The Ryan Hanley Show - This VC Bought Bitcoin at $200, Saw TikTok's Rise, and Now Says THIS is the Next Big Trade

Episode Date: February 6, 2026

Spartan philosophy, built in the black-ops lab of business: https://www.findingpeak.comFinding Peak podcast: https://linktr.ee/ryan_hanleyHe bought Bitcoin at $200. He had the chance to invest in TikTok before it was a global phenomenon. Now, venture capitalist and Levex founder Harvey Liu is revealing what he believes is the single biggest trade of the next five years.In this episode, we go deep on:The real reason China's tech scene is crushing the West (it's not what you think).Why Harvey believes Ethereum is a better bet than Bitcoin right now.The simple, 4-step playbook for new crypto investors to avoid getting wrecked.How AI is about to change trading forever.If you want to understand the hidden forces driving the global economy and where the smart money is moving next, you can't afford to miss this.Connect with Harvey Liu:Website: https://levex.com/en/Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarveyLevexThis is the way.This show is part of the Unplugged Studios Network — the infrastructure layer for serious creators. 👉 Learn more at https://unpluggedstudios.fm.Our Sponsors:* Click the link http://kalshi.com/r/SB60 or download the Kalshi App and use code SB60 to sign up and trade today!Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

Eventually, the models will be very close to each other. Ognary users can really tell too much difference between like a grok and like a deep seek or chat GPT. What's going to be making the huge difference is focusing on the application side. There's an interesting trend. Mata actually just bought a Chinese company, yeah, for I think it was two billion dollars. Two billion, yeah, Mannis. Yeah, the manus. Dennis, the company, the entrepreneur, they move out of China because they want their application.

The AI agent can be used globally because they don't want sanctions from the States. They are very strong team. The point is it's the closed model versus open model compared with Google App Store and Apple App Store. They will coexist. Forget what you know about the future. While everyone is distracted by the latest AI hype and meme coins, the real, revolution is happening right under our noses. My guest today, a tech entrepreneur and early crypto adopter, is here to explain why the

next wave of disruption isn't coming from where you expect. We're talking about the quiet giant that's about to tokenize the world. If you want to know where the smart money is really going, you're in the right place. Welcome to Finding Peak. This is the way. Let's go through your journey. Like you started a little bit in the green room and I cut you off because it's so good. But you have a very unique kind of origin story.

And although, you know, I usually don't start with origin and stories because, you know, I think people hear a lot of the same stuff. Yours is so unique. I think it's really important to hear. So maybe take us all the way back to your father's an entrepreneur. You're growing up in China. Like what was that like? I mean, my audience is predominantly U.S.

and I know for a lot of people in the U.S., China could essentially be another planet. And I don't mean that in a bad way. It's just so far away. And I think, having spoken to as many people as I have, and this show provides me a lot of opportunity to reach out of the states and understand what's going on beyond, I don't think as many people do. And I would love for you to explain a little bit like, what does it mean growing up in China, having experienced both the Eastern world and the Western world.

You know, what are some of the differences? and just start to walk us through that process because it is such a unique journey to getting to where you are today. Yes, it is. Yeah. Yes, let's get started. I was growing up in Tianjin, China.

It's a very big city. It has like 13 million populations right now. I think including the populations actually temporarily working there is like 20 million plus. And I grew up there very early in the 80s. I was born in the 80s. I grew up in a very traditional Chinese family. My father used to work for the government, and then later on he started his own business in the 90s.

And he has been one of the role models for me, because that's why since I had very strong goals when I grew up, I just want to become someday someone like my father. He's my role model. And when I was young, I was really interesting in computer games. And so I had a goal when I grew up. I want to be a computer programmer. I can develop my own games. Then I decided after my high school, I decided to go study abroad.

At that time, my English wasn't good. So I studied really hard. I got admitted to one of the universities in Canada. So in 2001, I went abroad, studied Canada alone. And that's where I started learning English, speaking English. And at the same time, I was studying in computer programming at all. After graduation, I was working for one of the internet companies in Canada. and during that time I was taking care of operations and daily developments of some of the tools we use for business.

But also because I was growing up in China, I lived in Canada, I studied there, I started to realize there's actually greater opportunities. Like I started to invest to apply for one of the top business schools in Siat in France. I was lucky enough to get in. And after studying for one year full time in France, Fontaineble, France, I graduated with an MBA degree. And then at that time, it was booming in China. It was 2012. I saw there's a bunch opportunities back in China because I learned all this knowledge from both on the technical side and the business side. I think there's a great opportunity for me to go back to China and start to actually be part of this booming opportunities back in China.

I went back. Actually, I got in, joined one of the top local venture capital firms in China. in 2013, where I invest in mobile app companies, startups in China. I was based in Beijing. I looked around projects. I think over the years I looked into like 100 projects across all these Chinese major cities, Shanghai, Beijing,

Guangzhou, Shenzhen. Then I, at the same time, actually, it was very, very interesting. My friends was looking into blockchain and they looked at Bitcoin and everything. So I was in those investors groups with them. I started learning into blockchings. In 2013, that's the first time actually I invest in blockchain. A BTC, a Bitcoin at $200, I remember. And then that was one of the times we really, we couldn't really find too much information at the time.

