Day 1 of Mitigation for the Jimmy Lai Case: Citizens queue for three nights for public gallery tickets; former employee moved by Lai’s personal example.

Since last Friday (Nov 15) at noon, a queue had already begun forming outside the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts. A regular attendee known as “Great-Aunt,” who was first in line, arrived at approximately 4:00 AM. Reporters also observed about ten middle-aged women arriving around 1:00 PM that same day. Most wore masks and used umbrellas to hide their faces, refusing to answer any questions.

— The Witness (法庭線)

Anyone who has looked into how Bitcoin operates—even if they haven’t read the Whitepaper—will have heard of Proof of Work (PoW). Having been involved in Web3 civic education for years, I often hear “muggles” complain that this concept is hard to grasp. But in reality, Bitcoin’s design is highly grounded in the physical world. Concepts like PoW, mining, and wallets are all borrowed from familiar daily life. Once you realize this, understanding Bitcoin becomes much easier.

Don’t overthink it as something purely technical or profound. In plain English, Proof of Work is simply “How far would you go for [X]?”

• How far would you go for a bowl of Kau Kee beef brisket?

• How far would you go for a Keung To concert?

• How far would you go to enter the main courtroom to support Jimmy Lai and the Apple Daily executives?

If you are willing to queue for an hour outside Kau Kee, pay over a hundred HKD, and endure the staff’s shouting, you get to eat the brisket.

If you are willing to spend time learning “vibe coding” to write programs to snatch tickets, or pay thousands of dollars to scalpers, you get to see Keung To perform.

And if you were willing to arrive at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts three days early and sleep rough in the winter cold for three nights—going further than even the “queuing gangs”—you won’t just win the spot; you’ll get to sit in one of the 42 public gallery seats in the main courtroom, right where the defendants are.

Before we dive deeper into PoW, let’s explain “Queuing Gangs” (排隊黨).

“Queuing Gangs” refer to people hired to act as human queuing machines. It might be a unique Hong Kong subculture, perhaps destined for the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Any citizen who has queued for a high-profile court case has likely encountered them: groups of people, usually speaking Mandarin, communicating via WeChat, professionally equipped, arriving early to snatch tickets for the main courtroom, yet knowing absolutely nothing about the case itself. These are “suspected” queuing gangs.

By noon on the first day, before the hearing had even ended, over 60 people were already queuing for tickets for the following day. Most wore hats, masks, and used umbrellas to shield their faces.

Queuing gangs don’t just occupy court seats, preventing concerned citizens from entering; they serve any industry where demand exceeds supply. In the 90s, when the Hong Kong property market was booming, every new development launch attracted queuing gangs. Masterminds would hire them to get the top spots in the selection line; selling that spot alone could earn hundreds of thousands of HKD. At the peak of the 1997 bubble, a prime spot for the Carmen’s Garden launch in Jordan reportedly changed hands for nearly 2 million HKD.

From a million making you a “millionaire,” to two million barely buying a “nano-flat,” to two million only covering a down payment, and finally, to two million only buying a spot in a queue—that is inflation. That is Hong Kong.

Bitcoin’s goal, of course, isn’t to decide who enters a courtroom or gets a flat, but who gets to record the ledger and receive Bitcoin as a reward.

Bitcoin’s version of PoW isn’t about “who gets there first,” but rather “who can solve a mathematical puzzle fastest.” This isn’t Kumon or Olympiad math; you can’t solve it through wisdom or study. It is purely trial and error—plugging in different numbers repeatedly until the answer works.

Furthermore, the math problem in Bitcoin’s PoW is meaningless, and the answer is useless. For example, if a parent tells a child, “Calculate our monthly household expenses and I’ll give you a candy,” that math problem is useful and meaningful. However, if the parent says, “Count how many grains of sand are in this flowerpot to get a candy,” it is only to prove the child’s “sincerity.” It can only be done one by one, it doesn’t train the mind, and the answer itself serves no purpose.

