Compiled & edited by TechFlow
Guests: Imran Khan, Founder of Alliance DAO; Qiao Wang, Founder of Alliance DAO
Podcast source: Good Game Podcast
How Long Will This Bear Market Last? | EP 72
Summary of key points
Imran and Qiao discuss how long this bear market will last, and provide no-nonsense crypto insights for entrepreneurs.
Summary of highlights
- Now is a very good time to go long.
- I don't think this cycle is over. I think we're actually still in the middle of the cycle, probably another six to 18 months.
- This market decline is actually a good thing because it provides more breathing room.
- The market just needs an excuse to adjust, and that excuse is tariff policy.
- The worst thing about tariffs is the uncertainty they create, not the tariffs themselves.
- A lot of people on Twitter are being influenced by other people's emotions. I think basically all of these people are wrong, and those who are bearish, are all wrong.
- Institutional investors are more inclined to choose tokenized treasuries rather than stablecoins.
- I really like tokenized early stage ideas and products because essentially this is the whole space of tokenized 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 problem 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 given that, and given where Bitcoin is right now as a macro asset class, I think over the next six to eighteen months, Bitcoin is actually going to do very well.
- Usually in the first 100 days of a president's term, they do a lot of tweaking of the economy or reworking the way policy is done. And usually after that, policy settles down.
Market status?
Imran:
There is a guy called Ki Young Ju who recently tweeted that the bull cycle of Bitcoin is over and that a bear market or sideways price action is expected for the next 6 to 12 months.
Qiao:
So what is the reason? What is the rationale of these people?
Imran:
Let me read it. They mentioned that every key on-chain indicator was showing bearish signals. As new liquidity in the market dried up, new whales were selling Bitcoin at lower prices. CryptoQuant users subscribed to my alert service and received these signals.
This alert 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 turning points where the moving average trend changes.
Qiao:
I am skeptical about the performance of this data in the current cycle, because a lot of big data analysis is now related to ETFs.
Imran:
There are others who base their bear market calls 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 that this may have an impact on the market. He also mentioned some other signs that make him believe that we have entered a bear market.
Tariffs and the economy
Imran: What are the factors that keep us bullish on the market? How is the overall economy looking?
Qiao:
The economy is actually doing pretty well. From the election to now, or in the last few months, corporate earnings forecasts have been going up, not down, which is a positive sign for the market.
Imran: Are you focusing on the macroeconomic level?
Qiao:
No, I'm mainly focused on what's going on domestically. For example, high-yield bond spreads are near all-time lows. High-yield spreads are generally a measure of credit risk in the market and the economy. If there's a recession, credit risk increases because companies may not be able to repay their debts. While spreads have risen slightly recently, that's mostly because of tariffs. But concerns about inflation from tariffs have actually diminished. Inflation is actually falling, at least in the short term.
It's the opposite of what people would expect from tariffs, because people would think that tariffs would lead to inflation, but that's not happening. Inflation is actually going down, not going up. And unemployment is near lows as well. So I actually think the economy is barely cracking. Of course, the risk is higher than it was three months ago, and I'm not saying that tariffs have no impact. Of course it's going to impact people's spending, especially companies' spending. Uncertainty is actually a big risk and a big problem for companies and individuals, but it's not showing up in the data yet. So I think the economy is actually doing pretty well, and given that, and given where Bitcoin is right now as a macro asset class, I think over the next six to 18 months, Bitcoin is actually going to do very well.
Imran:
I've seen some reports on the actual impact of tariffs on the U.S. For example, automakers like BMW are taking steps to temporarily absorb some of the tariff costs to provide price protection for American consumers.
I'm not sure if this price protection will last long term, but at least in the short to medium term, the auto industry may have some cushion. I imagine other industries may take similar measures. So even if the tariffs do go into full force, it may take some time for consumers to really feel the impact.
Qiao:
Yes, the longer this uncertainty lasts, the greater the risk that inflation could creep up and become unmanageable. If Trump continues to talk tough about tariffs, cracks could appear in the economy. But it's not that bad yet. Have you noticed that Trump has been quiet on tariffs in recent days? I think he may be approaching his personal "maximum pain point."
