Alliance DAO Founder: The bull market is still there, and now is the best time to go long

Organize & compile: Shenchao TechFlow

Guests: Imran Khan, founder of Alliance DAO; Qiao Wang, founder of Alliance DAO

Podcast source: Good Game Podcast

Original title: How Long Will This Bear Market Last? | EP 72

Summary of key points

Imran and Qiao discussed how long this bear market will last, providing entrepreneurs with nonsense-free cryptocurrency insights.

Wonderful view summary

• It is a very suitable time to go long now.
• I don't think this cycle ends. I think we are actually in the middle of the cycle, and it may take six to eighteen months.
• This market decline is actually a good thing because it provides more breathing space.
• The market only needs an excuse for adjustment, and this excuse is tariff policy.
• The worst thing about tariffs is the uncertainty it brings, not the tariffs themselves.
• Many people on Twitter are influenced by the emotions of others. I think basically these people’s judgments are wrong, and those who are bearish are all wrong.
• Institutional investors prefer to choose tokenized treasury bonds rather than stablecoins.
• I really like the ideas and products of the early stages of tokenization because essentially this is the entire field of tokenization startups, tokenized equity and even tokenized companies
• Web2 giants like Robinhood and Kalshi may gradually squeeze the living space of crypto startups. This is a question worthy of attention and may have a significant impact on entrepreneurs in the crypto field.
• I think the economy is actually doing pretty well, and with that in mind, and Bitcoin as a macro asset class right now, I think Bitcoin will actually be doing well over the next six to eighteen months.
• Usually during the first 100 days of their presidency, they make a lot of adjustments to the economy or re-formulate how policies are implemented. Usually after that, the policy gradually stabilizes.

Current market status?

Imran:

There is a guy named Ki Young Ju who recently tweeted that the bull cycle of Bitcoin is over. It is expected that bear markets or sideways consolidation will occur in the next 6 to 12 months.

Qiao:

So what is the reason? What are the reasons for these people?

Imran:

Let me read it. They mentioned that every key indicator on the chain shows a bear market signal. As new liquidity in the market gradually dry up, the newly entered "whale" is selling Bitcoin at a lower price. CryptoQuant users subscribed to my alert service and received these signals.

This alarm system uses principal component analysis (PCA) to combine indicators such as MVRV, SOPR and NUPL and calculates a 365-day moving average. It can identify the turning point in the trend change of the moving average.

Qiao:

I am skeptical of how these data perform in the current cycle. Because many big data analytics are now related to ETFs.

Imran:

Some people judge bear markets based on macroeconomic factors. For example, the impact of tariffs. In addition, the inflation problem has not been resolved. He also mentioned some macro changes related to artificial intelligence (AI). He believes this may have an impact on the market. He also mentioned some other signs that made him believe we were already in the bear market.

Tariffs and Economy

Imran: What factors keep us bullish on the market? How does the overall economy look like?

Qiao:

The economic performance is actually pretty good. From the election to the present, or in other words, corporate earnings forecasts have been rising, not falling, which is a positive signal for the market.

Imran: Are you focusing on the macroeconomic level?

Qiao:

No, I mainly focus on the situation in the United States. For example, the spread of high-yield bonds is currently close to historical lows. Generally speaking, high-yield spreads are an indicator of credit risk in the market and the economy. If the economy is down, credit risk increases because businesses may not be able to repay their debts. Although interest rate spreads have risen slightly recently, this is mainly due to the impact of tariffs. However, concerns about inflation triggered by tariffs have actually weakened. Inflation is actually falling, at least in the short term.

This is exactly the opposite of what people expect of tariffs, because people think that tariffs will cause inflation, but it doesn't actually happen. Inflation is actually falling, not rising. And the unemployment rate is close to the lows. So, I actually think there are almost no cracks in the economy. Of course, the risk is higher than three months ago, and I'm not saying that the tariffs have no effect. Of course it will affect people's consumption, especially companies' consumption. Uncertainty is actually a big risk and a big problem facing companies and individuals, but these data have not yet been revealed. So I think the economy is actually doing pretty well, and with that in mind, and Bitcoin as a macro asset class right now, I think Bitcoin will actually be doing well over the next six to eighteen months.

