Recently, Cobo co-founder Shen Yu had an in-depth conversation with Jilink Technology founder Jin Ming, with topics spanning multiple dimensions including investment systems, Bitcoin, DeFi, AI Agents, and the meaning of life.

Written by: Cobo

Recently, Cobo co-founder Shen Yu had an in-depth conversation with Jilink Technology founder Jin Ming, with topics spanning multiple dimensions including investment systems, Bitcoin, DeFi, AI Agents, and the meaning of life.

During the conversation, Shen Yu shed the aura of an early "mining giant" and presented a highly rational reflection, admitting that early success had an element of luck, and he reviewed the cognitive leap of viewing DeFi as "200 years of financial condensed history." In the present moment, when AI deeply takes over cognitive input, this pioneering builder steadfastly adheres to long-termism, maintaining clear and unique independent thought in the restless crypto circle.

Below are the core observations and extracts from this conversation:

"DeFi is a compressed course on financial history"

Shen Yu sees DeFi as an experimental ground for understanding finance. Mechanisms such as lending, market-making, and liquidity mining are fundamentally re-answering questions that traditional finance has already addressed. Participating in protocols is equivalent to experiencing hundreds of years of evolution of financial products in a very short time. For him, the value of DeFi thus becomes a motivation for him to review financial history and theoretical knowledge.

Therefore, his investment framework grows out of practice. Shen Yu mentioned that in the early days, there was no complete investment framework; the method he developed later resembled a cycle: first practice, accumulate experience in the real market, then abstract rules from the results, form frameworks, and finally hone intuition. The key is to continuously pose questions during action, then supplement financial history and theory in reverse.

"After AI lowers execution costs, human will becomes even more important"

AI is significantly shortening the distance from idea to implementation. Many past ideas faced the main obstacle of high execution costs; now, knowledge, tools, and action capabilities are consolidated into the hands of individuals, and as long as there is a sufficiently clear "seed," they can be quickly tested. The stronger the technology, the more important human sense of direction, judgment, and will to take continuous action become.

However, an increase in possibilities can also amplify the builder's confusion. AI brings almost unlimited actionable space, making "topic selection" the biggest problem. Shen Yu candidly admitted that he once had a strong sense of mission and creative impulse during the mining era, but now he finds himself in a more confused stage and has yet to find a sufficiently large and systematic direction. Nevertheless, he still defines himself as a builder: one of the meanings of existence is to create a little more possibility that originally did not exist in the world.

"Agents are transforming from efficiency tools to cognitive and self-understanding external brains"

Shen Yu has deeply embedded AI and agents into his daily life. At the information input end, the work of reading original long articles, screening materials, and compressing them into PPT is completed by a set of notes system he independently built based on evolutionary thinking, combined with AI-filtered daily reports; in daily interactions and cognitive support, he has configured three specialized agents: one is a rationality-based agent, providing highly rational action plans and decision suggestions; another is a more feminine, softer agent responsible for emotional analysis and empathy, which even pointed out that he "may have a fear of death"; and a third is a blind spot reminder agent that combines historical information and personal actions to help him identify cognitive blind spots. The role of agents has extended beyond traditional assistants, evolving into a companion-like "cognitive external brain," not only handling information and tasks for individuals but also deeply participating in emotional care, blind spot correction, and the construction of a second thinking system.

"Core assets must first have a sufficiently large long-term value space"

Shen Yu also revealed his first principle for selecting core assets in the interview, which is that TAM (Total Addressable Market) must be large enough and that there should be a macro vision capable of supporting long-term holding behind it. He believes that an asset is worthy of entering the core position candidates only when it has not only short-term opportunities but also the potential to shape the technological, financial, or social structures of the next ten years or even longer.

He adopts a three-layer position management logic: first discovering with small positions, then increasing allocation through continuous validation, and finally entering the core period after seeing the long-term vision, where positions can increase to about 20%. Currently, only Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tesla have truly passed this set of tests, while SpaceX is still in the observation and timing phase.

Whether Ethereum can remain in the core position depends on the next round of infrastructure value. Although Ethereum has already entered his core asset list, its status is being re-evaluated. The new criterion is whether Ethereum can further become the infrastructure for the operation and collaboration of AI agents. If it can meet the new demands of the machine economy, Ethereum may still maintain its core position; otherwise, the original investment logic needs reassessment.

"Bitcoin is a better gold"

The fundamental difference between gold and Bitcoin lies in the competition between two paradigms and camps, namely the "digital currency + AI" camp and the "gold + industrial manufacturing" camp. Shen Yu believes "Bitcoin is a better gold," with the most fundamental reason being its complete lack of intermediaries and the granting of asset disposal rights to sovereign individuals. Traditional gold often requires multiple intermediaries and institutional custody to achieve rights confirmation and liquidity, whereas Bitcoin can be independently fully controlled and disposed of by individuals without relying on any intermediary, truly realizing personal asset sovereignty.

There are two types of technologies that significantly enhance sovereign individual capabilities. BTC changes the way individuals control and dispose of assets, allowing value to be possessed and transferred independently of traditional institutions; AI expands the individual's own capability boundaries, enabling a person to accomplish knowledge and execution tasks that previously required an organization. The former reinforces asset sovereignty, while the latter amplifies personal productivity.

"A philosophy of investment that is small yet profound"

Traditional asset allocation emphasizes reducing portfolio volatility through low correlation assets such as gold, stocks, and Bitcoin, but Shen Yu does not agree with this investment philosophy. "Human cognition and energy are limited; the assets that can truly be deeply understood are actually very few." Rather than purchasing unfamiliar gold to satisfy asset allocation theories, Shen Yu's investment philosophy is closer to "small yet profound," believing that defensive capability does not come from holding more asset categories, because correlation tends to converge in extreme situations. In the event of a true systemic crisis (extreme situations), those assets you thought were balancing each other often collapse synchronously or exhibit consistent performance. Diversification is effective in extremely stable markets but often fails in the face of real "disasters."