Original Source: William Joy
Article Compiled By: Wrench, PANews

Recently, Cobo co-founder Fish Zhang and Ultiledger founder Jin Ming had an in-depth conversation about AI, entrepreneurship, investment, Bitcoin, Web 3, Agents, and life's mission.

Fish is an early participant in the crypto industry, having been involved since 2011, and is one of the earliest Bitcoin evangelists and participants in China; Jin Ming is a former member of the Chinese Free Diving National Team, founder of Ultiledger, and has long focused on the research and commercial application of video AI technology, receiving investments from institutions such as Alibaba, Yunfeng Fund, and Megvii Technology.

From the mission of entrepreneurs to the relationship between humans and technology in the AI era; from free diving and death anxiety to investment frameworks and asset allocation; and to the future of BTC, RWA, Agents, and Ethereum, the two had an in-depth discussion around technology, capital, and individual life experiences.

Fish believes that one of the most significant changes brought by AI is a substantial reduction in the cost from idea to implementation. In the past, an idea might have remained only in the mind due to the high cost of execution; today, AI is compressing and structuring a vast amount of human knowledge and providing execution capabilities to individuals at an extremely low cost. Consequently, technological advancement has made human will more critical. However, he also admitted that while AI has opened up many possibilities, a sufficiently large and systematic thing has not yet been found. He still defines himself as a Builder, believing that "being alive in some sense is about making the world's possibilities a little bit more abundant because of your existence."

This Builder mentality also pervades his investment philosophy. Fish believes that good assets do not need to rely on continuous narratives; rather than widespread diversification, he tends to focus on a few assets that he truly understands because human energy is limited, and what truly matters is understanding the underlying logic of the assets.

In the next stage of Web 3, the key direction Fish is observing is Agents. He believes that ecosystems like Ethereum may not primarily be for human use in the future but for Agents.

Below is the full interview, compiled by PANews:

The AI Era: Human Will Becoming More Crucial

Jin Ming: The last time you participated in an interview was a decade ago, in 2017. At that time, you had a classic quote: "With so much money, I don't know how to spend it all at once."

Godfish: Now I know how to spend it. In fact, fundamentally, I think this kind of human will is becoming more and more important. After the AI era came, many things that used to take a lot of time and cost to accomplish, now as long as you have an idea, you can do it quickly. This change is huge.

Right. You see, fundamentally, it is this kind of human will that is becoming more and more important. When the AI era came, many executions that used to be very difficult, or that you thought were very difficult in the past, suddenly as long as you have an idea, it can be done in no time. This change is huge. Things that we might have found unimaginable ten or twenty years ago can now be delivered very easily. Things that we couldn't even imagine ten or twenty years ago, now as long as you have an idea, the backend execution cost has dropped very low, and many things can be delivered quickly.

Jinming: It's about going from an idea to the final implementation.

Godfish: Yes. In the past, you had a seed, had a dream, but it might always just be a dream. Now the backend cost is dropping rapidly, and with AI compressing and structuring a lot of human knowledge, you can call on these capabilities at a low cost.

You have a seed at home, and it can quickly be implemented. In the past, it was like OK, I have a seed, I have a dream, but that's just a dream. Now the backend costs are dropping rapidly, and then with AI compressing a lot of human knowledge, so you can call on this at a low cost. I feel like it has opened up a lot of possibilities. So I feel like AI has opened up a lot of possibilities at once.

From Mission to Confusion, Builders Are Also Seeking Answers

Jinming: Are you satisfied with your current state of life? Do you feel happy and fulfilled every day?

Godfish: It's okay, but I still feel a bit lost. Unlike when I first started my business, at that time, the sense of mission was particularly strong. Now it has entered a state of chaos: you see that AI has unfolded many possibilities, you feel this is the best era, but you don't see a very clear path. Whether it's a sense of mission or a specific business path, I still haven't figured it out completely. So now it's more about exploring and improving myself.

Jinming: How did you define your sense of mission when you first started your business?

