Original title: "The Secret to Winning in Crypto (from a Top Investor) - Alliance Founding Partner | EP86" Guest: Qiao Wang, Founding Partner of Alliance DAO Original translation: Zhouzhou, Ismay, BlockBeats

Editor's Note: In this podcast, Qiao delves into the necessary qualities of great founders and investors, emphasizing the importance of persistence and unique insights in the crypto industry. He shares his investment strategy, analyzes the difference between investing and trading, and his optimism about Solana. In addition, Qiao summarizes the key qualities that stand out in the Alliance DAO accelerator.

The following core questions are raised and explored in this podcast:

1. Key traits of being a great founder and investor

2. Qiao’s personal investment strategy

3. Prediction of the future crypto market

TL;DR：

Key qualities to become a great founder and investor: Qiao emphasized that persistence, unique market insights, and a high level of integrity are the keys to success. At the same time, he pointed out that autistic traits have advantages in crypto founders, enabling them to demonstrate independent thinking and focus in complex environments.

Personal Investment Strategy: Qiao explained his decision to sell Ethereum and favor Solana, believing that Solana has greater potential, and also analyzed in depth the difference between investing and trading.

How to stand out in Alliance DAO: Founders must demonstrate a high level of independent thinking, focus, and problem-solving skills. We particularly value teams that can reject conventional wisdom and stick to their own ideas.

Future Outlook of Crypto Market: Qiao mentioned his prediction for Bitcoin price in the next 12 months, and he also said that the market sentiment and volatility will be significantly affected in the election year.

Work-Health Balance: He shares his thoughts on health and work, saying that while work can be stressful, social interaction is essential for longevity. Fitness and sleep are key to keeping healthy and productive.

The following is the original text of the conversation (the original content has been deleted and reorganized for easier reading and understanding):

Personal experience

Kevin: What are some unique stories about your childhood? Are there any special experiences that explain your success today?

Qiao Wang: I was born in a good family. Although my family was not well off, my parents told me that they would definitely send me to college. Meeting such a family was my first luck in life. The second luck was meeting my wife, who really understood and supported me. She had her own career and ambitions, but she also took good care of me and my children.

Kevin: Do you think you can get far on your own?

Qiao Wang: I think what really made me go further was some of my childhood experiences. Due to the limitations of my family, I couldn’t take so many risks, although I had taken more risks than ordinary people, such as entering the cryptocurrency field very early. But I always wanted to take more risks, but my family’s financial situation made me have to worry about it.

Kevin: So what stopped you? Was it some psychological concern?

Qiao Wang: Yes, I would think if I started a business directly after graduating from college, what would happen to my parents? I couldn’t let my parents down, so I chose a relatively stable job in the financial industry on Wall Street, and the salary was quite good at that age.

Kevin: What was your job at the time?

Qiao Wang: Quantitative trading mainly involves writing software for low-level distributed systems, which is actually why I later became interested in cryptocurrency. The benefit of quantitative trading is that it has statistical advantages, so the profits are relatively stable, which allowed me to make a lot of money when I was very young. Kevin: You think you should thank your wife for providing you with a lot of support, right?

Qiao Wang: Yes, especially her psychological and financial support, which enabled me to devote myself to the field of cryptocurrency later, both from an investment and career perspective. I think risk tolerance has two aspects, one is your willingness to take risks, and the other is your ability to take risks. I have always been willing to take risks, but what really enabled me to take risks was my wife's support.

Kevin: You mentioned that your previous work in finance was your entry into the crypto industry. What was it about the world of cryptocurrency that initially attracted you?

Qiao Wang: What attracted me initially was the volatility of the market. The moment I really understood the value proposition of cryptocurrency was when I was a trader, doing arbitrage through different gambling platforms, and I particularly liked the low-risk, high-return trading strategy. It was these experiences that gradually made me realize the importance of cryptocurrency.

Kevin: You transferred a large sum of money to an offshore platform. What does this have to do with cryptocurrency?

