Transcript of This VC Bought Bitcoin at $200, Saw TikTok's Rise, and Now Says THIS is the Next Big Trade

Eventually, the models will be very close to each other. Ordinary users can't really tell too much difference between a Groke and a Deep Seq or ChatGPT. What's going to be making the huge difference is focusing on the application side. There's an interesting trend. Meta actually just bought a Chinese company for, I think, $2 billion.

$2 billion, yeah. Manish.

Yeah, Manish. The company, the entrepreneur, they They move out of China because they want their application, the AI agent can be used globally because they don't want sanctions from the states. They are a very strong team. The point is, it's a closed model versus open model. Compared with Google App Store and Apple App Store, they will coexist.

Forget what you know about the future. While everyone is distracted by the latest AI hype and meme coins, the real revolution is happening right under our noses. My guest today, a tech entrepreneur and early crypto adopter, is here to explain why the next wave of disruption isn't coming from where you expect. We're talking about the quiet giant that's about to tokenize the world. If you want to know where the smart money is really going, you're in the right place. Welcome to Finding Peak. This is the way. Let's go through your journey. You started a little bit in the green room, and I cut you off because it was so good, but you have a very unique origin story. And although I usually don't start with origin stories because I think people hear a lot of the same stuff. Yours is so unique. I think it's really important to hear. So maybe take us all the way back to your father's an entrepreneur, you're growing up in China. What was that like? I mean, my audience is predominantly US, and I know for a lot of people in the US, China could essentially be another planet.

I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just so far away. And I think having spoken to as many people as I have, and this show provides me a lot of opportunity to reach out of the States and understand what's going on beyond, I don't think as many people do. I would love for you to explain a little bit what does it mean growing up in China, having experienced both the Eastern world and the Western world, what are some of the differences? Just Can you start to walk us through that process because it is such a unique journey to getting to where you are today.

Yes, it is. Yes, let's get started. I was growing up in Tianjin, China. It's a very big city. It has 13 million populations right now. I think including the population is actually temporarily working there is 20 million plus. I grew up there very early in the '80s. I I was born in the '80s. I grew up in a very traditional Chinese family. My father used to work for the government, and then later on, he started his own business in the '90s. And he has been one of the role models for me because that's why since I had very strong goals when I grew up, I just want to become someday someone like my father. He's my role model. And when I was young, I was really interested in computer games. I had a goal. When I grew up, I wanted to be a computer programmer. I can develop my own games. Then I decided after my high school, I decided to go study abroad. At that time, my English wasn't good, so I studied really hard. I got admitted to one of the universities in Canada. In I went abroad, studied Canada alone. That's where I started to learn English, speak English, and at the same time, I was studying in computer programming as well.

After graduation, I was working for one of the Internet companies in Canada. During that time, I was taking care of operations and daily developments of some of the tools we use for business. But also because I was growing up in China, I lived in Canada, I studied there, I started to realize there's actually greater opportunities. I started to invest. Using some of my income or some of the savings I saved from my diligence, investing in Google's, Google shares and I have full shares. I think in the early 2000s. Then with that time, I think I started getting very interested. More educations on the business side. I decided to apply for one of the top business schools in SIAT in France. I was lucky enough to get in. After studying for one year full-time in France, Fontaineble, France. I graduated with an MBA degree. Then at that time, it was booming in China. It was 2012. I saw there's a bunch of opportunities back in China because I learned all this knowledge from both on the technical side and the business side. I think there's a great opportunity for me to go back to China and start to actually be part of this booming opportunities back in China.

I went back. Actually, I got in, joined one of the top local venture capital firms in China in 2013, where I invest in mobile app companies, startups in China. I was based in Beijing. I looked around projects. I think over the years, I looked into hundreds of projects across all these Chinese major cities, Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen. At the same time, actually, it was very interesting. My friends was looking into blockchain and they looked at the Bitcoin and everything. I was in those investors groups with them. I started learning into blockchain. In 2013, that's when I That's the first time actually I invest in blockchain. A BTC, a Bitcoin at $200, I remember. Then that was one of the times we couldn't really find too much information at the time. I was really still just at the early stage understanding blockchain. But over the times we studied together, we realized this is really the next big thing. As a VC investor as well, I looked into many of the platforms at the time. I think one of the biggest ones at the time was hobbit. Com, btcchina. Com, and even OKCoin. It's OKX today. Their founding members was actually forming the company in 2013, 2014 back in Beijing.