Imran:

I've seen some reports on the actual impact of tariffs on the United States. For example, automakers like BMW are taking measures to temporarily absorb some of the tariff costs and provide price protection for American consumers.

I'm not sure if this price protection will last for a long time, but at least in the short to medium term, the automotive industry may have some buffering. I think other industries may take similar measures. So even if the tariffs are really implemented in full, it may take some time for consumers to truly feel the impact.

Qiao:

Yes, if this uncertainty lasts longer, the greater the risk, and inflation may gradually rise and become uncontrollable. If Trump continues to make tough remarks about tariffs, the economy may have cracks. But at present, the situation is not that bad. Have you noticed that Trump has remained silent on tariff issues in recent days? I think he may be close to his personal "big pain point".

Imran:

This is usually the first 100 days of a presidential term, usually during the first 100 days of a presidential term, and they make a lot of adjustments to the economy or re-formulate how policies are implemented. Usually after that, the policy gradually stabilizes. But we still need to observe. Hearing that he plans to announce new policies on April 2, I saw his tweet this morning saying that April 2 could be a deadline and he plans to impose universal tariffs on 20% of the world's countries.

Qiao:

This reminds me of the point I mentioned earlier. The worst thing about tariffs is the uncertainty it brings, not the tariffs themselves. If Trump can clearly tell us what the specific tariff policy is, then this uncertainty will disappear and companies can adjust accordingly. This will put the economy in a better state.

Imran:

Another Trump goal is to bring manufacturing back to the United States. He argued that American goods should be given priority over imported goods. But Anthon believes that the manufacturing base of the United States is very weak compared to Shenzhen or China, which is indeed a problem. Especially in terms of labor costs, the United States does have disadvantages. But it may be different if you look at it from a robotics perspective.

Qiao:

However, this is obviously a long-term problem. The recovery of manufacturing will take several years to take effect, and this is not something that can be solved in a short-term economic cycle.

Imran:

Since this process takes a long time, consumers will not feel the direct impact of tariffs in the short term. So we also need to observe how these tariffs will ultimately affect future commodity pricing.

Cryptocurrency market sentiment divides

Qiao:

I also noticed a phenomenon where there is a huge difference between sentiment in the cryptocurrency circle and the sentiment of traditional financial institutions. To be honest, I have never seen anyone in the crypto circle so pessimistic about the market since the FTX incident.

And on the institutional side, when I talk to some traders, they are very optimistic about the market. Banks have begun to gradually open up policies, relaxing restrictions on customers' investment in Bitcoin ETFs.

Imran:

I have some data here that supports your point of view. Since Trump's election, the total market value of stablecoins has increased by $50 billion. In addition, the tokenized Treasury bond size has grown from less than $2 billion to $4.1 billion, an area that has grown almost 50% since Trump's election. So, anything linked to physical assets is growing.

In terms of asset management scale, this growth trend is very obvious. And we found that institutional investors prefer tokenized treasury bonds rather than stablecoins. The reason is that stablecoins have certain risks, such as credit issues related to Tether or Circle, while tokenized Treasury bonds provide a safer exit path, especially for traditional institutional investors.

You may also notice some good news related to physical assets and trade finance. For example, Ethena and Securities recently announced the launch of a Layer 1 blockchain called Converge, and Ondo, there are many bullish signals about RWA's application in the field of trade finance.

Qiao:

Yes, I feel that overall, many people on Twitter are affected by the emotions of others. I think basically these people’s judgments are wrong, and those who are bearish are all wrong.

Imran:

I think encrypted Twitter has become an "echo chamber", encrypted Twitter has formed an echo loop, causing all participants to fall into a vortex of negative emotions. I think people should be more off crypto Twitter and focus on actual data on the chain, as well as the growth dynamics of cryptocurrencies in various fields. But now, few people do it.

"Where are we now? Where will we go?"

Imran:

What do you think about the future of cryptocurrencies? What stage are we currently in? What is the future direction?

Qiao:

I think we had issued a warning two months ago, or earlier in January.

Imran:

Yes, I think everyone is a little tired psychologically. Those who should sell should have sold it now and have already sold it.