Qiao Wang: I transferred about $20,000 to several offshore gambling platforms, and the money was stuck in the banking system for half a year. This made me realize that I needed Bitcoin. When I finally got the money back, I immediately transferred the money to a bank in Japan, which was the bank behind the famous Mt. Gox at the time. Then the price of Bitcoin started to rise. For many people, the first "magic moment" is to see the price rise and wealth increase.

If I had entered crypto at the peak of the market in 2011 or 2014, I would have given up for several years. But I decided to go all in on crypto in 2017, which was another peak. Before 2017, most of my wealth was already in crypto, but in 2017, I decided to invest my career in it and started working at Messari.

What kind of developer team can succeed?

Kevin: Last week, Camino co-founder Thomas mentioned that you were one of their biggest supporters when Solana crashed to $8. How did you know that Solana would rebound when everyone was down?

Qiao Wang: This reminds me of the Ethereum DAO hack in 2016, which split the Ethereum community, but a small number of developers remained passionate about Ethereum and continued to develop applications on it. This persistence makes me believe that Ethereum will survive the difficulties. Similarly, I saw a small group of Solana developers after the FTX crash, and their enthusiasm and persistence for Solana gave me confidence.

Kevin: As an investor and founder, were there any similar moments that helped you build that conviction and kept you on Solana after the FTX crash?

Qiao Wang: Of course, like Solana, Ethereum or Bitcoin, you can think of them as a "living organism" that can survive as long as the number of people participating in it reaches a certain "critical mass". I saw something similar in the Bitcoin "civil war" in 2017. In the end, the part of the Bitcoin core community persisted, and other forks, such as Bitcoin Cash or SegWit2x, failed to gain enough support.

Kevin: Does this mean that in a bear market, even if only a small number of users are enthusiastic about the product, you can eventually reach "escape velocity" and achieve success?

Qiao Wang: Exactly. In a bear market, even if you only have 50 or 100 users, the support of these loyal users is enough to keep the project going and eventually achieve a breakthrough. Many of the projects we support have also experienced peaks and troughs. But even in the trough, they always have a small number of loyal users who really like their products. Even if the number of daily active users is declining, there may be only 10 to 100 users using it every day, but these core users allow the team to continue to iterate on the product. In the end, these projects reach "escape velocity" (that is, the product achieves large-scale success).

One successful example is the NFT market "Tensor". In the first one or two years, it only had about 100 to 1,000 users, and obviously not all of them were regular users. As an entrepreneur, you have a full year or two without growth and without enough market traction. What is your instinctive reaction at this time? Give up or turn? But in the end, their team persisted and achieved a breakthrough in their product.

Kevin: We tend to have a bias that high valuations in the crypto space should be accompanied by a large number of users because the way the industry is built makes people think that way. However, the fact is that even without a lot of users, you can still achieve breakthroughs in the future.

Qiao Wang: In Web 2, when you build a product, people usually tell you that you should achieve 10% or 20% growth every week. But the truly successful products have a very smooth growth curve, like a gradual exponential growth. In the crypto space, the products that are ultimately successful and loved by people almost never follow this growth trajectory. Their growth trajectory is more like a step-by-step, first growing, then remaining stable for a period of time, then ushering in a wave of explosive growth, and then entering a period of stability.

For example, Coinbase has grown significantly in every bull market, and has remained relatively flat or even declined in bear markets. This is true for most crypto products that support speculation, which is determined by the nature of the crypto market. But even products that are not speculative in nature, like Farcaster, have experienced similar growth patterns. They have almost no growth for a long time, and then suddenly in December last year, the number of users has increased 10 times, from 10,000 daily active users to 100,000.

Kevin: What kind of people do you think make great crypto investors?

Qiao Wang: To stand out in the primary market, you need to have a natural skepticism about the world, question the consensus, and think about which of the things people often say are wrong.

Kevin: If someone is naturally optimistic, he may be a better founder, because to be a great founder, you need to have an overly optimistic, even a little bit delusional self-confidence. To be a great investor, you may need to be skeptical about everything, even a little cynical. How do you think you can balance the two?