That's when I looked into those projects as a venture capital side. I looked into them. From that time, I learned for certain things, you have to get in early and you need to study them. You need to believe them because I made my mistakes over the times. When I was first investing in Google and Apple shares, I sold them too early because because I didn't understand the business can grow. At the time, I didn't have too much knowledge on the financial side. That's why I decided to went to business school. Also for Bitcoin, I bought 200, I sold them 300, 400, and I wanted to wait until they come down and buy it back, and then they never come down. The reason why is just because we didn't really research deep enough and understand what's really the technology side, what's really actually make a difference. So make you believe that you can hold on to it for the longer time. So then after that, around the COVID time, because at the end of the COVID time, the Chinese has the government has a big lockdown in Shanghai and in Beijing. And in 2021, 2022, then I was lucky enough to join another venture capital for me in Singapore, where actually I invested more on Web3 projects rather than just mobile app projects.

Then that's when I had the idea to start the current project, so the Lebex exchange, because me as a trader during the time, I trade lots of coins, crypto coins as well. Also, I trade lots of stocks. Also, I look at... On the VC side, I looked at lots of projects over the times. I know where the traders or the users really look for a trading platform. I had the technology knowledge and I have VC resources, so I was able to actually form a very strong team. Our tech team has a very strong background building trading platforms for the investment banks, one of the bigger banks. Our team is really focused on the tech side. My goal was building a platform, really deliver the trader's experience and make them feel the platform really put them at the center stage we can provide them the tools they can succeed. That's how I came along to become the co founder and CEO of LiveX from my journey. There's many failures and many experience, even on the personal side. I'm a father of two daughters. I got divorced as well, and I had this personal up and downs.

At the same time, I was able to focus more on the business side, on the work, so I can deliver the projects and deliver the user experience to our users. I think in the long run, there's lots of things to come. I think that's how it is right now.

Yeah, awesome. I appreciate you going through all that. There's a lot to unpack. I got a lot of questions for you.

Of course. Yeah.

So I'm going to go back and I'd love to start- Sorry.

In Dubai, it's a little bit hot here.

You're good. So I'd love for you to maybe compare and contrast for us When you look at, say, entrepreneurship in Canada and France and the Western world versus compared to China, and is there a difference in how entrepreneurship is approached? Here, I know in the States, especially since the rise of, say, Facebook, Google, Apple, et cetera, people wear entrepreneurship like a badge of honor. They get it tattooed on their body. Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. And there's this whole culture to it. And there's failure porn now where people are failing, and then they're using that to launch careers. And now, it's been very... Like, entrepreneurship is very commercialized. Do you see the same things coming out of China? Is it a more mature entrepreneurial market? Is it still a developing entrepreneurial market? Where do you see the major differences in entrepreneurship in general between the two?

I think before, let's say, let's go back to early 2000. I think maybe after 2001, 2002, the Chinese, especially on the tech side, they just start to have this smaller tech companies. I remember back there, there's China. Com, netis. Com, Alibaba. They all started very, I think late '90s, early 2000. That's the time I think the entrepreneur is my previous generation. They are more traditional, and they didn't really have too much college education, but they are very dedicated, very diligent, very determined. They work really hard, I would say. They set their goals, they work everything out of themselves to trying to accomplish it. That's one time the entrepreneurship is like. It's people just hard working. It's just doing the daily routines, and then they gather the experience from maybe some failures. They evolved onto that, based on that. At that time, I think China didn't really have too much technology base to build on, and then they relied more on the foreign investment. I think that's when the times the US, the European has actually invested lots of investment and technology back into the China. I think even Taiwan, especially for the semiconductor industry, and China Taiwan, Japan, and Korea, during that time, they invest a lot in China to help to develop the technology.

I would say it's the first generation of entrepreneurs in China. Basically, they start most of them from scratch, so they didn't have too much base to build up. But after, I think, after 2008, especially Actually, after the financial crisis, also after the 2008 Olympics, so Beijing Olympics, the Western world understand more about China. Even I think, the The general living standards in China has grown up, grow very rapidly after that. The second generation from the first, there's people has been becoming a richer by doing business themselves. The first generation has generated wealth, so they have their second generation, has better education. Most of them actually went abroad and learned from the Western world and see how they do business, how they do entrepreneur, and had the knowledge. Then when those generation, I started to actually build their own business or start getting to entrepreneurship, and I think that's when the second wave actually came. I think it's the early... That's when actually I went back is after 2010. I think the Chinese, especially the VC industry and the Internet industry, Actually has seen a tremendous growth after 2010, especially 2015 to 2000, right before the COVID.

That's when you see Tencent, Alibaba, and this big giant came out, and also the smaller ones because people had experience working for the big companies, start to build their own business as well. You see softwares like mobile apps, like a We have the Chinese version of Uber. It's called DD. Also, there's the delivery services of China, the apps in China because the Chinese population The density is very high. The delivery has been growing really fast. Also because the Chinese has a bigger market, entrepreneurship works differently than the Western world in the way that because the market is big enough and you can have, you would say, if you have idea, You have a quick technology base, you can quickly develop your product. Even it's like a 60%, 70% complete. To actually prove your ideas, you can always go to the market and let the market do the stress test on your products. You can iterate after that. If you see some failures, you can gain from the feedbacks from the users. It's the feedbacks and the cycle is very quick. It's not like the States For example, in Canada, you don't have too much market you can test because it costs you too much to actually to do marketing on that nationwide.

