"Bitcoin can no longer keep up with ARKK—AI is sucking away global liquidity, and the crypto market hasn't even reached a point of true stagnation yet." In an exclusive interview on the East-West capital dialogue program "168X," Dovey Wan, founder of Primitive Ventures, draws on his years of practical experience spanning the US and Chinese technology and capital circles to deeply analyze AI's disruption of the global liquidity landscape, the survival crisis of white-collar workers, and the survival philosophy of "insensitivity" in the crypto bear market.
Dovey Wan, with a technical background, holds a Master's degree in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University. She previously served as Managing Director at DHVC, leading early-stage investments in dozens of blockchain infrastructure projects, including Dfinity, Cosmos, and StarkWare. In 2018, she founded Primitive Ventures, an evergreen fund operating entirely with its own capital and refusing external LPs. Primitive Ventures focuses on investing in native crypto innovators and supporting independent Bitcoin Core developers during a crypto winter. Today, Primitive Ventures' portfolio includes over 50 projects across multiple cutting-edge fields, including DeFi, zero-knowledge proofs, Bitcoin Layer 2, and AI infrastructure.
This article is a summary of highlights from 168X (@168X_Fortune) – a top-tier dialogue platform deeply connecting Eastern wisdom and Western innovation, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as AI, blockchain, robotics, space technology, and bioengineering, exploring how technology, capital, and humanistic wisdom will reshape the future of human civilization. The program is hosted by ex-banker Mr. Z.
The Great Liquidity Split: When Bitcoin Can No Longer Keep Up with ARKK
"Back in 2024, I repeatedly said on Twitter that Crypto's liquidity supply chain had undergone significant structural changes," Dovey stated bluntly.
She cited the relationship between Bitcoin and ARKK (ARK Innovation ETF) as an example—
Before the GPT moment, ARKK and Bitcoin followed a very similar trajectory: both were essentially liquidity-driven assets that "only expanded their valuations, not their value."
However, after the GPT moment, AI growth stocks began to generate real returns and cash flow. Having withstood the test of the DeepSeek moment, the valuation logic of AI growth stocks has become increasingly clear.
By mid-2025, a key divergence emerged: Bitcoin could no longer keep up with ARKK's growth. This meant that liquidity was shifting—funds were moving from purely valuation-driven assets to AI growth stocks that could be priced based on real cash flows.
Dovey points out that this is why Primitive Ventures began tracking AI core supply chain companies such as TSMC and SK Hynix very early on.
In addition, she observed a significant trend: the US stock market is becoming "crypto oriented".
Retail investor-driven, highly leveraged traders dominate, and extreme volatility is evident. The recent flash crashes in silver and gold exhibit characteristics similar to the crypto market. "Many models used by institutions in the past are no longer suitable," she stated bluntly. "The profile of traders is also changing."
But there's a deeper driving force behind this. White-collar workers who have been squeezed out of traditional workplaces by AI are collectively flocking to the trading market.
White-collar workers are like horses in a carriage: Five-year countdown to the AI apocalypse.
Dovey has released a shocking statistic: In the first half of 2025, New York City will only add 1,000 jobs.
“The finance guys are all unemployed,” she said bluntly. “Junior lawyers are unemployed too. So what can these people do? They have financial literacy, access to all kinds of financial instruments, and know-how—so they’ve basically all become basement traders.”
This trend echoes her writings during the GameStop incident— that when financial populism combines with cultural trends, the structure of market participants will undergo a fundamental change.
Dovey predicts that AI will become a new ideology. She witnessed her friend's three-year-old child, barely able to speak, chatting with AI every day because the parents simply couldn't satisfy the child's boundless curiosity.
"The world will become very strange in the future, but many people are not prepared for it."
But what truly worries Dovey is a deeper structural rupture.
Past economic models assumed that when the economy grows rapidly, employment will also increase. The Federal Reserve's dual mandate of "employment and inflation" is based on this assumption.
But AI may soon break this equation, leading humanity into a world where "ultra-high growth + ultra-high unemployment" coexist.
“People always use the steam engine as an analogy to represent female textile workers,” Dovey said, “but I think it’s not about female textile workers—it’s more like the horses in a carriage. When a cheaper horse becomes available, capital will naturally choose the cheaper one.”
Her prediction was extremely specific: within five years, major Silicon Valley companies will no longer need "specific function engineers"; accounting, Big Four auditing, and a large number of paper-intensive service industry jobs will also be replaced by AI within five years.