Godfish: When you see a window of opportunity, you will feel a very strong creative impulse. You will feel that if this thing is not done, you will definitely regret it in this life. It's as if a force is pushing you, and you can't escape it at all, so you come out and do it.

Jinming: The huge demand you saw back then, was it for mining?

Godfish: Actually, it started as early as 2013, and the core issue was the problem of hash power. Mining originally started in the United States, then later began to migrate to China. When China first started making ASIC miners, the machines actually needed to connect to U.S. mining pools to mine. There were two main issues: first, the network problem, as there were delays and packet loss in the international internet, leading to very poor mining efficiency; second, the settlement method of the entire mining industry at that time was not reasonable. So what we did was to solve these two problems.

Essentially, you see a market gap, a niche market, where there are some needs that have not been fully met, and you happen to have the ability to meet them. At this point, a very strong impulse arises to build this thing.

Jinming: After so much precipitation over time, what do you think is your mission now?

Godfish: I still feel like I need to create something. I have always defined myself as a Builder. Since the AI era, I have made many small tools and dashboards, but I have not yet found that truly big, systematic thing; I am still observing.

Actually, as you progress in entrepreneurship, being on the front line and having done many things will lead to a lot of confusion and perplexity. So you have to immerse yourself in a large amount of knowledge from human history: how have similar things happened in the past? How do philosophers think? All these things will come back to influence you. At this moment, you can see many possibilities for the future, but you have not yet found that specific path.

In Search of a Sense of Life Mission

Jinming: Yesterday when I was sharing, I talked about purpose awareness, which is about a sense of life purpose. I metaphorically likened it to a scale.

Many people initially want to create some big things, hoping to leave a legacy; on the other end of the scale is experience and happiness, and many young people feel that life is about pursuing happiness. If you put it on this scale, where are you now?

Godfish: I don't have a specific desire to leave anything behind, nor do I seek any particular experiential sensation. I've used AI to deconstruct a lot of psychoanalytical things, but fundamentally, I am someone driven to build from within. I just want to build something. When something is created, I feel great satisfaction. I hope to present something because I believe that, to some extent, living is about your existence increasing the possibilities in this world a little bit.

Jinming: This is actually very leftist, very legacy-oriented. There is a very interesting phenomenon in psychological research, where many people aspire to become Builders. And a latent psychological characteristic of a Builder is that they are prone to anxiety. Because your life purpose is constantly to build. When you are not actively moving forward, not in the process of building, you tend to enter an anxious state. Have you experienced this state before? How do you usually resolve it?

Godfish: Definitely to some extent, but now I can switch it off. I have had some ways to empty myself since I was young, such as raising animals, pursuing hobbies. So basically, every week I enter this state. You have to allow yourself to empty out. How do you deal with fear when you are diving?

Redefining Fear in Extremes

Jinming: When you hold your breath, your body will constantly send you signals, which is actually a confrontation between rationality and sensibility. I think the most direct metaphor is that free diving is actually very similar to a spiritual process. First, you need to enter the water with a state of "knowing the outcome." You have to keep telling yourself: you are safe.

The human brain is actually very clever. Humans are controlled by the autonomic nervous system. For example, it is very difficult to truly suffocate oneself on land by holding your breath. When you hold your breath to the limit, the brain may experience a brief blackout, known as a BO, entering a brief state of shock. After about ten seconds, the airway will reopen, and the person will naturally inhale.

But why might a person die underwater as a result? When a person loses consciousness underwater and the airway reopens, what they inhale is not air but water. So ultimately, it may lead to drowning. That's why free diving training must always have a buddy, a training partner.

However, from another perspective, it is also a very good spiritual process. You will continuously give yourself complete positive psychological suggestions: what you are doing now is meditation, you are entering a state of flow; you are healthy, you are safe; your brain is very intelligent.

And at the beginning, no one could hold their breath to the limit immediately. At the start of training ten times, two months, three months, most people may only reach about 50% of their limit. As training progresses, they slowly approach 70%, 80%, and even 90%. Many times, what limits newcomers from going deeper is not their physical limit but rather their unfamiliarity with their own body. As you become more familiar with your body, you will increasingly trust yourself and get closer to your limit. So the whole process is not as much of a struggle as imagined; many times it is actually very peaceful.