I was really still just at the early stage, understanding blockchain. But over the times, we studied together. We realized this is really the next big thing. So as a VC investor as well, I looked into many of the platforms at the time. I think one of the biggest ones at the time was Hobi.com, BTCChina.com, and even OK coin. It's OKX today. Like, that's their founding members was actually forming the company in 2013, 2014, back in Beijing. And that's when I looked into those projects as a venture capital.

side. I looked into them. So from that time I learned, for certain things, you have to get in early and you need to study them, you need to believe them, because I made my mistakes over the times. When I was first investing in Google and Apple shares, I sold them too early because I didn't understand like the business can grow or at the time I didn't have too much knowledge on the financial sides and that's why they decided to went to business school. Also for Bitcoin, I bought 200. I sold them like 300, 400 and I wanted to wait until they come down and buy it back and then they never come down. And the reason why is just because we didn't, really research deep enough and understand what's really, the technology side, what's really

actually make a difference. So make you believe that you can hold on to it for for the longer time. So then after that, around the COVID time, because, you know, like at the end of the COVID time, like the Chinese has, the government has a big lockdown in Shanghai and a Beijing. And in 2021, 22, then I was lucky enough to join another venture capital for me in Singapore,

where actually I invested more. Let's talk about winning. Not just in business, not just in life, but in the arena of well, just about everything. And if you're like me, you love the thrill of the game. I'm a huge

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This is the way. On Web 3 projects, rather than just mobile app projects. And then that's when I had the idea to start the current projects at Lebex Exchange.

Because me as a trader during the time, I trade lots of coins, crypto coins as well. Also, I trade lots of stocks. And also I look at, like on the VC side, I looked at lots of projects over the times. So I know where the traders or the users really look for on trading platform.

And I had the technology knowledge and I have VC resources. So I was able to actually form a very strong team. Our tech team has a very strong background building, trading platforms for the investment banks, one of the bigger banks. So our team is really focusing on the tech side. And my goal was building a platform really deliver the traders experience and make them feel the platform really put them at the center stage where we can provide them the tools they can succeed.

So that's how I came along to became the co-founder and CEO of Lavex from my journey. You know, there's many failures and many experience, like even on the personal side. I'm a father of two daughters. I got divorced as well. And I had this personal up and downs. At the same time, I was able to focus more on the business side, on the work, so I can deliver the projects and deliver the user experience to our users. and I think in the long run, there's lots of things to come and I think that's how it is right now. Yeah.

Yeah, awesome. I mean, I appreciate you going through all that. There's a lot to unpack. I got a lot of questions for you. Of course, of course. Yeah. So I'm going to go back and I love to start. In Dubai, it's a little bit hot here.

Yeah, no, you're good. You're good. Yeah, yeah. So I love for you to, maybe compare and contrast for us. Like when you look at, say, entrepreneurship in Canada and France in kind of the Western world

versus compared to like China. And is there a difference in how entrepreneurship is approached? Like here, you know, I know in the States, especially since the rise of say Facebook, Google, Apple, etc., you know, people wear entrepreneurship like a badge of honor, right? They get a tattooed on their body.

Everybody wants to be an entrepreneur. and there's like this whole culture to it. And, you know, there's like failure porn now where people are failing and then they're using that to launch careers. And it's all now it's been very commercial. Like entrepreneurship is very commercialized. Do you see the same things coming out of China? Is it a more mature entrepreneurial market?

Is it still a developing entrepreneur market? Like where do you see the major differences in entrepreneurship in general between the two? I think before. Let's say, let's go back to early 2000. I think 2000, maybe after 2001, 2002, the Chinese, especially on the tech side, they just start to have like this smaller tech companies. I remember back there, there's like a China.com,

nettees.com, Alibaba, they all started very, I think, late 90s, early 2000. That's the time I think the entrepreneur is my previous generation. Like they are more traditional and they didn't really have too much college education. But they are very dedicated, very diligent, very determined. So they work really hard, like I would say. So they set their goals. They work everything out of themselves.

to trying to accomplish it. And that's one time, that's one time, like, the entrepreneurs are like, it's people just hardworking, it's just doing the daily routines, and then they gather the experience from maybe some failures. So they evolve onto that, like, based on that. And at that time, I think China didn't really have too much, like, technology-based to build on, and then they relied more on the first. foreign investment. I think that's when the times the U.S., the Europeans, has actually

invests a lot of, like investment and technology back into the China. I think even Taiwan, especially for the semiconductor industry and Taiwan, Japan and Korea and during that time, they invest a lot in China to help to develop the technology. Then that's the first, I would say that's, I would say it's like the first generation of entrepreneurs in China. They start from, basically, they start most of them from scratch, right? So it didn't have too much base to build that. But after, I think, after 2008, especially after the financial crisis, also after the 2008 is Olympics, right?