Qiao:

We did say people should sell. But I was wrong at the time and I thought we were approaching the vertex of the cycle. But in hindsight, I don't think the cycle is over. I think we are actually in the middle of the cycle, and it may take six to eighteen months.

Imran:

So this market decline is actually a good thing because it provides more breathing space.

Qiao:

The overall decline this time is mainly due to market sentiment caused by tariff policies. Bitcoin follows U.S. stocks, which reached an all-time high in early January. From the perspective of price-to-earnings ratio, the trading level of U.S. stocks is equivalent to mid-2021, before Fed Chairman Jerome Powell began hikes, and even close to the level before the 2007 global financial crisis. Therefore, the valuation of US stocks is very high.

The market only needs an excuse for adjustment, and this excuse is tariff policy. So, the market has now adjusted, the US stock market has fallen by at least 10%, and the Nasdaq has fallen by 13%. I think this adjustment is necessary. Although the valuation is still relatively high, it is now more reasonable.

That's true. Therefore, Bitcoin's trend is closely following the US stock market. However, as far as the current economic situation is concerned, there are actually no obvious problems. If Trump can stop talking about tariffs frequently, I think the economy may improve. But I feel that he is close to his "personal limit", which is the greatest pressure point.

Imran:

Yes, they always say they don't care if the stock market is in a recession, or if the country is in a recession or something, but I don't believe that statement.

Qiao:

So, I still have 80% confidence in whether I have reached the vertex of the cycle at the moment. At the current price level, I'm not sure if we've reached the mid-term bottom, but this is a perfect time to go long.

There may be some emerging areas, and some narratives may become important. But I think there is no clear narrative yet, and some key market narratives may appear in the future.

Imran:

People have lost heavily on Meme-related tokens, and now they are paying attention to tokens that can actually generate income.

Qiao:

This is something people are discussing online, but in fact the market does not operate completely according to this logic. But we can continue to observe. At the moment, I haven't seen anything particularly attractive outside of Bitcoin. Ethereum is now close to historically oversold levels, but I can't find a good enough reason to hold it. It is indeed a bit difficult to buy it, but at the same time, its fundamentals are actually pretty good.

I still think Bitcoin is my most optimistic asset. I have also recently bought some stocks, such as Google, TSMC, Tesla and Pinduoduo (PDD), which are companies we have discussed in the past two years. In addition to Tesla, I have finally increased Tesla's position recently. Last November, I tried Tesla’s SSD (full autonomous driving system), which is really a game-changing product. So I've been waiting for the price adjustment. After Tesla dropped 50% from its high, I finally bought it.

Ethena and Ondo launch their own Layer 1

Imran:

What do you think of Ethena and Ondo launching their own Layer 1 blockchain? I find this interesting, for example, their Permissioned Validators are from traditional financial institutions. This actually weakens Ethereum's moat in the DeFi field to some extent. After all, one of the advantages of Ethereum is its huge asset pool accumulated over the years.

Recently, a research report from Standard Chartered Bank mentioned that Base has "drawn" about $50 billion in value from the Ethereum ecosystem, right? So in my opinion, there is a lot of value now flowing from Ethereum's Layer 2 and Layer 1 to other chains.

Qiao:

What do you think about this? I don't want to argue about Ethereum anymore, this is the current reality.

Imran:

Obviously, this is not good news for Ethereum. I think this will continue to happen in the future. RWA may choose to build its own blockchain, which is called a "licensing chain", because such chains can provide more functions.

They can choose to "rollback" the data on the chain, and they will have more control.

Regulation and counterparty risks

Qiao: But I don't quite understand why they do this in a permitted way. What is the meaning of this? What benefits can they get from it?

Imran:

One is more control over the account book. For example, if you encounter a hacker attack launched by a country like North Korea. In permissionless blockchains, this situation is almost impossible to deal with. But on licensed chains, they can take steps to reduce losses by controlling validators.

Qiao:

But which users are they launching this license chain to attract? For example, if you want to buy their products today, such as money market funds, or something similar, you can open a brokerage account directly.

