâ that the chart had seen since launch. The tweet also contains an amazing number of 64s. It refers to the Hexagrams, the BTC chart, the SHIB MC, and the current CHING price. We viewed that as an optimistic forecast of the future for CHING. We understood then that CHING was going to be BIG.
This tweet shared with us information from Dev. In treading his path, he was communicating that he was working hard and pushing forward on the back-end of the project. He stated that this project was his life-long dream. We understood at that moment that Dev had entrusted his crypto âbabyâ to a community made up of strangers who met and began building the community-side of CHING from nothing. It felt like a calling. It didnât feel like work. It felt like inspiration. We were driven to make CHING a reality. The advice regarding fulfillment also brought peace to the community. It let us grow and build and reach out to the world without the stress of a âgrow or dieâ mindset that is so endemic in crypto. It is why the community appears so content even during a quiet period in the chat. This concept is âbaked inâ to CHING culture. Yes, we raid. Yes, we are driven and humble. No, we are not starved with hunger or fearful of the fate of CHING.
This tweet, again, alluded to a connection to TSUKA. Even at the time of this writing (4/28/23), the connections to TSUKA remain a mystery. This was a repost of sorts from the tweet posted on launch day, speaking about the dragon. Once again, a reference to âtimingâ indicating again that the timing of all parts of CHING were very important, and perhaps some of them were starting to align. There was obvious connection to 64 as well connecting the Hexagrams to the MC of TSUKA at the time of that screenshot.
This dev tweet indicated to us some kind of reckoning or rebalancing on the horizon. âTo diminish the full and augment the humbleâ is pretty clear especially in the context of the earlier tweet about the âpreviously gifted.â This tweet hints at a rebalancing, where the âwhalesâ end up giving to the âhumbleâ which we interpret as the honest crypto trader trying to make some gains. This tweet alludes to the rampant problem with coordinated âinsidorâ projects that pump to get small buys in, then dumps on them to âfattenâ their wallets. There is a sense of incoming justice from this tweet. Reward the honest small crypto trader who holds CHING. Meanwhile, cause hardship for the âwhalesâ for their greed and arrogance.
With the above tweet, we recognized that the four tokens appeared in chronological order, or rather, how it was supposed to be. CHING, BTC, SHIB, TSUKA. This introduced the concept of CHING being the prequel. Perhaps CHING was the token that BTC was supposed to be but improved upon from the unavoidable flaws of BTC. Additionally, the question was asked, âFate or coincidence?â This phrase became part of the core vocabulary in the community. As so many âcoincidencesâ began showing up, it became easier to call it fate.
This tweet referenced the Hexagram 07 or mass action or Multitude. This tweet seemed to be forecasting a massive movement from TSUKA to CHING. The chart showed a massive red candle and the text almost had a biblical tone. This referenced Hexagram speaks of a major action that causes massive change, but because it was done right and with good heart, then it is good. For extra measure, Dev also included a partial repost speaking about the excessive dragon.
This tweet began a series of tweets that included the thick red box drawn on tweets and screenshots. Devâs communication was clear here in highlighting the 6.43M in liquidity. We saw the 64 connection. We noted the reference to âtimingâ once again, and listing CHING, SHIB, and TSUKA symbols together. At the time of this writing (4/28/23), These connections are still not entirely clear.
The CHING community began with nothing. We had no tokens, no tax, and no marketing wallet. We needed to pay to update Dextools. We began fundraising from the community. Slowly, donations arrived. There was a little bit of ETH left in the wallet. CHING tokens were bought with it. The wallet is now locked in a 2/3 multisig Safe wallet with 64,900 CHING. The community will determine how they are spent. Devâs message was clear here.
This mystery remains unsolved as of this writing (4/28/23). This tweet showed an Etherscan message addressed to Dev. The sender is still unknown. This asserted the âprequelâ narrative that this was what BTC was supposed to be, but better. It also hinted at deeper connections to the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching. Additionally, this message revealed that the idea of CHING had been around for a long time. By using the terms âalways saidâ indicated that this was someone who was close to Dev, and that Dev had been talking about this for a long time. Also by using the terms ânow the prequelâ perhaps indicated that this was meant to be BTC from even before BTC was created. The image below shows the transactions by the wallet that sent the etherscan message. There were exactly six TXs. Please also note the TX amounts, 64, 6,464, 6,464. Clearly referencing 64 once again. Additional research into the author of this note is still needed.
This image above was taken on 3/21/23. Feel free to check the metadata. The purpose of including this image was during the early days of CHING, the official Twitter account was following 0 accounts. But that was about to change.
Earlier we had discovered that Neyma Jahan was the founder and CEO of Unification. Maziar Sadri was the Chief Product Officer at Unification. So that left us with official action taken on the CHING Twitter account that pointed directly to these two gentlemenâs accounts.
