Kong Jianping, co-chairman of Canaan Technology (the world's first blockchain stock) and founder of Nano Labs, sat down for a wide-ranging conversation covering his journey from law school dropout to two-time Nasdaq founder, his views on Bitcoin as a macro anchor, why his listed company chose BNB over Bitcoin as its strategic reserve, and where he sees the next big opportunity in what he calls "Web4."From law school to Bitcoin in 2012Kong first encountered Bitcoin in 2012 — when most people still dismissed it as a scam. Despite graduating from law school, he never practiced law, choosing entrepreneurship from his first year of university. His early ventures included organising driving school recruitment on campus — a business that earned him hundreds of thousands per month before he voluntarily walked away, a pattern of moving on before markets peak that would define his career.Two Nasdaq listings, two different erasKong helped take Canaan Technology public in 2019 after a gruelling six-year journey through A-shares, the NEEQ board, Hong Kong stocks, and finally US markets — setting two Nasdaq records on listing day for in-person and online viewership. The listing required convincing institutions including Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank to endorse a company whose product "turns into money just by plugging in" — language regulators initially treated as a red flag for a Ponzi scheme.His second listing, Nano Labs in 2022, was completed in a far more hostile environment — Chinese concept stocks were effectively frozen following the Didi incident, during a crypto winter that coincided with a broader US market crash. Despite the timing, Nano Labs got through because its legal and regulatory groundwork was already solid. Kong credits luck more than judgment for both outcomes.Why BNB, not Bitcoin, for the listed companyKong's personal family office holds Bitcoin primarily, consistent with his view that Bitcoin is the anchor of Web3. But for his listed company's strategic reserve, he chose BNB — reasoning that Michael Saylor's Strategy had already established dominance in the corporate Bitcoin treasury space, and that the next best opportunity was the exchange platform coin of the world's leading crypto exchange.He initially planned a joint $100 million reserve alongside a larger participant, but regulatory concerns around stock price volatility led to a restructuring. The company ended up buying 130,000 BNB at over $600 per token — which rose to $1,300 before retracing. Kong views BNB's relative resilience, compared to Solana and Ethereum which declined more severely from their strategic reserve purchase prices, as validation of the thesis.Bitcoin as anchor — but AI is the sunKong expressed genuine long-term conviction in Bitcoin as the anchor of the future financial system, arguing that as AI increases wealth concentration globally, sovereign governments will have no choice but to print money — at which point Bitcoin's fixed supply becomes its defining advantage. He also cited stablecoins as genuinely more efficient than traditional fiat payment rails.However, he offered a sobering near-term framing: "Without this AI revolution, the Web3 industry is like the moon — sexy and visible. After AI came, AI is like the sun. As long as it rises in the sky, the moon and stars all become invisible." He believes that in three to five years, after AI's high-growth phase passes, Web3 and Bitcoin will reassert their relative strength against other industries.Web4: AI plus Web3, rebranded for a new eraKong coined the term "Web4" to describe the current AI-autonomous-agent era, arguing that "Web3 plus AI" is both technically imprecise and politically difficult to navigate — particularly in mainland China, where calling something "Web3" invites regulatory suspicion while "Web4, an AI autonomous network" is more likely to be welcomed. He has run nearly 40 offline events across China on this theme, with venues of 1,000-2,000 people per city — drawing not crypto natives but traditional industry entrepreneurs seeking to understand AI.Hong Kong, regulation, and the US dollar stablecoin advantageKong has been an early and consistent supporter of Hong Kong as the primary Web3 hub for overseas Chinese — taking that position when most of the industry was focused on Singapore. He credits Hong Kong's regulatory approach as among the best globally, characterising it as focused on financial stability rather than prohibition or unconstrained innovation.On the US stablecoin legislation, he was direct: the framework is designed to enhance the global competitiveness of dollar-denominated stablecoins, increasing competitive pressure on Hong Kong's stablecoin ambitions rather than opening a window for them.Advice for young people entering Web3 todayKong's closing message was consistent throughout the conversation — keep iterating, stay in one major field long enough to catch successive waves, and recognise that in this industry, choice of track matters more than effort applied to the wrong one. He argued that young people are structurally advantaged in the AI era because they are AI natives with faster learning cycles and smaller "ships" that can change direction quickly. The generation entering the workforce now, in his view, faces not structural unemployment but a genuine opportunity to overtake older generations who cannot adapt as quickly.His summary: "If you continue, keep iterating in one field, you may gradually catch up with the fast train of this era — and even play a greater role on it."
Weatherly
Anais