Imran:
That's usually the first 100 days of a president's term, and usually in the first 100 days of a president's term, they make a lot of adjustments to the economy or re-formulate how policy is implemented. Usually after that, policy will gradually stabilize. But we still need to watch. I heard that he plans to announce new policies on April 2nd. I saw his tweet this morning saying that April 2nd may be the deadline, and he plans to implement universal tariffs on 20% of the countries in the world.
Qiao:
This brings me to a point I made earlier. The worst thing about tariffs is the uncertainty they create, not the tariffs themselves. If Trump could tell us exactly what the tariffs would be, that uncertainty would go away and businesses could adjust accordingly. That would put the economy in a better shape.
Imran:
Another goal of Trump is to bring manufacturing back to the United States. He advocates that American goods should be given priority over imported goods. But Anthon believes that the manufacturing base in 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 a disadvantage. But if you look at it from the perspective of robotics, the situation may be different.
Qiao:
However, this is obviously a long-term problem. The recovery of the manufacturing industry 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 still need to observe how these tariffs will eventually affect future commodity pricing.
Cryptocurrency market sentiment split
Qiao:
I also noticed a huge divergence between the sentiment within the cryptocurrency community and that of traditional financial institutions. To be honest, I haven’t seen people in the crypto community so pessimistic about the market since the FTX incident.
On the institutional side, when I talked to some traders, they were very optimistic about the market. Banks began to gradually open up their policies and relax restrictions on customers investing in Bitcoin ETFs.
Imran:
I have some data to back up your point. Since Trump was elected, the total market cap of stablecoins has increased by $50 billion. Also, the tokenized Treasury bond has grown from less than $2 billion to $4.1 billion, which is almost a 50% increase since Trump was elected. So anything pegged to a physical asset is growing.
This growth trend is very obvious in terms of asset management scale. And we found that institutional investors prefer tokenized bonds rather than stablecoins. The reason is that stablecoins have certain risks, such as credit issues related to Tether or Circle, while tokenized bonds provide a safer exit route, especially for traditional institutional investors.
You may have also noticed some positive news related to physical assets and trade finance. For example, Ethena and Securitize recently announced the launch of a Layer 1 blockchain called Converge, and Ondo, there are a lot of bullish signals about the application of RWA in the trade finance field.
Qiao:
Yeah, I think in general, a lot of people on Twitter are being influenced by the emotions of other people. I think basically, these people are wrong, the people who are bearish, they are all wrong.
Imran:
I feel like crypto Twitter has become an echo chamber. Crypto Twitter has formed an echo loop that has caused all participants to fall into a vortex of negative emotions. I think people should get out of crypto Twitter more and pay attention to the actual data on the chain and the growth dynamics of cryptocurrencies in various fields. But now, few people do this.
"Where are we now? Where are we going?"
Imran:
What do you think about the future of cryptocurrencies? What stage are we at now? Where is it going in the future?
Qiao:
I think we sounded the alarm two months ago, or even earlier in January.
Imran:
Yes, I think everyone is a little tired psychologically, and those who should have sold should have sold out and locked in their profits by now.
Qiao:
We did say people should sell. I was wrong at the time, I thought we were near the top of the cycle. But in hindsight, I don't think the cycle is over. I think we're actually still in the middle of the cycle, maybe another six to 18 months.
Imran:
So this market decline is actually a good thing because it provides more breathing room.
Qiao:
The overall decline was mainly due to market sentiment caused by tariff policies. Bitcoin's trend closely follows that of the U.S. stock market, which reached an all-time high in valuation in early January. In terms of price-to-earnings ratio, U.S. stocks are trading at levels equivalent to mid-2021, before Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell began raising interest rates, and even close to the level before the global financial crisis in 2007. Therefore, U.S. stocks are very highly valued.
The market just needed an excuse to adjust, and that excuse was the tariff policy. So now the market has adjusted, with US stocks down at least 10% and the Nasdaq down 13%. I think this adjustment is necessary. Although valuations are still high, they are now more reasonable.