So Beijing Olympics, the Western world understand more about China. and even I think the general living standards in China has grown up, like grow very rapidly after that. So the second generation from the first, like those people has been becoming a richer by doing business themselves. The first generation has generated wealth, so they have their second generation, has better education. And most of them actually went abroad.

and learned from like the Western world and see how they do business, how they do entrepreneur and had the knowledge. And then when they, those, those generations, I started to actually build their own business or start getting into entrepreneurship. And I think that's when the second wave actually came. I think it's the early, that's when actually I went back is 2000, after 2010. I think the Chinese, especially the VC industry and the internet. internet industry actually has seen a tremendous growth after 2010, especially 2015 to 2000,

right before the COVID. And that's when you see Tencent, Alibaba, and this big giant came out, and also the smaller ones, because people had experience working for the big companies, start to build their own business as well. you see software like mobile apps like DD we have the Chinese version of Uber. It's called DD and also there's May 2020 like the delivery service of China like the the apps in China because the Chinese population is very in very the density is very high. So the delivery has been very growing really fast and and also

because the Chinese has a bigger market, entrepreneurship is kind of, it works differently than the Western world in the ways that because the market is big enough, and you can have, you would say, like if you have idea, you have a quick technology base, you can quickly develop for your product,

even it's like a 60% 70% complete. and to actually prove your ideas, you can always go to the market and let the market do a stress test on our products. And you can iterate after that. If you see some failures, you can gain from the feedbacks from the users. The feedbacks and the cycle is very quick.

It's not like the states, for example, in Canada, like you don't have too much market you can test because it costs you too much to actually do market. on that like nationwide. So you can in China is different. You got small market like when in one city, you get 10 million population and you can easily get like a million users. And you know you can get quickly feedback from the product you roll out.

So that's that's different ways to we, I see it for the entrepreneur side. Yeah. That's really interesting. I hadn't thought about the market size. being such an advantage. I mean, essentially two larger Chinese cities is bigger than the entire country of Canada. And Canada is just barely bigger than the state of California. And then we think of the U.S. market as being large at, what, 360 million, but that's a third of, or less than a

third of the overall Chinese market. That's really interesting. And I'm assuming, because I know the U.S. has the highest, like paid ad rates, like CPMs are often the high. highest in the U.S. So even though the market's not as big as China, you're also paying much higher CPMs if you're trying to, you know, test ideas or run ads into a market to try to do some product testing. So, so basically what you're saying there is that market size and the dynamic of it allows you to push products out and get a, get feedback at a large scale very rapidly to understand, like, do we have something here or do we need to iterate or is just just a complete miss. Yeah, and I think that's just one example is TikTok, right? Because TikTok started in China. It's

bite dance. It's the Chinese version. It's called Doin in China. They started. Actually, I had a chance as a VC investor. I had the chance to invest in the early stage of the TikTok mother company back in China. That was 2013. When I was actually first joined the firm, I looked into their project. They started as like a news app. So they basically, they post different kind of news on their apps and people seeing it. And they use the algorithm, basically call it an algorithm at the time they developed a database. Because people look at different news, they mark their interest on those news. They actually put tags, right?

So at the backhand, the algorithm will put text on all this news people looked at it and start pushing for their, like what they are interested. So in that way, people like always sees what they interested. So they really, they really like the app. So that's because over the times, like TikTok actually they build up their algorithm because there's so many people using it. they start building the big database. Imagine if they started up, like the startup in Canada, they don't have enough samples, right? They don't have enough users to help them build the user base.

And that's actually, I would say at that time, it's definitely a advantage because they have enough user base to can test out ideas and improve the products, improve the algorithm. then once they have that advantage, they went globalized, right? So they start up TikTok and went viral quickly because they already had all this database algorithm they built up from the local Chinese market. They just applied it globally.

And I think similar stories for AIs. I think the U.S. and China, they're racing for AIs very, very competitively. But I think, you know, I'm not sure if you know, Deepseek, it's also, it's an AI model, it's back in China. Deepseek actually, they have their advantage because they, they had more, I would say, like local Chinese market data, right? So, so that's something is really important. And even Tesla, they want to have their like a auto drive tested in China. and they treat Chinese markets is one of the most important market

in globally because they have in China you would have like a thousand more like a road accident or condition cases than the States, right? Because the States is all straight roads, highways. In China you've got this small road in nowhere and the village roads.

And then Tesla, the IIs can learn all this different kind of driving conditions and it will help to improve their user case eventually. I think that's the reason why right now there is a certain advantage in China in the AI competition, but they're lacking of the chips because the US actually block the chips exports to China. And eventually, but that's kind of a backfire because you are forcing the Chinese government to invest more to build their own chips. Yeah.

Yeah, actually there was a really good, I don't know if you listened to the All In podcast with Chmoth Polly Hepatia and David Sacks and those guys. If you don't, it's okay. But it's one of the larger entrepreneur podcasts out there. And they were just having this discussion, this exact discussion around the merits of denying the Chinese market, the Navidia chips that in the Tesla chips, etc., these advanced chips. and the argument that was being made is that while everyone on the call could see the kind of defense argument to it from a very short term, maybe scarcity or narrow view, at the same time, they're like, look, like all this tension between, you know, China and Taiwan and the state, like, this could all be solved if, you know, we could figure out a way to sell these chips in. and, you know, this was, I think it was David Sacks. His argument was essentially, well, wouldn't we rather sell China our chips, know what they have and reap the benefit of selling them the chips versus creating, one, this kind of self-imposed friction that doesn't necessarily need to be there. And two, all Chinese entrepreneurs are going to do, as you're describing, is eventually develop their own chips.

