主持人: Hello everyone, welcome Chase, a very mysterious and powerful figure in the crypto world, to our show. Chase, please introduce yourself.

Chase: Hello everyone, hello everyone. Formerly powerful, now fallen, hahaha. I'm leaving to pursue my dreams, giving up immense power. Hello everyone, I'm Chase. As the class representative mentioned, my most recent job was as a Listing Manager at Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the crypto world. This job primarily involved helping founders mint their tokens on this exchange. Between the time I joined and left, Binance had already achieved an annual trading volume on the same level as Nasdaq, so the scale is significant.

主持人: Let me explain your job to everyone. So, these people issue a coin, but if they want to trade it on Binance, which has a trading volume comparable to Nasdaq, it has to go through your team. My understanding is, you probably can't say this, but it's similar to a position at the SEC that decides whether a company can go public, so all the founders are very...

Chase: Functionally, there are similar aspects, but legally it cannot be defined that way.

主持人: Okay, please continue. How big is your team, and what was your role within it?

Chase: Our team was only about a dozen people, and my official title was Listing Building Manager. There were 4 of us, originally 4, and now even fewer. About 4 people could go out, genuinely approach and talk to people, interpret their doubts, guide them, and tell them how to do things, like A B C D. That's roughly it.

主持人: Wow, I think your background actually contains several important pieces of information. Firstly, you must have reviewed many projects; you're probably one of the people in the world who has seen the most Crypto projects, because that's your job. And because you truly held real power—let's not shy away from this, especially since you're leaving, so there's no conflict of interest anymore. So, those founders also valued you highly, meaning the core resources and information you could obtain were very firsthand and authentic, including the judgment you developed. And thirdly, one of your jobs was also to interact with the industry, so you must have formed your own views or insights. I think these aspects define your unique position. So, what do you think you can share with everyone today?

Chase: I think what I can share most with everyone is what the entire model has become after I've input so much data. And I think my data is relatively high-quality data, so it shouldn't be garbage. I can share it very honestly with everyone. It's almost the highest quality data. From the time I joined the company until last year, 2025, in about two and a half years, I reviewed roughly between 1,000 and 2,000 projects. Last year, about 100 projects that we supported successfully launched tokens.

主持人: Tell us about the concept behind these numbers, both for reviewing projects and launching projects.

Chase: You can understand project review as being similar to how VCs review projects: you have to look at the deck, you have to look at the team, you have to talk to them, call them, and then make your own judgments. That's the most basic. For a VC, I think reviewing 200 projects a year is pretty good, quite impressive, and you also have to constantly communicate with the founders. But in over two years, I reviewed more than 1,000, and last year alone, 100 were listed. What does 100 mean? When I first joined Binance, they listed only about twenty-something projects a year, the whole company listed only twenty-something. Then in the second year, it was fifty-something or sixty, and by the third year, 2025, I alone listed 100 projects in that year. And then the bull market came, how many were listed in total? Around 250, maybe 300.

主持人: Anyway, you alone accounted for almost half of them.

Chase: One-third. No, no, about one-third, because there were only four of us in total.

主持人: Only four people in total, and the success rate of this screening is about 5% to 10%.

主持人: I'd like you to help everyone understand this world first, especially how many people who don't know Crypto perceive it.

Chase: First, you can think of it as a virtual world, and this world has its own set of economic circulation mechanisms. If you treat it as a country, then it needs the US dollar to support its liquidity. But its output, its export, is its service; it only has service, only the tertiary industry. What is the agriculture it needs for its primary industry? It needs computing power and electricity.

主持人: How should I understand that statement? What does it mean that its output is the tertiary industry? Because we often say things like, "Can we use Bitcoin to buy pizza now?" right?

Chase: That's not it. Why do I say it's the tertiary industry? Although Bitcoin has a large market share, 50% to 60%, it's not the core of this industry, not where we can talk about bubbles. It can serve as a store of value, but it can't provide many services. Store of value is essentially what we refer to as liquidity support.

Chase: Why do I say it's the tertiary industry? It's because in this industry, for example, after Ethereum emerged, many smart contracts could enable certain functionalities, such as DeFi. These things can actually have a significant impact on the traditional financial industry. And the SEC (U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission), I remember a few weeks ago, someone was saying that within the next two years, specifically 2026 and 2027, almost all mainstream Wall Street institutions will be on-chain.

主持人: Regarding DeFi, we actually invited Richard Youzhong (founder of Huma Finance) to our channel to talk about his project. Basically, it helps companies already engaged in trade reduce friction in finance, whether it's exchanging currency or lending, it helps them reduce friction and increase efficiency. It's a clear example of a service bringing value to traditional or non-Crypto sectors.