In China, it's different. You got small market. When in one city, you get 10 million population, you can easily get a million users. You know you can get quickly feedback from the product you roll out. That's different ways I see it for the entrepreneur side.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I hadn't thought about the market size being such an advantage. I mean, essentially, two larger Chinese cities is bigger than the entire country of Canada. Canada is just barely bigger than the state of California. And then we think of the US market as being large at what, 360 million, but that's a third or less than a third of the overall Chinese market. That's really interesting. And I'm assuming, because I know the US has the highest paid ad rates, like CPMs are often the highest in the US. So even though the market's not as big as China, you're also paying much higher CPMs if you're trying to test ideas or run ads into a market to try to do some product testing. So basically what you're saying there is that market size and the dynamic of it allows you to push products out and get feedback at a large scale very rapidly to understand, do we have something here or do we need to iterate or is this just a complete miss?

Yeah. I think that's just one example is TikTok, right? Because TikTok started in China. It's bite dance. It's the Chinese version. It's called Dou Yin in China. They started. Actually, I had a chance as a VC investor. I had the chance to invest in the early stage of the TikTok mother company back in China, that was 2013, when I actually first joined the firm, I looked into their project. They started as a news app. They basically posted different news on their apps and people seeing it, and they use the algorithm. Basically, they call it the algorithm. At the time, they developed a database because people look at different news, they mark their interest on those news. They actually put text. At the back-end, the algorithm will put text on all this news people looked at and start pushing for what they are interested. In that way, people always see what they're interested, so they really like the app. That's because over the times, TikTok, actually, they build up their algorithm Because there are so many people using it, they start building the big database. Imagine if they started up the startup in Canada, they don't have enough samples, they don't have enough users to help them to build the user base.

I would say at that time, it's definitely an advantage because they have enough user base to test out ideas and improve the products, improve algorithm. Then once they have that advantage, they went globalized. They started up TikTok and went viral quickly because they already had all this database algorithm. They It's not really a startup from the local Chinese market. They just applied it globally. I think similar stories for AIs. I think the US and China, they're racing for AIs very, very competitive competitively, but I'm not sure if you know, Deep Seek, it's also an AI model. It's back in China. Deep Seek, actually, they have their advantage because they had more, I would say local Chinese market data. That's something is really important. Even Tesla, they won't have their auto drive tested in China. They treat Chinese markets as one of the most important market in globally because they have... In China, you would have a thousand more road accident or condition cases than the States, because the States is all straight roads, highways. In China, you got this small road in nowhere and the village roads. And then Tesla, the IIS can learn all these different driving conditions, and it will help to improve their user case eventually.

I think that's the reason why right now there is a certain advantage in China in the AI competition, but they're lacking of the chips because the US actually block the chips it exports to China. But that backfire because you are forcing the Chinese government to invest more to build their chips. Yeah.

Actually, there was a really good... I don't know if you listened to the All In podcast with Chamoth Polyapetia and David Sacks and those guys. If you don't, it's okay. But it's one of the larger entrepreneur podcasts out there, and they were just having this discussion, this exact discussion around the merits of denying the Chinese market, the NVIDIA chips, and the Tesla chips, et cetera, these advanced chips. And And the argument that was being made is that while everyone on the call could see the defense argument to it from a very short term, maybe scarcity or narrow view, at the same time, they're like, look, all this tension between China and Taiwan and the state, this could all be solved if we could figure out a way to sell these chips in. And I think it was David Sacks. His argument was essentially, Well, wouldn't we rather sell China our chips, know what they have, and reap the benefit of selling them the chips, versus creating, one, this self-imposed friction that doesn't necessarily need to be there, and two, all Chinese entrepreneurs are going to do, as you're describing, is eventually develop their own chips.

And I think as we've seen, one of the things, and I follow Deep Seek pretty closely because I'm really interested in the fact that it's also an open-source model. So And they just came out with, and I'm going to butcher some of the technicalities to it. I was reading about it. I'm not necessarily trained in any programming stuff. So I understand the usage and the ideas, but I couldn't make my fingers make the magic box do the things. But this new model they just came out with is essentially created an entirely new framework for how to set certain boundaries and how to compartmentalize research so it's not getting lost in context in larger prompts, et cetera. You see this deep seek will move ahead, and some of the open source Chinese models will take a step ahead, and then you see open AI. But I do think it feels to me, and I'm interested as a technologist yourself, what your take is on this You look at, say, WordPress, right? Wordpress, open source website. So now we're talking early 2000s, 2000, 2010 is really when WordPress separated itself so quickly and so rapidly became the most widespread platform because it was open source, right?