During the early days of CHING, something mysterious happened. We started getting some traffic from Chinese accounts into the TG chat. Someone in the chat pointed out that an ad had showed up on cntoken.ioâs homepage (Like a CMC or CG in China) as a full size static banner ad. The ad linked directly to the CHING TG chat. With all of the inbound traffic, it inspired us to create the Chinese TG channel. About a day or so later, the ad dropped. It was almost as though Dev provided the ad to encourage the community to create the Chinese channel.
This tweet featured the question of fate vs. coincidence. It obviously was themed around the future of AI. Arthur C. Clark spoke of an evolution in machines where the machines would be making decisions that humans were no longer the best choice. There was a thick red box around the year 1964. There is the clear connection to the 64 Hexagrams seen in the date. We did some digging and found out that in 1964, humans in the US Govt. ended the use of a âparallel dollarâ backed by silver because they could no longer control the silver price. That left just the gold-backed dollar. A few years later, in 1971, humans again decided that the dollar should be from removed the gold standard and went to a fiat dollar. This indicated that Dev was thinking about macroeconomic concerns around dollar valuation and dependency and the humans trying to control it. Imagine if there was a better way.
This Dev tweet focused on the Hexagram 08 known as Union, or âHolding together.â This tweet spoke about the importance of the community holding their bags with perseverance. This is despite market conditions, short-term market cap, or the enticement of memecoins.
This one got interesting. Here we had a Dev tweet with the 64 Hexagrams, asking about fate or coincidence. If we translated the term âtweetsâ to the term âprojects,â we had a potential clue of someone pretending to be Dev, when it actually wasnât. Is it possible that an identity or name was used in a project even though it wasnât him at all? We noticed the big red box around the 6/4. We saw obviously the 64 connection there, but was there more? Dev had mentioned TSUKA in previous tweets. We began to dig and ask if this was possibly related to TSUKA. So we went back to the TSUKA chart on June 4th of 2022, 6/4.
On the 10th day of TSUKAâs life, on 6/4, . So perhaps the date in Devâs tweet was 6/4/10. Not the year, but the number of days the token had existed. That happened to be the date that the Etherscan message ârevealedâ the TSUKA dev as Ryoshi. Did this Dev tweet bring into question Ryoshiâs legitimate connection to TSUKA? What did all of this have to do with CHING?
This tweet blew our minds. Did this hint that the intention and plan for CHING and its related ecosystem may be to achieve a $64B market cap? Was Binance related somehow? We found this tweet to be very bullish for the long term prospects of CHING and its ecosystem.
These Dev tweets offered some wisdom and support for the CHING community. We were advised to control our emotions. Hexagram 03 was cited indicating that there is more work ahead, to âfind helpersâ or engage more of the community for support. Dev hinted at the month of April. Dev also was very clear here that nobody in the community should take on the burden of the success or failure of the project as their own.
This Dev tweet above proved very useful. It was important as the community was building and as decisions were beling made that we considered this message. Knowing that what CHING was becoming was massive, however, we also had very little information, much of it speculation and a piecemeal of clues. We found ourselves being the âfoolish boy.â The community was made up of seasoned crypto enthusiasts who knew how to grow and develop a community-run project. When it came time to make important choices about growth and development, we leaned into the wisdom of the âold blind man.â It required almost a sense of faith that Dev, the âold blind manâ was building behind the scenes while we slowly and organically grew the community, avoiding morally questionable shortcuts to âspeed things up.â This process was where a core value of integrity was formed within the community.
This tweet references April. As this was written (5/16/23) April came and went, so the focus was not on the month, rather, the focus was on Elon. This is the 2nd tweet referencing Elon. For context, Elonâs tweet was an award that was received by George RR Martin, the author of the Game of Thrones books. These books feature dragons. What was the reasoning behind this tweet? Was something scheduled to happen in April? Is there a deeper connection between CHING Elon Musk himself?
In this Dev tweet, the community was introduced to the Hexagram 7, or Shih. This Hexagram spoke of a an army forming. The stories around this Hexagram related to all things âarmy forming.â Trust in strong leadership. Move forward with integrity and discipline. The text also gave another hint that CHING was a prequel, or something that should have been the thing that was first. In this case we considered that this was referencing Bitcoin. So we connected that perhaps CHING was supposed to be the Bitcoin. Was it possible that the concepts behind CHING had been âin the worksâ since before Bitcoinâs creation? Dev also spoke of finalizing the journey. So this indicated that there were many other steps or projects that came before CHING even came into existence. What were these other steps? Were they other projects meant to work together? The âjourneyâ that Dev referred to here was still a mystery. The image in the tweet revealed the facelift to the website that corrected the opacity, made it more readable, improved the moving background âflyingâ image, and added references to 64, and to the book, The Celestial Dragon I Ching.
In the above tweet, Dev introduced the community to Hexagram 53. In this case, specifically line 5 of this hexagram.
