Dovey Wan: The Great Liquidity Schism, Bitcoin May Never Keep Up with ARKK

Original Video Title: Dovey Wan on Bitcoin, AI & TSMC: The New Global Power Structure

Original Video Source: 168x

Original Text Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

"Bitcoin can no longer keep up with ARKK — AI is absorbing global liquidity, and the crypto market has not even experienced true desolation yet." Dovey Wan, Founder of Primitive Ventures, in an interview on the East-West Capital Dialogue show "168X," deeply analyzed the disruption of global liquidity dynamics by AI, the existential crisis of white-collar labor, and the survival philosophy of "bluntness" in the crypto bear market from the perspective of years of hands-on experience in the cross-border tech and capital circles.

With a tech background, Dovey Wan holds a Master's degree in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University. She was formerly the Managing Director at Danhua Capital (DHVC), leading early-stage investments in dozens of blockchain infrastructure projects such as Dfinity, Cosmos, and StarkWare. In 2018, she founded Primitive Ventures, a perennial fund operated with proprietary capital that does not accept external LPs, focusing on investing in crypto-native innovators and supporting independent Bitcoin Core developers in the depths of the crypto winter. Today, Primitive Ventures' portfolio spans over 50 projects across various cutting-edge fields such as DeFi, zero-knowledge proof, Bitcoin Layer 2, and AI infrastructure.

This article is a highlight summary of the 168X (@168X_Fortune) show — a top-tier dialogue platform deeply connecting Eastern wisdom with Western innovation, focusing on cutting-edge fields such as AI, blockchain, robotics, space technology, and biotechnology, exploring how technology, capital, and humanistic wisdom will reshape the future of human civilization. The show is hosted by ex-banker Mr. Z.

The Great Schism of Liquidity: When Bitcoin Can No Longer Keep Up with ARKK

"In 2024, I repeatedly said on Twitter that the liquidity supply chain of Crypto itself has undergone significant structural changes," Dovey stated bluntly.

She used the relationship between Bitcoin and ARKK (ARK Innovation ETF) as an example —

Before the GPT Era, ARKK's trend closely mirrored that of Bitcoin: both were essentially “purely liquidity-driven assets with valuation expansion but no value expansion.”

However, after the GPT Era, AI growth stocks began to generate real earnings and cash flow. Through the test of the DeepSeek Era, the valuation logic of AI growth stocks became increasingly clear.

By mid-2025, a crucial deviation occurred: Bitcoin could no longer keep up with ARKK's surge. This meant that liquidity was undergoing rotation—funds were moving from purely valuation-expanding assets to AI growth stocks that could be priced by real cash flows.

Dovey pointed out that it was for this reason that Primitive Ventures started tracking early-stage companies in the AI core supply chain, such as TSMC and SK Hynix.

Additionally, she observed a profound trend: U.S. stocks are undergoing “crypto-ization.”

Retail-driven, high-leverage traders dominate, extreme volatility. Events like the recent flash crashes in silver and gold exhibit characteristics similar to the crypto market. “Many models previously used by institutions are now no longer applicable,” she stated. “The trader demographic is also changing.”

Behind this is a deeper driver. White-collar workers who have been displaced by AI in traditional workplaces are collectively entering the trading market.

White Collars Are the Horses of the Carriage: A Five-Year Countdown to the AI Apocalypse

Dovey presented a staggering fact: In the first half of 2025, the entire New York City only added 1,000 new jobs.

“The finance guys are all out of work,” she bluntly stated. “Junior lawyers, too. So what do these people do? They have financial literacy, channels for using various financial tools, Know-how—so they basically all turn into basement traders.”

This trend echoes an article she wrote during the GameStop incident—when financial populism combines with cultural zeitgeist, the market participant structure undergoes fundamental change.

Dovey predicted that AI will become a new ideology. She witnessed a three-year-old friend's child chatting with AI every day as the parents could not meet the child's boundless curiosity with conversation.

“The future of this world is going to get very weird, but many people are not prepared for it.”

But what truly worries Dovey is a deeper structural break.

The past economic model assumed that when the economy grows rapidly, so does employment. The Fed's dual mandate of “employment and inflation” is based on this assumption.

However, AI may be about to break this equation, ushering humanity into a world of “super high growth + super high unemployment” coexistence.

“People always use the steam engine replacing textile factory workers as an analogy,” Dovey said, “but I don’t think it’s the textile factory workers—it might be the horse pulling the carriage. When there’s cheaper horsepower available, capital naturally chooses the cheaper option.”