Indeed. So Bitcoin is following the U.S. stock market closely. However, in terms of the current economic situation, there is actually no obvious problem. If Trump could stop talking about tariffs so often, I think the economy might improve. But I feel like he is approaching his "personal limit", which is the biggest pressure point.
Imran:
Yeah, they always say they don't care if the stock market goes into a recession, or if the country goes into a recession or something like that, but I don't believe that.
Qiao:
So, I am still 80% confident that we have reached the top of the cycle. At current price levels, I am not sure if we have hit the mid-term bottom, but this is a very good time to go long.
There may be some emerging areas and some narratives that may become important, but I don't think there are clear narratives yet, and there may be some key market narratives that emerge in the future.
Imran:
People have lost a lot of money on meme-related tokens, and now they are starting to pay attention to tokens that can actually generate income.
Qiao:
This is something people discuss online, but in reality the market doesn't quite follow this logic. But we can keep watching. At the moment, I don't see anything particularly attractive outside of Bitcoin. Ethereum is now close to historical oversold levels, but I can't find a good enough reason to hold it. It's a bit difficult to buy it, but at the same time, its fundamentals are actually pretty good.
I still think Bitcoin is my favorite asset. I have also recently bought some stocks, such as Google, TSMC, Tesla, and Pinduoduo (PDD), which are all companies we have discussed in the past two years. In addition to Tesla, I finally increased my position in Tesla recently. Last November, I tried Tesla's SSD (full self-driving system), which is really a game-changing product. So I have been waiting for the price to adjust. After Tesla fell 50% from its highs, 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 blockchains? I think it's interesting, for example, their permissioned validators come from traditional financial institutions. This actually weakens Ethereum's moat in the DeFi field to some extent. After all, one of Ethereum's advantages is the huge asset pool it has accumulated over the years.
Recently, Standard Chartered Bank has a research report that mentioned that Base has "extracted" about $50 billion in value from the Ethereum ecosystem, right? So in my opinion, there is a lot of value 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 reality now.
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 "permissioned chain", because this chain can provide more functions.
They can choose to "roll back" the data on the chain, and they will have more control.
Regulation and Counterparty Risk
Qiao: But I don’t quite understand why they want to do this in a licensing way. What’s the point? What benefits can they get from it?
Imran:
One is more control over the ledger. For example, if there is a hacker attack launched by a country like North Korea. In a permissionless blockchain, this situation is almost impossible to deal with. But on a permissioned chain, they can take measures to reduce losses by controlling the validators.
Qiao:
But who are they trying to attract by launching this permissioned chain? For example, if you want to buy their products today, such as money market funds, or other things like that, you can just open a brokerage account.
The significance of tokenized funds on Ethereum is that it allows people who cannot open a brokerage account to purchase these products through the Ethereum chain. So, what problem do they solve by creating a new permissioned chain?
Imran: Probably for global access. If you know who the counterparty is, it makes the whole system easier to regulate. Because you understand the roles of all the players in the value chain, you don't have to worry about counterparty risk of partners, or the risk of the other party to the transaction being unidentified, or security issues like hacker attacks. Do you think this is a consideration for them?
Qiao:
But will this bring them more business? Every time you create a new chain, you run into a huge user acquisition problem. You have to find a way to attract users.
Imran:
Traditional financial institutions already have their own distribution channels, and maybe there is some kind of cooperation 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 to see if there is some actual value, or if it's just "smoke and mirrors" - that is, it looks complicated but actually has no substantive meaning.
If they do have distribution channels and are running on a permissioned chain, then they may have solved the counterparty risk and hacking issues at the same time, while also providing a global product. This is the argument for this model. But the argument against it is that Ethereum is permissionless, anyone can develop applications on it, anyone can use it, and you only need an Internet cable to access the global market without KYC.
Qiao:
I was surprised that Standard Chartered mentioned Layer 2. They seem to think that Layer 2 can keep a lot of the sorting fees instead of passing them all to Layer 1.
Tokenizing assets on Base
Imran:
Did you see their announcement about tokenizing assets on Base?