Qiao Wang: Optimism and questioning the consensus or thinking independently are two separate concepts. In fact, some of the best founders I have worked with are very contrarian and they also question the consensus. Because the essence of entrepreneurship is to discover an insight into the market or users that others do not understand, and the first step in entrepreneurship is to understand what others do not understand. Therefore, the best founders and the best investors have the trait of contrarian thinking.

Kevin: Naval believes that in this era of unlimited leverage, judgment is the most important thing. He means that judgment is similar to wisdom and can foresee the long-term consequences of your actions. So how do you cultivate this judgment?

Qiao Wang: Cultivate through actual action. As a trader, I learned through the "lessons" of the market. You must lose money first before you can learn how to make the right judgment. If you never take action, that is, investors never really "get on the field", then you will never learn. There are two best ways to learn, one is active humility, and the other is forced humility. You must improve your judgment through action.

Personal investment strategy

Kevin: So are you more inclined to investing or trading?

Qiao Wang: Both are fine. The key is to find the way you are good at.

Kevin: So what are the key skills required for short-term trading and long-term investing?

Qiao Wang: The core of both is to question the consensus. At the same time, trading is essentially a study of history. You have to analyze past patterns and look for those patterns that are statistically effective repeatedly. The advantage of short-term trading is that you can get feedback from the market very quickly. If you trade 10 times a day, you will have 300 trading samples in a month, and then you can evaluate whether your strategy is effective. It is difficult to get quick feedback for long-term investment, and you may have to wait for several years to know whether your investment is successful.

People often think of Buffett and Charlie Munger as value investors, but in fact, their strategies have evolved over the past 90 years. In the early days, Buffett focused on companies with low price-to-earnings ratios and low price-to-book ratios, looking for undervalued companies. After meeting Munger, his investment philosophy changed. Munger believes that investing in a good company at a reasonable price is much better than investing in an ordinary company at a low price. This is more like growth investing rather than traditional value investing. In the field of cryptocurrency, I think this idea also applies. You have to pay attention to those protocols or tokens that grow over time, whether it is on-chain transaction volume, total value locked (TVL) or market attention.

Kevin: Do you think this growth investment strategy is more suitable for the cryptocurrency field?

Qiao Wang: Yes, especially in the crypto market, growth doesn't just mean financial growth, it can also include changes in narrative and increased market attention. Even if a project doesn't make much money now, if it has enough market attention and is likely to get more attention in the future, then it's a project worth investing in. So where does the money end up? It's likely to go to places that attract the most attention, not to places that are judged to be good businesses based on rational analysis.

For example, Lido, there are a lot of protocols that everyone thinks should perform well, but in fact they don't. The idea is actually very simple, basically people put their money in the places that make them most excited about the future, not necessarily the companies that perform best now.

The reason I had faith in Solana at its lowest point was because I had tried the products myself. I started using Solana products in 2021, and I had been using them for about a year until FTX collapsed. At that time, the products were still very crude, but you know, you could execute transactions in about 100 milliseconds, very smoothly, and with very low fees. You could feel that the products in the Solana ecosystem were no longer limited by the blockchain.

We often say, why do you own an iPhone but don't own Apple stock? We always think of ourselves as looking for future products, future technologies. The same is true in investing, ask yourself, "What do I like?" The answer is actually right in front of you. I really like DeFi because you can experience these products yourself, and I think there are two real magic moments in the entire crypto field. The first is the experience when you send a Bitcoin transaction for the first time. The second is DeFi, because you can not only send payments, but you can trade in both directions.

Kevin: How do you deal with market cycles?

Qiao Wang: Most of my portfolio is Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and Coinbase stock. Occasionally I will do some short-term trading, and by short-term, I mean a period of several months, similar to narrative-driven trading, rather than medium- to long-term holding. So I bought certain assets very early, and most people probably know that this is a short-term trade I made.

Kevin: What about in the long run?

Qiao Wang: In the long term, I looked at the top 300 tokens and looked at their supply and excess supply relative to market value. Excess supply is the percentage of tokens that have been unlocked, which is a very important factor. I also look at whether these projects have real traction and user base. Ultimately, I think the tokens that meet these criteria are Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, and some stablecoins.