The significance of tokenized funds on Ethereum is that they allow those who cannot open brokerage accounts to purchase these products through the Ethereum chain. So, what exactly did they solve by creating a new license chain?

Imran: Probably for global visits. If you can know who the counterparty is, it will make the entire system more susceptible to regulation. Because you understand the role of all participants in the value chain, you don’t have to worry about the partner’s counterparty risks, the risk of unidentified transactions on the other side, or security issues like hackers. Do you think this is a consideration for them?

Qiao:

But can this bring them more business? Every time you create a new chain, you will encounter huge user acquisition issues. You have to find ways to attract users.

Imran:

Traditional financial institutions already have their own distribution channels. Maybe there is some kind of partnership between these traditional financial fund companies and these two Layer 1 projects, but I'm not sure how close this relationship is. It may be just cooperative marketing, and we don’t know the specific depth of cooperation. I mean, I'm just trying to think from their perspective and see if there is some actual value, or is it just "smoke and mirror" - that is, it seems complicated but actually has no substantial meaning.

If they do have distribution channels and are running on a licensed chain, then they may solve both counterparty risks and hacking issues while providing a global product. This is the reason to support this model. But the reason for opposition is that Ethereum is licensed, and anyone can develop applications on it, and anyone can use it. It only needs a network cable to access the global market without KYC.

Qiao:

I was surprised by Standard Chartered’s question about Layer 2. They seem to think that Layer 2 can keep a lot of sorting fees instead of passing them all to Layer 1.

Asset tokenization on Base

Imran:

Have you seen their announcement about tokenized assets on Base?

Qiao:

Are they really going to do this?

Imran:

I think they've started to act or are testing.

Qiao:

I think globally, Coinbase and Base are probably one of the most qualified companies to succeed in the tokenized stock space.

They not only have distribution channels, but also have rich experience in dealing with traditional finance, right? They are one of the major custodians of many large asset management funds. In addition, they are a public company, which also brings them more credibility. Moreover, they are located in the United States and are subject to strict regulation, which is undoubtedly a huge advantage.

Imran:

So they may have a better edge in RWA than Ethena or Ondo or any other competitor.

Robinhood and Kalshi

Qiao: Another company that might be very suitable for tokenized stocks is Robinhood.

Imran:

If you look at their recent announcements, they mention not only tokenized stocks but real estate.

Imran:

In fact, founder Vlad mentioned that he wanted to build a platform, and he imagined that this platform could allow users to easily buy and sell real estate with just one click.

Imran:

They also recently reached a partnership with Kalshi. I remember we talked about this before. In fact, Kalshi has signed an agreement with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to allow them to provide forecast market services in the U.S. These services include some specific contracts similar to the forecast market. Kalshi is currently the only company that has been authorized to legally operate such services across the United States.

Robinhood has just entered into a partnership with Kalshi to provide all Robinhood users with comprehensive predictive market capabilities. This has also caused some concerns.

Web2 giants like Robinhood and Kalshi may gradually squeeze the living space of crypto startups. This is a question worthy of attention and may have a significant impact on entrepreneurs in the crypto field.

At least in the United States. However, I think there is still great potential for development in the field of crypto on a global scale. For example, Polymarket still performs very well in the international market. What do you think about this?

Qiao:

I don't think they are allies of ours, they are more like external threats.

Imran:

There are indeed many startups and traditional businesses that pose a threat to entrepreneurs in our ecosystem. So, we can only deal with these challenges by acting quickly and executing efficiently.

Current Situation of Artificial Intelligence

Manus AI

Imran:

Recently, when I was browsing information flow, I found that half of the content is now discussing AI startups. In fact, we also mentioned similar topics in the previous podcast. Among the startups we focused on, four of them were completely focused on AI. There are indeed a lot of interesting things happening in the AI ​​field lately. Have you used Manus?

Qiao: I don't have access permissions.

Imran:

I've done some simple tasks with Manus and Operator. Operator is a tool launched by ChatGPT or OpenAI. I tried two tasks, such as asking them to go to the official website of YC (Y Combinator) to get information about the latest batch of startups and filter out the crypto startups that have already been launched.

