Dovey Wan: AI Is Siphoning Global Liquidity, Bitcoin Hasn't Hit a Real Bear Market Yet

"Bitcoin can no longer keep up with ARKK—AI is sucking away global liquidity, and the crypto market hasn't even reached the true sense of dead silence yet." In an exclusive interview for the East-West capital dialogue program "168X," Dovey Wan, founder of Primitive Ventures, leveraged her years of practical experience spanning Chinese and American tech and capital circles to deeply analyze AI's disruption of the global liquidity landscape, the survival crisis of the white-collar workforce, and the philosophy of "resilient endurance" in a crypto bear market.

With a technical background and a Master's degree in Information Systems from Carnegie Mellon University, Dovey Wan previously served as Managing Director at Danhua Capital (DHVC), leading early-stage investments in dozens of blockchain infrastructure projects like Dfinity, Cosmos, and StarkWare. In 2018, she founded Primitive Ventures, an evergreen fund operating entirely with proprietary capital and not accepting external LPs, focusing on investing in crypto-native innovators and funding independent Bitcoin Core developers during the depths of the crypto winter. Today, Primitive Ventures' portfolio spans over 50 projects across multiple frontier fields including DeFi, zero-knowledge proofs, Bitcoin Layer 2, and AI infrastructure.

This article is a summary of key insights from the 168X (@168X_Fortune) program—a premier dialogue platform deeply connecting Eastern wisdom with Western innovation, focusing on cutting-edge fields like 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

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

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

Before the GPT moment, ARKK and Bitcoin's price movements were highly correlated: both were essentially assets driven purely by liquidity, characterized by "valuation expansion without value expansion."

But after the GPT moment, AI growth stocks began generating real earnings and cash flow. Following the test of the DeepSeek moment, the valuation logic for AI growth stocks became increasingly clear.

By mid-2025, a critical divergence emerged: Bitcoin could no longer keep up with ARKK's gains. This signaled a rotation in liquidity—capital flowing from purely valuation-expansion assets towards AI growth stocks that could be priced by real cash flows.

Dovey pointed out that precisely because of this, Primitive Ventures began tracking core AI supply chain companies like TSMC and SK Hynix very early on.

Additionally, she observed a telling trend: The US stock market is becoming "crypto-fied."

Retail-driven, dominated by high-leverage traders, with extreme volatility. Even recent flash crashes in silver and gold exhibited characteristics similar to crypto markets. "Many models used by institutions in the past are actually no longer very applicable," she stated bluntly. "The profile structure of traders is also changing."

Behind this lies a deeper driving force. White-collar workers displaced from traditional jobs by AI are collectively flooding into the trading markets.

White-Collar Workers are the Horses of the Carriage: The Five-Year Countdown to the AI Apocalypse

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

"Finance bros are unemployed," she said candidly. "Junior lawyers are unemployed. So what can these people do? They have financial literacy, access to various financial instruments, and know-how—so they've basically all become basement traders."

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

Dovey predicts that AI will become a new ideology. She has personally witnessed a friend's three-year-old child, who just learned to speak, chatting with AI every day because parents simply cannot satisfy a child's infinite curiosity.

"The future world will become very strange, but many people are not prepared for this."

But what truly worries Dovey is a deeper structural rupture.

Past economic models assumed that high economic growth would be accompanied by employment growth. The Federal Reserve's dual mandate of "employment and inflation" is based on this assumption.

But AI may soon break this equation, ushering humanity into a world of "ultra-high-speed growth + ultra-high unemployment" coexisting.

"People always use the analogy of steam engines replacing textile mill girls," Dovey said, "but I don't think it's textile mill girls—it might be the horses of the carriage. When cheaper horsepower appears, capital will naturally choose the more affordable option."

Her judgment is extremely specific: Within five years, Silicon Valley giants will no longer need "specific function engineers"; accounting, Big Four auditing, and a large number of document-intensive service industry positions will similarly be replaced by AI within five years.

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

She gave a vivid example: After Musk took over Twitter and conducted mass layoffs, Twitter actually got better. Even if Google laid off a third of its engineers, she believes it would still operate just fine.