Chase: Right.

主持人: Could you please list some of the other main points you see?

Chase: What you just mentioned is where this industry exports services and value, and that's correct. But beyond that, this industry has its very unique aspects, such as Flash loan (flash loan), which most people probably haven't heard of. What does it mean? For example, if you go to a bank to borrow money, you either have collateral, right, or your credit score is very high or something; you always need something for the bank to lend you money. The capability of a flash loan is that you can complete the borrowing and repayment without any collateral, and at the same time, without any risk to the bank. Almost all payment-related Crypto can enable this.

Chase: The most important thing, and something I might write about soon, is an AI-related paper. For example, let's say five years from now, if AI in the world continues to develop according to our current scaling law, the number of AI agents will definitely exceed the human population, right? So, based on this assumption, how do you measure the economic activities generated between AI agents? You call its API, FINE. You currently have a subscription model, but often, I might only need to access long-tail data, for example, data only you have, or only I have. How do you settle a single call, right? The amount of data obtained is very, very small, and the existing banking system cannot settle it. All these economic activities need to be measured first, to be quantified. Secondly, everyone needs to trust this for it to succeed. This is where Crypto can enable or collaborate with AI. This is also why many people in the industry are thinking that Crypto itself might not be for humans; designed this way, it might be for AI in the future.

主持人: When I interviewed Youzhong (founder of Huma Finance), he also said something I still remember: he believes AI is productivity, and Crypto is production relations.

Chase: Actually, Crypto also has productivity and production relations. But Crypto can truly change production relations because, to put it broadly, ideologically, there's a concept of capital equalization within it. Imagine if you live in mainland China, you're used to Alipay, used to Yu'e Bao, right? Your money sitting there automatically earning interest is a matter of course. But in North America, in Europe, you might have to go to a bank separately, and banks have thresholds, and the interest rates they give you are very low. But Crypto has completely equalized the entire world; money is money. I don't care whose money it is; as long as you deposit it and it meets my standard, you can get the same returns.

主持人: You just mentioned that payment itself is a huge system here, and Crypto can provide a lot of value in it, and changing production relations is another value. Are there any other major value points for Crypto in your opinion?

Chase: To be more realistic, it can help all countries with excess liquidity carry more liquidity without affecting inflation.

主持人: Understood, so store of value. Do you think there's any significant difference between this and gold?

Chase: That's a very good question. Look, there's an image in the link I shared with you. What is this image? First, let me ask you a question: do you think the US stock market, from the Dot-com Bubble until now, has been in a bear market or a bull market?

主持人: It's a bull market.

Chase: Exactly, if you look at the S&P 500, it's a bull market. But for gold, it's a bear market. The chart I showed you illustrates this point.

主持人: Right, interesting. So, you're saying the money printed fueled the growth of the S&P 500, but it still didn't surpass gold's inflation-fighting growth rate. Wow, so the S&P is even more...

Chase: This was published by Lyn Alden, a very famous author. It's her research, I can give you the link later.

主持人: Interesting, interesting, interesting. This is a huge shift in my investment understanding. Before, the flawed academic investment theory I learned, which was hampered by economics, made me think that stock prices were discounted future earnings or something. That makes sense, but then I realized why everyone says the US stock market bubble is going to burst, and it's supposed to fall every 10 years or something, but it hasn't happened. Why? I later thought, it's because when too much money is printed, it has nowhere to go. Before, people couldn't generate that much currency, but now that so much currency has been generated, it has to go somewhere.

Chase: Yes, exactly. Think about it, our goods and services grow, say, by 5% or a few percent annually, right? Your money supply increase, including your credit growth, completely outpaces that rate. So, your excess money, besides turning into a bubble, has to find new services or assets to price. Why are there new assets to price? Because in the crypto world, Crypto can continuously issue assets at a very low cost, and its warrants don't require verification by a central institution. So, as long as people believe your asset has value, new liquidity will flow in and absorb that liquidity.

主持人: You just need to verify it beforehand.

Chase: Yes, you just need to judge for yourself. Not just you! You!

主持人: Oh, me personally, right? You!

Chase: No, no, I'm just an employee.

主持人: Just an employee, a workhorse.

主持人: A recently popular project is called Polymarket, I believe you've heard of it.

Chase: I'm not familiar.

主持人: Could you tell everyone about it? I've actually heard of it, but I don't know much about it. I always thought it sounded like a scam, so I didn't look into it.

Chase: OK, it first became popular during the Trump election year. It's basically a prediction market, though he calls it a prediction market, it's actually a binary option. He knew the election results hours before they were officially announced. What's his logic? He believes that there's always someone in the world with inside information about an event.