Interviewer: Doesn't this process help you overcome the fear of death? Or does it make you confront death more directly?

Jin Ming: That's a very good question. I feel that after long-term freediving or breath-holding training, my fear of death has indeed greatly decreased. I haven't seriously thought about why. At the beginning of the first breath-hold, or during the first few training sessions, I still had some fear of death, but now I have completely overcome it. Even in my daily life, when joking with my parents, I would say that I feel my life experience has been very fulfilling and rich. Even if something unexpected happens tomorrow and I'm no longer here, I would still feel very happy. In the past, I used to think that of course, the longer I live, the better, and death is a very regrettable thing. But now I'm not so afraid of it anymore. Are you afraid of it?

Interviewer: I think there is still some level of anxiety. Or rather, observers might tell me, my Agent partner might also tell me, that I actually have death anxiety.

AI Agent is Becoming the New Information Gateway

Jin Ming: What channels do you use now to gather information every day?

Interviewer: Almost all AI. I open my eyes, and AI tells me that it has read everything for me from yesterday. Now I have three AI Agents. One Agent is tool-rational; it will tell you what to do. One is more feminine and softer, it will search for things deep inside you. And there is one that combines what you did yesterday and tells you what blind spots it noticed.

For example, it might tell you: in history, there was a good book, and a certain chapter discussed an issue that ancient people also encountered, and it is very relevant to your current state. Would you like to spend 15 minutes reading this chapter? And then three things will pop up for you to directly observe.

In addition, I also have a note-taking system. They will use evolutionary thinking to connect what I have focused on in the past with things related to my life. In a sense, my attention is like a "deity," determining which views or propositions can survive. Every day, AI will "crossbreed" a batch of new things and then filter one out, telling me, "There is an article you can read." So now I hardly read things directly. There are also daily digests and long articles selected by AI, processed by AI first and then presented to me. I usually quickly compress it into a PPT to read.

Building an Investment Framework Starting from DeFi

Jinming: But this way is mostly dealing with existing information. There is a lot of real-time information, such as a conflict that suddenly occurred a second ago, which may not be as timely when acquired through AI.

Fish: I don't care. The most important information will find you on its own, and you will definitely see it. I don't do such short-term trading. I realized very early on that I don't have a talent for that. Making some simple decisions is easier, but if it's something more long-term, I might be more suitable.

I actually started investing after playing around with DeFi. DeFi helped me recap my investment history. We went from the "Underground Fed" all the way to how traditional finance was invented, witnessing the development of the past two hundred years. During this process, you will have many questions, and then you go back to fill in the history and financial knowledge gaps. It was only at this point that I started to seriously invest.

I was just relatively lucky on day one, somehow got hold of some decent methodologies, and took a path that wasn't too wrong. But it wasn't until I finished the DeFi wave that I began to build my knowledge structure and investment framework. Before that, I actually didn't have a complete investment framework.

Jinming: So, you mean that during your long period of mining, you didn't really form an investment framework.

Fish: At that time, I didn't even think I was investing. I just had a vague intuition that I should hold some Bitcoin while also applying some position management thinking.

I am an ISTJ personality, and many things are abstracted in the practice process. I first form some frameworks, then train my intuition; in the process, many new questions arise, abstracting new frameworks further. An investment framework is gradually formed in this way.

From DeFi to RWA, Rethinking Financial Products Themselves

Jinming: In general, very few people actually construct an investment framework from DeFi. Because DeFi is often fundamentally about "yield farming," which is completely separate from investment logic.

Shenyu: But what you need to look at is what these financial products themselves are actually providing in terms of functionality, and how they are meeting market demand. It's essentially building a financial market from 0 to 1 on-chain. I look at this process; it's not about arbitrage or mining in DeFi, which I see more as muscle memory, as intuitive.

But in this process, you accumulate a lot of experiences, which are very valuable; at the same time, you also accumulate a lot of questions, which are equally valuable. Initially, you may not understand why everyone needs these things, but once you figure it out and look back at history, many things start to connect.

