Author: May
At the 2025 Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference, May, the chief editor of Bitpush, conducted an exclusive interview with Mountain, the founder of Water Drop Capital. He shared his impressions of the conference, highlights (including high political presence, Bitcoin spirit, and new technological applications), and delved into the development trends of the Bitcoin ecosystem, how to attract price-focused individuals to the technological ecosystem, potential niche tracks (such as BTC Fi and payment), and regional market layouts (US dominance and emerging opportunities in Hong Kong).
May: Let's discuss your feelings about attending the conference today
Mountain: This is the first time the Bitcoin conference has been held in Vegas in so many years, and it was quite unique. Based on my observations, there are several highlights to share. First, Vegas itself is very distinctive, a place in the US where angels and demons coexist. People also call it the "sin city," which is very similar to the early impressions many had about Bitcoin, so Bitcoin and Vegas have a very similar temperament. The most obvious difference in this conference compared to previous ones is the significantly higher concentration of politicians. I didn't count carefully, but I felt there were at least 20 guests from Washington. From big names like the former US Vice President Pence, including Eric Trump (Trump's son), and his younger son Donald Trump Jr., to several state legislators and Congress members Cicia, they all came here. The density of politicians is the most notable difference from previous Bitcoin conferences. The second highlight is that the Bitcoin conference still retains the very traditional Bitcoin spirit. We can see many elements of anti-centralization. For example, there was a charity auction for Ross Ulbricht (founder of the Dark Web Silk Road), who was in prison in recent years and was just released by Trump a few months ago (late 2024). His works and personal items from prison, including his personal ID card, were put up for auction, which was very interesting. This is something that would be hard to see in other countries, perhaps only in the US, at a Bitcoin conference. We also saw many Bitcoin artists who created works representing libertarianism, geek spirit, and Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision. Besides listening to speeches, it was also a fun place to explore. Not just art pieces, but we also saw many CyberTrucks and Rolls-Royces, all very Bitcoin-flavored, which was the second highlight. The third highlight is another difference. In previous years, exhibitors at Bitcoin conferences were mostly Bitcoin miners, Bitcoin wallets, and Bitcoin-related merchants selling a few types of items. But this time, we saw many booths based on Bitcoin blockchain applications, such as BTC Fi (combination of Bitcoin and DeFi), new technologies like BitVM, Bitcoin Layer 2, cross-chain, and even OP_CAT. These emerging Bitcoin ecosystem technologies all came to exhibit. This is very different from other public chain Hackathons or Ethereum ecosystem conferences. If you go to such public chain conferences, you feel like you've heard all the technologies, and they've been hyped up many times. But at the Bitcoin ecosystem conference, you hear many terms you've never heard before, which is strange because most people think Bitcoin is just Bitcoin, with nothing new. So this conference was very interesting. That's all I'll say for now.
May: You mentioned many developments in the Bitcoin ecosystem. We also noticed that at this conference, some people seem to only care about how much Bitcoin has risen, how much big money is involved, and how much Wall Street capital has entered. Another part of people, like a technical person I met, said he only cares about who comes, which politicians speak, and which old money enters, focusing solely on the coin. How do you view this collision and fusion? How can we get those price-focused people to pay more attention to the Bitcoin ecosystem and understand it, which is quite a technical thing?