You might wonder why Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t design a meaningful math problem. As I said at the start, Bitcoin mimics the physical world. The mechanism of a physical queue is purely to compare “sincerity” and establish order; it has no other meaning—unless you argue that training your leg muscles or testing your endurance for sleeping on the street is a “meaning.”

To reduce the waste of time and energy in physical queuing, other mechanisms have emerged. The younger generation might not remember the days when, to get a seat at a restaurant, you had to stand directly behind a diner who looked like they were almost finished and unlikely to sit for another hour reading newspaper. Today, you just take a ticket. You still wait, but you don’t have to fight for a spot, and you can walk around freely. This also means you can queue at several restaurants at once.

Some “advanced” malls or apps allow remote queuing, further lowering the cost of waiting. However, in PoW, lower cost is not always better. Cost and incentives are the keys to any mechanism. Only when the two are aligned does the system succeed.

Personally, I don’t eat in malls, except with my mother. Once, on a Sunday, she wanted to go to Jade Garden in New Town Plaza for dim sum. I downloaded the mall app, verified my phone, and took a number before leaving the house. There were over 200 numbers ahead of us. I thought it would take forever, but before we even reached the restaurant, our number had passed. The reason was simple: one app account could take ticket for multiple restaurants, and one family could have multiple accounts. People take a bunch of numbers “just in case.” This results in “ticket inflation,” where the queue no longer reflects actual demand. Diners like me were forced back to the old way—standing physically at the door.

Many Bitcoin maximalists believe PoW is the most superior consensus mechanism, while Proof of Stake (PoS) is criticized as being “impure” or even “heretical.” I respect that people have different views, but to me, that argument is like saying “only physical queuing is fair, and any comfortable alternative is just ‘cutting corners’ and lacks the justice of the old ways.” I beg to differ.

One flaw in this view is ignoring that Bitcoin mining consumes massive amounts of electricity, damaging the environment. Readers might think that as a Bitcoin advocate, I wouldn’t hold this “EU-style leftist” view. However, I am not just a fan of Bitcoin; I am a fan of the environment. A friend once said that environmentalism shouldn’t just look at resources used, but the value created. I completely agree. But that also means if we can create the same value with fewer resources, the original mechanism is inefficient. If a remote ticket system provides the same fairness as a physical line, yet a bank insists people stand for hours, that isn’t just “fair”—it’s poorly designed.

Others argue PoW ensures participants truly “sacrifice,” making it more just than PoS, where you only lock up assets (a “security deposit”) without “working.” They claim PoS allows the wealthy to dominate. However, when the world has something called “money” that can buy labor, time, and even dignity, this view becomes a beautiful misunderstanding.

Back to the court queue: if the only way to get in was for citizens to queue personally, and they couldn’t receive any other benefit, then yes, that PoW mechanism is fair. However, when shameless people can hide in the background and pay a small amount of money to hire a “queuing gang” to occupy precious seats, that PoW is hardly “fair.”

In the context of Bitcoin, economic incentives have pushed the entry barrier for “work” higher and higher. It started with personal computers, moved to specialized hardware (ASICs), and then to massive mining farms. Proof of Work has long since evolved into “Proof of Capital.” If your financial power is weak, you are essentially just helping the network for free; your chance of getting a reward is lower than winning the lottery.

In contrast, Ethereum’s Proof of Stake, while capital-centric, is designed with better details. Ordinary people can participate with as little as 0.01 ETH to earn about 3% APR—the same rate as Bitmine, a “whale” holding 4 million ETH. In other words, the “economies of scale” are not as dominant.

I make these analogies to give citizens a new angle to learn about Web3, and to give the Web3 community a chance to understand civil society. Individual power is small. Whether it’s a queue in daily life or mining on a blockchain, I may not have the wisdom to design a better mechanism. What I do have, however, is the power to be a good citizen: refuse scalpers, don’t jump the line, and most importantly, resist the queuing gangs.

“If I don’t come here to sleep, it gives one more chance to a ‘queuing gang.’ So I stay here. I don’t want so many paid people taking up all the spots.”