Jinming: So this round of bringing RWAs on-chain, including introducing US stocks on-chain, is like extending your understanding of financial products formed in DeFi to traditional finance.

Shenyu: Yes, it's like putting US stocks in front of you again, forcing you to understand the logic behind US stocks.

Jinming: But ten years ago when you were mining, you never thought about holding US stocks, right?

Shenyu: Even when others asked to borrow money from me to speculate in US stocks, I didn't really understand it at the time. I can only say that I was lucky and happened to take a not-so-wrong path. Back then, I was actually very clueless and didn't think it through. Later, I had a lot of questions, and then AI came along, and my learning speed suddenly became very fast. I could quickly go through a large number of books and materials, then understand why these things happened.

Good Assets Do Not Need to Continuously Seek New Narratives

Jinming: You've been involved with Bitcoin for over a decade now. Has your view on BTC changed at all?

Shenyu: No change, it's still digital gold. In this world, assets that you can hold without needing an intermediary, most other assets are basically wrapped in one layer, two layers, or even three layers of intermediaries.

Jinming: Many of our group members are quite pessimistic now as well.

Whale: The value of BTC is truly revealed only in extreme situations. So, it's normal for people not to care about it when the market is booming.

Jinming: Do you agree with the view that BTC has actually significantly enhanced individual sovereignty under classical liberalist ideology?

Whale: A core aspect of individual sovereignty is the ability to dispose of assets. AI has brought about an enhancement in this ability, and BTC is a key asset in the way sovereign individuals handle their assets. Both of these things are very important.

Jinming: I have some friends around me who were very early believers in BTC and had strong faith. However, I feel that after this cycle, many people are starting to feel that they can't see a new narrative.

Whale: Good assets don't need a narrative, and the longer they exist, the more they can prove certain things.

Jinming: I think in this Web 3 cycle, there are two narratives that are quite important. One is the full asset arbitrage done by Ethena, and the other is on-chain Real World Assets (RWA). But both of these are still in their early stages and haven't really matured yet.

Instead, I feel that the killer To C (Consumer) applications of Web3 have not yet emerged. I'm not talking about the products used by investors and traders today, but products that ordinary consumer users can use as easily as WeChat, truly changing people's way of life. I don't think such a product has appeared yet.

Whale: I've long held the view that ecosystems like Ethereum may not be meant for human use in the future, but for Agents. It might eventually be a network where humans are not necessarily the most suitable end-users. When we use on-chain products now, many times the requirements for user expertise and security awareness are too high. If humans directly become end-users, the barrier is still quite high. But if Agents become the intermediary layer, it might be a better presentation.

Jinming: If in the future, the main users on Ethereum, Solana, and other platforms are Agents, then the entire Agent ecosystem is rapidly evolving. How do you see the future of these Ethereum, Solana ecosystems?

Whale: Right now, I am observing a key point: whether Agent can achieve large-scale adoption in an ecosystem like Ethereum. If this point indeed arrives, it may be a turning point.

Jin Ming: I think Web 3 actually has a significantly undervalued aspect. From 1.0, 2.0 to 3.0, "readable, writable, ownable," fundamentally may change the way societal wealth is distributed. If we place finance in this framework, my ideal Web 3 finance is actually like this: Today, when Chinese participate in A-shares, conducting trades through trading apps, a significant portion of the transaction fees generated ultimately go to platforms like East Money, Tonghuashun, rather than the participants themselves.

But one of the core values of Web 3 is that participants can simultaneously become owners of the benefits. For example, when you participate in trading on Binance, Hyperliquid, the platform gains fees from your trades, and as an ecosystem participant, you may also share in the value brought by the platform's growth through tokens, buybacks, and other means. You are both a participant and a shareholder. In the Web 1.0, Web 2.0 era, you were more of just a participant; in Web 3, you may potentially be both a participant and a shareholder. I think this is actually one of the core values of Web 3, and it should not only occur on-chain.

In theory, in the future, in any money-related field worldwide, this kind of model may appear: you are both a participant, receive rewards, and also enjoy the dividends of ecosystem development. However, currently, this mechanism has not been truly applied on a large scale outside of Web 3.

