From Binance to CIO of a Middle Eastern Public Company: Bill Qian discusses the intersection of crypto, AI, and geopolitics.

Hosts: Mr. Z, Victor, @168MrZ

Guest: Bill Qian, former head of Binance Labs and chairman of Cypher Capital.

"The wholesale price of gold in Dubai saw a discount of $50 per ounce—when war comes, you can't take your gold with you. But Bitcoin showed its resilience during those days." In an exclusive interview on the East-West capital dialogue program "168X," Bill Qian, former co-founder of Cypher Capital and former chief investment officer of Phoenix Group, shared his firsthand experience of the Middle East conflict, providing an in-depth analysis of the differences in the performance of Bitcoin and gold during real crises, the philosophy of asset allocation in turbulent times, and the debate over the authenticity of the AI ​​bubble.

This investor, who has deployed and managed over $20 billion in assets throughout his career, previously served as Head of Global Investment and Mergers & Acquisitions at Binance. He later co-founded Cypher Capital in Dubai and became Chief Investment Officer of Phoenix Group , the first publicly traded crypto company in the Middle East. Now, at a turning point in the cycle, he has chosen to press the pause button and turn his attention to the intersection of AI and crypto FinTech.

The Collapse of a Safe Haven: When Iranian Missiles Strike Where You Store Your Money

Five years ago, when Bill Qian arrived in the UAE with Binance, the country was being hailed as the "Switzerland of the 21st century." Russians, British, Asians, and Indians flocked there, global capital settled on the Palm Islands, and the crypto community found the most tolerant regulatory environment.

Then war broke out.

"I'm a big fan of the UAE, and I really like the government here, as well as the people from all over the world," Bill admitted. "But war happens, and that's that. We have to look at it objectively."

The US-Iran conflict has brought unprecedented shocks to this "safe haven" city. Drone attacks continue in Dubai, several banking apps were temporarily paralyzed, and luxury home prices on Palm Jumeirah have plummeted.

Before recording the 168X program, Bill had just researched a series of historical cases—Tel Aviv, Israel; Kyiv, Ukraine; Moscow, Russia; Sarajevo in the 1990s; and New York after 9/11. "You can't say that a city is finished after a war, but it needs to rebuild confidence, rebuild population flow, including financial instruments, before it can slowly bring housing prices back up."

What truly perplexed him was a logic that defied common sense.

"I never imagined the Iranians would attack a place where they have money stored," Bill said. Iranian leaders have substantial assets in the UAE—investment companies, mansions on Palm Jumeirah, and bank deposits. After the missiles hit, these assets were the first to plummet in value.

"Maybe when a person gets ruthless, he won't care about anything else."

This conflict has revealed a deeper geopolitical paradox. In the past, everyone believed that the presence of US military bases was a form of "protection" and "blessing." But when Iranian missiles were aimed at these bases and their surrounding areas, this "protection" turned into a "curse."

Bill points out that this will fundamentally affect several major events in the Middle East:

• First, is there still a sufficient budget to invest in the United States?
• Second, how to re-examine the costs of allowing the existence of US military bases.

For investors who have staked their entire fortune on UAE real estate, this is an expensive lesson in risk management.

Gold's fatal flaw: War is the most honest stress test

The Middle East conflict provided Bill with an excellent testing ground to observe Bitcoin and gold.

He noted a compelling detail: during the war, the Dubai gold wholesale market saw a discount of $50 per ounce. The discount itself wasn't large, but the signal it sent was deafening—when a real crisis hit, the "portability" advantage of physical gold virtually vanished.

"Dalio says gold has strong anti-traceability and is untraceable, so gold must be bullish," Bill analyzed. "But once you go to war, you'll find its shortcomings—can you really carry around a lot of gold bars? That's a very difficult thing."

He attributed gold's limitations to two fatal weaknesses: portability and confiscation resistance . Even the United States in 1933, a "beacon of the free world," ordered the confiscation of all privately owned gold nationwide. In extreme circumstances, the "safety" of physical assets may well be nothing more than an illusion.

In contrast, Bitcoin's price rose rather than fell during the days of the war. More importantly, there were fundamental factors at play: a surge in OTC transactions by Iranians and residents of the Middle East, a dramatic increase in stablecoin exchanges, and a corresponding spike in Bitcoin purchases.

However, Bill refused to categorize Bitcoin simply as either a "safe-haven asset" or a "risky asset." "Why must we be controlled by this duality? Why can't some assets escape this binary logic?"

A 17-year-old asset is neither a substitute for gold nor merely a shadow of tech stocks. It may exhibit completely different attributes at different historical stages, and our understanding of it is always temporary.

The Cortisol Investment Rule: Buffett's advice is suitable for almost no one.

As 168X host Mr. Z discussed asset allocation with Bill, Bill brought up an unexpected dimension.

Most investors only consider two things when building a portfolio: returns and drawdowns. But Bill believes there is a seriously overlooked third dimension— your own cortisol levels, or the quality of your sleep.

"This is a very important point," he emphasized. "Many people only think about how much financial leverage they have and how much volatility they can withstand, but many people ignore what their healthy leverage is."

He used Buffett's classic advice to illustrate the counterintuitive nature of this viewpoint. Buffett recommends that future generations allocate 90% to S&P 500 index funds and 10% to bonds. This sounds impeccably conservative.