Kevin: How do you allocate between these four assets?

Qiao Wang: I prefer Bitcoin and Solana. I think Ethereum is relatively overvalued. And from the unique data I have, more and more founders and entrepreneurs choose Solana instead of Ethereum. In terms of developer activity, Solana has more potential. Therefore, I have more allocation to Solana than Ethereum. As for Bitcoin, it is a pure PMF - the best value storage tool, uncensorable value storage tool, and no project can challenge it in the near future.

Kevin: Do you adjust your investment strategy based on the market cycle, or do you just stick to your core positions, like the four major tokens, because you don’t think you can outperform the market with a short-term strategy, so you decide to hold those tokens for the long term?

Qiao Wang: I will try to play the market cycles a little bit, but it is really difficult. I have posted a tweet before about my experience with several cycles. In the first cycle, I held Bitcoin all the way until it fell 80%. In the second cycle, because of the "post-traumatic stress reaction" from the previous time, I sold it at about 40%-50% from the high point, which was the cycle in 2017. In the third cycle, I sold it at about 30% from the high point. So I did a little better in each cycle, but you can never sell at the highest point. However, in the last cycle, I bought it almost near the lowest point.

So I have certainly gotten better over time, but it has taken about 15 years. Even though I try to play the cycles, I don't sell everything and I don't go all in at the bottom. I might sell 20% to 30% of my holdings at the top of the market and then double down at the bottom. The reason for this is that the opportunity cost of losing money if you are wrong at the top is much greater.

Kevin: As a cryptocurrency investor, what stages does a typical investor go through?

Qiao Wang: Generally speaking, when you first experience a market cycle, you hold on until the asset value is almost zero. For example, in my first experience, Bitcoin fell 80%. But I was lucky that I only held Bitcoin at that time.

Kevin: It sounds like you made the right choice, at least not going “all in” on other tokens, but focusing on Bitcoin and Ethereum?

Qiao Wang: Yes, in the first cycle I only held Bitcoin because I didn’t know much about other tokens at the time. Later in the second cycle, I started to buy some altcoins, but even so, I still knew that only Bitcoin and Ethereum were truly valuable. So when I decided to sell at the top, I dumped those altcoins and switched to Ethereum.

Kevin: Some people think that they can outperform Bitcoin and Ethereum by investing in small-cap tokens, but how difficult is that actually?

Qiao Wang: Every cycle is different. It was indeed easy to outperform Bitcoin and Ethereum in the last cycle (2021) because that was the biggest asset bubble in all markets. In this cycle, the situation is completely different. I think it will be very difficult to outperform Bitcoin, Solana, and Coinbase stock from now on unless there is a similar monetary or fiscal stimulus again.

How to view altcoins and memes

Kevin: Will the copycat season you mentioned still appear?

Qiao Wang: There have been altcoin seasons in the past, but this time may be different. There are two conditions for an altcoin season to occur: 1. There are fewer tokens; 2. There is a large amount of capital flowing into the market. But the current situation is that there are too many tokens, thousands of tokens are created every day, and there is not enough capital injected into the market. Therefore, this cycle may not see a large-scale altcoin rise like before.

Kevin: What do you think of memes? Will they continue to exist in the future?

Qiao Wang: I don’t think memes are just a cyclical phenomenon, I think they will always exist. However, the key to surviving in this market lies in the spread of memes and the existence of leaders. Take WIF as an example. Its innovation lies in the “hat” meme, which allows any other meme or avatar to add this element and spread virally. But to survive in the long run, it also needs the support of CEX listing like Binance.

Kevin: Do you still hold WIF?

Qiao Wang: In terms of risk-adjusted returns, I’m not sure if it will surpass Solana. I’m comparing everything to Solana right now. If the total market value of the entire cryptocurrency market continues to rise, WIF may rise along with Solana or even perform better. But if the market conditions deteriorate, meme coins will be more risky than mainstream tokens, so I prefer to maintain a relatively stable investment strategy.

Kevin: As an investor in Alliance, what do you think of Pudgy Penguins?