主持人: Agreed.

Chase: Then your inside information should be priced, it should be valued.

主持人: Right, this is a market that prices it. Okay, he's not a scammer. That makes sense, hahaha, you convinced me with one sentence.

Chase: Hahaha, that's exactly what happened. I'm quite good friends with that founder, we often have meals and drinks. So, now you can indirectly understand that, in the larger context of de-globalization, Crypto is a very strong sector that maintains globalization. And this sector puts all information on the same network, where all information can be priced. Information can become an asset, traffic can become an asset, any transaction, any idea can become an asset. And as long as this asset has liquidity, it can be absorbed.

Chase: It's like going back to what I told you before, why I want to write an AI paper. The issue is, I believe that in the future, the GDP or economic volume generated by agents will definitely exceed that of humans. At that time, you won't be able to do it without a measurement, without certain infra. So, the existing infra now is this Crypto infra. But in economics, or in academia, there isn't an index yet to say what this agent actually looks like. Currently, we can only estimate what AI might look like in the future by looking at Google's reports, right, OpenAI's funding data, and the CapEx of companies like Oracle building data centers.

主持人: Understood. If you think about it from first principles, it means every agent, every transaction should be measured, and it should be very precise. Let me briefly explain to my channel's audience. My understanding is there are two core issues. The first is how much AI is worth, whether AI is valuable. This is actually very hard for us to price. Because right now, if you only look at OpenAI's revenue, it's not much, tens of billions, right, not huge. But Dai Yusen proposed an idea, and I did a survey at an event then: if I bought out your future right to use ChatGPT, you wouldn't be allowed to use services like ChatGPT anymore, or any new AI, how much would you be willing to pay to be bought out? When I asked the audience, at $100,000, only one person raised their hand; out of about 100 people, only one. When I asked at $1 million, many still hadn't raised their hands. $1 million. So, the value of this thing is enormous, but I have no way to measure it. The second is about how much productivity AI actually generates. GDP is actually very hard to measure.

Chase: Yes, GDP is particularly flawed. G stands for gross, right, but it's not actually gross. Every time you make an API call, you can precisely measure it. Secondly, it's domestic, but AI isn't domestic; it's a global thing. Thirdly, it's not a product, not a finished product; it's many intermediate states. So, every word in GDP is wrong. If you use this to measure AI, that's why we absolutely need a new index, at least a new microscopic measurement, and then it's also very important whether a macroscopic index can emerge from that.

主持人: We're already writing some, there's already a framework.

Chase: My point is about the link between macro and micro; you can write a framework, but whether OpenAI allows you to measure it is another matter.

主持人: You're absolutely right. It's possible that when the number of agents develops to a certain extent, and one or two killer Apps emerge, you might not 100% need OpenAI to manage your data, care for your data, or collect your data. You could, for example, locally host your own agent. Then, when your agent helps you with complex tasks, it relies on cloud-based agents, right? For daily tasks, you can do them at home yourself. I have two MacBooks, one MacBook and one Mac mini, and I can link them up to run a Qwen 31B model at home. And my data is all local, which is also very, very useful.

主持人: We've gone back to value creation. Let's quickly talk about money, hahaha, come on, let's discuss the question everyone cares about most.

主持人: Will Bitcoin rise or fall in 2026? Make a prediction.

Chase: It will rise, it will definitely rise, it will reach an all-time high. But in a way you probably haven't imagined. Why? It goes back to my previous point: all information can be priced. Now, in the crypto world, anyone can be priced within this network. When everyone forms a consensus, your consensus will be priced, and those who go against the consensus will cash out on you. OK, this might be a bit deep. If you've been a market maker, if you know quant trading, you'll find it's always a big fish eating small fish, but it's also a process where the few eat the many. When the majority forms a large consensus, it's highly likely to become a target, and others will price that target.

主持人: So, when everyone thinks it's going to fall, it rises instead, and doesn't fall.

Chase: Why? Because when you know it's going to fall, when you're convinced it will fall, you've actually been social engineered. I'm talking about the general public, not you personally.

主持人: But this doesn't feel like anything new; it's just the market maker's manipulation logic in our stock market. Right, can anyone manipulate Bitcoin? Such a large market, or is it really that large?

Chase: Bitcoin's market cap is currently two-something or three trillion US dollars, so the scale is not small, it's about 1/10th of gold, roughly that magnitude. Last year, around February or April, there was one week where Bitcoin's candlestick chart, if you look at the daily k-line, moved up for 7 consecutive days with the same magnitude and volume, and then suddenly dropped. What does this mean? This kind of pattern usually appears when there's a strong market maker who can control the entire supply of chips. In other words, certain individuals or a certain group, on that day, wanted to announce to the world, guys, I've controlled this thing, it's that simple.