Qiao:
Are they really going to do this?
Imran:
I think they've already started doing this, or are testing it.
Qiao:
I think globally, Coinbase and Base are probably some of the companies best positioned to succeed in the tokenized stock space.
Not only do they have distribution channels, they also have extensive experience in dealing with traditional finance, right? They are one of the main 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 strictly regulated, which is undoubtedly a huge advantage.
Imran:
So they probably have an advantage over Ethena or Ondo or any of the other competitors in terms of RWA.
Robinhood and Kalshi
Qiao: Another company that might be a good fit for tokenized stocks is Robinhood.
Imran:
If you look at their recent announcements, they mentioned not only tokenized stocks but also real estate.
Imran:
In fact, founder Vlad mentioned that he wanted to build a platform that he envisioned would allow users to easily buy and sell real estate with just one click.
Imran:
They also recently partnered with Kalshi. I remember we talked about this before. In fact, Kalshi has signed an agreement with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to allow them to provide prediction market services in the United States. These services include some specific contracts like prediction markets. Kalshi is currently the only company that has obtained federal authorization to legally operate such services throughout the United States.
Robinhood just partnered with Kalshi to provide full prediction market capabilities to all Robinhood users. This has also raised some concerns.
Web2 giants like Robinhood and Kalshi may gradually squeeze the living space of crypto startups. This is a problem worthy of attention and may have a significant impact on entrepreneurs in the crypto field.
At least in the United States. However, I think the crypto space still has great potential for development globally. For example, Polymarket is still performing very well in the international market. What do you think about this?
Qiao:
I see them less as our allies and more as an alien threat.
Imran:
There are indeed many startups and traditional companies that pose a threat to entrepreneurs in our ecosystem. Therefore, we can only respond to these challenges by moving quickly and executing efficiently.
Current state of artificial intelligence
Manus AI
Imran:
I recently found that half of the content in my newsfeed is about AI startups. In fact, we also mentioned a similar topic in the last podcast. Four of the startups we follow are completely focused on the field of AI. There are indeed many interesting things happening in the field of AI recently. Have you used Manus?
Qiao: I don’t have access rights.
Imran:
I used Manus and Operator to complete some simple tasks. 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 obtain information about the latest batch of startups and screen out crypto startups that have been launched.
I used Manus and Operator to do the same task. Manus took about 4 minutes to complete. Manus gave a complete result in 3 to 4 minutes, including not only the name of the startup, but also the name of the founder and their specific business. It can be said that it basically captured the complete relevant information.
The Operator got stuck. After running for two minutes, the Operator returned the following: “I looked at the latest batch of startups on the YC website and found only one company called Lero, which focuses on trainable deep agents and artificial intelligence.” It also added that there were no crypto-related startups in this batch. In contrast, I was very surprised by Manus’s performance.
Qiao: Do these two tools use your computer to run tasks, or do they 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, simulate mouse movements and clicks, and it will search for information about YC, browse websites 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:
I have come to a similar conclusion in the past month. I am not sure if China is really ahead of the United States in all aspects, but at least it can be said that the two are on par. For example, DeepSeek is a notable example. As everyone knows, DeepSeek's performance is almost comparable to the top models in the United States, but its scale is one to two orders of magnitude smaller. This means that it can run on local devices and is very efficient.
AI video models in China and the United States
Qiao:
Another interesting phenomenon is that we currently have several video-based AI startups in our incubator. They use three or four video models, only one of which is from the United States, and the other three are from China. It is said that the Chinese model not only has better performance, but also lower costs and higher product quality.
But AI has a very wide range of applications. These are just a few scattered data points. For example, you could say Tesla's self-driving technology is a kind of "physical AI," right?
Of course, Tesla's FSD (full self-driving) technology is the world's leading technology. So, it is difficult to say which country has more advantages in the field of AI. But I think that China is at least on the same level as 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 clearly increased its investment in domestic chip manufacturing, especially in cooperation with SMIC. Have you noticed this?
Qiao:
But their chip technology is still several generations behind.
