神鱼：AI 时代的知与行

Recently, Cobo co-founder Godfish (Shenyu) and Extreme Chain Technology founder Jin Ming engaged in an in-depth dialogue, spanning topics from investment frameworks, Bitcoin, DeFi, and AI Agents to the meaning of life.

During the conversation, Godfish shed the early "mining tycoon" halo, revealing a highly rational self-reflection. He candidly admitted that his early success involved an element of luck, and reviewed his cognitive leap of viewing DeFi as a "condensed 200-year financial history." At a time when AI is deeply taking over cognitive input, this frontier builder steadfastly adheres to long-termism, maintaining clear and uniquely independent thinking in the volatile crypto space.

Below are the core observations and takeaways from this dialogue:

"DeFi Is a Compressed Course in Financial History"

Godfish views DeFi as an experimental laboratory for understanding finance. Mechanisms such as lending, market making, and liquidity mining essentially re-answer questions that traditional finance has already addressed. Participating directly in protocols is akin to experiencing centuries of financial product evolution in an extremely short period. For him, this is precisely why DeFi's value lies in motivating him to make up for gaps in financial history and theoretical knowledge.

His investment framework therefore grew out of practice. Godfish noted that in the early days he had no complete investment framework. The methodology he later developed more closely resembles a cycle: first practice, accumulate experience in real markets, then abstract patterns from results, form frameworks, and ultimately train them into intuition. The key is to continuously raise questions through action, then retroactively fill in financial history and theory.

"When AI Compresses Execution Costs, Human Will Becomes Even More Important"

AI is dramatically shortening the distance from idea to implementation. In the past, the main barrier for many ideas was the prohibitive cost of execution; now, knowledge, tools, and execution capability have been compressed into the hands of individuals—as long as you have a sufficiently clear "seed," you can test it quickly. The more powerful the technology, the more important one's sense of direction, judgment, and will to sustain action become.

But the expansion of possibilities also magnifies the confusion felt by builders. AI brings nearly infinite space for executable projects, making "choosing the right topic" the greatest challenge. Godfish admitted that during the mining era, he possessed a strong sense of mission and creative drive, yet now finds himself in a more uncertain stage, still searching for a direction that is large and systematic enough. Nevertheless, he still defines himself as a Builder: part of the meaning of his existence is to add possibilities to the world that did not previously exist.

"Agents Are Evolving from Efficiency Tools into External Brains for Cognition and Self-Understanding"

Godfish has already deeply integrated AI and Agents into his daily life. On the information input side, the work of reading original long-form articles, screening materials, and compressing them into PPTs is handled by a note-taking system he independently built based on evolutionary thinking, combined with an AI-curated daily digest. For daily interaction and cognitive assistance, he has deployed three Agents with distinct roles: one is a tool-rationality Agent that provides highly rational action plans and decision recommendations; one is a more feminine, soft-style Agent responsible for emotional analysis and empathy—it once even astutely pointed out that he "may have death anxiety"; and one is a blind-spot alert Agent that, drawing on his historical information and personal behavior, specifically helps him identify cognitive blind spots. The role Agents play has already surpassed that of traditional assistants, extending into a kind of companion-style "cognitive external brain" that not only processes information and tasks on one's behalf, but also engages deeply in emotional care, blind-spot correction, and the construction of a secondary thinking system.

"Core Assets Must First Have a Sufficiently Large Long-Term Value Space"

In the interview, Godfish also revealed the first principle for screening core assets: the TAM (Total Addressable Market) must be sufficiently large, and there must be a macro vision behind it capable of supporting long-term holding. He believes that only when an asset offers not just short-term opportunities but also the potential to help shape technological, financial, or social structures over the next decade or more does it deserve to enter the core position candidate list.

He employs a three-tier position management logic: first, discover with a small position; then, increase allocation through continuous validation; and finally, once the long-term vision is clear, enter the core phase, where the position may rise to approximately 20%. Currently, only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tesla have truly passed this test, while SpaceX remains in the observation and timing stage.

Whether Ethereum can remain in the core position depends on the value of the next cycle of infrastructure. Although Ethereum has already entered his core asset list, its status is being reassessed. The new criterion is whether Ethereum can further become the operating and collaboration infrastructure for AI Agents. If it can capture the new demand from the machine economy, Ethereum may retain its core status; otherwise, the original investment thesis needs to be re-evaluated.

"Bitcoin Is Better Gold"

The essential difference between gold and Bitcoin is a contest between two paradigms and camps—the "digital currency + AI" camp versus the "gold + industrial manufacturing power" camp. Godfish believes that "Bitcoin is better gold." The most fundamental reason lies in its complete absence of intermediaries and the authority it grants sovereign individuals over their assets. Traditional gold typically requires layers of intermediaries and institutional custody to achieve title confirmation and liquidity, whereas Bitcoin can be fully controlled and disposed of by individuals autonomously without relying on any intermediary—truly realizing individual asset sovereignty.

There are two types of technology that meaningfully enhance the capabilities of sovereign individuals. Bitcoin changes the way individuals control and dispose of their assets, allowing value to be held and transferred autonomously, independent of traditional institutions; AI, on the other hand, expands the boundaries of individual capability itself, enabling one person to accomplish the knowledge-based and execution work that previously required an organization. The former strengthens asset sovereignty, while the latter amplifies individual productivity.

"The Investment Philosophy of Fewer but Deeper"

Traditional asset allocation emphasizes reducing portfolio volatility through low-correlation assets such as gold, stocks, and Bitcoin, but Godfish does not subscribe to this investment philosophy. "Human cognition and energy are limited, and the assets one can truly understand in depth are actually very few." Rather than buying gold he does not understand simply to satisfy asset allocation theory, Godfish's investment philosophy leans closer to "fewer but deeper." He argues that defensive capability does not come from holding more asset classes, because correlations converge under extreme conditions. In the event of a genuine systemic crisis (extreme scenario), those assets you believed would counterbalance one another often end up collapsing in sync or behaving identically. Diversification works in extremely stable markets, but it tends to fail in the face of true "disasters."