The Pomp Podcast
Dovey Wan, Founding Partner at Primitive Ventures: Whats Really Going On with Crypto in China
- Dovey Wan's background spans software engineering, eBay marketplace analysis, and venture capital before discovering Bitcoin through the capital transfer problem for overseas Chinese students.
- Primitive Ventures operates as a global crypto holding company using its own balance sheet for direct investments, mining operations, and project incubation, rather than as a traditional fund.
- Satoshi Treasure is a million-dollar Bitcoin treasure hunt using Shamir secret sharing to split one private key into 1,000 shards; teams need 400 to win and collaboration is required across geographic borders.
- China's government promotes blockchain as strategic infrastructure (alongside AI and 5G) to modernize monetary systems and fight shadow banking that represents ~30% of M2 money supply.
- The Digital Currency Electronic Payment System (DCEP or digital renminbi) will provide PBOC full transparency over economic activity, enable programmable monetary policy, and extend renminbi's global reach via the Belt and Road Initiative.
- Bitcoin mining remains concentrated in China (60–70% of global hash power), with innovations emerging in mining pool tokenization, containerized facilities, and energy arbitrage across seasonal hydropower cycles.