"For every individual, how to maintain resistance to AI, maintain immunity to AI, this is the most significant challenge for the next decade," Dovey concluded.

TSMC Geopolitical Game: How the "Pretty Girl" Protects Herself Between Two Big Brothers

Another thought-provoking topic in the interview was Dovey's deep analysis of TSMC's geopolitical strategy. Primitive Ventures not only holds TSMC stock but has spent two to three years systematically studying the company.

"We like TSMC the most, not only because it's a monopoly in wafer manufacturing, but also because founder Morris Chang is extremely wise, with a very good succession plan," Dovey said. She even made a special trip to Taiwan to buy the second volume of Morris Chang's autobiography, believing it contains a wealth of wisdom on business succession.

She analyzed the core paradox TSMC faces: If the Arizona factory directly advances to 3nm and progresses quickly, TSMC faces the risk of "pulling the rug out from under itself"—the US could use TSMC as its biggest bargaining chip in negotiations with China. Once US domestic production capacity matures, TSMC's strategic value as Taiwan's "guardian mountain" would significantly diminish.

Precisely because of this, TSMC chose to cooperate with Japan for upgrades, moving from the original 6nm to 3nm. This is an extremely sophisticated strategic move. On one hand, they cannot let the US pull the rug out; on the other hand, progress in the US is inherently slow due to professional ethics, bureaucracy, and other reasons. Both publicly and privately, TSMC needs to ensure an alternative path.

Dovey summarized Taiwan's situation with a vivid metaphor: "Taiwan is a bit like a particularly pretty girl, with two big brothers vying for her favor." She believes that while the two big brothers are vying for her, this "girl" should frantically improve her own fundamentals—using the insights learned from the big brothers to start her own career, so that even if the big brothers stop vying for her in the future, she can still live well.

She extended this logic to a more macro framework: In the past, Taiwan relied on military defense, but now AI and computing power are becoming a new type of national defense asset.

NVIDIA setting its overseas headquarters in Taipei, the "father-son" like professional succession relationship between Jensen Huang and Morris Chang, and the manufacturing reshoring policies promoted by Japan's new Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi—all these actions are reshaping the geopolitical power dynamics of the global semiconductor supply chain.

The Dead Silence Hasn't Arrived Yet: SpaceX Bloodletting, Resilient Endurance, and Bear Market Survival Rules

Discussing market prospects, Dovey's famously titled article "Who is Paying for the Bull Market" was brought up by host Mr. Z. Facing the current pessimistic sentiment in the crypto market, her judgment was calm and sharp.

"Sentiment will definitely go lower, prices will go lower too. A real bear market should be very quiet, should have a sense of dead silence," she said, "but now there's new drama every day, all sorts of conflicts every day. We are far from the sense of dead silence."

She specifically pointed out a major liquidity risk event in 2026: SpaceX's IPO. According to reports, SpaceX plans to go public around mid-2026 with a valuation of approximately $1.5 trillion, potentially raising up to $50 billion. If realized, it would be the largest IPO in human history.

"Just the IPO is $1.5 trillion," Dovey analyzed. SpaceX investors have held for a long time and need to take profits; coupled with the complex equity structure after its merger with xAI, this will be a "large-scale retail bloodletting event" covering both private and public markets, forming a huge liquidity shock to the entire risk asset market.

She also observed that the market has already become extremely cautious: all good earnings reports trigger profit-taking, trillion-dollar giants like Microsoft can swing 15% up and down, "like meme stocks."

The extreme polarization of volatility is changing the market's ecology. 2026 will not be an easy year.

For different types of traders, Dovey gave distinctly different advice:

If you are a volatility-harvesting trader, 2026 will be a "golden year"—quantitative firms like QRT, HRT are making huge profits. But if you are a directional, subjective judgment-based trader, you need to be extra cautious.

And as a long-term asset allocator like Primitive Ventures, she chooses to maintain "resilient endurance": having sufficient cash reserves, remaining relatively insensitive to short-term volatility, and patiently waiting before the true dead silence arrives.