主持人: OK, he not only controlled it, but he directly told everyone that he was sending a clear signal.

Chase: Right, what does he want? He wants you to join him, he wants those who understand to join him, to take advantage of those who don't.

主持人: Wow, I need to quickly check what day that was. Let me find it for you, let me find it for you. Oh my god, hh.

Chase: Haha, this industry is very, very interesting. Who is this person? There's no specific person, and you'll never know who it is. It's like this: there are many market makers, both traditional finance and Crypto market makers, and many of them actually overlap. So, these market makers don't look at fundamentals; they only look at market liquidity and the signals they believe in. Once these signals appear, they will trigger the same trading strategy. What I just described, what does it belong to? It belongs to either the market liquidity at that time being controlled by these few entities with similar algorithms, so everyone confirmed each other, OK guys, we're all in this together, right? Or they simply believe that other people with chips or money won't get involved, won't participate in my game during this period.

主持人: About a year ago, one day a year ago.

Chase: I'll find it and send it to you. Okay, I'll find the screenshot and send it to you.

主持人: Continue. Bitcoin showed such a trend that insiders knew, a trend of expert manipulation. So if that's the case, then it's definitely as you said, he can already cut, and will do so in this way, so everyone just needs to understand.

主持人: So what's next? You just mentioned Bitcoin, and this aligns with my understanding: Bitcoin serves as a store of value within the blockchain, essentially like a gold vault that we all use for transactions. But truly making or losing a lot of money in this space actually involves things beyond Bitcoin. Even if the value of this gold fluctuates, it's relatively stable; if it reaches an all-time high, compared to now, it might only be a 30% to 40% increase. Besides everyone trading with leverage, what else do you see?

Chase: This might go back to what you learned about traditional economics. One is valuation-driven, right, and the other is liquidity, or truly fundamental-driven. However, the valuation system in the crypto world is different from traditional finance; it's mainly composed of three parts. What are they? One is liquidity, one is traffic, which is attention. The last one is your entire chip structure, which is what we call Tokenomics. These three segments almost determine what your target, this asset, will look like in the short to medium term. No one looks long-term, no one looks long-term.

主持人: How short is short to medium term?

Chase: Generally, it's 7 days to 3 months; you can almost see the general direction of an asset. But for example, a project like Richard's, their project is actually very, very good, but when it came to issuing tokens, because they didn't have much experience before, it wasn't done particularly well. However, from a long-term perspective, this project is very, very worth paying attention to. For example, they recently launched Defensive Loopring, a new function, a new feature, which indirectly helps you leverage assets they consider very low risk, and it won't cause you losses. Almost at the smart contract level, what's the result? It can give you an annualized return of about 17% to 16%. A dozen percentage points is very, very substantial, and it doesn't have much of an upper limit on the capital amount. You can put in a few million and just relax.

主持人: That's a great example then: why hasn't their coin's price risen, even though the underlying work is so good? What determines the coin's price, or what causes the gap in between?

Chase: Once your coin, this asset, goes into circulation, honestly, first, you can't control it yourself; it's all market (behavior).

主持人: Yes.

Chase: But because of the market, the entities participating in pricing this market are either retail investors who don't understand, or market makers who have very strong capital but don't care about value; they only care about short-term profit. This leads to everyone making short-term choices without long-term ones. So when do you enter? Especially for someone like you, or a tradfi (traditional finance professional), or even in my current situation, wanting to make long-term choices, it's always after their first wave is over, when people realize it still has value, and its token is no longer affected by liquidity and attention. At this point, the valuation is a relatively fair one. For example, if you look at Richard's project, Huma, its current valuation might only be around 300 mil, about 300 million US dollars. But in my opinion, it's easily worth two billion. It's just waiting for the wind.

主持人: So, basically, the hype is over now.

Chase: Yes, exactly, that speculative wave is over.

主持人: I think observing Crypto trading, specifically Crypto trading on Binance, vividly illustrates how the stock market has a so-called value component, a trading component, and a speculative or market-maker-controlled component. It's often hard to see clearly in traditional markets, but in Crypto, it's exceptionally obvious and clear.

Chase: So it's fully displayed, everyone is transparent.

主持人: Everyone is transparent.

Chase: Yes, transparent. Because it hasn't been defined as a security yet, there are very few regulations that can govern it. So many people start to do bad things, right, it's hard to avoid.