And I think as we've seen, you know, one of the things, and I follow Deep Seek pretty closely because I'm really interested. in the fact that it's also an open source model. And, you know, they just came out with, and I'm going to butcher some of the technicalities to it. I was reading about it. I'm not necessarily, I'm not trained in any kind of programming stuff. So I understand the usage and the ideas, but I couldn't make my fingers make the magic box do the things.

But, you know, this new model they just came out with is essentially created an entirely new framework for how to set certain boundaries and how to compartmentalize research so it's not getting lost in context and larger in larger prompts, et cetera. And it's, and it's, you know, you see this, you know, deep sequel move ahead and some of the open source Chinese models will take a step ahead and then you see open AI. But I do think it feels to me and I'm interested as a technologist yourself, like what your take is on this.

Like you look at, you look at, say, WordPress, right? WordPress. Open source website. So now we're talking like early 2000, 2010 is really. when WordPress separated itself so quickly and so rapidly became the most widespread platform because it was open source, right? And at that time, you know, I was marketing in sales has always been my side of the house, right?

At that time, the argument was, well, they're open source, so it's kind of like it got labeled as like amateurish or somehow like the code wasn't as good. And what was really interesting, and I think this is what we're going to eventually see with open source models versus these closed models with AI is WordPress won because so many programmers were able to get their hands on it and play with it and fix it. And they don't want their stuff getting hacked. So the entire argument of it not being as secure went out the window really fast and that WordPress continued to ascend and, you know, take over the number one platform in the

country or in the world. And many platforms tried, but I truly believe it was the open source nature. of WordPress that did that. So do you see something similar happening with open source AI models versus the closed models like over time, you know, the battle for a while but open source eventually will win or, you know, I'm talking widespread use. I think there'll always be very specific use cases for close models, but I can see these open source models taking the larger everyday user market segment.

Well, I think I think we need to look at two. things. We're talking about models. Models is, I see, the computing power or the AI models, right? So they have this, they can generate tokens, so people you can, they can query them and apply to things. But I think eventually it doesn't matter, like, if the chips getting blocked from the States or trying to invent their own chips. I think it would eventually, the models will be very close to each other. And there's not too much difference. I think you can't really, like, I mean, like for ordinary users, like you can't really tell too much difference between like a grok and like a deep seek or chat GPTs.

They all do similar things, right? Even TikTok had their own AI. It's called Doebao as well, right? So they all has kind of similar logic behind it. And you know, the more ironic about it, like many of the Chinese scientists actually is working for those AI companies, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You look at like the Tesla, like they introduced their AI team as many Asian faces.

But that's just, it's not very important, I would say. Like the difference would be very, very minimum. and what's going to be making the huge difference, I think, right now is focusing on the application side. I think there's an interesting trend. I'm not sure if you see the news. Mattah actually just bought a Chinese company for, I think, $2 billion. Two billion, yeah, Mannis. The company, the Chinese company, the entrepreneur, they move out of China because they want their application.

the AI agent can be used globally because they don't want sanctions from the States. But I think they are very strong team. They actually found it like only eight months old, I think. Yeah. Yeah, if I remember right. So the point I'm trying to make is that it's a close model versus open model. I think eventually it's going to be, I would compare with. with like a Google app store and Apple App Store,

and they will coexist. But I think eventually what's going to be big differences to the applications to be going to come out, like the AI agent to be going to use. I think Tesla is more using their AI AI system for daily like a transport or robots, and that kind of things. Deep seek is open source,

so it's the access, the bearer to entry to utilize their model is very low. And chat GPT on the other side, I think it is, currently I think it's a little bit more advanced and has more resources

because they got the biggest investment from the Nvidia and from SoftBank, all that kind of thing. They got more. more firepower. Yeah, yeah, they got more firepower. I think they're going to be the strongest. But I think eventually it's depending on the ecosystem, like how they use their models to actually apply to the, to affect the daily life of regular users. Right. So for us, we also interested in,

because we are doing the trading platforms, we also often look at like AI tools to help traders or investors to do better investment. And there's many applications to that as well. I'm not sure if you read the story. I should deep seek the founder. They initially invented the model just for help them to do stock trainings, basically. So they made lots of money to stock trading. And then they decided to make this model publicly available with open source because they see this there's lots of applications you can use with the open source, make it more more wildly adapted. It's help more people rather than just keeping them closed.

Yeah, I think the acquisition of Manus by meta was really interesting. So I've been using Manus almost since day one, since like its first day that it was available in the States. I've been using it. And watching how quickly that team has deployed like level two and level three functionality has been, in my mind, incredible. I mean, personally, I use it. So for, let's just say for the production of this podcast, 90% of the post production that happens with this podcast is the result of Manus. So I've created a series of prompts. I take the transcript.