I did the same task with both Manus and Operator. It took Manus about 4 minutes to complete. Manus gave the full results in 3 to 4 minutes, including not only the name of the startup, but also the founder's name and their specific business content. It can be said that it basically grabs complete relevant information.

But the Operator is stuck. After two minutes of running the Operator, the result returned was: "I looked at the latest batch of startups on the YC website and found only one called Lero, focusing on trainable deep agents and artificial intelligence." It also added that this batch of startups are not associated with encryption. By contrast, I was surprised by how Manus performed.

Qiao: Do ​​these two tools run tasks on your computer, or rely on the cloud?

Imran:

I think they run in the cloud, not directly on my computer. For example, Operator will display a desktop interface that simulates mouse movement and clicks. It will search for YC information, browse the website and crawl content.

However, this also reminds me of a phenomenon that many Chinese startups seem to be ahead of the United States in some aspects. At least from the discussion on Twitter, outside observers generally believe that Chinese startups have surpassed the United States in some areas.

Qiao:

In the past month, I have come to a similar conclusion. I'm not sure if China is really ahead of the United States in all respects, but the two are equally matched to say the least. For example, DeepSeek is a prominent example. As we all know, DeepSeek's performance is almost comparable to that of the top American models, but it is one or two orders of magnitude smaller. This means it can run on local devices and is very efficient.

AI video models from China and the United States

Qiao:

Another interesting phenomenon is that we currently have several video-based AI startups in our incubator. They used three to four video models, only one from the United States and the remaining three from China. It is said that China's model not only has better performance, but also has lower costs and higher product quality.

However, AI has a very wide range of applications. This is just some scattered data points. For example, you can say that Tesla’s autonomous driving technology is a kind of “physical AI”, right?

Of course, Tesla's FSD (fully autonomous driving) technology is world-leading. Therefore, it is actually difficult to make a conclusion on which country has more advantages in the field of AI. But I think China is at least on the same level as ours and the United States.

Imran:

I feel the same way. Especially after the Biden administration restricted the export of high-end video chips to China, China has significantly increased its investment in local chip manufacturing, especially in cooperation with SMIC. Have you noticed this?

Qiao:

But their chip technology is still lagging behind generations.

Imran:

But even so, companies like DeepSeek are already using existing chips and software to develop products that can compete with US startups in the media. Although it has not been completely flat, the gap is narrowing. I think that after one or two more technological iterations, China's products can reach the same level as those of the United States. So it can be foreseen that they will continue to increase their investment in SMIC.

Qiao:

In fact, chip export restrictions may force China to innovate on model scale.

Imran:

In the long run, this may instead be a Chinese advantage, making them more resilient and innovative in their competition with the United States.

Qiao:

Moreover, models like Deep Seek are open source.

Imran:

That's interesting because I've hardly heard about Llama 3 lately.

Qiao:

However, there is a very noteworthy trend here. First of all, the technological competition between these two superpowers has basically become an "arms race", and both sides are quickly catching up with each other's pace.

Localized Large Language Models (LLMs) and Privacy

Qiao:

Recently our team mentioned a very interesting trend that is localized large language model (LLM).

With the advancement of technology, the size of LLM is gradually shrinking, but its performance has not declined. This means that in the future they can run directly on local devices, such as personal computers, or even mobile phones. This provides the possibility for developing new applications based on local reasoning.

Imran:

This is a huge benefit to privacy protection.

Qiao:

Not only that, localized LLM can also significantly improve response speed. Because all calculations are done locally, there is no need to send the request to the cloud and wait for the response. Even for those who don’t care much about privacy, the speed improvement is also an important advantage.

Apple Intelligence and Privacy Issues

Imran: This may be a good thing for both Apple and Google, right? For Android, too?

Currently, Apple is having some difficulties with its Apple Intelligence project. They had planned to launch some important features a few months ago and had a lot of publicity for it, but eventually they canceled it. It is said that the main reason is that they have encountered bottlenecks in privacy protection.

Apple cannot directly use other companies' models, so, they have to rely on their own frameworks, but in this area, I think Apple is already behind.

Qiao:

Apple is indeed behind. What puzzles me is that despite this, Apple's P/E ratio is still more than 30 times, which is the highest among the "seven tech giants", second only to Tesla. Tesla can be essentially a Meme stock. By the way, I bought some Tesla stocks a few days ago.