In the parable above, the imagery used is pregnancy, and a womanâs desire to become pregnant. This symbolizes somebody striving to achieve an outcome that will bring great blessings and joy. It confirms that after all of the waiting and investment made, this outcome is achieved, or in this case, âcannot be prevented.â This means that the desired result will come to be. This hints that Dev understands that the desired outcome of CHING will be achieved. It is inevitable And with that, âthere will be good fortune.â
These above tweets offered the community some grounded advice. Arguing with a fool, makes you a fool as well. The reference to humility was strong here. Humility, being humble, has been a common theme in Devâs communication. It was very clear that this virtue needed to be deeply instilled into the CHING community. Dev then introduced the community to Hexagram 25, particularly line 1.
The line above was self-explanatory. Acceptance, free from judgement and prejudice, and an open mind were highlights here. This communicated that being open to new concepts, ideas, and people were vital to CHINGâs success.
This Dev tweet asked about fate or coincidence, a common question across Devâs tweets. A screenshot of the original tweet is below.
The above image showed what originally appeared with Devâs tweet. This must have obviously upset interested parties to have the tweet taken down. This tweet was Dev communicating the possibility that the price of Bitcoin has been manipulated by the policies of the Chinese government and those of Hong Kong.
This above referenced tweet continued the fate vs coincidence question and an obvious 64 reference to that many years ago. When we looked for deeper meaning in understanding the Mercury program at NASA, we found possible inferences to make. This summary from ChatGPT below provided some strong context. Perhaps Dev was communicating just how groundbreaking this project and its related ecosystem was. If you swap the idea of CHING and a decentralized financial system with space exploration, then perhaps Dev and others working around him are setting up achievements in crypto that will âlay the foundationâ for future developments in the space. In other words, this work may be revolutionary. Changing our world forever, just as space flight changed the worldâs view of itself as a human population.
This next series of tweets focused on Devâs possible connection to the original Bitcoin. This also helped us to understand that perhaps CHING was supposed to be the original cryptocurrency. Dev referred to it as âThe prequel.â
The above Dev tweet continued the focus and clear importance of the number 64. It was mentioned three times. What was the connection between a 64 digit hash and the 64 Hexagrams of the I Ching? And what did that have to do with CHING?
The above tweet reiterated the importance of 64 and asking about fate or coincidence. It also linked to a Coinbase.com article. Below is a ChatGPT summary of the article, revealing a great deal of information.
There were some key takeaways from the article and its summary. In spite of the early Bitcoin minersâ anonymity, they worked in the âbest interest of the network.â This was counter to the stereotypes of self-interest. This also indicated a clue that CHING and its related ecosystem projects might need to work together for the best interest of this massive undertaking.
There were 64 early Bitcoin miners. There was the 64 again. This begged the question, was Dev one of the first miners of Bitcoin? These early Bitcoin pioneers clearly worked together for the betterment of the Bitcoin network above selfish interests. Is Dev hinting that in this Renaissance of crypto, ecosystem supporters need to work together? Does Dev suggest that we must bring in a new era of integrity and cooperation?
This tweet above brought more questions than answers even up to the date of this writing (5/20/23). We see that at 640k MC, a CHING is worth $.01. What does that mean? What is the significance of these two tweets? We see references to âThe prequelâ as well as hashtags that show CHING as coming first, before Bitcoin. Will CHING serve as a âcorrectedâ Bitcoin?
This tweet also provided more questions than answers. The article clearly referenced $64M in profit from selling Bitcoin. In reading it, no obvious clues were evident. What was the significance of this tweet? What did this Tesla sale of Bitcoin have to do with CHING? Was this a connection to Elon Musk? Was the timing of the sale important?
This Dev tweet above introduced the possibility that CHING perhaps may serve as an oracle of some kind. A query for ChatGPT revealed that an oracle was:
Was there something unique about the 64 Hexagrams and the I Ching that somehow would work with the CHING token? How did the ancient Hexagrams connect with oracles used in the crypto space? Once again, we were left with more questions than answers.
This Dev tweet above made reference once again referenced the importance of humility. As the tweet used the third person pronoun âhisâ indicated that perhaps Dev was referring to himself. It was unclear from whom his humility was ârecognized.â The tweet also hinted that perhaps there was still work to be done on the project. As the CHING community, we interpreted that as a need for patience and peace until âall his aimsâ have been completed and CHING becomes ready for the light to be shown upon it.
From May 10th until the end of July, the community pushed forward, together. They built out a media repository, and began building the structure for a charitable giving arm of CHING. They kept communication active in the chat each day through gif posts and occasional chat. During this period, the website was taken down. This period of time tested the faith and commitment of each holder and community member. No contact from Dev. No website. Only the true believers pushed on. It solidified the strength of belief within the community. Each of us had no other option but to KNOW deep in ourselves that the CHING dragon would awaken soon. Receiving the post on July 29th was a reassuring nod to the community that Dev was here all along, busily building. By using the terms âstay wellâ and âcontinueâ indicated a state of readiness on the community side of CHING. It felt as though Dev was saying, âWe are ready.â