I take a few screenshots. I take a few headshots. I pop it into Manis. And then I have a set of prompts that I work through and essentially everything that I then need, everything from podcast, YouTube, show notes page, what I'm sharing on social, the graphics that come out, and it gives me all these different options, and it's all incredibly high quality. And they actually added a feature before, this was to me, and this is why I think these AI agents. So for guys, for those of you listening at home may not know the difference, Manis is not necessarily working off its own model per se.

it does have its own model, but what it does that is so particular and where in my mind, they've stepped ahead and I think shown the everyday user market, something they haven't seen in the other models, is this ability to create on-the-fly agents that then go out and execute off other models. So it's pulling in Nana Banana Pro 2 graphics. And then it's pulling in, you know, maybe it's pulling in a video from SORA and it's pulling in, you know, it's using these different resources. and then it also has the ability to go out and hit the web,

which it could do that before open AI could. So, man, is because it used different models, actually had the ability to go out and do deep research and deep analysis of websites inside a flow before opening I could do that. And it's this idea of AI agents, I think, which is really going to be the next level. And we'll look back on these, you know, single chat flow,

you know, the kind of early days. we'll look back and laugh at how remedial, you know, that stuff was. When we see these agents and, you know, how quickly voice is coming and visual recognition and all this kind of stuff, it's, it's really wild. Yeah. But what Man is, what the acquisition of Manis showed me, and I was, I was, I wish it wasn't meta that bought them because I think Meta's AI is kind of whack compared to the other ones personally.

But, but, but was how important this idea. of multi-agent functionality is to high production. Like if you really want to get high output, you need to be able to run multiple agents. They need to be able to talk to each other and they need to know how to layer. And I honestly, I don't think there's a better retail user product on the market that man is when it comes to that.

And that was a really interesting acquisition, particularly born out of China, moved to the U.S., or at least had a U.S. headquarters and now being bought by a U.S. company, it just shows how global this stuff is and how, you know, I often, you know, it's funny. Like, I love watching politics because it's like watching like real housewives of, you know, Washington, D.C. kind of because it's all just so, it's all performance art, you know, and like there's, you see these problems, you know, ah, the Chinese are doing this.

The U.S. is doing this and everyone's, and you sell these. And underneath, it's just all the business people and regular people are just working with each other, getting business done. Like, it's just funny how, you know, you can, you can get caught. up in headlines, but, you know, I always tell my buddies in particular, and I'm blessed to have this show and be able to talk to people like yourself. I'm like, the people that are actually getting shit done, like, it, I don't know, you don't even think twice about this crap. You're like, we're doing business or not. You know what I mean? Obviously, there's always a little bit of something

you've got to work through. But I want to move over to blockchain and particularly, um, what you're doing there because obviously, if you were in early on BTC, I have made the mistake twice as you did of buying, feeling amazing about myself when it go up, selling, and then watching it go down a little and then go way up again. I've played that game multiple times now and I'm now just in a, I'm just going to hold this shit until, you know, for a decade or so before I sell any of it. Big believer, big believer in the tech. What we've seen maybe over the last three to four years in particular is this of alt coins and meme coins. and all this kind of stuff.

And, you know, there was, for a while, there were all these core networks that still exists, Salana, et cetera. But it feels like Bitcoin is really won in terms, at least for now, as like the gold standard cryptocurrency. Like today, if you walk into, you walk into your local bar or, you know, your card game or your golf,

you know, your golf match or whatever. And you say, hey, I bought some Bitcoin today. People are like, oh, okay. You know, three years ago, people would laugh at you and say you're, you know, playing with video game money or whatever. What do you like when you're, you know, being at having a trading platform, seeing all this stuff, having people being able to trade Bitcoin as much as, you know, Wolfcoin 133 or whatever, right? What has been maybe some of your high level takeaways of this maturation and where do you see the market continuing to mature as we go?

Yeah, I think like, like, you mentioned, I bought it early, I sold it early too, but I think there's a reason why I wasn't really a true believer at the time, because there is no institutional adoption at the time. It was too early, right? So people didn't really, like there's value, definitely there's values in Bitcoin, but at the time, there's not many people actually understand it or can realize or kind of agree on the value of Bitcoin. So at that time, there was higher risk than now, right? Like, I'm not sure if you, you do lots of investment, you always hear about like a reward over risk. There's a ratio, right? So, so the higher, the reward with higher risk. But right now, Bitcoin might already

has a higher price, that you won't get that kind of tremendous growth if you bought like $300. But right now, the risk is way lower. The reason why is because the, I think over the, over the years, like especially 2003, 20, 2024, because the institution adoption, because the spot E.TFs, the Wall Street adoption of big, though the big institutions come in and realize there's value also Cassie Wood from Arc and Tesla, Elon, and they all bought Bitcoin, right? So this is when there is a common recognition on the value of Bitcoin, and it obviously they bring up the price, but I think at the same time it has reduced. the risk tremendously. So the volatility on Bitcoin price has been has been done even like over the last

year or two people are talking about this four year cycles, right? So we're supposedly people are arguing if there is still another four year cycle for Bitcoin. And right now, even there if, there is still four year cycles and the volatility will be way less, right? Because all this institutional money and spot ETFs traditional finance institutions has access the Bitcoin as

a storage of value, right? Because Bitcoin is treated as digital gold because it's scarcity has limited quantity of 21 million and even a big chunk of that belongs to

Satoshi, but Satoshi's Bitcoin is no longer moving so it's not in the supply so the supply is limited and there is definitely an application of Bitcoin on payment or or the other things we can use as Bitcoin as a as a blockchain even and I think it definitely there is a value for big for for Bitcoin itself and on the other side I think is the Ethereum is no need to me mention is that Ethereum has a different utility, I would say.