But Apple's valuation is really hard for me to understand. They haven't launched refreshing innovations in many years. It can be said that Steve Jobs brought Apple a decade of glory, but after that, this glory seemed to fade away.

Imran:

Hopefully Cook can turn the situation around. However, Warren Buffett has already sold its shares at the high of Apple's stock price.

Qiao:

However, as these high-performance and miniaturized models become increasingly popular, and they are mostly open source, this brings huge possibilities to new applications based on local reasoning. This has a very positive effect on privacy protection and performance optimization.

Imran:

I think there is huge potential in this. In the future, we may see some very interesting applications born. Do you know if there are startups exploring this field?

Qiao:

There seems to be no yet. I think the biggest problem at the moment is that when users download an app that supports local reasoning, they also need to download the model file, which can take several minutes.

Using localized large language model

Imran:

I believe that with the advancement of technology, this problem will gradually be solved. This is indeed a very important area to pay attention to. I have seen some potential application scenarios, such as applications in the health field. Provide personalized suggestions by analyzing user health data.

These models can help users analyze long-term health trends, such as what aspects can be improved. Moreover, this data is processed entirely locally and does not need to be uploaded to the large language model in the cloud. This makes me feel more at ease. Sometimes, I don't want to share certain sensitive information, especially for privacy reasons.

Qiao:

If there could be an encrypted, completely private system, and the data belongs only to me, I would trust it more.

Vibe encoding

Imran: Have you used Lovable or other vibe encoding platforms? I don't know much about the concept of vibe encoding. In essence, it is an AI-assisted encoding tool that can be applied in different fields. I built my own website and I think these tools are really amazing.

Qiao:

These tools are very competitive. Do you remember Wix and Squarespace? These tools can also help people create websites quickly, but it was really troublesome to use them at the time.

Imran:

Indeed, those tools have not been very good. In contrast, Lovable's biggest feature is that it offers more freedom and customization options. For example, you can simply adjust the design style to make the page simpler, or remove the pictures. The operation is very simple, and I think this kind of tool is now very easy to commercialize.

I think these tools are suitable for almost everyone, especially entrepreneurs, because they can significantly improve efficiency.

Qiao:

One of the main application scenarios of Lovable is to help entrepreneurs quickly create product demonstrations. This tool is very practical for those who want to hand over the product prototype into the hands of users without spending too much development costs. It is also very suitable for personal websites, such as your own homepage.

Imran:

This is interesting because it lowers the threshold for entrepreneurship. You mentioned on Twitter before that we found from some data that entrepreneurs now may have lower technical skills than before. This is because today's "creators" can build applications themselves without learning programming.

At this stage, the most important thing is to quickly launch MVP (minimum viable product) and find the fit between the product and the market.

Qiao:

Yes, but it should be noted that we still prefer teams with strong technical capabilities. Of course, but there may be one day when a team of engineers does not require a team of engineers can quickly achieve the fit between the product and the market. I don't know if this will be the end of this year, two years later or five years later, but it's always possible.

However, it has not reached that point yet. The trend I've observed is that nowadays teams are usually made up of two to three people, one of which is a non-technical partner, and technical partners use coding aids like Cursor and Windsor to do the front-end development work. But they still need a strong engineer to take charge of back-end development, handling more complex tasks.

Imran:

Over time, the product becomes more complex. But at least for now, in order to quickly implement MVP, you can indeed rely on Lovable or similar tools.

Qiao:

There are some recent comments that vibe encoding may cause more errors in the product. Indeed, for example, some people are dissatisfied with tools like Cursor and Windsor. But for startups, these mistakes are not a critical issue. The biggest risk in the early stages is that the product is not interested in the user, not that there are some minor problems in the code. Once you launch a product that users really need, you can go back and fix these bugs.

Imran:

It is the most important thing to bring the product to market and let users use it.

I think this helps a lot for entrepreneurs in emerging countries. For example, there is an example of a child from Congo who lives in a village without electricity. He made a homemade windmill by collecting metal parts to provide energy to the village. He did this through the Internet learning and research. His behavior can be seen as a real-life vibe code, such as energy construction. From this perspective, emerging countries and local communities can use these tools to develop applications, solve practical problems, and thus improve living conditions.

