Primitive Ventures

Asia accounts for 60% of global crypto users and drives the largest share of retail liquidity. Yet many founders overlook simple facts, like: - Chinese users can register on Binance/OKX with a China ID without issue - The Korean market has no perps - Wallet overlap between USDT and USDC in the region is under 3% In collaboration with @ForesightVen, we’ve crafted the ultimate GTM playbook for Asia - the most actionable guide for founders looking to thrive globally.

Primitive Weekly POV Snapshot This week, our team dives deep into how geopolitics is reshaping China's commodity strategy, why China is leapfrogging the West in AI adoption, the Pokémon-ification of software development, and the inevitable unemployment of VCs. Here is the breakdown from the PV team👇 1/ 👀 The Petroyuan Pivot @DoveyWan on the geopolitical move that changes everything: Trump locked his China visit before Khamenei died. Timing too perfect. China just lost its Iran escalation card—15% of crude imports, gone overnight. What happens next: Beijing pivots hard to Gulf states and Central Asia. More barter deals with Russia and Africa to cut USD exposure. Manufacturing accelerates out of China. Trump's real message: "Your Belt and Road ally just got decapitated. Now let's talk Taiwan." 2/🚀China's AI Adoption Curve @adaYen72 calls this China's "mobile payment moment" all over again: Remember when the West was stuck on credit cards while China moved to QR codes? Same thing happening with AI. West still hesitant. China already sprinting—no legacy systems holding them back. Why this matters: Less baggage means faster adoption. China isn't trying to fix old infrastructure. They're just building new. 3/ 🦞Pokémon Dev Era @YettaSing on what software development is becoming: A friend's GitHub is flooded with agents—scanning repos, submitting PRs everywhere. How does a regular programmer compete with that? Answer: they don't. It's not human vs human anymore. It's trained agent vs trained agent. The new game: Software development is now about who trains the best agents. We've entered the era of computational Pokémon battles. 4/ ☹️VCs Getting Automated @0xtony0x just added AI Brad Pitt to Primitive's investment committee: "Future of VC is unemployment." The reality: If agents can run due diligence, what's left for human VCs? Taste, relationships, and the ability to train even better agents. Everything else is getting automated out. Stay tuned. Stay primitive. 📷

Primitive Weekly POV Snapshot This week, our team explored what it means to build with agents instead of junior headcount, why crypto is increasingly serving as live market infrastructure during geopolitical stress, how AI is widening the gap between top operators and everyone else, and why “AI installing AI” is already becoming a real service layer in China. Here is the breakdown from the PV team 👇 1/ 🤖 The Agentic Firm @DoveyWan shared how two investment-associate agents powered by @openclaw are already handling deck prep, research synthesis, and simulation work at a cost far below a traditional junior team. As more analytical workflows become automatable, scaling no longer depends on adding headcount. The constraint shifts to judgment, taste, and the ability to direct agents well. 2/ 🛰️ Crypto as Live Market Infrastructure @0xtony0x highlighted how, during geopolitical shocks, on-chain markets stayed open while traditional systems were offline. BTC, oil, gold perps, and prediction markets all absorbed real-time demand for hedging and price discovery. When TradFi sleeps, crypto trades. This is where crypto starts to matter less as a sector, and more as infrastructure. 3/ 🧠 From 10× to 100× @YettaSing reflected on how AI is no longer just a productivity tool — it is a multiplier on existing judgment. AI does not flatten talent gaps. It amplifies them. The best operators are not just working faster with AI. They are compounding faster. 4/ 🛠️ AI Installing AI @adaYen72 pointed to an emerging micro-economy in China: people now pay for onsite or remote setup of agent tools. Humans paying AI to install AI is no longer a joke. It is already a business. Once agent tooling becomes valuable enough, service layers emerge around it. That’s the snapshot for this week. Stay tuned. Stay primitive.🛡️

Primitive founder @DoveyWan at 2026 HK Consensus, in conversation with Tim Grant, CEO of Deus X Capital: Crypto’s first era was about banking the unbanked. 👀What comes next is brokering the unbrokered. As AI compresses intellectual labor, earning purely from time gets harder. Capital ownership starts to matter a lot more.👇