Qiao Wang: The model of Pudgy Penguins and the NFT community is very unusual. They are not businesses in the traditional sense. They start by building a community, attracting users, and then launching products, such as toys and games. This model is very unconventional, but it is becoming more and more common today.

Kevin: Do you have an NFT for Pudgy Penguins?

Qiao Wang: I used to own one, but I sold it later because the price went down. As an investor, I would think about whether these NFTs can surpass Solana.

Kevin: What do you think of NFT as an investment class?

Qiao Wang: The problem is that the non-fungible nature of NFTs and the high entry price make it very difficult to attract new capital, and therefore it is difficult to outperform other assets.

Kevin: So you think that in this case, market liquidity is a key factor, right? There are already many tokens, meme coins, and a large number of NFTs on the market, and people need to choose among these options.

Qiao Wang: Yes, absolutely right.

Kevin: If your goal is to surpass Solana, why do you still hold Ethereum?

Qiao Wang: For me, holding Ethereum is not for financial reasons. I feel some emotional connection with Ethereum. After all, I have been involved in the early development of Ethereum since 2014. It feels really bad to completely abandon a project that I have participated in from the beginning. For me, Ethereum is like an NFT community, full of emotional connection.

Investing in Pump.Fun because of autism?

Kevin: What did you see that others didn’t notice when you decided to invest in Pump.Fun, one of the most successful protocols today (from a revenue and market share perspective)?

Qiao Wang: When the team first joined our accelerator, they were not building Pump.Fun. They were working on some other products, but those products did not succeed. In fact, they pivoted at least twice before they came up with the idea of ​​Pump.Fun.

So, when investing early, especially in consumer products, it’s almost always a bet on the founder, not the idea, and I see a high level of autistic tendencies in founders. It’s not a coincidence, it does take a certain level of autism to be a great consumer product founder.

I think it's a causal relationship, not a simple correlation, that these artistically gifted people are able to think independently and often disagree with the general public. They are not distracted by the consensus on the Internet or other people's opinions, and are able to observe quietly.

Kevin: Do you think you have some autistic traits?

Qiao Wang: I think I might have some.

As an investor, autism has become almost a “must have” for me in selecting founders for consumer-facing products. The founders I look for tend to have some degree of autistic traits and preferably some childhood trauma, although they usually won’t tell you this in the first two meetings.

Kevin: So autism plus childhood trauma is the “alpha” factor for success, right?

Qiao Wang: Exactly. To be a successful founder, you need two things: thinking and action. Autism is where the thinking comes from, and the action comes from trauma because you have something to prove.

Kevin: What does Alliance DAO do?

Qiao Wang: We invest in founders who have high autistic traits and may have had childhood trauma.

Kevin: Why did you create Alliance DAO?

Qiao Wang: After leaving Messari, I realized that I really liked the entrepreneurial process from 0 to 1, but I didn't like the expansion stage from 1 to 10. 0 to 1 is about discovering insights into user needs and trying various methods to solve problems. I thought, how can I experience this process from 0 to 1 50 times a year? So, I decided to create an accelerator.

Kevin: Do you use hackathons to find more founders with autistic traits?

Qiao Wang: Yes, any founder who has created great things in the crypto space, we would like to invite them as judges.

What good founders need

Kevin: As a founder in the crypto space, how can you increase your chances of survival in a bear market?

Qiao Wang: The simplest way is that you don’t have any skills in other industries and can’t switch careers. This is actually a true portrayal of many crypto founders, who don’t understand any other industries. In the last bear market, many founders turned to the field of AI. These people are very smart and can become experts in new fields in a short period of time.

Kevin: As an investor, do you prefer founders who can quickly pivot from one industry to another, or those who focus on crypto?

Qiao Wang: It depends on the specific situation.

Kevin: Another element of success is having a co-founder. How do you find a good co-founder?

Qiao Wang: The statistically most ideal co-founder configuration is two people who have worked closely together in the past, either at work or on a project. The second most ideal configuration is two friends who, although they have not worked together, trust each other and understand each other's strengths and weaknesses. The worst configuration is someone you just met, or a stranger found through an online co-founder matching platform.