Mountain: This is a good question and probably what many people are wondering. Because now everyone sees that Bitcoin's fundamentals have changed dramatically. Mainly, the US Bitcoin bill requires the government to buy 1 million BTC. Moreover, 32 states have submitted state bills, and each state might buy several thousand, as three states have already approved the bill, with Texas being the latest. This could add up to a demand for purchasing several million BTC. Besides these government and state governments, we've seen many listed companies like MicroStrategy, Marathon Digital in the US, and an endless stream of new companies transforming to buy Bitcoin using balance sheet strategy. Including companies in the Hong Kong stock market like Boyaa Interactive, Huobi Technology, and Meitu, they have also announced entering the crypto market by buying coins. We can imagine that as these companies and governments hold more and more BTC, they won't be content to just let the Bitcoin sit idle, which would be wasteful and meaningless. They will definitely hope to gain benefits from these BTC under safe conditions. For example, if I'm a company holding 1,000 BTC, currently worth over $100 million, with a 5% APY, it means the company can have over $5 million in net profit annually with almost no cost. Who would want to give up this profit? This is what BTC Fi is doing. I believe BTC Fi is responsible for bringing more and more Bitcoin from cold wallets to active on-chain. Our Water Drop Capital has been focusing on investing in top Bitcoin ecosystem projects in the past few years, all in our portfolio. Like already launched projects such as Stacks, Merlin, Runes protocol, B² Network, Lorenzo, Luminex, and BounceBit, we've invested in all of them, and they're performing well, even with high revenues. This is rare in the crypto world, as we know most crypto enterprises have no revenue or profit, completely dependent on token prices. But Bitcoin ecosystem projects basically all have very good profits. I think this is a new paradigm that changes the previous industry's bubble and the situation where startup companies struggle to burn money. That's why we're particularly focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem and have made many investments in the BTC Fi field, because we believe this market will grow larger. We've calculated that currently, only about 200,000 BTC are participating in the Bitcoin ecosystem through Staking and various BTC Fi. Everyone expects 10% of Bitcoin, about 2.1 million BTC, to participate in BTC Fi, which means there's still a tenfold space. I think this is the most certain and main opportunity in the crypto world.
May: You just mentioned many niche tracks in the ecosystem, such as payment, earning interest, security, and infrastructure. What tracks do you think are worth paying attention to or have the potential to break out in the future?
Dashan: I think these all have potential, and it's hard to say which one has the most potential, but they each have their highlights. For example, the BTC Fi track is actually about continuously attracting inactive BTC to become active. Whether it's using them as arbitrage trading pairs to obtain trading profits, or as collateral for lending protocols, including becoming liquidity providers for trading pairs to provide TVL, they actually contribute a lot of value, so earning returns is justified. This cake is very large, and you don't need to become an industry leader; as long as you can cut a slice of the cake and bring a certain amount of Bitcoin into the protocol, making money will be very easy, pure profit, without needing to issue tokens, just providing services. As for payment, I think this track's ceiling is indeed very high. We know the Lightning Network has been online for many years, and in many places, including this Bitcoin conference, many cafes support Bitcoin payments via the Lightning Network. We saw many booths offering a direct 10% discount for Bitcoin payments. The Lightning Network's TPS is 1 million, which is as fast as VISA and MasterCard's traditional payment systems, with very low costs. Some people are even exploring combining the Lightning Network with AI payment, creating projects for payments between AI agents. We've invested in a project called AILayer, specifically solving payment interactions for AI agents, which I think is very promising. So I believe the bottom layer is BTC Fi, the upper layer is payment, and combining them can increase the overall Bitcoin chain's activity. Higher chain activity means miners can earn money, and higher income can help iterate and buy better machines to maintain network security, creating a virtuous cycle.
May: Yes, very good. Looking at the market from this region, will the North American market still be the largest in the future? Are you considering developing in other emerging potential markets?
Dashan: First, I must admit that because Bitcoin was born in the United States, and due to its culture, system, and especially the strong support for the crypto industry by the new president, currently no region can compare with the United States. With the Vice President attending and the President tweeting support, this level of support is unprecedented. So I believe that for a long time, the United States will remain the industry leader. We should try to come to the United States more and interact more with American peers. However, as Chinese, we also see that Hong Kong's policies are very good. In many policy aspects, Hong Kong is even ahead of the United States. It's just that Hong Kong's entire financial market is much smaller than the US, so we can't expect Hong Kong to quickly surpass the United States. But after all, Hong Kong is a Chinese territory, and we have invested heavily in Hong Kong. We collaborated with Pacific Asset Management to create the Pacific Bit Capital fund brand, launching several funds, including VC funds, pure Bitcoin funds, quantitative trading funds, and hedge funds. We've also been exploring the RWA track within a compliant framework, with good results. So I think if more Chinese participate in this track, we don't need to surpass the United States, but at least we won't fall behind and can cut a slice of the cake. Let Hong Kong or Chinese people's share in the Bitcoin financial world not be lower than their share in traditional finance. We know that on Wall Street, the traditional financial market, the proportion is perhaps dozens or even hundreds of times that of Hong Kong. But at least in the Bitcoin or crypto field, not being lower than that proportion would be basically satisfactory.