Even if these companies delay layoffs due to managerial inertia and social responsibility, layoffs will become inevitable once the burden of operating costs begins to threaten their ecological position. Overall, within about ten years, the entire mode of social operation will be completely reshaped by AI productivity.
She gave a vivid example: after Musk took over Twitter and laid off a large number of employees, Twitter actually got better. She believes that even if Google laid off a third of its engineers, it would still function well.
"For every individual, how to maintain resistance to AI, how to remain immune to AI, is the most important issue for the next decade," Dovey summarized.
TSMC Geopolitical Game: How a "Pretty Girl" Protects Herself Between Two Big Brothers
Another thought-provoking topic in the interview was Dovey's in-depth analysis of TSMC's geopolitical strategy. Primitive Ventures not only holds TSMC stock but also spent two to three years systematically researching the company.
"We admire TSMC the most, not only because it's a monopolist in wafer manufacturing, but also because its founder, Morris Chang, is extremely wise and has an excellent succession plan," Dovey said. She even made a special trip to Taiwan to buy the second volume of Chang's autobiography, believing it contains a wealth of wisdom on business succession.
She analyzed the core paradox facing TSMC: if the Arizona factory directly advances to 3 nanometers and the progress is rapid, TSMC will face the risk of "cutting off its lifeline"—the United States can use TSMC as the biggest bargaining chip in negotiations with China. Once the production capacity in the United States matures, the strategic value of TSMC as Taiwan's "guardian mountain" will be greatly reduced.
This is why TSMC chose to collaborate with Japan to upgrade its process from 6 nanometers to 3 nanometers. This was an extremely shrewd strategic move. On the one hand, it couldn't allow the US to undermine its core capabilities; on the other hand, the US was already slow due to ethical considerations and bureaucratic issues. Both for its own benefit and its own interests, TSMC needed to secure an alternative path.
Dovey used a vivid metaphor to summarize Taiwan's situation: "Taiwan is a bit like a very beautiful girl, with two big brothers fighting over her." She believes that while the two big brothers are fighting over her, this "girl" should frantically improve her own foundation—use the knowledge she has learned from the big brothers to start her own business, so that even if the big brothers stop fighting over her in the future, she can still live a good life.
She extends this logic to a broader framework: in the past, Taiwan relied on military defense, but now AI and computing power are becoming a new type of defense asset.
NVIDIA's decision to establish its overseas headquarters in Taipei, the "father-son" professional succession between Jensen Huang and Morris Chang, and the manufacturing reshoring policy promoted by Japan's new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi—all these actions are reshaping the geopolitical power structure of the global semiconductor supply chain.
The sense of utter desolation hasn't arrived yet: SpaceX's drain on liquidity, the power of insensitivity, and the rules of survival in a bear market.
When discussing market prospects, host Mr. Z brought up Dovey's famous article, "Who's Paying for the Bull Market?" Her assessment of the current pessimistic sentiment in the crypto market was calm and insightful.
"Sentiment will definitely be lower, and prices will be lower too. A real bear market should be very quiet, it should have a deathly stillness," she said. "But right now there are new dramas every day, and there are still all sorts of struggles every day. We are far from reaching that deathly stillness."
She specifically pointed to a major liquidity risk event in 2026: SpaceX's IPO. SpaceX is reportedly planning to go public in mid-2026 with a valuation of approximately $1.5 trillion, potentially raising as much as $50 billion. If it goes ahead, it will be the largest IPO in human history.
"The IPO alone will raise $1.5 trillion," Dovey analyzed. SpaceX investors have held on for a long time and need to take profits; coupled with its complex shareholding structure after merging with xAI, this will be a "massive retail investor drain" covering both the private and public markets , creating a huge liquidity shock to the entire risk asset market.
She also observed that the market has become extremely cautious: all good earnings reports are triggering profit-taking, and trillion-dollar giants like Microsoft can fluctuate by 15%, "like meme stocks."
Extreme volatility is changing the market landscape. 2026 will not be an easy year.
Dovey offers drastically different advice for different types of traders:
If you're a volatility-harvesting trader, 2026 will be a "golden year" —quantitative firms like QRT and HRT are making huge profits. But if you're a directional, subjective trader, you need to be extremely cautious.
As a long-term asset allocator like Primitive Ventures, she chooses to maintain "insensitivity": having sufficient cash reserves, remaining relatively insensitive to short-term fluctuations, and patiently waiting before the real stagnation arrives.