Kevin: You mentioned trust as one of the most important factors in a co-founder relationship. What’s the second most important thing?

Qiao Wang: The second most important factor is complementary skills. If two founders have different key skills, this will greatly increase the success rate of the team.

Kevin: One lesson I've learned is that in the early stages of a startup, founders often don't know what game they're playing because they're not familiar with the industry. As you get deeper, you start to understand the rules of the game, and then you can define what skills are necessary.

Qiao Wang: This is indeed part of the entrepreneurial process, learning through trial and error.

Kevin: You also mentioned integrity. Buffett and Naval have also said that when choosing people to work with you, look for those with high intelligence, high energy and high integrity. Why do you think integrity is the most important quality that a world-class founder must possess?

Qiao Wang: Integrity is like a multiplier, it is either positive 1 or negative 1. Intelligence and work attitude are absolute values, the higher the better, but if you don’t have integrity, this multiplier becomes negative 1. Even if you are very smart and work very hard, but without integrity, your end result will be negative. This is why people like SBF fail, he is very smart and works hard, but lacks integrity and ultimately destroys himself and those around him.

Kevin: Where do you think this "negative integrity" comes from?

Qiao Wang: People change, especially when you get rich quickly, money changes you.

Kevin: How can we quickly detect whether a person has integrity issues?

Qiao Wang: It's hard. I'm still trying to design some questions for our accelerator application form to help identify people with low integrity. But to be honest, it's easy for liars to get away with it. So we usually filter out less speculative founders through those investment opportunities with lower valuations and avoid those opportunists who are purely pursuing high valuations.

Kevin: Many people would say that money and fame are not good reasons to start a business. What do you think about this?

Qiao Wang: I have seen many successful founders who would not tell you in the early stages that they were doing it for money. But as time goes by, they start to honestly say that they really want to make money through entrepreneurship, and I actually prefer this kind of honesty.

Election could spur crypto market fatigue

Kevin: You previously tweeted that the longer Bitcoin prices stagnate, the more fatigue there will be among cryptocurrency developers and investors. What do you think this reflects?

Qiao Wang: What that tweet means is that people feel something whether the price goes up or down. Even if the price goes down, people still feel alive. But when the price stays stagnant for a long time, people feel tired. I can feel this, for example, when the price went up at the end of last year, people felt good and energetic. Now I talk to the same people, and they complain that the crypto industry has not made any substantial contribution to society, saying that they want to quit, etc.

Kevin: So how do you communicate with these people?

Qiao Wang: I told them that prices would go up after the December election.

Kevin: Do you believe this?

Qiao Wang: I think the election will indeed cause some volatility. Trump's re-election may be beneficial to cryptocurrencies in the short and long term. On election night, prices may fluctuate by about 5% depending on the results.

Kevin: If Trump is not elected, will prices fall?

Qiao Wang: Maybe, but even if prices go down, people will still feel the vitality of this market.

Focus is a superpower

Kevin: You once wrote a tweet not related to crypto: “It’s not hard to be good these days because most people are vulnerable.” Can you elaborate on that?

Qiao Wang: I think most people are psychologically and physically fragile. Psychologically, most people lack the ability to think independently, and they are always looking for recognition rather than seeking the truth. The rise of social media and smartphones has exacerbated this phenomenon. Since 2012, cases of ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), suicide, depression, and anxiety have increased significantly.

Kevin: I am also affected by ADHD, and social media has a big impact on me. I talked to Nicola Kerry, the founder of Blockchain.com, and he said that he can't concentrate on reading an article now.

Qiao Wang: Being able to focus for long periods of time has become a “superpower.” In the past, most people could focus for at least 45 minutes, but now most people can’t even do that.

Kevin: How do you stay focused?

Qiao Wang: I actively limit the time I spend on TikTok. I don’t use Instagram, Facebook, or Snapchat. The only social media I use is Twitter. But even so, Twitter is very addictive.

Kevin: What do you watch on TikTok?