主持人: Speaking of which, let's introduce someone who is completely transparent, or perhaps entirely acting. I've recently been reading "A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality", and this Nanlong Hou character, he's just playing himself, a person with deep cunning. Sun Ge, Justin Sun, you must know a lot about his stories. I think he's a great case study to tell us about the character profiles and their underlying motivations in this space. It's quite perplexing; he's everywhere, so it's hard to figure out if he's actually made a lot of money, is genuinely rich, or just pretending to be. How do you discern these things? Give us some inside information.

Chase: Inside information, let's talk about Nanlong Hou first. After all, he's a descendant of Cang Kun Shang Ren, right? He definitely has to hide things. In the cultivation world, within Wang Yu's ("A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality" author) setting, it's all about scheming and intrigue; you can't help it, that's his protective umbrella. Even so, he was still tricked, right? So it's hard to say. As for Sun Ge, I don't have any personal dealings with him, so it's hard for me to comment much. But he is genuinely rich, that's publicly acknowledged within the industry.

主持人: Knowing he's rich, that fact might be a question mark for outsiders, but within the industry, it's definitely 100% certain. So what is it that the industry knows? It should be public information, right?

Chase: He has public addresses, public addresses on the chain. He has a public chain called Tron, right? You know USDT, right? Actually, the largest parking space for USDT is on Tron. This means Tron and USDT have a symbiotic relationship, at least previously. And think about it, USDT has printed so much currency, I forget if it's 60% or what percentage, I can check now, it's better to give real data to everyone. Tron currently has 4.7 billion, which is its TVL. USDT on Tron has 80 billion. What does this mean? It means its largest, Ethereum, is 46.77%, and the second is Tron at 43.07%. That's over eighty percent. And USDT Tether's annual revenue is 15 billion US dollars, almost pure profit. Think about OpenAI losing tens of billions a year, Anthropic losing tens of billions a year; these two combined don't make as much as Tether's revenue. The money you lose isn't as much as they earn.

主持人: How does Tether generate its revenue? Is it from transaction fees?

Chase: No, Tether is the issuer of USDT. The logic behind it is, for example, you give me 1 dollar, and I take that dollar to buy a T-bill. After buying the T-bill, I then give you this USDT token. So for you, you've exchanged 1 dollar for a USDT token, right? It's one dollar for one dollar. Then you can go and play. But for me, for every dollar that comes in, I can earn the interest from the T-bill that the Federal Reserve gives me. So, as long as my volume is large enough, I continuously profit from this interest rate spread of 3.5%. That's the current interest rate. That's it, 15 billion a year.

主持人: Okay, haha. Sun Ge is really rich.

Chase: Really rich. Haha, I'm not familiar with Sun Ge, I can give you some links for gossip, you can check them out. It's not good to talk about people in public.

主持人: Hmm, indeed.

主持人: So, how about we talk about the stories of getting rich quick in the crypto world? What kind of people are these? We just talked about the essence or value of this space, and its current state, right? For example, how transparent everyone is; it's actually a very clear trading arena. I think its underlying logic is quite clear. So, what kind of people are in this space? I personally observe that the proportion of beautiful women at all crypto gatherings is particularly high.

Chase: Yes, it's quite magical. The proportion of gold diggers is probably very high, that can be verified. Of course, there are also many good women; over half of my former colleagues were women, and they were all excellent. The crypto industry as a whole is essentially a separate world, a separate country; it has everything. The entire spectrum, from the far left to the far right, is present. On the far right, you have the US President, people with the highest power, their family members involved in many things within the crypto world. On the far left, you have people who are in jail, those who defrauded others of tens or hundreds of billions; all kinds of people exist.

主持人: From my perspective, I'm someone who understands technology, and I've produced several videos about Web3, so I know a bit. But I feel I'm completely outside this circle; apart from buying one Bitcoin, I have no connection to this space. And occasionally, I see people around me who say they're working in Web3, and it feels like a minority are making money, but it also seems that some, once they understand the rules of the game, can rapidly amplify their wealth, what's called getting rich quick. Among the professionals in this space, what percentage do you think truly understand the game?

Chase: First, the barrier to entry isn't high. As long as you're diligent enough, even a high school student—not to mention domestically, but if you know how to bypass the Great Firewall in China—it's not hard to earn tens of thousands of RMB a month.

主持人: Through what means? Trading? Or?

Chase: By participating in new projects, for example, through airdrops and such, right? That's actually a part of traffic monetization. It's because this industry has enough liquidity, or the bubble is big enough, that the economic returns you get for the same amount of time invested are definitely higher than if you were to work in manufacturing or traditional secondary industries.