Emerging countries are leveraging these tools, and I think their impact may be greater in these places than in developed countries.

Qiao:

Because it is more difficult to obtain funds in these areas, and their business models may not be suitable for venture capital.

Imran:

This excites me. I think this will create a level playing field for more entrepreneurs, which means we will see more new products that we haven't seen before. So, I'm not interested in the word vibe encoding itself, but the possibilities it brings are really exciting.

Tokenized startups and equity

Imran:

Next we can talk about the relationship between vibe encoding and cryptocurrency.

There is a startup called Taro Base, you should have heard of it? The core feature of Taro Base is to provide byte encoding tools to help crypto startups build applications and focus on encryption-related scenarios. We believe that the opportunities in this field are currently fully open. And, not just building applications, people can also turn these startup ideas into some kind of revolving financing tool through tokenization. This tool can help businesses monetize while driving user growth. So, "transforming your life philosophy into reality and ultimately achieving an initial public offering (IPO)" may become a new trend. Taro Base is working in this direction. Apart from that, we have another startup that is exploring similar models using games as an example. So we've seen some really interesting practical use cases, especially when it comes to the combination of startup ideas and tokenization.

Qiao:

Yes, I really like the ideas and products of the early stages of tokenization because essentially this is the entire field of tokenization startups, tokenized equity and even tokenized companies, right? However, at a broader level, there are two main ways to tokenize the early stages of tokenization: one is to directly tokenize these early stage ideas; the other is to tokenize the stocks of existing companies, such as putting shares of Tesla or SpaceX on the blockchain. I think this idea is feasible, but it faces many obstacles in practice. First, you need to get these stocks. So the question is, where do these stocks come from? You may need to buy stocks as a company, or buy stocks from company employees. Then, it is also necessary to create a legal and compliant framework to put these stocks on the chain. This operation process is complex and full of friction.

In addition, the current demand for this model does not seem to be high in the market, as users can already easily obtain these stocks through their brokerage accounts. Therefore, another more promising idea is not to move the stocks in the secondary market to the chain, but to directly put the stocks in the primary market to the chain. That is to say, when a company is first established, it operates in a completely crypto-native way, such as tokenizing and publishing its shares to the chain before it is established. This is the future development direction of combining vibe encoding and tokenization platforms.

Imran:

Essentially, this approach is to bring small and medium-sized startups directly to the blockchain.

Qiao:

It is indeed the case, and it also creates a brand new market for these companies. I think this is very important.

BYD's new 1,000-kilowatt electric vehicle charging technology

Imran:

This could be a huge opportunity. Have you heard of BYD's recent news? BYD is China's largest electric car manufacturer, with its current share of about 11% in the global market, while Tesla's market share is 19%. Recently, BYD announced a very advanced technology that basically allows an electric car to quickly charge in just one minute.

Qiao:

How can this be achieved?

Imran:

Their technology can fully charge the vehicle in just 5 minutes and have a range of 250 to 300 miles. Specifically, they used a fast charging system for electric vehicles with power up to 1,000 kilowatts.

Their core technology is the design of a platform flash charging battery and blade battery. This combination can accelerate ion transfer in the electrolyte while reducing the resistance of the battery separator, thereby significantly shortening the charging time. However, I don't know enough about the technical details, but it's this innovation that reduces the charging time to 5 minutes.

Qiao:

Is this technology already put into production? Or is it still in the R&D stage?

Imran:

It is expected to be officially put into use next month. I like this idea very much because they take a very short time from concept to practical application. In contrast, I am not very interested in conceptual technologies that take 18 to 24 months to implement. This technology comes from China. Another interesting trend is that more and more such innovative technologies are emerging from China, not the United States.

Qiao:

I have seen some data showing that the share of Chinese branded cars in the European market is growing rapidly, especially in the past three years, this trend is very obvious. However, I'm not sure if the data are completely accurate.

Imran:

I recently watched a video of a car interior comparison between BYD and Tesla and found that BYD's interior design is much more refined.