And at that time, marketing and sales has always been my side of the house, right? At that time, the argument was, well, they're open source, so it got labeled as amateurish or somehow the code wasn't as good. And what was really interesting, and I think this is what we're going to eventually see with open source models versus these closed models with AI, is WordPress, one, because so many programmers were able to get their hands on it and play with it and fix it. And they don't want their stuff getting hacked. So the entire argument of it not being as secure went out the window really fast. And WordPress continued to ascend and take over the number one platform in the country or in the world. And many platforms tried, but I truly believe it was the open source nature of WordPress that did that. So do you see something similar happening with open source AI models versus the closed models over time? They battle for a while, but open source eventually will win. I'm talking widespread use. I think there'll always be very specific use cases for closed models, but I can see these open source models taking the larger everyday user market segment.

Well, I think we need to look at two things. We're talking about models. Models is the computing power or the AI models. So they have this They can generate tokens so people can query them and apply to things. But I think eventually, it doesn't matter if the chips getting blocked from the States or China invents their own chips. I think eventually the models will be very close to each other and there's not too much difference. I think you can't really... For ordinary users, you can't really tell too much difference between a Groke and a Deep Seq or ChatGPT. They all do similar things. Even TikTok has their own AI. It's called Douba as well. They all have a similar logic behind it. You know, the more ironic about it, many of the Chinese scientists actually is working for those AI companies. You look at the Tesla, they introduce their AI team in many Asian faces. But that's just not It's not very important, I would say. The difference will be very, very minimum. What's going to be making the huge difference, I think, right now is focusing on the application side. I think there's It's a interesting trend.

I'm not sure if you see the news. Meta actually just bought a Chinese company for, I think, $2 billion.

$2 billion, yeah. Manish.

Yeah, Manish. The Chinese company, the entrepreneur, they move out of China because they want their application. The AI agent can be used globally because they don't want sanctions from the states. But I think they are very strong They actually found it only eight months old, I think, if I remember right. The point I'm trying to make is that it's a closed model versus open model. I think eventually it's going to be... I would compare with a Google App Store and an Apple App Store, and they will coexist. But I think eventually, Basically, what's going to be big difference is the applications that we're going to came out, like the AI agent to be going to use. I think Tesla is more using their AI system for for daily transport or robots and that things. Deepseq is open source, so it's the access, the bear to entry to utilize their model is very low. Chatgpt on the other side, I think it's a little bit more advanced and it has more resources because they got the biggest investment from the NVIDIA and from SoftBank, all that thing. They got more firepower. Yeah, Microsoft. Yeah, they got more firepower.

I think they're going to be the strongest. But I think eventually it's depending on the ecosystem, like how they use use their models to actually to apply to the... To affect the daily life of regular users. For us, we're also interested in... Because we are doing the trading platforms, we also often look at AI tools to help traders or investors to do better investment. There's many applications to that as well. I'm not sure if you read the story, actually, Deep Seek, the founder, they initially invented the model just to help them to do stock trading, basically. They made lots of money to do stock trading. Then they decided to make this model publicly available with open source because they see there's lots of applications you can use with the open source, make it more wildly adapted. It's help more people rather than just keeping them closed.

I think the acquisition of Manus by Meta was really interesting. I've been using Manus almost since day one, since its first day that it was available in the States, I've been using it. And watching how quickly that team has deployed level two and level three functionality has been, in my mind, incredible. I mean, personally, I use it. Let's just say for the production of this podcast, 90 % of the postproduction that happens with this podcast is the result of Manus. So I've created a series of prompts. I take the transcript, I take a few screenshots, I take a few headshots, I pop it into Manus, and then I have a set of prompts that I work through. Essentially, everything that I then need, everything from podcast, YouTube, show notes page, what I'm sharing on social, the graphics that come out, and it gives me all these different options. It's all incredibly high quality. And they actually added a feature before. This was to me, and this is why I think these AI agents. So for guys, for those of you listening at home may not know the difference. Manis is not necessarily working off its own model, per se.

It does have its own model. But What it does that is so particular and where, in my mind, they've stepped ahead and I think shown the everyday user market, something they haven't seen in the other models, is this ability to create on-the-fly agents that then go out and execute off other models. So it's It's pulling in Nana Banana Pro 2 graphics, and then it's pulling in... Maybe it's pulling in a video from Sora, and it's pulling in... It's using these different resources, and then it also has the ability to go out and hit the web, which it could do that before OpenAI could. So Manish, because it used different models, actually had the ability to go out and do deep research and deep analysis of websites inside a flow before OpenAI could do that. And it's this idea of AI agents, I think, which is really going to be the next level. And we'll look back on these single chat flow, the early days. We'll look back and laugh at how remedial that stuff was when we see these agents and how quickly voice is coming and visual recognition and all this stuff. It's really wild.