主持人: That sounds like the spiritual energy here is very abundant. When Nascent Soul cultivators are fighting, or working on projects, those in the Qi Condensation stage come by, "Hey, can I get some elixirs?" Hahaha.

Chase: Hey, hey, hey! That's pretty much it. Because it's not that competitive; it seems like there's so much money, but there really aren't that many people. Binance now has about 300 million users, registered users, KYC'd and KYB'd. But in reality, the truly active people in this industry, I think, are probably less than 1 million, around 1 million.

主持人: So besides begging for elixirs, what else can they do?

Chase: Begging for elixirs, and then there are many abstract things, like NFTs that were popular in the last cycle, right? They're essentially small pictures. But it's like the Dutch tulip mania model we used to talk about, many people play it. This leads to many people, for example, getting rich overnight. How does the money of these newly rich people come about, where does it go, and what happens to it? It means that all newcomers can easily earn the same average income as people with similar understanding. As long as you're diligent, even if someone gets rich overnight, if they don't change or improve, if they don't enhance their understanding, that money will slowly be distributed into the hands of others within the circle. It's a dynamic process. Because as long as you don't spend the money, it stays there. It's fake, right, it's not real money. This is also why I say this industry can capture a lot of excess liquidity without affecting inflation in the real economy. The money is all there, everyone can play, it's like fun tokens.

主持人: It's actually the same thing as tulips. But it has more variety.

Chase: Yes, more variety. And everyone can create their own tulip, there's still the concept of equalization there.

主持人: So what are the Nascent Soul cultivators doing?

Chase: Nascent Soul cultivators also have factions, many factions. Some are value-oriented, like Richard, or cash-flow oriented, like my boss, who already has a lot of money and probably doesn't care about cash flow, but rather cares more about his industry status. And then there are the so-called Hacker Builders, who provide new technologies, such as FHE, ZK, and these things. This is also very interesting, hahaha, alchemy.

主持人: And it's very useful.

Chase: Why? Because without Crypto, technologies like ZK or FHE would be very difficult to apply on a large scale in the real world. Firstly, they require long-term investment in infra, and it's not even guaranteed to be good. But in the Crypto circle, as long as something is recognized as a public good or has value, it can be priced. This is also what makes this circle so appealing.

主持人: I think it sounds like the people who make big money are still those who engage in trading and market manipulation, not the technical people. Especially for those stories to hold true, the biggest problem here is that the story is very beautiful, and for this story to hold true, the technical investment required is actually very, very large. But it seems...

Chase: Yes, that's right.

主持人: It's hard to incentivize truly technical people to invest here.

Chase: There are two hurdles. The first is perhaps not enough money, and the second is that being too close to money becomes a problem. For example, I think these things sound great, and I want to invest, but I know there are so many temptations, challenges, noise, and scams here. I don't think I could survive that well in this environment.

主持人: Yes, you've really voiced what most people feel. Many who want to enter the space or do something there definitely face various risks. Because it's still a relatively wild era, not fully formalized yet.

Chase: But it's moving fast, right? Binance has already obtained the global license from Abu Dhabi, and compliance will continue to improve. For individuals, I think everyone should first discard their preconceived notions and understand what this industry is all about, what it does, why there's so much money, and why so many talented people have entered this industry. It's still an industry with high talent density and high capital density. If you don't understand it, it's probably not the industry's problem; it's probably your problem. This is also why I convinced myself to spend 8 years doing nothing but diving into this. And it's particularly friendly to young people; it doesn't care about your status or position, it only cares if you've put in the effort, if you've seriously studied and researched. You can earn your living expenses, or initial income, which will definitely be better than working a regular job, especially for fresh graduates.

主持人: Finally, one more question for you: for the typical audience of our channel, say, someone in the tech industry who has accumulated some wealth through employment, if they want to make money in the crypto world—not even talking about participating in building it, just making money from it—what's your advice for them in 2026?

Chase: My advice is that they should at least first understand the two mainstream things in the crypto world. One is BTC, treat it as capital allocation, whether as gold or whatever, you can try buying a base position. But this is not investment advice. The second thing is stablecoins. The stablecoin phenomenon, I shared within the team since the year before last, would see a big explosion this year. Last year almost confirmed this wave of explosion, and it will materialize this year. This explosion is because almost all banking systems, the traditional old financial systems, will be challenged by stablecoin payments, whether it's C2C / B2B / B2C.

主持人: My understanding is that stablecoins are a good trading tool, but they don't offer particularly good investment opportunities for making money, is that correct?