Imran:
But even so, companies like DeepSeek have already used existing chips and software to develop products that can compete with American startups in the media field. Although it is not completely on par, the gap is narrowing. I think that after one or two more technological iterations, Chinese products will be able to reach the same level as the United States. So it is foreseeable that they will continue to increase their investment in SMIC.
Qiao:
In fact, chip export restrictions may force China to innovate at the scale of models.
Imran:
In the long run, this may actually be an advantage for China, making them more resilient and innovative in their competition with the United States.
Qiao:
Moreover, models like Deep Seek are open source.
Imran:
This is interesting, because I've heard almost nothing about Llama 3 lately.
Qiao:
However, there is a very noteworthy trend here. First, the technological competition between the two superpowers has basically become an "arms race", with both sides catching up with each other at a rapid pace.
Localized Large Language Models (LLMs) and Privacy
Qiao:
Recently our team mentioned a very interesting trend is the localized large language model (LLM).
As technology advances, the size of LLMs is shrinking, but performance is not decreasing. This means that in the future they can run directly on local devices, such as personal computers or even mobile phones. This opens up the possibility of 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 requests to the cloud and wait for responses. Even for those who don’t care much about privacy, the speed improvement is an important advantage.
Apple Intelligence and Privacy
Imran: This could be a good thing for both Apple and Google, right? And for Android as well?
Currently, Apple is having some difficulties with its Apple Intelligence project. They had planned to launch some important features a few months ago and made a lot of publicity for it, but eventually canceled it. It is said that the main reason is that they encountered a bottleneck in privacy protection.
Apple can't use other companies' models directly, so they have to rely on their own framework, but in this area, I feel that Apple has fallen behind.
Qiao:
Apple is indeed lagging behind. What confuses me is that despite this, Apple's price-to-earnings ratio is still over 30 times, which is the highest among the "Big Seven", second only to Tesla. Tesla can be said to be essentially a meme stock. By the way, I bought some Tesla shares a few days ago.
But Apple's valuation is really hard for me to understand. They haven't launched any 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 things around. However, Warren Buffett sold Apple shares at their highs.
Qiao:
However, as these high-performance and small-scale models become more popular, and most of them are open source, this brings huge possibilities for new applications based on local reasoning, which has a very positive effect on both privacy protection and performance optimization.
Imran:
I think there's a lot of potential here, and we're likely to see some very interesting applications in the future. Do you know of any startups exploring this space?
Qiao:
I think the biggest problem right now is that when users download an app that supports local inference, they also need to download the model file separately, which may take several minutes.
Use a localized large language model
Imran:
I believe that with the advancement of technology, this problem will be gradually solved. This is indeed an area that deserves attention. I have seen some potential application scenarios, such as applications in the health field. By analyzing the user's health data, personalized recommendations can be provided.
These models can help users analyze long-term health trends, such as where improvements can be made. Moreover, this data is processed entirely locally and does not need to be uploaded to a 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 I could have an encrypted, completely private system where the data belonged only to me, I would trust it much more.
Vibe Encoding
Imran: Have you used Lovable or other vibe coding platforms? I don't know much about the concept of vibe coding, but it is essentially an AI-assisted coding 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 also helped people create websites quickly, but they were really cumbersome to use at the time.
Imran:
Indeed, those tools are not very user-friendly. In contrast, the biggest feature of Lovable is that it provides more freedom and customization options. For example, you can simply adjust the design style to make the page more simple, 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 use cases for Lovable is to help entrepreneurs quickly create product demos. This tool is very practical for those who want to get product prototypes 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 barrier to entry for startups. You mentioned on Twitter earlier that we found from some data that entrepreneurs today are probably less skilled than they used to be. This is because now “creatives” can build apps themselves without having to learn programming.
At this stage, the most important thing is to quickly launch an MVP (minimum viable product) and find the fit between product and market.
Qiao:
Yes, but it should be noted that we still prefer teams with strong technical capabilities. Of course, but there may come a day when a team that does not need engineers can quickly achieve product-market fit. I don’t know if it will be the end of this year, two years from now, or five years from now, but it is always possible.