But what the acquisition of Manish showed me, and I I wish it wasn't Meta that bought them because I think Meta's AI is whack compared to the other ones, personally. But was how important this idea of multi-agent functionality is to high production. If you really want to get high output, you need to be able to run multiple agents. They need to be able to talk to each other, and they need to know how to layer. And honestly, I don't think there's a better retail user product on the market that, man, when it comes to that. And that was a really interesting acquisition, particularly born out of China, moved to the US, or at least had a US headquarters, and now being bought by a US company. It just shows how global this stuff is and how... I It's often... It's funny. I love watching politics because it's like watching Real Housewives of Washington DC, because it's all performance art. You see these problems. The Chinese are doing this. The US is doing this, and everyone's... And everyone's in you see all these. And underneath, it's just all the business people and regular people just working with each other, getting business done.

It's just funny how you can get caught up in headlines. But I always tell my buddies in particular, and I'm blessed to have this show and be able to talk to people like yourself. I'm like, the people that are actually getting shit done, I don't know. You don't even think twice about this crap. You're like, We doing business or not? You know what I mean? Obviously, there's always a little bit of something you got to work through. But I want to move over to blockchain and particularly what you're doing there because obviously, if you were in early on BTCE, I have made the mistake twice as you did of buying, feeling amazing about myself when it go up, selling, and then watching it go down a little and then go way up again. I've played that game multiple times now, and I'm now just in a, I'm just going to hold this shit until for a decade or so before I sell any of it. Big believer, big believer in the tech. What we've seen maybe over the last three to four years in particular is this of altcoins and meme coins and all this stuff.

For a while, there were all these core networks that still exists, Solana, et cetera. But it feels like Bitcoin is really won, at least for now, as the gold standard cryptocurrency. Today, if you walk into your local bar or your card game or your golf match or whatever, and you say, Hey, I bought some Bitcoin today. People are like, Oh, okay. Three years ago, people would laugh at you and say you're playing with video game money or whatever. When you're having a trading platform, seeing all this stuff, having people being able to trade Bitcoin as much as Wolfcoin, 133 or whatever, right? What has been maybe some of your high-level takeaways of this maturation? And where do you see the market continuing to mature as we go?

Yeah, I think, like you mentioned, I bought it early. I sold it early, too. But I think there's a reason why I wasn't really a true believer at the time because there is no institutional adoption at the time. It was too early. So people didn't really… Definitely, there's values in Bitcoin, but at the time, there's not many people actually understand it or can realize or can agree on the value of Bitcoin. At that time, there was higher risk than now. I'm not sure if you do lots of investment, you always hear about a reward over risk. There's a ratio. The higher the reward, the with higher risk. But right now, Bitcoin already has a higher price. You won't get that tremendous growth if you bought $300. But right now, the risk is way lower. The reason why is because I think over the years, especially 2023, 2024, because the institutional adoption, because the spot ETFs, the Wall Street adoption, though the big institutions come in and realize there's value. Also, Cathy Wood from ARC and Tesla, Elon, and they all bought Bitcoin. When there is common recognition on the value of Bitcoin, it's obviously they bring up the price.

But I think At the same time, it has reduced the risk tremendously. The volatility on Bitcoin price has been down. Even over the last year or two, people are talking about these four-year cycles. We're supposedly people are arguing if there is still another four-year cycle for Bitcoin. Right now, even there is still four-year cycles and the volatility will be way less because all this institutional money as spot ETFs, traditional finance institutions has access the Bitcoin as a storage of value. Because Bitcoin It's treated as digital gold because it's scarcity. It has limited the quantity of 21 million. Even a big chunk of that belongs to Satoshi, but Satoshi speaks Bitcoin is no longer moving, so it's not in the supply. The supply is limited, and there is definitely application of Bitcoin on payment or the other things we can use as a blockchain even. I think definitely there is a value for Bitcoin itself. On the other side, I think is the Ethereum. It's not need to be mentioned is that Ethereum has a different utility, I would say. I think Tom Lee has been the biggest bullish, a bullish follow for Ethereum because he's seeing Ethereum as one of the only layer one blockchain that has never been done since the since it got online.