Chase: If you want to look, of course, you can look at US stocks, look at Circle, look at Robinhood, look at Coinbase; you can check out all three of these. I think there are still some undervalued ones. For example, of course, I can't mention names, haha, there are undervalued ones. But the point is, you have to first understand why this thing will challenge existing systems. Because besides going long, you can also go short; if the challenged party doesn't react fast enough, can't you also short them, right? There are many strategies here that you can deploy based on information and a fixed trend.

主持人: So I suddenly have an idea here: I could invite you to Superlinear to host a paid, private sharing session. It wouldn't be investment advice, but I think you've already done a lot of research, right? And these things should be discussable with everyone.

Chase: Of course, of course, after I finish catching up on my AI courses, hahaha. I haven't even had time to talk about AI courses yet. Ah, hehehe.

主持人: A great opportunity to sell courses. You've actually always been interested in AI courses, and before, you were really busy with work, over ten hours a day, more than 1,000 projects, all built up over time, so you didn't have time to look. But now you're starting to exit, so you can watch these courses, and I hear you have some insights. Could you briefly share a little with everyone?

Chase: For me, this course is exactly the kind of course that suits me, especially now that the term vibe coding has emerged. For me, I probably won't get bogged down in details. What do I do first? I look at the framework, I look at what shouldn't be used, what shouldn't be done. For example, I just watched Yage's video today, about API keys: after you import them, you need to put them in the .env file, right? Instead of passively uploading them. I think as a beginner, a non-engineer, one wouldn't know these things. This should be emphasized, perhaps even an initial list, a not to do list.

主持人: I'll tell Yage about this list, summarize it. Hey, have you watched the "Programming Fundamentals in the AI Era" course?

Chase: I finished it, that one should be very useful. Because when I replied to you that day, I was actually halfway through that course, and I had just deployed my own agent hosted locally, and it was helping me look up all sorts of transaction data and miscellaneous stuff. I just kept it on my phone and had it call different APIs to look things up for me. This thing is also very useful for me. In the future, we might even be able to create a separate MCP to, you know, build Crypto-oriented APIs.

主持人: I think a big benefit of these courses for you is that the specific points taught are useful, the mindset, and the habits are all useful. But I think a very unique value might be that because Yage understands deeply enough, with sufficiently profound first-principles thinking, he dares to say what is no longer useful, and he dares to say what kind of learning methods are wrong. Many people don't dare to say this because they're afraid of being wrong, and because they're not confident enough in their ideas. Yage has completely thought through why things were one way before and are another way now. For example, he can say that learning AI with a framework is wrong. Most people wouldn't dare to say that; most people would just equivocate.

Chase: You probably need someone with 10 years of insider experience to perceive that.

主持人: For me, Yage just walked me through it, but many details he guided me through were things I had to play with and explore myself, not knowing how many pitfalls I'd encounter.

Chase: Yes, yes.

主持人: The reason I'm saying this is because I just wrote an article in the community today, and someone said, "There's so much free information online, why is this course so expensive?" I said, compared to the pitfalls it helps you avoid, and the day it saves you, the money is well worth it. Online, you learn for 10 minutes and then waste a day; that's basically how it is.

Chase: Online... it's a drop in the ocean. When you two release courses, I buy them immediately. After buying, I'll watch them when I have time, never hesitating. Why? Because I know it's very cheap, a few hundred US dollars, especially for people in the crypto world, a few hundred dollars is like nothing. And those few hundred dollars can open up the most direct understanding of a new field for me, allowing me to learn about it in the most efficient way. For investors, especially for someone with my mindset, this is extremely efficient. This is also your value, and I highly recognize it.

主持人: Thank you, thank you.

主持人: So let's answer your question. How do you think I should maximize the use of my domain knowledge? In terms of your overall value as a person, when you had real power, what was the ratio of power to your domain knowledge?

Chase: 2:8, meaning power was 2.

主持人: And in others' eyes?

Chase: In others' eyes, it might be reversed; in others' eyes, I think it might be 99:1. It's possible.

主持人: I think we need to consider this first. It's normal, right? A VP-level person in any big tech company, casually, right? And then once they leave, they find that nobody cares.

Chase: Honestly, I've always had an empty-cup mentality. You know, when I transitioned from investment to Crypto, it was the same; my first job was a very basic, entry-level job. So I don't care about that. What I care about is, first, my vision, my value needs to be realized. This value, this data, has been input into my model, and I want to output it. But first, someone needs to ask the right questions, and second, I need a suitable platform for people to understand. So, what is the outcome you envision for maximizing leverage? Is it monetary income, influence, or something else? It's actually the same as the second question, we can ask them together: your second question is how to prioritize between building an IP and a cash-rich business?