Primitive Weekly POV snapshot This week, our team dives deep into how AI agents are replacing analysts, our thesis behind backing @opinionlabsxyz to capture the East-West split in prediction markets, the ruthless distribution playbook in consumer AI, and why the future of payments is on-chain. Here is the breakdown from the PV team 👇 1/ 😵The End of the Analyst Era @DoveyWan built a team of investment analyst agents using @openclaw . For just $200/month, these agents handle pitch prep, surface critical signals, and run complex investment simulations. >The old model: High economic growth = high employment. >The new reality: We are entering an era of ultra-high growth and ultra-high unemployment. Unless human analysts have proprietary insight, taste, or access, agentic cross-pollination will replace them entirely. 2/👀 Prediction Markets 2.0: The Great Divergence @YettaSing outlines our full investment thesis on @opinionlabsxyz "seed-stage" underdog from the East that quietly hit $1.5B in weekly volume. >The Paradox: Assets can converge globally, but opinions are local. The West concentrates on sports and politics, while the East thrives on pop culture and local narratives. >The East-West Split: Opinion Labs captures dispersed attention. For the 2026 South Korean local election, Opinion Labs did $52M in volume compared to Polymarket’s $482K. >The AI Scaling Layer: To handle infinite local opinions without fragmenting liquidity, Opinion Labs uses multi-agent AI to structure markets and resolve unstructured information at scale. Prediction markets have entered 2.0. The West optimizes for financialization and hedging uncertainty at scale. The East turns collective judgment into a living, internet-native participatory system. more here>> x.com/primitivecrypt… 3/💻 The Consumer AI War: Distribution > Compute @adaYen72 breaks down ByteDance's Doubao and its massive success, proving that the future of consumer AI is about ruthless distribution, not just raw compute. > The Doubao Playbook: Entering the market late, Doubao bypassed coding benchmarks to focus on engineering viral entertainment. By blasting relatable everyday consumer features through the Douyin algorithm, it hit a staggering 70M+ DAU, leapfrogging early movers. > The Global Lesson: We see the exact same playbook in the West, with Google baking Gemini into billions of Android phones to close the gap on ChatGPT. Doubao's textbook GTM shows that the crown in consumer AI goes to the players who can turn raw tech into everyday products through distribution monopolies and manufactured virality. 4/ 🤖 Agentic Payments: The On-chain Inevitability @0xtony0x highlights AI as an evolutionary force that prioritizes the most efficient platforms to execute human intent. >The Delegated Economy: AI is already executing economic activities, placing 200M orders through Qwen during the Chinese New Year. >The Path of Least Friction: Money follows the second law of thermodynamics, flowing to the road of lowest cost. Because AI demands extreme efficiency, the future of agentic payments will inevitably happen on-chain. That’s the snapshot for this week. Stay tuned. Stay primitive.🛡️

Primitive Weekly POV snapshot: This week, our team dives deep into why localization wins in prediction markets, why we invest in @tenbinlabs and why the "Equity Perp" window is the next big global access play. Here is the breakdown from the PV team👇 1/ 🌍 Prediction Markets: Localization is the Moat @DoveyWan challenges the "one size fits all" view of prediction markets.Most platforms miss a key point: Category Mix: >West (Kalshi/Poly): Dominated by Sports & Politics (~80%+). It's a "Reality Show" economy for whales. >East (Opinion): Politics is constrained, but culture and speculation thrive. Just as RedNote is distinct from Instagram, prediction markets will split into regional "recipes." Localization isn't just a feature but the path to compounding repeat volume through cultural curation. 2/ 👏The RWA Liquidity Trap: Enter Tenbin. Stablecoin payments are onboarding the next wave of capital, but existing RWAs are stuck in a "liquidity tax" death spiral. @0xtony0x introduces Tenbin—our latest bet to fix this. Tenbin is the first tokenization platform designed to bring CME-grade depth directly on-chain with: >0% mint/redemption fees. >RFQ-first integration for instant price discovery. >A modular stack for Commodities and FX. We’re moving the world’s most liquid markets at the speed of DeFi. 3/ 📈 The Rise of On-chain Equity Perps @YettaSing drops a massive deep dive on why Equity Perps are the ultimate "Export of Access." The US doesn’t just export dollars; it exports access. Stablecoins did this for T-bills; Equity Perps are doing it for stocks. The Thesis: >By turning equities into plug-and-play collateral, we are moving toward a global tokenized margin network. >The Reality: 24/7 trading and 1:1 capital efficiency are flipping the script on CEXs. >The Risk: The window is closing. As US regulators (SEC/CFTC) begin studying perps, the "offshore" speed advantage will eventually meet onshore rails. The time to scale is now. 4/👀 Macro Check: High-Level Fragility. Is the "Hard Landing" closer than we think? @adaYen72 points out a dangerous divergence in the LMEX (London Metal Exchange Index). >2022: Prices were high on "free money" and fear (Real yields at -0.5%). >2026: Prices are at the same highs, but money is expensive (Real yields at +2%). This is a physical squeeze in a high-rate environment. Corporates running massive capex on 2% real rates have zero margin for error. If cash flow misses, debt service explodes. With sticky supply-driven inflation, there is no "Fed Put" to save us. We are seeing max complacency before a potential hard landing. That’s the snapshot for this week. Stay tuned. Stay primitive. 🛡️