Whale: I think it will happen in the future. For example, data in the AI era may naturally create a similar mechanism. The possibility of technological diffusion has already been opened up. When it can be widely adopted may still require solving many problems and will take time. But the potential is already there. We are already seeing successful demos in some edge scenarios, but it has not yet developed into large-scale applications.

Gold or BTC?

Jin Ming: How do you view gold?

Whale: I don't pay much attention to those. Bitcoin is the better gold.

Jin Ming: I think the commonality between the two is consensus, but the groups forming consensus are different. Bitcoin has formed part of its consensus at the individual sovereignty level, while gold has formed a stronger consensus at the national sovereignty, especially central bank level. Global central banks are still continuing to buy gold.

Whale: Essentially, it can be divided into two camps. One camp is the "Digital Currency + AI" represented by Bitcoin, and the other is the traditional "Gold + Industrial Capability." If we look at it from a spectrum perspective, we may lean a bit more to the left.

Jinming: Do you remember James Tobin's Nobel Prize-related theory? From this point of view, we can buy both Bitcoin and gold. Because the two are positively correlated in certain periods, but in the past year, there has even been a certain degree of negative correlation. If you want to enjoy the so-called "free lunch" of the financial market and achieve a well-diversified portfolio, you should hold more assets that are low or even negatively correlated. What do you think?

Whale: I don't believe there are truly negatively correlated assets. While many assets are indeed diversified under normal circumstances and have relatively low correlations, they all have a few common core constraints. When those core market variables undergo systemic changes and the entire market reaches an extreme situation, almost all assets tend to behave similarly.

Jinming: But there are also exceptions. For example, oil and many credit-related assets are inversely correlated at certain stages. U.S. Treasuries also often exhibit an inverse relationship with credit assets.

Whale: But there can also be scenarios where both U.S. Treasuries and stocks plummet. So I believe what truly needs to be resisted is the most extreme situations. Many times, you may think two assets are negatively correlated, but in the most extreme circumstances, they may not actually protect you. Therefore, I am not a typical advocate of diversification, but lean more towards concentration. Since you fundamentally don't understand so many things, and human energy is limited. Since the underlying logic is not fully understood, I'd rather concentrate my assets on a few things that I truly comprehend.

Investing is ultimately a combination of character, cognition, and position management

Jinming: I find this point very interesting. I think there are some things that you don't need to fully understand. For example, gold has already formed a long-term consensus in many sovereign central banks even if you don't research it. Since this consensus exists, holding it long term can also be part of being well-diversified.

Whale: But it will affect your mentality when it falls. So don't let these things affect your mindset, and the simplest way is to not hold it. When Bitcoin falls, you won't panic, you won't have too much emotional fluctuation. But the premise is you need to have faith. And to truly have this faith, you have to do a lot of groundwork.

Kim Ming: For the average person, a larger barrier may still be that most people are not professional investors. Position management, drawdown control, including mindset management, they find it difficult to truly remain calm.

Godfish: Is this also related to training? For sports like free diving, is it mostly trained, or is it related to a person's innate personality?

Kim Ming: I think it may be both. I believe that sports, in the future, may become a necessity for many people. Many people will pay more and more attention to health, and then truly focus on a certain sport, gradually becoming a kind of "athlete" in a sense. It will bring a sense of achievement, and at the same time, make you happier.

When all these things come together, it is actually a relatively complete trading lifestyle. Plus your own lifestyle in the future, the Bitcoin drawdown, for Type A investors, may actually be a better buying opportunity. For example, when Bitcoin is at $120,000, you may find it hard to buy, and I won't particularly want to accumulate above $100,000 either because I don't think it has given me an opportunity. If it drops below $90,000, I would see an opportunity. Buy at $90,000, $80,000, $70,000, $60,000, gradually accumulating. Because I still have long-term optimism.

Is AI a Cycle or the "Hydroelectric Coal" of a New Era?