However, we are not there yet. The trend I have observed is that teams now usually consist of two or three people, one of whom is a non-technical partner, and the technical partner will use coding assistance tools like Cursor and Windsor to complete the front-end development work. But they still need a strong engineer to be responsible for back-end development and handle more complex tasks.
Imran:
Over time, the product will become more complex, but at least for now, in order to quickly achieve MVP, you can rely on Lovable or similar tools.
Qiao:
There have been some comments lately that vibe coding can lead to more bugs in products. It's true that some people have complained about tools like Cursor and Windsor. But for a startup, these bugs aren't a critical issue. The biggest risk in the early stages is that the product has no users interested, not that there are some small problems in the code. Once you have a product that users really want, you can go back and fix these bugs.
Imran:
What matters most is getting the product to market and letting users use it.
I think this is very helpful 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 windmill by collecting metal parts to provide energy for the village. He did this by learning and researching on the Internet. His behavior can be seen as vibe coding in real life, such as energy construction. From this perspective, emerging countries and local communities can use these tools to develop applications to solve real problems and improve living conditions.
Emerging countries are taking advantage of these tools, and I think their impact may be greater there than in developed countries.
Qiao:
Because it is more difficult to obtain funds in these regions, and their business models may not be suitable for venture capital.
Imran:
That's exciting to me. I think it will level the playing field for more entrepreneurs, which means we'll see more new products emerge that we haven't seen before. So, I'm not excited about the term vibe coding itself, but the possibilities it brings are really exciting.
Tokenized Startups and Equity
Imran:
Next we can talk about the relationship between vibe coding and cryptocurrency.
There is a startup called Taro Base, you should have heard of it, right? The core function of Taro Base is to provide bytecode tools to help crypto startups build applications, focusing on crypto-related scenarios. We believe that the opportunities in this field are completely open at present. Moreover, not only building applications, people can also transform the ideas of these startups into some kind of revolving financing tools through tokenization. This tool can help companies monetize while driving user growth. So, "turning your life ideas into reality and eventually achieving an initial public offering (IPO)" may become a new trend. Taro Base is working in this direction. In addition to this, we have another startup that is exploring a similar model using games as an example. Therefore, we have seen some very interesting practical use cases, especially in the combination of startup ideas and tokenization of these ideas.
Qiao:
Yes, I really like the idea of tokenizing early-stage products because essentially, this is the whole space of tokenized startups, tokenized equity, and even tokenized companies, right? But at a broader level, so far, there have been two main ways to tokenize early-stage ideas: one is to tokenize these early-stage ideas directly; the other is to tokenize the shares of existing companies, such as Tesla or SpaceX, and put them on the blockchain. I think this idea is feasible, but there are many obstacles to actually doing it. First, you need to acquire these shares. So where do these shares come from? You may need to purchase shares as a company or acquire shares from employees of the company. Then, you need to create a legal and compliant framework to put these shares on the chain. This process is complicated and full of friction.
Furthermore, the demand for this model does not seem to be high at the moment, as users can already easily access these shares through their brokerage accounts. So, another more promising idea is not to move secondary market shares to the chain, but to put primary market shares directly on the chain. That is, when the company is just established, it operates in a completely crypto-native way, such as tokenizing its shares and publishing them on the chain before the company is established. This is the future development direction of combining vibe coding and tokenization platforms.
Imran:
Essentially, this approach brings small and medium-sized startups directly onto the blockchain.
Qiao:
It does, and it also creates a whole new market for these businesses. I think that's really important.
BYD's new 1,000 kW electric vehicle charging technology
Imran:
This could be a huge opportunity. Have you heard about BYD recently? BYD is China's largest electric car manufacturer, and currently has about 11% of the global market share, while Tesla's market share is 19%. Recently, BYD announced a very advanced technology that can basically allow an electric car to be fast charged in one minute.
Qiao:
How is this possible?
Imran:
Their technology allows a vehicle to be fully charged in just 5 minutes, giving it a range of 250 to 300 miles. Specifically, they use a 1,000-kilowatt fast-charging system for electric vehicles.