Thesis led by @0XTony0X Excited to support Tenbin @tenbinlabs @ballsyalchemist @hocryptogu @jake_lang Tenbin is the first tokenization platform designed to solve the structural liquidity trap of existing RWAs by bridging CME-grade depth directly on-chain. The Macro Driver As stablecoin payments onboard the next wave of institutional and retail capital, the demand for diverse RWA exposure is reaching a tipping point. Commodities and FX represent a massive, untapped TAM—the inevitable next step for a maturing on-chain economy. The Friction in Status Quo Current commodity tokens like PAXG and XAUT are bogged down by legacy friction. With 25bps mint/redemption fees and fragmented liquidity, they often fall into "bootstrapping" death spirals, making efficient price discovery nearly impossible for high-volume traders. The Tenbin Model Tenbin strips away this complexity to offer a leaner, more efficient primitive: - Zero Friction: 0% mint and redemption fees, removing the "liquidity tax" of incumbents. - RFQ-First: Direct RFQ integration bypasses bootstrapping hurdles for instant price discovery. - Infinite Scalability: A modular approach that makes expanding into new Commodities or FX as simple as managing CME exposure. - Maximum Efficiency: 1:1 capital-efficient collateralization with the future potential for yield-bearing FX and Gold. Tenbin is architecting a unified financial stack where the world’s most liquid markets finally move at the speed of DeFi.

For blockchain to becomes the global financial infrastructure , we need liquidity for tokenized assets. Without liquidity, there is no utility. Thrilled to back @tenbinlabs, a tokenization platform that brings CME liquidity to RWA, starting with FX and commodities.

Prediction markets evolve differently by region. Western markets optimize for depth in sports and politics, while Eastern platforms reflect a broader but thinner category mix driven by culture and crypto. 👇

AI and blockchain. Machines and @USDC. Looking forward to exploring more with @openmind_agi.

Circle 🤝 @openmind_agi We’re excited to collaborate with OpenMind to develop foundational standards for machine-to-machine payments. Together, we plan to bring USDC-powered micropayment protocols to life and shape the infrastructure for autonomous, real-world AI transactions. Read our agentic payments proposal on the x402 GitHub: github.com/coinbase/x402/…

Powered by @NVIDIA Jetson Thor, the OpenMind BrainPack brings next-gen autonomy to humanoids and quadrupeds. Thor gives OM1 the compute to run cutting-edge AI models, navigate real-world urban environments, and uphold spectator privacy. As robots gain new capabilities, Thor ensures they run smoothly, safely, and intelligently.

Monad Mainnet is now live! Check it out here: app.monad.xyz app.monad.xyz

🛰️ SpaceComputer x EigenCloud 🛰️ EigenDA will become a cornerstone of our stack, anchoring data availability for both Earth-based execution and orbital consensus. We're bringing @eigencloud with us to space!

Yetta @YettaSing and I will be at Token2049. @primitivecrypto is co-hosting two events with our portfolio companies @chaoslabs and @SentientAGI: - private dinner with @SentientAGI (DM me for link) - happy hour with @chaoslabs and @FlowTraders luma.com/9mkwxylk Come say hi!

Ethena powered dollar savings is now live for the 280m+ users on Binance Hold USDe in Binance for 12% APR on unlimited size Enjoy 🔸🔸🔸

Introducing the OpenMind App Now available for iOS and Android: openmind.org/app We are accepting users off the waitlist each week starting today What you need to know to participate in Season 1 🧵👇

Cheap stablecoin transactions continue to be one of the most important sources of large-scale value that crypto provides today. Excited to see @codexfx joining the arena as an L2 and thinking explicitly about synergy between itself and ethereum L1 from day one.