主持人: Most people have neither money nor influence, so since you're still choosing here, do you already have enough money?

Chase: Not enough, but I'm not particularly worried about family or children.

主持人: So what is the outcome you want to maximize leverage for?

Chase: My vision is that I believe this industry still has 20-30 years, and I hope to continuously benefit from the industry's Beta, with occasional Alpha emerging. This is my goal. Money? Just industry growth, in general, fame and fortune are one and the same for me; if you have fame, profit will naturally follow.

主持人: Your situation is very unique. I'll first offer a relatively generic piece of advice for a situation that isn't like yours, and then I'll see if I can customize some. The generic advice is that I think the first step in entrepreneurship, doing knowledge-based paid content, is very reasonable. Because it's non-standardized with a high customer unit price, and if you were to create a standardized product now, it wouldn't be able to justify your time investment. The profit margin for standardized products is very low. And you already possess so much knowledge, and there's so much demand for this knowledge in the market. So I think this is a reasonable path. If you're interested, we can discuss whether there's a way to help you with it. The key is to build a foundational business, I think, and foundational income, and then see if you can leverage that for more. That's roughly the approach. And additionally, I think it's very important for you to build your own assets in this space, and this asset should ideally be one that can generate cash. For example, this community itself is such an asset, isn't it? And in the crypto world, I don't know enough about it, so I don't know what kind of assets there are. It sounds like launching such a project is possible, or something similar.

Chase: If you want to enter the crypto world, I can show you a wild time, hahaha. But under current conditions, it wouldn't be good for your reputation. However, when the crypto world is nearing its mature phase, that's the best time for you to cash out.

主持人: I don't think my reputation is that important. Just yesterday, I was in a ski group talking about going skiing, and someone below said, "Hey, caught a YouTube god!" I said, "Don't call me a YouTube god, call me a course-selling imp." But indeed, that's not my current focus; I'm still focused on making that course good. So, this is something I can think about, discuss, and talk about in the second half of the year. Anyway, you need to build your own asset, and if you want to capture its industry growth, then this asset must be able to appreciate along with industry growth. I just don't know what kind of asset is most suitable here. But I think you definitely can have better ideas. My own feeling is that it's already very difficult to build such an asset in the ordinary world in 5 years. The crypto world might be faster, and you've already started working on your agent with the AI bonus, and you also have the knowledge bonus. My advice is to try to find a partner. You have such extensive industry connections, right? People trust you so much. Most people probably look at your actual power, but some should recognize you personally.

Chase: Yes, you're absolutely right.

主持人: And then, within this, find someone, whether it's a big shot who gives you a piece of business, or a new project, providing you with certain resources and endorsement to do it, or find a partner similar to you but complementary, I think either can help you build a more influential asset faster. And your vision—this is why I hesitate—I think your vision is very appealing, but it easily leads to a purely influence-driven path, which might not be what you want.

Chase: Understood. A purely influence-driven path is actually very difficult to build. Influence is something that depreciates very quickly. So, if you post something today, the best outcome is that everyone shares it and thinks what you said is great. But after 3 months, if you can't implement it, what's the use of it? It still requires a big shot like CZ, right, to rally the industry, and say, "This thing we have, we need to make it an industry standard, and I'm going to push for actual Nascent Soul cultivator-level collaborations," and only then is it possible.

主持人: That's at the God Transformation stage.

Chase: A Nascent Soul cultivator alliance should also work, right? But it might be difficult for an individual to achieve.

主持人: You're absolutely right. The two pieces of advice you gave me are actually the same two points I divined. Either I find a very good platform, or I find a very good partner.

Chase: Yes, that depends on your personality. I think finding a platform is definitely a very good approach, actually. Because you can always find a partner, but opportunities for platforms are actually very hard to seize.

主持人: It depends on fate. In this circle, is there any platform bigger than Binance, right? It's about having a position. You jumped from your position at Binance to somewhere else to do something different. Both the size of the platform and your role within it are important.

Chase: In this company, in this industry, in terms of position, I've reached the top. But it's not what you want to do, right?

主持人: Yeah, in terms of your fame, fortune, and especially the actual power, you've reached the peak. But it can't fulfill your ideals; this power can't be transformed into your ideals. My point is, someone who believes in you, a platform that believes in you, gives you the corresponding resources, and then you go achieve your ideals. And achieving those ideals certainly isn't a one-step process. In my opinion, you have to undertake a project that's truly impressive.

Chase: I definitely have to work hard every day; that's already a habit. We can schedule another time to discuss other topics.

主持人: Okay, okay. Thank you very much for today's content, hahaha.

Chase: No problem, no problem. Thank you, thank you.