Their core technology is a combination of platform flash battery and blade battery design. This combination can accelerate the transfer of ions 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 is this innovation that reduces the charging time to 5 minutes.
Qiao:
Is this technology already in 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 the time from concept to practical application is very short. In contrast, those conceptual technologies that take 18 to 24 months to land are not very interesting to me. 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 market share of Chinese-branded cars in Europe is growing rapidly, especially in the past three years, and this trend is very obvious. However, I am not sure whether these data are completely accurate.
Imran:
I recently watched a video comparing BYD and Tesla's car interiors, 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 popularity of charging piles, but more importantly, the ability of fast charging technology.
Robotics
Imran: I recently did some research on robotics. It is a very competitive field. I found that robotics has great potential for development in multiple industries. For example, humanoid robots can be used in a variety of general scenarios, while factory robots focus on improving factory work efficiency, especially in automated production lines.
Qiao:
This should be Amazon's strength, right? Although many people think that Tesla is the leader in the field of robotics, I think Amazon is. Amazon has not only developed many types of robots, but especially in the field of factory robots, they have been deeply involved for decades and may have been far ahead.
Imran:
I agree with you. You may have also seen Andrew King's post, where he mentioned that the potential of robotics is similar to the opportunity when cryptocurrency first emerged. He used Figure AI as an example of how huge the space is. I couldn't agree more with him. I think it's going to be a very big opportunity. And it's interesting that Elon Musk mentioned in a recent speech that the cost of goods could drop significantly in the future.
Yes, he even predicted that the cost of goods will approach zero, causing the value of money to decline. His logic is that when all goods are highly commoditized, there will be no need for money 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 math to estimate the market size of Tesla Optimus (Tesla humanoid robot). His algorithm was: multiply the minimum wage by the number of hours people spend on housework such as washing dishes and laundry per day, multiply by 365 days a year, and finally multiply 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 always likes to exaggerate, but achieving even one-tenth of that would mean Tesla's valuation could reach $10 trillion, making it the most valuable company in the world.
Imran:
And Tesla may well dominate the general humanoid robotics space, which is a really exciting space from what I've seen so far.
From what I have read and observed, robotics will have a profound impact not only on the cryptocurrency space, but also on the entire labor market. For example, while optimizing production processes in factories, it can also be widely used in the home. I also noticed that some surgical units have begun to use robotics to assist in surgery. Some companies have even raised funds and successfully developed these devices.
Cryptocurrency and Robotics
Imran:
I’ve been researching the intersection of cryptocurrency and robotics lately, but haven’t seen many real-world use cases.
Payments are a possible use case, but beyond that I don’t see any obvious applications for cryptocurrencies in combination with robotics. Do you have any ideas?
Qiao:
If there is, perhaps it is a data-related application? For example, through the incentive mechanism of cryptocurrency, to collect and guide the data needed for robot training.
Imran:
But do you think we really need this approach?
Qiao:
It's hard to say. Tesla's approach to handling electric vehicle data is to first launch vehicles, collect a lot of data through these vehicles, and then use this data to optimize hardware and software. This forms a virtuous cycle: hardware captures data, and data in turn improves hardware.
Imran:
Tesla may take a similar approach to the development of humanoid robots. My guess is that they will provide a preliminary version of a humanoid robot to some willing people, which may only be able to complete 10% or 20% of the tasks, and the rest of the tasks will 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?
Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in the Workforce
Qiao:
I recently thought of a question: Will contractors and freelance platforms, such as Fiverr and Amazon's Mechanical Turk, be replaced by the rise of artificial intelligence? After all, AI agents can already do many similar tasks, right? We have also observed this trend within our company. In the past, we would hire some freelancers to complete simple tasks, such as searching for good entrepreneurs online. Now, with AI agents, we can complete the same work in a shorter time and at a lower cost.
Imran:
Indeed. I feel that Fiverr is a platform with a poor user experience because most of the service providers are low-cost labor from emerging countries. Due to language barriers and communication problems, the final results are often not what you expect. You may need to spend more time explaining and coordinating. Now, with artificial intelligence, these tasks can be completed instantly, which is really great.