Kim Ming: From the current logic, I think calling AI a pure cyclical stock is inaccurate. I believe AI will definitely become the most important productivity of the next era and will replace a lot of things that run the world today. This change may be even bigger than the Industrial Revolution. If this assumption holds, then AI is not just a simple cycle, but the "water, electricity, and coal" of a new era. Of course, if this assumption does not hold, then you can simply treat it as a cycle. The key lies in your judgment of this assumption itself.

Godfish: But if you look at history, many things are actually isomorphic. During the 2000 Internet bubble, everyone also thought the Internet was the future. At that time, network infrastructure was core, and everyone went to buy Cisco. As a result, Cisco later went through a long period of valuation digestion. Could something similar happen?

Kim Ming: All I can say is that everything has a probability. But I believe that if the AI era truly arrives in the future, the need for storage will be immense. Right now, we mainly have chatbots, plus some programming robots. But the truly huge storage demand in the future may come from embodied intelligence, which is true robotic intelligence. Today, there is no true embodied intelligent robot in our homes, and robots in work scenarios are still mainly concentrated in a few factories. A large number of white-collar office scenarios have not been truly replaced.

Furthermore, the future human brain may also require more external storage. For example, a person's brain may have multiple backups, or may have additional "external brain" through a brain-machine interface. These needs have not truly materialized today. But if the AI era truly arrives, the demand space will be very large. So the key actually goes back to an assumption: Do you believe that the AI era will definitely come? I believe it will definitely come. And the idea of robots is no longer completely a wild assumption. Today, looking down the chain of existing human technological development, we can already see the possibility of massive production.

How to Filter Core Assets?

Shen Yu: This brings us back to the trading lifestyle. Your personality preferences will influence what kind of investment philosophy and framework you choose, ultimately affecting your position management and mindset management.

Jin Ming: Everyone does differ greatly indeed. But ultimately, those who truly do well are definitely able to develop a core set of things that belong to them, suitable for them. Including what you just mentioned as T 0 level assets, its definition is actually different. In my framework, what you consider T 0 level assets may only be considered T 2 or T 3, because it may still belong to a very cutting-edge thing.

Shen Yu: Our approach is roughly divided into three levels. The first level, we may first discover an anomaly: this company seems a bit strange. We will not start with a heavy position, maybe buying no more than 2%, and even normally only a fraction of a percent, as an observation position. Then we spend time and effort to understand it. If we think its logic is correct, we may upgrade again, from a fraction of a percent, to single digits percentage-wise, gradually becoming a mid-single-digit asset allocation, but generally not exceeding 10%.

From around 10% further to around 20% of core assets, you actually need to go through a "leap" of "faith." Because once you truly enter the core position, it relies not only on fundamentals and logical deduction, but also requires something akin to faith. You need to see a large enough vision that can support a huge TAM (Total Addressable Market), while also having a very good business logic, and a real key inflection point.

So in conclusion, our current most core framework is: monopoly + growth. For the most core asset, its TAM must be particularly large, requiring a sufficiently large vision to drive it. Otherwise, it cannot be placed in the most core asset allocation.

Jinming: Based on your framework, what do you currently consider the most core asset?

Godfish: Currently, the main assets we have included are Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tesla. SpaceX is still in the timing and observation stage and has not been upgraded yet. Ethereum is still in the mix, but we have also recently discussed whether to move Ethereum down from this tier.

Jinming: Isn't there also an issue of identity here? I remember a year ago when you removed Ethereum, I said in the group chat that I was "sleeping better," and you also mentioned sleeping better, right?

Godfish: Yes, because we stopped mining DeFi. But the core logic we see now is that Agent may operate on Ethereum in the future. Of course, this logic has not been falsified yet.

Jinming: But why can't Agent run on Base? Why can't it run on Solana?

Godfish: It can run on both. But Ethereum's ecosystem may be a better match. It has a lot of decentralized infrastructure at its core. Although these things may not have been truly achieved in the past, the foundation is also trying to move in this direction. For example, building a registry and ecosystem infrastructure around Agent. Although nothing significant has been achieved at the moment, some groundwork has been laid, giving the market a ray of hope.

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