Waterdrop Capital's Da Shan: The Altcoin Bull Market May Be Over, Bitcoin Targets $200,000–$300,000
Da Shan, founding partner of Waterdrop Capital, during his Binance Square's "Blockchain 100" said that the era of widespread altcoin price increases during bull markets may be finished — but that Bitcoin will have another cycle, and it will not stop at $110,000 or $120,000."Optimistically, it will definitely be $200,000 to $300,000 or higher," he said.His path to that view runs from building his own mining rigs while pursuing a PhD in 2013, through resigning from Huawei HiSilicon in 2017 to found Waterdrop Capital and invest in over 200 projects, to becoming chairman of AI company Good Vision AI in 2025.Da Shan Is Bullish Into October and Cautious After the MidtermsIn the short term he is optimistic on September and October performance, but plans to turn highly vigilant after mid-October as the US midterm elections approach — "running away at the slightest sign of trouble."His reasoning is symmetrical rather than directional. If Trump's midterm results are favorable, there is no need to play the crypto card. If they are unfavorable, the opponent's potential crypto policies would also be detrimental to the market. Either outcome removes a tailwind.He treats that as short-term noise. Both US parties are converging on crypto policy, he argues, and neither dares to offend a constituency this large. On a four-year cycle basis, the current six months and the first half of next year should already sit in a bear market phase — which is why he remains optimistic longer term.He also disclosed his own losses candidly. He bought at $80,000, watched it fall to $70,000, then $60,000, before the bottom — and has now seen it rebound to near $80,000. His Bitcoin holdings this round exceed the previous cycle's.Bitcoin Layer 2 Survival Rates Beat Ethereum's Despite Weaker ProjectsAs one of the main drivers of the 2024 Bitcoin Layer 2 rally, Da Shan offered an unusually direct review of that bet.He admitted he did not think Bitcoin Layer 2 was "so great or so necessary." The real reason he promoted it was that Ethereum had thousands of highly homogenized Layer 2 projects at the time, which was overwhelming.The results justified the trade in his view. Bitcoin Layer 2 chains number only a dozen or so, against hundreds on Ethereum — most of which have died, with perhaps fewer than five surviving. He named River, Lorenzo, Particle, Merlin and B² among those "still doing well," most already listed on Binance.Those assets supported the net asset value of Waterdrop's latest fund, allowing it to deliver on commitments to limited partners. He cautioned that the projects still need to survive this bear market and build genuine competitive advantage as Bitcoin's market capitalization rises.Why Da Shan Tells Founders to List Rather Than Issue TokensHis view that high-quality projects should go directly to the stock market rather than issue tokens has circulated widely. He expanded on the reasoning.Listing a blockchain project is harder than listing a traditional internet project — internet companies need only address users, revenue and data, while blockchain companies must also handle compliance and regulation. But the payoff is larger, because the Nasdaq crypto sector holds only a few dozen stocks, making it easier for good projects to stand out. Issuing a token means competing against thousands.His two pieces of advice for founders: build real business with real customers and real revenue rather than telling stories, since Nasdaq has strict requirements on revenue and company size — crypto companies cannot list on the A-share market and face difficulty in Hong Kong. And accept that going public means embracing traditional finance and dealing with Wall Street, rather than playing with the community, posting on Twitter and holding meetups.He says he has persuaded several teams to pivot. No fewer than five Waterdrop portfolio companies are queuing for listings based on actual business rather than DAT-type structures. The fastest is Good Vision AI, where he serves as chairman — a company that originally planned a token but already had revenue, prompting him to advise expanding the AI business line and listing instead. It is about to list on Nasdaq.AI and Blockchain Are Two Sides of the Same CoinDa Shan frames his shift to AI as a natural extension of his mining background. Good Vision AI initially focused on token routing, designing computing power solutions for enterprise users facing capacity constraints.He describes AI and blockchain as "two sides of the same coin in the digital economy" — many AI practitioners have not realized blockchain's importance, and many blockchain practitioners have not realized AI is the key application for blockchain. He suggests researching both, and if energy is limited, betting on one is fine, but "praising one while belittling the other" is the mistake.On whether miners switching to AI hurts the industry, he argues the opposite. Computing power operators simply did the math during the bear market — mining AI tokens in the same space is more profitable than Bitcoin, so capacity naturally migrates. Once Bitcoin returns to $100,000 or $200,000, those operators come back. Meanwhile traditional institutions like MicroStrategy, ETFs and Stripe accumulate quietly during the bear market.That view has support in the data. IREN holds $2.8 billion in contracts across Microsoft, Nvidia, Perplexity and Figure AI. Hut 8 has its $9.8 billion Beacon Point lease. HIVE signed a $350 million GPU cloud deal lifting contracted annual recurring revenue to roughly $180 million.No AI Bubble Now, But Two Risk Triggers to WatchDa Shan concludes there is no AI bubble currently — though that does not mean one will not form, or that the market cannot collapse.His observation is that AI computing power is a seller's market. Any capacity coming online in the US and Japan is snapped up, including capacity available six months to a year ahead. Hardware, chip and storage companies are reporting strong results, and demand continues growing with large language model adoption.He identifies two potential triggers: macroeconomic variables including the midterm elections, and the market sentiment inflection point that IPOs of landmark companies like Anthropic could bring.Nvidia's most recent guidance supports the demand read — $108 billion for the third quarter against $103.9 billion expected, with CEO Jensen Huang saying AI has reached its inflection point. The margin picture is where the pressure showed, with gross margin guided to 74% from 75%, the first sequential decline of the cycle.RWA Is the Biggest Opportunity, and On-Chain Speed Is Retail's EdgeDa Shan believes RWA is the largest current opportunity in crypto, and says Waterdrop is in talks to potentially invest in an RWA project Binance is planning.On how retail investors compete against institutions, he offers two routes. The first is trading time for space — holding assets like Bitcoin long term without exiting easily, which makes a position untouchable by market manipulators. The second is on-chain opportunity equalization: as in the 2017 ICO era when on-chain assets were scarce and participation depended on who sent funds first, protocols increasingly let retail access the same cost basis as institutions.He warns that pre-IPO and crypto listing logic are similar — prices often fall back after the opening surge. If traditional finance's most elite operators enter crypto, "the losses will only be more severe." Retail should not follow blindly.His view on RWA carries a caveat visible in the data. Tokenized real-world assets have roughly tripled in a year to around $29-33 billion, with tokenized US Treasuries alone crossing $13 billion. But most large tokenized assets show minimal weekly transfer activity, and only around a tenth of RWA value is actively deployed in DeFi — issuance is outrunning usage.Long-Termism and Refusing to Chase EverythingAsked what separates people who stay in the industry from those who disappear, Da Shan named two things.The first is long-termism — the patience and belief to weather cycles. The second is being principled and not trying to make money from everything: thinking clearly about what you are good at and what you enjoy, and making money that makes you happy, because energy is limited and chasing every opportunity leads only to distraction.