And it's one of the basics for Wall Street to access blockchain. But basically, I think in the near future, we're going to see real-world assets like bonds and stocks. They're all going to be going on-chain, and it's going to be on Ethereum. It's going to be one of the most viable chain. They're going to adapt. I think the 2024, when the spot ETF for Bitcoin came out, that's the Wall Street adoption for Bitcoin. And 2025 this year, because of Tom Lee and BitMain, he's one of the biggest ETH holders for a listed company right now. So he's holding, I think, over almost 5% of the float of Ethereum. And I think he is one... Actually, that's actually a bookmark for Ethereum getting a Wall Street adoption, like the institutional money actually supporting that. And also on top of that, this cycle, the bullish cycle, is way different than the last one in the 2017, because like you mentioned, there are millions of meme coins, altcoins out there, and I would say most The first of them has no value. That's also the reason why even the major coins Solana and Ethereum is they're not going up as much on the percentage-wise as last cycle because there's so many coins to select, especially for the retails.

They follow for KORs. Kors often very excited and pushing for a couple of meme coins, and then eventually this came down and crashed and it has no value, and people just lose money on that. It's distracted all this potential money can invest in the major coins, the Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, where we do have values. That's why I think this bull market is more institutional-driven rather than we have a retail really making lots of money on the last cycle. Also, there's another side note is that during last cycle, the Chinese market, the Chinese retail can still have easily access to cryptos. But right now, because the Chinese government has very strict rules on trading cryptos in the mainland China, it's not easily accessible to any trading platforms. That's potentially has reduced the money flowing to the market as well. But it could be a potential opportunity. Maybe I think in one day, There's going to be an open policy and for the Chinese can get access to crypto trading, and that will potentially boost the market a little bit more higher, I think.

Yeah, that's a really good insight. So I have a couple of things I'd like to clear up for the audience because you talk a little bit about this. Let's just stick with Bitcoin and Ethereum for now for this part of the conversation. We have Bitcoin, which I think it's maybe more naive detractors. It's not worth, it doesn't do anything. It's really that idea of a store of value. No one's running applications on the Bitcoin network for the most part. It's basically just, I buy this because it has value, and I also have some gold, and I also have some mutual funds, and I'm diversifying, and whatever. Okay. And then you have networks like Ethereum, which have incredible utility. My industry that I grew up in was the insurance industry here in the States. There has been talk for a long time. While the insurance industry in the States seemingly believes it's 20 years in the past, technology-wise, from anything that's actually happening today, they tend to just be massive laggards, the conversation around... Insurance policies are an incredible use case for using blockchain technology, a coin or otherwise. And the conversations around that have been, if the industry were to start to make a move, Ethereum would be the network in which an insurance policy blockchain would be built on.

So if I'm sitting here and I'm just a retail investor, I got 5, 10 % of my portfolio I like to play around with. I like to put it in some different things. How do people start to gage a Bitcoin investment, which, as you said, and I've seen it as well as just a retail investor, volatility is down. Even though you saw a move recently, if you pull out a little bit, you can just see the dips and the highs are not as big, and you're seeing a natural up and down progression. With up and to the right being the overall course, where Ethereum seemingly is going up, but has been much flatter. It's been around that 200,000 to 4,000 mark for a long time. And as you said, if I'm just a Yolo, a Reddit investor who looks for the next hype cycle on some Reddit board, deep down in Reddit, and I put a bunch of money in whatever coin, that could be going to an Ethereum. It could be going to one of these other chains. So should I be thinking more Ethereum, Solana, etc? Like one of these that haven't moved in a long time but have a tremendous utility, have thousands, if not in some case, hundreds of thousands or even millions of applications being built on them seemingly are going to be around for a long time because of the tech?

Or should I be thinking more, Hey, let me just put my money in Bitcoin and ride the wave, or do I Yolo and chase the reddit boards? How do I start to think through where I should play? Because I have so many friends, so many, who when you get a couple of whiskies in them, will tell you about all the ridiculous coins that they put money in that they felt amazing about for about 20 minutes, and then all of a sudden, their account was at zero when everyone crashed out. So how do you start to think through this as, we'll call it, an unsophisticated crypto retail investor?

Yeah, I think if you are a beginner, I think it's always to start to get, for example, if you're new to the crypto trading, I think you always good to start with the spot trading. If you know your trading platforms, for example, Binance, OKX, or even not, Lebex, and you can get in there and you You can open your account and deposit your USDT or your coins and do spot trading to start with. Just get familiar with the features and get familiar spot trading of Bitcoin, Ethereum, the major ones, not the smaller ones. You just go on CORE market cap. It's one of the website you use. You just go down to the list. On the top, I would say top five. Aside, top five Top 5 is first one is Bitcoin, second is Ethereum, after that is Binance, Solana, XRP. I think until that point, XRP is, I think, is the most The risk is once you want to invest in. Just start there and then maybe start slowly as well. Then one strategy you can use is called the dollar cost average. You can do DCA. Over the times, you can build, for example, let's say today is 92K for Bitcoin, and you buy 10% on your portfolio.