— Former Eastern District Councilor, Chan Wing-tai

Day 1 of Mitigation for the Jimmy Lai Case: Citizens queue for three nights for public gallery tickets; former employee moved by Lai’s personal example.

Since last Friday (Nov 15) at noon, a queue had already begun forming outside the West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts. A regular attendee known as “Great-Aunt,” who was first in line, arrived at approximately 4:00 AM. Reporters also observed about ten middle-aged women arriving around 1:00 PM that same day. Most wore masks and used umbrellas to hide their faces, refusing to answer any questions.

— The Witness (法庭線)

Anyone who has looked into how Bitcoin operates—even if they haven’t read the Whitepaper—will have heard of Proof of Work (PoW). Having been involved in Web3 civic education for years, I often hear “muggles” complain that this concept is hard to grasp. But in reality, Bitcoin’s design is highly grounded in the physical world. Concepts like PoW, mining, and wallets are all borrowed from familiar daily life. Once you realize this, understanding Bitcoin becomes much easier.

Don’t overthink it as something purely technical or profound. In plain English, Proof of Work is simply “How far would you go for [X]?”

• How far would you go for a bowl of Kau Kee beef brisket?

• How far would you go for a Keung To concert?

• How far would you go to enter the main courtroom to support Jimmy Lai and the Apple Daily executives?

If you are willing to queue for an hour outside Kau Kee, pay over a hundred HKD, and endure the staff’s shouting, you get to eat the brisket.

If you are willing to spend time learning “vibe coding” to write programs to snatch tickets, or pay thousands of dollars to scalpers, you get to see Keung To perform.

And if you were willing to arrive at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts three days early and sleep rough in the winter cold for three nights—going further than even the “queuing gangs”—you won’t just win the spot; you’ll get to sit in one of the 42 public gallery seats in the main courtroom, right where the defendants are.

Before we dive deeper into PoW, let’s explain “Queuing Gangs” (排隊黨).

“Queuing Gangs” refer to people hired to act as human queuing machines. It might be a unique Hong Kong subculture, perhaps destined for the list of Intangible Cultural Heritage. Any citizen who has queued for a high-profile court case has likely encountered them: groups of people, usually speaking Mandarin, communicating via WeChat, professionally equipped, arriving early to snatch tickets for the main courtroom, yet knowing absolutely nothing about the case itself. These are “suspected” queuing gangs.

By noon on the first day, before the hearing had even ended, over 60 people were already queuing for tickets for the following day. Most wore hats, masks, and used umbrellas to shield their faces.

Queuing gangs don’t just occupy court seats, preventing concerned citizens from entering; they serve any industry where demand exceeds supply. In the 90s, when the Hong Kong property market was booming, every new development launch attracted queuing gangs. Masterminds would hire them to get the top spots in the selection line; selling that spot alone could earn hundreds of thousands of HKD. At the peak of the 1997 bubble, a prime spot for the Carmen’s Garden launch in Jordan reportedly changed hands for nearly 2 million HKD.

From a million making you a “millionaire,” to two million barely buying a “nano-flat,” to two million only covering a down payment, and finally, to two million only buying a spot in a queue—that is inflation. That is Hong Kong.

Bitcoin’s goal, of course, isn’t to decide who enters a courtroom or gets a flat, but who gets to record the ledger and receive Bitcoin as a reward.

Bitcoin’s version of PoW isn’t about “who gets there first,” but rather “who can solve a mathematical puzzle fastest.” This isn’t Kumon or Olympiad math; you can’t solve it through wisdom or study. It is purely trial and error—plugging in different numbers repeatedly until the answer works.

Furthermore, the math problem in Bitcoin’s PoW is meaningless, and the answer is useless. For example, if a parent tells a child, “Calculate our monthly household expenses and I’ll give you a candy,” that math problem is useful and meaningful. However, if the parent says, “Count how many grains of sand are in this flowerpot to get a candy,” it is only to prove the child’s “sincerity.” It can only be done one by one, it doesn’t train the mind, and the answer itself serves no purpose.