I think Tom Lee has been the biggest like a bullish follower for Yetheram because he's seeing Ethereum as one of the only layer one blockchain has never been done since the since gone online and it's one of the basics for Wall Street to access blockchain. But basically, I think in the near future, we're going to see real war assets like bonds and stocks.

They're all going on chain and it's going to be on e-Sirm. It's going to be one of the most viable chain they're going to adapt. So I think the 2024, when the spot ETF for Bitcoin came out, that's the Wall Street adoption for Bitcoin. And 2025 this year, because of Tom Lee and Bitmain, he's one of the biggest ETH holders for a listed company right now. So he's holding, I think, over almost 5% of the float of Ethereum. And I think he is one actually, that's actually a bookmark for Yisuram getting a Wall Street adoption, like the institutional money actually supporting that. And also on top of that, this cycle, the bullish cycle is way different than the last one in 2017.

Because like you mentioned, there are millions of mint coins, out coins. out there. And I would say most of them has no value. And that's also the reason why the major coin Solana and Ethereum is they're not going up as much on the percentage-wise as last cycle because there's so many coins to select, especially for the retails. They follow like for K-O-Ros. They call also all. often like very excited pushing for for a couple of mean coins and then eventually this came down and crashed and it has no value and people just lose money on that. It's distracted all this potential money can invest in the major coins, the Bitcoin Ethereum

Solana, we do have values. So that's why I think this bull market is more like institutional driven rather than like we have like a retail really making lots of money on the last cycle and also there's another side note

is that during the last cycle the Chinese market the Chinese retail can still can easily access to to cryptos but right now because the Chinese government has very strict

rules on trading cryptos in the mainland China is not easily accessible to any trading platforms. So that's potentially, has reduced the money flowing to the market as well. So, but it could be a potential opportunity. Maybe I think in one day, there's going to be an open policy and for the Chinese can get access to crypto trading. And that will be like potentially boost the market a little bit more. more higher, I think. Yeah. That's a really good insight. And so I have a couple things I'd like to

clear up for the audience. And because you talk a little bit about this. And I, and we'll, let's just stick with Bitcoin and Ethereum for now for this part of the conversation. Right. We have Bitcoin, which I think it's maybe more naive detractors, you know, it's not worth. It doesn't do anything. It, you know, it's really that idea of a store of value, right? There's, it's not, no one's running applications on the Bitcoin network to a certain, you know, for the most part. Like for the, it's, it's basically just I buy this because it has value and I also have some gold and I also have some mutual funds and I'm diversifying and whatever.

Okay. And then you have networks like Ethereum, which have incredible utility, right? My industry that I grew up in was the insurance industry here in the States. And there has been talk for a long time. And while the insurance industry in the States seemingly believes it's 20 years in the past technology-wise from anything that's actually happening today. They tend to just be massive laggards. The conversation around, you know, insurance policies are an incredible use case for,

you know, using blockchain technology, you know, a coin or otherwise. And the conversations around that have been, if the industry were to start to make a move, Ethereum would be the network in which the, you know, an insurance policy blockchain would be built on. Okay. So if I'm sitting here and I'm just a retail investor, I like to, I got five, 10% of my portfolio like to play around with. I like to put it in some different things. How do I, how do people start to gauge like a Bitcoin investment, which as you said,

and I've seen it as well as just a retail investor, volatility is down. And even though you saw a move recently, you know, if you pull out a little bit, you can just see the dips and the highs are not as big, and you're kind of seeing a natural kind of up and down progression, with up and to the right being the overall course, where Ethereum seemingly is going up, but has been much flatter. It's kind of been around that $2,000 to $4,000 mark for a long time.

And as you said, if I'm just a Yolo Reddit investor who looks for the next hype cycle on some Reddit board, you know, deep down in Reddit, and I put a bunch of money in whatever coin, that could be going to an Ethereum. It could be going to one of these other chains. So should I be thinking more Ethereum, Solana, et cetera,

like one of these that haven't moved in a long time but have a tremendous amount of utility, have thousands, if not, in some case, hundreds of thousands or even millions of applications being built on them, like seemingly are going to be around for a long time because of the tech. Or should I be thinking more, hey, let me just put my money in Bitcoin and ride the wave or do I Yolo and chase the Reddit boards? Like, how do I start to think through where I should play?

Because I have so many friends, so many, who when you get a couple whiskeys in them, will tell you about all the ridiculous coins that they put money in that they felt amazing about for about 20 minutes. And then all of a sudden, their account was at zero when everyone crashed out. So how do you start to think through this as we'll call it a unsophisticated crypto retail investor? Yeah, I think if you are a beginner, I think it's always to start to get, for example, if you knew to the crypto trading, I think you always get to start with the spot trading. And so if you know your trading platforms, for example, Binance, OKX or even NASLVX, and you can get in there and you can you can open your account and deposit your your, your your your USDT or your coins into spot trading to start with.

Just get familiar with the features and get favor spot trading Bitcoin, Ethereum, the major ones, not the smaller ones, right? So you just go on Core Market Cap is one of the website you use. You just go down to the list on the top, I would say top five. Aside, like top five is like first one is Bitcoin, second, Ethereum. After that is Binance, Solana, XRP. I think until that point, XRP is the, I think it's the most risky ones you use. you want to invest in.