Her assessment is very specific: Within five years, Silicon Valley giants will no longer need “specialized function engineers”; accounting, Big Four auditing, and many paper-intensive service industry jobs will similarly be replaced by AI within five years.

Even if these companies delay layoffs due to management inertia and social responsibility, once the burden of operating costs begins to threaten their ecosystem, layoffs will become inevitable. Overall, in about ten years, the entire social operational model will be completely reshaped by AI productivity.

She provided a vivid example: after Musk took over Twitter and conducted massive layoffs, Twitter actually improved. Even if Google lays off a third of its engineers, she believes it will still operate well.

“For every individual, how to maintain resistance to AI, how to maintain immunity to AI, this is the most significant issue of the next decade,” Dovey concluded.

TSMC Geopolitical Game: How the “Pretty Girl” Safeguards Herself Between Two Big Brothers

Another thought-provoking topic in the interview is Dovey's in-depth analysis of TSMC's geopolitical strategy. Primitive Ventures not only holds TSMC stock but also spent two to three years conducting a systematic study of the company.

“We love TSMC because it's not only the monopoly of wafer manufacturing but also because founder Zhang Zhongmou is extremely wise, with a very good succession plan,” Dovey said. She even traveled to Taiwan to buy the second volume of Zhang Zhongmou's autobiography, believing it contains a wealth of wisdom about business succession.

She analyzed the core paradox facing TSMC: If the Arizona factory directly advances to 3 nanometers and progresses rapidly, TSMC will face the risk of "burning the boats" — the U.S. can use TSMC as a major bargaining chip in negotiations with China. Once U.S. domestic capacity matures, TSMC's strategic value as Taiwan's "protector" will diminish significantly.

Therefore, TSMC chose to upgrade through collaboration with Japan, from the original 6 nanometers to 3 nanometers. This is an extremely clever strategic move. On the one hand, they cannot let the U.S. burn the boats; on the other hand, due to reasons such as professional ethics and bureaucratic system, the U.S. side's progress is inherently slow. Publicly and privately, TSMC needs to ensure an alternative path.

Dovey summed up Taiwan's situation with a vivid metaphor: "Taiwan is like a very beautiful girl, caught in a jealousy battle between two admirers." She believes that when two admirers are jealous of each other, this "girl" should aggressively improve her own foundation — using the knowledge learned from the admirers to start her own career, so that even if the admirers stop being jealous in the future, she can still thrive.

She extended 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 establishing its headquarters overseas in Taipei, the "father-son" professional inheritance relationship between Jensen Huang and Morris Chang, and Japan's new Prime Minister Kishida Fumio promoting a policy of reshoring manufacturing — all these actions are reshaping the geopolitical power structure of the global semiconductor supply chain.

The Silence Before Death: SpaceX Bloodletting, Blunt Force, and Bear Market Survival

Discussing the market outlook, Dovey's famous article "Who Will Pay for the Bull Market" was mentioned by the host, Mr. Z. Faced with the current crypto market's pessimism, her assessment is calm yet sharp.

"Sentiment will definitely be lower, prices will also be lower. A real bear market should be very quiet, there should be a sense of deathly silence," she said, "But now there are new controversies every day, there are still various struggles every day. We are far from reaching the point of deathly silence."

She particularly highlighted a significant liquidity risk event in 2026: SpaceX's IPO. Reportedly, SpaceX plans to go public around mid-2026 with a valuation of around $1.5 trillion, with a fundraising scale of up to $500 billion. If successful, it will be the largest IPO in human history.

"Just the IPO alone is going to be 1.5 trillion," analyzed Dovey. SpaceX's investors have held for a long time and need to cash out; coupled with its complex equity structure post-xAI merger, this will be a 'large-scale retail bloodbath' covering both the private placement and public markets, creating a significant liquidity shock to the entire risk asset market.

She also observed that the market has started to become extremely cautious: all good financial reports are triggering profit-taking, with trillion-dollar giants like Microsoft experiencing 15% price swings, "like meme stocks."

The polarization of volatility is reshaping the market ecosystem. 2026 will not be an easy year.

For different types of traders, Dovey provided starkly different advice:

If you are a volatility harvesting trader, 2026 will be the 'Golden Year'—quant firms like QRT, HRT are making a killing. But if you are a directional, judgment-based trader, extra caution is needed.

As for long-term asset allocators like Primitive Ventures, she chooses to maintain 'blunt sensitivity': holding sufficient cash reserves, remaining relatively insensitive to short-term fluctuations, and patiently waiting for the true calm before the storm.

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