You might wonder why Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t design a meaningful math problem. As I said at the start, Bitcoin mimics the physical world. The mechanism of a physical queue is purely to compare “sincerity” and establish order; it has no other meaning—unless you argue that training your leg muscles or testing your endurance for sleeping on the street is a “meaning.”

To reduce the waste of time and energy in physical queuing, other mechanisms have emerged. The younger generation might not remember the days when, to get a seat at a restaurant, you had to stand directly behind a diner who looked like they were almost finished and unlikely to sit for another hour reading newspaper. Today, you just take a ticket. You still wait, but you don’t have to fight for a spot, and you can walk around freely. This also means you can queue at several restaurants at once.

Some “advanced” malls or apps allow remote queuing, further lowering the cost of waiting. However, in PoW, lower cost is not always better. Cost and incentives are the keys to any mechanism. Only when the two are aligned does the system succeed.

Personally, I don’t eat in malls, except with my mother. Once, on a Sunday, she wanted to go to Jade Garden in New Town Plaza for dim sum. I downloaded the mall app, verified my phone, and took a number before leaving the house. There were over 200 numbers ahead of us. I thought it would take forever, but before we even reached the restaurant, our number had passed. The reason was simple: one app account could take ticket for multiple restaurants, and one family could have multiple accounts. People take a bunch of numbers “just in case.” This results in “ticket inflation,” where the queue no longer reflects actual demand. Diners like me were forced back to the old way—standing physically at the door.

Many Bitcoin maximalists believe PoW is the most superior consensus mechanism, while Proof of Stake (PoS) is criticized as being “impure” or even “heretical.” I respect that people have different views, but to me, that argument is like saying “only physical queuing is fair, and any comfortable alternative is just ‘cutting corners’ and lacks the justice of the old ways.” I beg to differ.

One flaw in this view is ignoring that Bitcoin mining consumes massive amounts of electricity, damaging the environment. Readers might think that as a Bitcoin advocate, I wouldn’t hold this “EU-style leftist” view. However, I am not just a fan of Bitcoin; I am a fan of the environment. A friend once said that environmentalism shouldn’t just look at resources used, but the value created. I completely agree. But that also means if we can create the same value with fewer resources, the original mechanism is inefficient. If a remote ticket system provides the same fairness as a physical line, yet a bank insists people stand for hours, that isn’t just “fair”—it’s poorly designed.

Others argue PoW ensures participants truly “sacrifice,” making it more just than PoS, where you only lock up assets (a “security deposit”) without “working.” They claim PoS allows the wealthy to dominate. However, when the world has something called “money” that can buy labor, time, and even dignity, this view becomes a beautiful misunderstanding.

Back to the court queue: if the only way to get in was for citizens to queue personally, and they couldn’t receive any other benefit, then yes, that PoW mechanism is fair. However, when shameless people can hide in the background and pay a small amount of money to hire a “queuing gang” to occupy precious seats, that PoW is hardly “fair.”

In the context of Bitcoin, economic incentives have pushed the entry barrier for “work” higher and higher. It started with personal computers, moved to specialized hardware (ASICs), and then to massive mining farms. Proof of Work has long since evolved into “Proof of Capital.” If your financial power is weak, you are essentially just helping the network for free; your chance of getting a reward is lower than winning the lottery.

In contrast, Ethereum’s Proof of Stake, while capital-centric, is designed with better details. Ordinary people can participate with as little as 0.01 ETH to earn about 3% APR—the same rate as Bitmine, a “whale” holding 4 million ETH. In other words, the “economies of scale” are not as dominant.

I make these analogies to give citizens a new angle to learn about Web3, and to give the Web3 community a chance to understand civil society. Individual power is small. Whether it’s a queue in daily life or mining on a blockchain, I may not have the wisdom to design a better mechanism. What I do have, however, is the power to be a good citizen: refuse scalpers, don’t jump the line, and most importantly, resist the queuing gangs.

“If I don’t come here to sleep, it gives one more chance to a ‘queuing gang.’ So I stay here. I don’t want so many paid people taking up all the spots.”

— Former Eastern District Councilor, Chan Wing-tai