So just start there and then maybe start slowly as well. And then one strategy you can use is called the dollar cost average. You can do DCA. And over the times you can build, for example, let's say today is 92K for Bitcoin. And you'll buy 10% on your portfolio. And tomorrow it came down or next week, the same day, next Monday came down. And then you buy another 10%.

Doesn't matter the price. And you just, in 10 batches, right? Right now, like, you can just slowly go down, right? Maybe in 10 weeks, it came down to 80K. And you started at 90K. So your average is like 85, right? So then when they start to go back up, maybe in the next month or so, and you go, you can always,

make money, right? So, and you don't have to worry about liquidation and everything. And that's one strategy for the beginners. That you're just going to use to how the market moves and they get a sense how it's trading, right? Then once you start making some money and you can use your profit, you can take some of the profit out and sell them. And you can start looking to some of this more aggressive ones, right? So you can, if you started with Bitcoin, you can move into Isyrian. or even Solana or XRP, and it can do the same strategy, right? So you can just buy a spot and start making like a regular buys,

eventually you can make some profit. Just make sure the money you put aside is like the investment money, not the money you need to pay the everyday cost, right? So once you have made some successful trade, and you can go to the next level, and you can start looking at perpetual trading. What's the perpetual is the futures contract. Basically, you can have leverage. But you're going to do leverage very smart because I think in the long run,

people lose money because they over-leveraged. And leverage, in certain sense, I would say, My business school professor always tells me, leverage will, if you use the right way, it's the only way to make you, like, richard, make you to the next class. So, like, even retail, the same. Like, if you're buying a house, using mortgage, that's a leverage. You start a company and you raise money, that's a leverage. And trading stocks, you're merging, that's a leverage.

So trading crypto and using professional contracts as a leverage as well. So you understand the leverage and then you use it only partially of the capital you have. I think the best case is you made money trading spot and used that profit and you do leverage trading. When the market is actually very clear, not in the market. market is in the range bonding. For right now, I think the market is still in range bonding. It's not a great time to use leverage to trade, but we can still building the spot at this moment,

just doing DCAs. I do see in the first half of the year, we might see some downside. Personally, I'm waiting for Bitcoin, because I sold my spots and I'm waiting to buy back my spot, maybe under 80K, even though I think this is even though I think currently there's a bounce, I think there's still a little bit more downside.

And wait until the water is cleared and the trend is clear. I can, I will buy some spot and then I will do some leverage very low, like a 3 to 5x. And that's normally my play. Basically, we need to wait until CNN and Fox News are saying that Bitcoin's dead and it's going to zero. And the minute they say that, I should start. That's when you start buying.

Or you see the highlight news is that there's like over the last 24 hours, there's like 100 million, 100 billion like a market value lost in the crypto market and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I basically, because I'm not smart enough, nor do I have the self-discipline to trade. I've tried and I just like my ADD goes off the rails and I just want more, you know,

I want action. I just set up, I just invest, I just DCA every week. I literally have it just set up auto, auto by, you know, a certain amount every week. And I don't even think about it. And that's when like I see, oh, it was at, you know, 127 and now it's at 92. And I'm like, you know, I'm not, who cares? I'm not, I'm not investing today for, you know, a quick lift, you know, for the type of investor I am for Bitcoin in particular. It's just, I think there will come a day where it could be five years from now.

It could be a decade from now. 300, 200, 500,000 if you're just DCAing or if you're doing it in chunks, you know, there's going to be a time in the future when you're very happy that you just, you didn't try to time it. You didn't try to get out at certain times. Exactly. I think if you're very smart and you know what you're doing, I think there's incredible amount of money to be made, trading.

I think for a lot of the people listening, especially if, you're a business owner and you don't have the time, right? This is where you get caught. I think in futures trading, at least my friends who've really lost decent chunks, has been, they don't have the time to invest. They think it's like this side hustle where I can show up for 20 minutes and open up my app and do some. And you just can't be successful long term that way. It's a, there's too much, it's a job. Like trading is a job. This is what people do all day long. Yeah. It's harder than the daily job. Yeah. And you have to. compete against people, like for example, the financial firms or professional traders,

they have invested maybe 10 millions in developing a software trading against you. And how do you think you can successful beating them, right? So you can only beat them with luck or you beat them with time. Like you can use, you can broaden your time frame. And then you slowly put their money in and you get an average your cost down. and then play the long game. So because the professional traders, they're looking for a short run, right? Or you wait until maybe the AI tools came out and they can help you to trade.

And we, like as a trading platform, we actually look into those features as well. We're in the middle of developing those. So we hope this can help the traders improve their trading success rate. Yeah. So with your platform, right, I can. and buy and hold, right? It's not, is it only trading or I can just go, like, let's say today I'm listening to this. You're like, you know, I like this guy.

I've been wanting to buy some Bitcoin. I've been wanting to get in. I've been saying I'm going to do it for a while. I can just go download the app, you know, put my information in. I can buy and hold. But then if I do want to start playing around and maybe, like you said, take some profits here and there and actually put some bets in, do a little futures trading on the side. I want to learn that game.