Tomorrow, it came down or next week, the same day, next Monday, came down. Then you buy another 10%, it doesn't matter the price. In 10 batches, right now, you can just slowly go down. Maybe in 10 weeks, It came down to 80K, and you started at 90K, so your average is like 85. Then when they start to go back up, maybe in the next month or so, you can always make money, and you don't have to worry about liquidation and everything. That's one strategy for the beginners. That you just got to use to how the market moves and they get a sense how it's trading. Then once you making some money and you can use your profit. You can take some of the profit out and sell them. You can start looking to some of these more aggressive ones. If you started with Bitcoin, you can move into Ethereum or even Solana or XRP, and you can do the same strategy. You can just buy a spot and start making regular buys. Eventually, you can make some profit. Just make sure the money you put aside is the investment money, not the money you need to pay the everyday cost.

Once you have made some successful trade and you can go to the next level and you can start looking at the perpetual trading. What's the perpetual? It's the futures contract, basically. You can have leverage, but you're going to do leverage very smart because I think in the long run, people lose money because they over-leveraged. And in a leveraged... In a certain sense, I would say my business school professor always tells me, leverage will, if you use it the right way, it's the only way to make you reach it, make you to the next class. So Even retail, the same. If you're buying a house using mortgage, that's a leverage. You start a company and you raise money, that's a leverage. And trading stocks using margin, that's a leverage. So trading crypto and using professional contracts, that's a leverage as well. You understand the leverage, and then you use it only partially of the capital you have. I think the best case is you made money trading spot and use that profit and you do leverage trading when the market is actually is very clear, not when the market is in a range bounding. For right now, I think the market is still in range bounding.

It's not a great time to use leverage to trade, but we can still building the spot at this moment, just doing DCAs. I do see in the first half of the year, we might see some downside. Personally, I'm waiting for Bitcoin because I sold my spots and I'm waiting to buy back my spot maybe under 80K, even though I think currently there's a bounce. I think there's still a little bit more downside. And wait until the water is cleared and the trend is cleared, I will buy some spot and then I will do some leverage very low, like a 3 to 5X. And that's normally my play.

Basically, we need to wait till CNN and Fox News are saying that Bitcoin is dead and it's going to zero. And the minute they say that, that's when we probably should start. That's when you start.

Or you see the headline news is that there's over the last 24 hours, there's like 100 billion market value lost in the crypto market and things like that.

Yeah. Yeah, those two. But I Basically, because I'm not smart enough, nor do I have the self-discipline to trade. I've tried and my ADD goes off the rails and I just want more, I want action. I just invest. I just DCA every week. I literally have it just set up to auto buy a certain amount every week, and I don't even think about it. And that's when I see, oh, it was at 127, and now it's at 92. And I'm like, I'm not... Who cares? I'm not investing today for a quick lift for the type of investor I am for Bitcoin in particular. It's just I think there will come a day where it could be five years from now It could be a decade from now, 300, 200, 200, 500,000 if you're just DCAing or if you're doing it in chunks, your big... There's going to be a time in the future when you're very happy that you didn't try to time it, you didn't try to get out at certain times. Exactly. I think if you're very smart and you know what you're doing, I think there's incredible amount of money to be made trading.

I think for a lot of the people listening, especially if you're a business owner and you don't have the time, this is where you get caught, I think, in futures trading, at least my friends who've really lost decent chunks, has been, they don't have the time to invest. They think it's like this side hustle where I can show up for 20 minutes and open up my app and do some... And you just can't be successful long term that It's a job. Trading is a job. This is what people do all day long.

It's harder than the daily job. And you have to compete against people. For example, the financial firms or professional traders, they have invested maybe 10 millions in developing a software trading against you. How do you think you can successful beating them? You can only beat them with luck or you beat them with time. You can use You can broaden your time frame and then you slowly put your money in and you get an average your cost down and then play the long game. Because the professional traders, they're looking for a short run. Or you wait until maybe the AI tools came out and they can help you to trade. As a trading platform, we actually look into those features as well. We're in the middle of developing those. We hope this can help the traders improve their trading success rate.

With your platform, I can buy and hold. Is it only trading or I can just go in? Let's say today I'm listening to this, you're like, I like this guy. I've been wanting to buy some Bitcoin. I've been wanting to get in. I've been saying I'm going to do it for a while. I can just go download the app, put my information in. I can buy and hold. But then if I do want to start playing around and maybe, like you said, take some profits here and there and actually put some bets in, do a little futures trading on the side. I want to learn that game. Your platform allow me to do that as well. So I have the full spectrum of opportunities to play in the game.