Imran:

I think the competition in the electric vehicle field is not only reflected in the popularization of charging piles, but more importantly, the ability of fast charging technology.

Robotics

Imran: I have done some research on robotics recently. This is a very competitive area. I found that robotics has huge potential for development in multiple industries. For example, humanoid robots can be used in a variety of common scenarios, while factory robots focus on improving factory work efficiency, especially on automated production lines.

Qiao:

This should be Amazon's strength, right? Although many people think Tesla is the leader in the field of robotics, I think Amazon is. Amazon has not only developed many types of robots, especially in the field of factory robots. They have been deeply engaged in it for decades and may have long been far ahead.

Imran:

I agree with you. You may have also seen Andrew King’s posts, who mentioned that the potential of robotics is similar to the opportunity when cryptocurrencies first emerged. He used Figure AI as an example to illustrate the huge prospects in this field. I totally agree with him. I think this will be a very big opportunity. And interestingly, Elon Musk mentioned in a speech recently that the cost of commodities may drop significantly in the future.

Yes, he even predicts that the cost of goods will be close to zero, resulting in the value of the currency also dropping. His logic is that when all commodities are highly commodified, there is no need for currency to exist. Of course, I think this is a bit exaggerated and more like a vision. But there are indeed many people who believe it.

Qiao:

I remember Elon once used simple mathematical methods to estimate the market size of Tesla Optimus (Tesla humanoid robot). His algorithm is: multiply the minimum wage by the number of hours people spend on household chores such as washing dishes, laundry, and more by 365 days a year, and finally by the global population. According to this calculation method, the potential market size of humanoid robots is as high as $10 trillion per year, which is really amazing.

Qiao:

Of course, Elon has always liked to exaggerate, but even achieving only one-tenth of it means that Tesla's valuation could reach $10 trillion, becoming the most valuable company in the world.

Imran:

And Tesla may dominate the field of universal humanoid robots. Judging from the information I have seen so far, the development in this field is really exciting.

From what I have read and observed, robotics will not only have a profound impact on the cryptocurrency field, but will also bring huge changes to the overall labor market. For example, while optimizing production processes in factories, it can also achieve widespread applications in homes. I also noticed that some surgical units have begun using robotics to assist the surgery. Some companies have even raised funds and have successfully developed these devices.

Cryptocurrency and Robotics

Imran:

Recently I have been studying the combination of cryptocurrency and robotics, but I haven't found many practical cases yet.

Payment is a possible use case, but beyond that, I haven't seen any obvious application of other cryptocurrencies combined with robotics. Do you have any ideas?

Qiao:

If so, maybe it is a data-related application? For example, through the incentive mechanism of cryptocurrency, the data required for robot training is collected and guided.

Imran:

But do you think we really need this way?

Qiao:

This is hard to say. Tesla’s approach when processing electric vehicle data is to launch vehicles first, collect large amounts of data through these vehicles, and then use this data to optimize hardware and software. This creates a virtuous cycle: the hardware captures data, which in turn improves the hardware.

Imran:

Tesla may adopt a similar approach to promote the development of humanoid robots. My guess is that they will offer some people willing to try a preliminary version of a humanoid robot that may only accomplish 10% or 20% of the tasks, and the rest require human assistance. In this way, the robot can gradually adapt to more general scenarios.

I think this will become reinforcement learning over time, rather than relying on crypto incentives, but who knows?

Application of artificial intelligence and robots in labor

Qiao:

I recently thought of a question: Will contractors and freelancer platforms such as Fiverr and Amazon's Mechanical Turk be replaced by the rise of artificial intelligence? After all, today's intelligent agents (AI Agents) can already do many similar tasks, right? This trend has also been observed within our company. In the past, we would hire some freelancers to complete simple tasks, such as finding excellent entrepreneurs online. Now, through smart proxy, we can complete the same work in a shorter time and at a lower cost.

Imran:

That's true. I think Fiverr is a platform that has a poor user experience because most of the service providers above are low-cost laborers from emerging countries. Due to language barriers and communication problems, the final results often do not match expectations. You may need to spend more time explaining and coordinating. And now, with AI, these tasks can be completed instantly, which is really great.