I can, your platform will allow me to do that as well. so I kind of have the full spectrum of opportunities to play in the game. Definitely, definitely. We have spot trading. We have futures trading. You can even use the spot as a collateral to do some kind of leverage to trade as well. And also we have definitely like across all this sales marketing. We have this welcome bonus and everything.

You can maybe just come. Sometimes we have promotions going out. You can come and then department. some money, get some trading credits, and it can trade with the trading credits is not costing your own money. And it's a good way to get used to some of the trading features as well. Yeah. So I want to finish with like, you've had this dynamic entrepreneur journey, not just in China, across the world. You've been in multiple different places, interacted with a ton of different people. You're sitting in Dubai today while we're talking,

which just makes this so incredible to begin with. doesn't have to be crypto, it can be whatever you want. When you can kind of sit in your spot and you look out over the ecosystem, maybe you put your VC hat back on for a second. Like what's the one tech sector, et cetera, where you're like maybe the market doesn't understand how much further this has to go, right? Like we keep hearing like AI is a bubble.

It's going to pop and, you know, it's going to become or, you know, crypto or is it, you know, energy? Is it nuclear? Is it, you know, space tech? Like, if you were sitting there today and we're, you know, something that really got you excited, what, what's that thing that you're like, man, this is going to move? Like, I don't know, maybe no when, maybe not sure which company,

but this sector's got legs and it's going to hit here in the next, next few years. Well, I think AI is already, everybody is already talking about. I think AI agents like Amanus, I think definitely there's more. I think AI agent is like the application on top of AI models. There's going to be lots of use for AI agents as well. But I think one thing I'm currently looking at, I think I still have lots of hope in Ethereum. because like we talk about, well, I think Tom Lee sometimes is overstated some points,

but I do agree with him on certain degrees because Ethereum is the utility-wise, like it is the gateway for the whole Wall Street or traditional finance to access blockchain. And that's something going to be really huge. Like you mentioned, the insurance, even real estate, right? So in Dubai, they already put some of the buildings real estate got tokenized and put it on a blockchain. And people can buy shares of it or buy the coins. So basically owning a partial share ownership of that building. I think also there's many, many applications you can use.

Also, Polymarket, right? So Polymarket, you can do all this betting and forecasting on blockchain. I think there's whole many things you can do. Like markets on Ethereum, built off Ethereum? I think they definitely utilize the certain blockchain networks. I think you're right. I just wasn't 100% sure. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, we can double check. Well, I love that. I mean, to be honest with you, Ethereum had definitely fallen off my radar a little bit, mostly just because I don't think about crypto every day. But I think you're right. I mean, Bitcoin is essentially paving the path, I think, culturally, for people to accept doing air quotes for those that are listening,

kind of crypto in general. It's kind of that beachhead. Crypto is kind of establishing the beachhead. but I could, you know, I'm listening to you and I can't find a hole in the idea that the next wave is going to be these actual utilitarian chains that where people are building. I mean, and guys, just so you know, like it's not like there's a few applications on Ethereum. Like we're talking some major, major applications, major platforms. I mean, entire, entire business models, companies, you know, regulatory, I know, regulated industries that are starting to either, that are currently using or dipping their toes in. And I think once you start to see, like you said,

finance, insurance, these highly regulated industries start to grab onto these. I think that's where the dominoes really start to fall because once the regulated industries are in, there's not really an excuse for anyone else to not start to invest and go down the rabbit hole. Harvey, man, I can talk to you about this stuff all day. I know it is later where you are. I appreciate that. I got of you guys. It's probably close to 1 a.m. now in Dubai. where Harvey is. So appreciate you taking this time. It's been a wonderful conversation.

Where could people learn more about your company? And then if they want to follow along with you personally, do you create? Do you share thoughts anywhere? Is there any platform that you'd like to push people to? Yeah. Actually, we have an official website. It's www.

levix, L-E-V-E-X.com. And also I'm on Twitter as well. My account is at Harvey Levix. and our official Twitter handle is at LevX. That's our official account. So if you want to learn more information about us, just hop on to one of the platforms and look for us. And also, I will be on spaces every Tuesday.

There is a quantum economic spaces. I will talk there, talking about the market every Tuesday. I think it's 10 a.m. Eastern time. I'll be there. So if you guys want to listen, you can always find me there as well. And also thank you, Ryan, for inviting me and having this interview today and really love to talk to you. Maybe we can set up another show later on for AI or the other stuff we will love to talk about.

I would love that. I love that. I, we spent a lot of time on, we'll call them, higher level psychology leadership type topics the last year. coming into 2026, we're going to focus more on finance, on technology, on, you know, AI, et cetera. And these, I think it's a tough game, you know, when you're in a leadership position, managing kind of the humans, right? You got the humans, which are really hard. And then you have the actual business that you're trying to build and the technology related to it.

And, you know, we're trying to capture the full spectrum here and give people a place to have these conversations. and learn. So I just appreciate you. I know it's late. This has been a wonderful conversation. And look, man, open invitation. We will definitely have you back. Anything comes up.

You drop that some of the AI features you're talking about into LevX. Come right back on, man. I'd love to have that conversation. Thank you so much. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. Yeah.

It's very nice. Yes, that's talking. Yeah.