In this episode of Binance Meetups, Ye Tan. Financial heroine, 3.75 million followers on Weibo.
Her views on Bitcoin are ahead of many traditional finance people. This episode is about investing—there are 25 takeaways in total.
Bitcoin is almost set to replace gold and become the new generation of safe-haven asset.
When the US dollar has trouble, only three things can strengthen against the trend: gold, Bitcoin, and Chinese government bonds. When you look at an asset, don’t just ask whether it’s good by itself—watch which side it stands on when the dollar is in trouble.
The money for buying gold comes from three channels: central banks around the world, gold ETFs, and retail investors. A gold ETF tracks the gold price and lets you buy and sell like a stock. Retail investors are just minor players who run around under the banner of the price—they don’t get a say. The real pricing of gold is determined by central banks. Who’s buying the money together matters far more than judging right from wrong.
Insurance companies can use 1% of their total assets to buy gold. That’s RMB 199 billion, 338 tons—about eight times the central bank’s annual net purchases. Previously, it was essentially the central bank standing on the stage buying alone; going forward, both the central bank and insurance companies buy together. To judge the incremental money, you need to look for the policy loophole that is getting loosened. Once the policy opens, it can last for years.
Gold’s price rise is a measure of Trump’s panic. In the same period, New York gold rose 11.44% and London gold rose 11.1%. The gap reflects the mindset difference between investors in Europe and the US versus those in Asia. Read the mindset gap from prices—looking only at up or down provides no real information.
In this round of turmoil in the global bond market, China and Japan simultaneously reduced their holdings of US Treasuries. The US Treasury increased its buybacks—left hand to right hand—the effect only lasted a day. To read the bond market, look at what the biggest buyer is doing. The “market-stabilization” talking points can be effective for as little as a day.
In the first eight months before 2026, for the first time, when companies borrow, the method shifted to issuing bonds and issuing shares, surpassing bank loans. The real reason is that bank lending has been declining even faster. When you see historic numbers, first separate whether the part that’s rising is truly increasing, or whether the total is shrinking.
China Merchants Bank (CM Bank) packaged and sold credit card receivables of RMB 7.2 billion that they couldn’t get back. Among these debtors, 80% to 90% are considered high-quality Platinum customers by the bank—people aged 30 to 40, with stable income, who have averaged six years of unpaid balances. Assess credit risk by cash flow, not by labels. Even high-quality customers can’t pay collectively.
Of ten retail investors, seven end up losing money. In 2025, 80% of retail investors are losing, with an average loss of RMB 20,000 per person. When the market is good, they do a bit better—back in 2019 to 2020, it dropped to about 60% losing. In years like 2018 and 2022, 85% were losing.
Quant investing is funds that automatically buy and sell through computer programs. Even if you shut off all quant strategies, retail investors still find it hard to make money.
American retail investors can make money because they give their money to pension funds, or invest in index funds made by packaging a basket of stocks and holding for ten or twenty years. They profit from companies making money, without having to gamble against everyone else.
At the coldest point for sentiment, money moves in against the trend. At the hottest point, it gets smashed the hardest. These two things always happen at both ends at the same time. In September 2026, the combined trading volume on both exchanges was RMB 1.61 trillion, the lowest within the year. At the same time, the basket-stock ETF fund saw net inflows of RMB 78.196 billion that month. U.S. Tree Robotics surged 630% at the open, then got cut in half within 13 trading days. Shenqiang Group’s listing jumped 10 times within two days.
On the day the Fed rate hikes were implemented, gold prices rose for two straight days, tech stocks didn’t fall, and companies that outsource R&D to drug manufacturers even surged. The market was trading expectations—when the news actually comes out, it loses momentum. The most dangerous time is before the news becomes reality.
Mortgage rates at 3.1% are already the lowest in history, yet nobody is willing to borrow. Ordinary people rush to prepay their mortgages instead. Since houses became tradable in 1998, this has never happened. When a tool used for 20 years suddenly doesn’t work, it means the rules of this market cycle have changed.
In central bank data, residents’ long-term loans are actually fewer than personal housing loans. Data contradicting itself is information in itself.
It’s no longer an era when buying a home automatically means it will go up. National sales of new homes have fallen by more than half from their peak. Only second-hand homes in first-tier cities are still rising, while the number of listings for sale is shrinking.
Now people buy homes based on circles and segmentation. Within the same city, the split between prime locations and poor locations can be even harsher than the gap between different cities.
No matter how booming factories are, it can’t lift home prices. Hefei’s electronics and auto manufacturing surged 79%, while home prices in the same period kept falling. Sales at large department stores and big supermarkets are down 11.7%. Don’t expect consumption to pick up first. Money earned from the tech industry won’t automatically flow into the real estate market.
For provident fund loans, the interest rate used to be set by the central bank and approved by the State Council; now it’s directly determined by the State Council. This means provident fund rates could potentially be cut to levels close to those of government bonds. Large policy dividends often hide in tiny details like changing a few words in regulations.
Stablecoins are the next major financial asset after gold. The US requires that they must be backed by US dollar cash and US Treasuries with maturities within 93 days. This is essentially creating a demand for dollars that can’t be refused. If you don’t want to miss the exit, you have to get on the train. Hong Kong must accelerate stablecoin pilot programs.
AI competition is already a contest over national fortunes. The gap between China’s open-source models and the US, which used to be 12 months, has narrowed to 3 months.
Software is being turned into something as cheap as cabbage by AI. Once software becomes cabbage-priced, hardware becomes the real decision-making link.
A gathering of Silicon Valley elites in San Francisco—the only rule is not to talk about AI. When a sector’s frenzy peaks, it often shows up first in the exhaustion of people working in the industry.
After the US hikes rates, the renminbi paradoxically becomes one of the strongest currencies. The money earned from exporting more will lose back in financial markets—one side goes in, the other side goes out. She doesn’t believe the RMB will fall sharply. The exchange-rate account can’t be calculated only as a trade account.
Head-end investors use technology stocks, plus bonds and fixed-income instruments like deposits, to hedge against inflation. Insurance serves as the baseline layer; what they chase is certainty. They also diversify into foreign currencies, avoiding those that move in lockstep with the renminbi. Instead, they choose currencies that can hedge RMB depreciation: the Canadian dollar, Australian dollar, US dollar, and euro.