Definitely. We have spot trading, we have futures trading. You can even using the spot as a collateral to do some leverage to trade as well. And also we have definitely across all this We have sales marketing, we have this welcome bonus and everything. You can maybe just come. Sometimes we have promotions going on. You can come and deposit some money, get some trading credits, and you can trade with the trading credits. It's not costing your own money. And it's a good way to get used to some of the trading features as well.

I want to finish with, you've had this dynamic entrepreneurial journey, not just in China, across the world. You've been in multiple different places, interacting with a ton of different people. You're sitting in Dubai today while we're talking, which just makes this so incredible to begin with. It doesn't have to be crypto. It can be whatever you want. When you sit in your spot and you look out over the ecosystem, maybe you put your VC hat back on for a second. What's the one tech sector, et cetera, where you're like, maybe the market doesn't understand how much further this has to go? We keep hearing AI is a bubble. It's going to pop, and it's going to become... Or crypto, or is it energy? Is it nuclear? Is it space tech? If you were sitting there today and we Something that really got you excited, what's that thing that you're like, Man, this is going to move. I don't know, maybe no when, maybe not sure which company, but this sector's got legs, and it's going to hit here in the next few years.

Well, I think AI is already everybody is already talking about. I think AI agents like a menace, I think definitely there's more. I think AI agent is like the application on top of AI models. There's going to be lots of use for AI agents as well. But I think one thing I'm currently looking at, I think I still have lots of hope in Ethereum because like we talk about, I think Tom Lee sometimes overstated some points, but I do agree with him on certain degrees because Ethereum is the utility-wise, is the gateway for the whole Wall Street or traditional finance to access blockchain. That's something going to be really huge. Like you mentioned, the insurance, even real estate. In Dubai, they already put some of the buildings' real estate got tokenized and put it on a blockchain. People People can buy shares of it or buy the coins. Basically owning a partial ownership of that building. I think also there's many applications you can use. Also, Polymarket. Polymarket, you can do all this betting and forecasting on blockchain. I think there's so many things you can do.

Polymarket's on Ethereum, built off Ethereum?

I think they definitely utilize the Serum blockchain network.

I think you're right. I just wasn't 100 % sure. Yeah, we can double check. Well, I love that. I mean, to be honest with you, Ethereum had definitely fallen off my radar a a little bit, mostly just because I don't think about crypto every day. But I think you're right. I mean, Bitcoin is essentially paving the path, I think, culturally for people to accept doing air quotes for those that are listening, crypto in general. It's that beachhead. Crypto is establishing the beachhead. But I'm listening to you and I can't find a hole in the idea that the next wave is going to be these utilitarian chains that where people are building. And guys, just so you know, it's not like there's a few applications on Ethereum. We're talking some major, major applications, major platforms, entire business models, companies, I know, regulated industries that are starting to either that are currently using or dipping their toes in. And I think once you start to see, like you said, finance, insurance, these highly regulated industries start to grab onto these, I think that's where the dominoes really start to fall. Because once the regulated industries are in, there's not really an excuse for anyone else to not start to invest and go down the rabbit hole.

Harvey, man, I could talk to you about this stuff all day. I know it is late where you are. I appreciate the heck out of you guys. It's probably close to 1: 00 AM now in Dubai where Harvey is. So I appreciate you taking this time. It's been a wonderful conversation. Where could people learn more about your company? And then if they want to follow along with you personally, do you create, do you share thoughts anywhere? Is there any platform that you'd like to push people to?

Yeah, actually, we have our official website. It's www. Levex. Com. And also I'm on Twitter as well. My account is @harvilevex, and our official Twitter handle is @lavex. That's our official account. So if you want to learn more, For more information about us, just hop on to one of the platforms and look for us. Also, I will be on Spaces every Tuesday. There is a quantum economic space. I will talk there talking about the market every Tuesday. I think it's 10 AM Eastern Time. I'll be there. If you guys want to listen, you can always find me there as well. Also, thank you, Ryan, for inviting me and having this interview today. I'd really love to talk to you. Maybe we can set up another show later on for AI or the other stuff we would love to talk about. I would love that.

I love that. We spent a lot of time on, we'll call them higher-level psychology leadership-type topics the last year. Coming into 2026, we're going to focus more on finance, on technology, on AI, et cetera. I think it's a tough game when you're in a leadership position managing the humans. You got the humans, which are really hard. And then you have the actual business that you're trying to build and the technology related to it. And we're trying to capture the full spectrum here and give people a place to have these conversations and learn. So I just appreciate you. I know it's late. This has been a wonderful conversation. And look, man, open invitation. We will definitely have you back. Anything comes up, you drop some of the AI features you're talking about into Levex. Come right back on, man. I'd love to have that conversation. Thank you so much. Okay.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Ryan. It's very nice. Yes, they're talking.