"I later discovered that this portfolio is basically unsuitable for almost everyone in the world," Bill said. "Because a major pullback in the US stock market can be 30% to 40%. You can imagine an average person whose entire fortune drops by 30% to 40% in a single year, and who only has 10% in cash."

This portfolio is only suitable for one type of person—"trust fund babies," individuals who are extremely wealthy, whose funds are locked in trusts, and who never need to touch their principal. For the remaining 99% of ordinary investors, even if the investment targets are correct, the position sizing can be fatal.

"Investing in the index is correct, but investing in 90% of the index is actually a very impressive thing." The implication is that it requires a psychological resilience that most people do not possess.

This is why Bill repeatedly emphasizes "buy when nobody cares, sell when everyone's talking." He observed that in the summer of 2025, people were asking him every day whether they should buy Bitcoin, while in the past year, various people were researching how to buy gold. "At times like these, you're going with your emotions, and it's best to go against them."

He pointed out that the current sentiment towards Bitcoin has entered a "relatively low period." After undergoing a triple cleansing—a bursting of the bubble, a drop in valuations, and a collapse in fundamental logic—Bitcoin has demonstrated its resilience in the last two to three weeks. This resilience is not supported by narratives, but rather validated by the real needs of the war.

AI is not a tulip: the hard logic behind 2 billion monthly active users

When the topic shifted to AI, Bill displayed the composure characteristic of an investor who has experienced multiple cycles.

In response to accusations of an "AI bubble," he first offered his own definition of a bubble: the magnitude of the gap between price and value. Based on this framework, he argues that today's AI is far from a tulip mania.

"The tulip mania was characterized by high prices, but its actual value was very limited," he distinguished. "The word 'bubble' is actually quite broad, ranging from slightly overvalued to outright nonsense; everyone calls it a bubble in between."

He presented a set of key In just three and a half years since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, the number of monthly active AI users worldwide has reached 2 billion. The global mobile internet user base is approximately 5 billion, while the total population is 8 billion.

Based on these fundamentals, the AI ​​"bubble" is fundamentally different from the dot-com bubble of 2000.

He cited Amazon as an example: when the dot-com bubble burst in 2001, Amazon's stock price plummeted by 90%, but its GMV and user base actually continued to grow. "We should step back and look at one thing—is it that the price is relatively overvalued, or is there really a big bubble?"

In Bill's analytical framework, encryption and AI are at distinctly different stages. Encryption has entered its "growth phase," focusing on a few well-defined theses, promising long-term growth but with narrowing room for innovation. AI, on the other hand, is simultaneously in its "growth phase" and "innovation phase"—chips and large-scale models are maturing, while applications are experiencing explosive innovation.

In the interview, Victor, a researcher at 168X, pointed out the phenomenon of large-scale and highly concentrated fundraising by VC funds in recent years—a16z announced a new $15 billion fundraising, Thrive raised $10 billion, and General Catalyst raised $10 billion. Bill analyzed that this is directly related to the fact that unicorn companies are going public later and later. When a company reaches a valuation of $100 billion and still doesn't go public, VCs naturally need larger funds to participate in later rounds.

He concluded with a striking comparison: Elon Musk, America's richest man, has a wealth that's one zero greater than Asia's richest man and possibly two zeros greater than Africa's richest man. "In North America, money is a different species altogether."

This extreme concentration of capital in North America explains why liquidity in the crypto market is being diverted to AI. As the world's smartest money chases AI growth stocks with real cash flow, assets driven purely by valuation expansion are facing an even harsher winter.

Survival Guide for the Year of the Horse (Bingwu): Preserve Your Health

As the interview drew to a close, host Mr. Z asked Bill to look ahead to the market trends for the second half of 2026.

Bill's assessment was succinct: 2026 will be a year of extreme volatility.

From Eastern metaphysics to Western reality, the signals are remarkably consistent. 2026 is the Year of the Horse (丙午), traditionally foreshadowing severe turmoil. The variables in reality are even more concentrated—the Middle East conflict continues to escalate, oil prices plummeted overnight by 20%-30%, and the CPI rebounded to 3.6%. The dual pressures of geopolitics and inflation are squeezing the certainty of all asset classes.

He offered drastically different survival strategies for different types of investors. "Unless you're a professional macro trader, you need to be quite cautious this year." The lessons of 2022 are still fresh in our minds—long-only funds suffered widespread losses, while macro traders made a fortune. High volatility is a paradise for macro strategies, but a nightmare for directional investors.

Regarding Trump's rivalry with Iran, Bill tends to believe that TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out) will occur. The logic is simple: for an 80-year-old president whose entire family is deeply involved in the crypto industry, the midterm elections and the price of Bitcoin are far more important than winning a war.

But no matter how the geopolitical game ends, Bill brings everything back to the most basic survival wisdom – "margin of safety".

These words carry particular weight coming from Bill, who witnessed firsthand the 20-year bull market in Chinese real estate turn into a crash, his own home Dubai transform from a safe haven into a target, and Iranian citizens using Bitcoin to escape the collapse of the banking system. "Going all in sounds cool, but do you really have the guts to bear all the volatility and consequences?"

Peace, sunshine, water—these are the things we usually overlook, but they are actually the most precious. This applies to investing, and it applies to life as well.

Related Reading: Essay | How to Protect Wealth in War