Qiao Wang: I like watching football, especially Cristiano Ronaldo and Messi’s videos. TikTok’s algorithm is very smart, and after watching a few videos, it can fully understand what you want to watch.

Kevin: You mentioned that people in the crypto space are interested in longevity. Can you elaborate on that?

Qiao Wang: Actually, I meant it a little bit jokingly at the time, but it is true that many people in the crypto field are very interested in "longevity". I think that outside of cryptocurrency, longevity is the area with the highest overlap with the crypto population. You won't see many crypto practitioners interested in nuclear energy, climate change or space exploration, but they are almost all interested in health and longevity.

Kevin: But we can also criticize this trend. I have talked to some crypto OGs. Although they talk about "longevity", they don't even go to the gym. After all, "longevity" is not just about living longer, but also about living better, right?

Qiao Wang: That’s right. The definition of longevity is not only about living longer, but also about healthy life span. In other words, it is not just about increasing the length of life, but also about improving the quality of life.

Kevin: But this is not a coincidence. If there really was a magic pill that you could take and live forever without having to go to the gym, everyone would definitely choose that pill.

Qiao Wang: But we don’t have such a medicine yet. The science is very clear. The best “medicine” we have right now is to go to the gym and exercise.

Kevin: Yes, my concept of longevity is that first of all, I have to get enough sleep, eat clean and healthy food, and going to the gym is a must.

Qiao Wang: For me, the most important things are, in order: first, sleep; second, going to the gym; then work; and finally, eating healthy.

Kevin: So how does work rank on the longevity “checklist”?

Qiao Wang: Work is also important for longevity. Although work can bring some stress and reduce life expectancy, there are also some positive effects, such as giving you the opportunity to communicate with interesting people. Social interaction is one of the key factors for longevity, so it's a balance. However, the reason I can say this is because I focused fully on work in my 20s, and I don't regret it.

Kevin: How was your health in your 20s?

Qiao Wang: I was very unhealthy. I don't know if you know that ferritin is a marker of inflammation, and my ferritin level reached 1400, while the average male ferritin level is around 200. Even 200 is not the optimal level, the optimal level is between 70 and 100. People with ferritin over 1000 are usually those who have cancer or severe inflammation. My body was almost full of inflammation at the time, and I even suspected that I had cancer. In my late 20s, the situation was really bad. Today, my cardiopulmonary function is much better than when I was in my 20s.

Kevin: Are you doing any pioneering work in the area of ​​health and longevity?

Qiao Wang: I occasionally make some angel investments, but not too many.

Kevin: What beliefs do you have that most people wouldn’t agree with?

Qiao Wang: I do have some ideas that most people may not agree with in public, but in private, they may agree with me. I think the current political situation is very ridiculous, especially in recent years, the so-called "modern liberals" have had a negative impact on society.

Kevin: Can you elaborate on that?

Qiao Wang: I think Harris is a Marxist. The first specific policy she announced was rent control, which is simply a manifestation of financial illiteracy. I believe that many people will agree with me privately, but in public, many people may stand on her side because of her identity as a woman and a minority. This is something I think is harmful to society. Many ideologies of the modern left are more like religious beliefs in my opinion, which is ridiculous.

Kevin: The Democrats have put forward someone who is economically ignorant and who could become president. What do you think is wrong in the system that there is no better option?

Qiao Wang: Recently I often hear people say that they are going to vote for Trump because he is "not that bad", but there are actually better options. The problem is that the reason people vote is because he is "not that bad", which shows that there may be some deeper problems behind one of the most important positions in the world, the US President.

Kevin: So what is your biggest prediction for the next 12 months?

Qiao Wang: Bitcoin prices will rise, and the increase will be significant.

Kevin: How much do you think it will increase?

Qiao Wang: $100,000.

Kevin: So where is the peak of Bitcoin in this cycle?

Qiao Wang: I’m not sure, the range is huge.

Kevin: So what is your prediction range?

Qiao Wang: Between $100,000 and $420,069, because we may be living in a simulation world, and the end point of the last cycle was $69,420, so if the next one can reach $420,069, that would be perfect.

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