Bitpush Exclusive Interview with Waterdrop Capital Founder Dashan

Author: May At the 2025 Las Vegas Bitcoin Conference, Dashan, the founder of Waterdrop Capital, was interviewed by May, the editor-in-chief of bitpush. He shared his experience of attending the conference, the highlights of the conference (including the high concentration of politicians, the embodiment of the spirit of Bitcoin, and the new application of ecological technology), and discussed in depth the development trend of the Bitcoin ecosystem, how to attract price followers to turn to the technology ecosystem, potential segments (such as BTC Fi and payments), and regional market layout (US-led and emerging opportunities in Hong Kong).

May: Let’s talk about today’s feelings regarding the conference.

Daishan: This is the first time in so many years that Bitcoin Conference has been held in the city of Vegas, and this conference is also very distinctive. Following my observations, there are a few highlights to share. The first is Vegas, a place that is very distinctive in its own right, belonging to the United States where angels and demons exist at the same time. Everyone also calls it sin city, which is sin city, which is very similar to the impression that many outsiders had of Bitcoin in the early years, so Bitcoin is very similar to Vegas itself. The most obvious difference between this conference and the previous ones is that the concentration of politicians is much larger, I didn’t calculate it carefully, but I feel that at least one or two dozen guests are politicians from Washington. As big as former Vice President Mike Pence, including Eric Trump (Trump’s son) and his youngest son, Donald Trump Jr., they all came to the scene, including several state legislators, Congressman Cicia, they all came here. The concentration of politicians is very high, which is the most obvious point that distinguishes it from previous Bitcoin conferences.
The second highlight is that the Bitcoin Conference still retains the very traditional Bitcoin spirit. We can see that there are a lot of points against centralization, some elements. For example, there is a charity auction, there is Ross Ulbricht (Ross is the founder of the dark web Silk Road), everyone knows that he was in prison for the past few years, and he was just released by Trump a few months ago (at the end of 2024), and some of his works in prison, as well as some of his daily necessities in prison, including his personal ID card, were put up for auction, which is very interesting. This is very difficult to see in other countries, and perhaps only in the United States, such a phenomenon can be seen at the Bitcoin Conference. Including we also see a lot of Bitcoin artists, who have created a lot of works that represent liberalism, represent the geek spirit, and represent the original Satoshi Nakamoto vision, which can be seen at the Bitcoin Conference. In addition to listening to lectures, this is also a fun place to visit the exhibition. Not only the artwork, but we also saw a lot of CyberTrucks, including Rolls-Royce, which still smelled of Bitcoin anyway, and that was the second highlight.
The third highlight, I think there’s another difference. In the past few years, more exhibitors at our past Bitcoin conferences may have been Bitcoin miners, Bitcoin wallets, and some merchants of Bitcoin elements, and they sell things like this, very single, just a few. But this time, we also saw a lot of booths at the Bitcoin Conference that are based on the Bitcoin blockchain and many applications, such as BTC Fi (the combination of Bitcoin and DeFi), some very new technologies, BitVM, including Bitcoin’s Layer2, cross-chain, and even OP_CAT, similar to such endless technologies on the Bitcoin ecosystem, they are all here to exhibit. Therefore, this is very different from some hackathon or Ethereum ecological conferences of other public chains. If you go to a public chain conference like that, it feels as if all the technologies have been heard, and they have been hyped many times. But on the contrary, when you come to the Bitcoin Ecosystem Conference, you hear a lot of terms that you haven’t heard, which is very strange, because most people think that Bitcoin is Bitcoin, and there is nothing new. So this conference was very interesting. I’ll start with so much.

May: You’ve just mentioned a lot of progress in the Bitcoin ecosystem. We also found that at this conference, some people seem to only pay attention to how much Bitcoin has risen now, how much money there is, and how much Wall Street money has come in to participate. There is also a part of people, I met a person who does technical stuff before, and he said that he can see who comes, which politician has come to speak, which old money man has come in again, and he only cares about coins, things built on this blockchain. What do you think of this kind of meaning that is a bit like colliding and then blending? How to make those who only pay attention to the price pay more attention to our Bitcoin ecology and understand the Bitcoin ecology? I think it’s still a pretty technical thing.

Dashan: This question is very well asked and may also be a concern for many people. Because now everyone sees that the entire fundamental situation of Bitcoin has undergone significant changes. The main point is the Bitcoin bill in the United States, where their government plans to buy 1 million Bitcoins. Additionally, 32 states have submitted state bills, and each state may need to buy tens of thousands, as three states have already approved this bill, with Texas being the latest to pass it. This could add up to a demand for several million Bitcoins. In addition to these governments, state governments, we have also seen a lot of listed companies, such as MicroStrategy, Marathon Digital in the United States, and an endless stream of new companies switching to buy bitcoin and using this balance sheet strategy to buy bitcoin. Including Boyaa Interactive, Huobi Technology, and Meitu in the Hong Kong stock market, they have actually announced that they will enter the cryptocurrency market by buying coins.
We can imagine that as these companies hold more and more Bitcoin, including the increasing amount held by the government, they would not be willing to just leave the Bitcoin sitting there unused, as that would be very wasteful and meaningless. They would definitely want to gain returns on these Bitcoins under safe conditions. For example, as a company, if I hold 1,000 Bitcoins, which is now worth over 100 million dollars, if I have a 5% APY return, it means the company can have a net profit of over 5 million every year, with no cost, very, very simple. Who would be willing to give up that profit? So this is what BTC Fi is doing. I believe BTC Fi is responsible for activating more and more Bitcoin from everyone’s cold wallets onto the chain. In the past few years, we have focused on investing in some of the top projects in the Bitcoin ecosystem, which are our portfolios. For example, those that have already been launched, like Stacks, like Merlin, like Runes protocol, B² Network, Lorenzo, Luminex, including BounceBit, we have all invested, and these are all online, performing well, and even many of them have high income. This is very rare in the cryptocurrency circle, because we know that most companies in the cryptocurrency circle have no revenue and no profits, and rely entirely on the price of tokens. But like BTC ecological projects, they basically have very good profits. I think this is a new paradigm to change the previous situation where there were too many bubbles in the industry, or it was difficult for startups in the industry to continue to burn money. That’s why we are very focused on the Bitcoin ecosystem and have made a lot of investments in the BTC Fi space, because we believe that this market will get bigger and bigger. According to our statistics, there are only about 200,000 bitcoins involved in the bitcoin ecosystem, and staking includes various BTC Fi. The expectation is that 10% of Bitcoin, or 2.1 million Bitcoins, will be able to participate in BTC Fi, and there is still 10 times more room in this case. I think this is the most certain and important opportunity in the cryptocurrency circle.

May: You just mentioned many sub-sectors within the ecosystem, such as payments, interest generation, or security, all of which involve infrastructure. What other sub-sectors do you think will emerge in the future, and which ones deserve more attention or have the potential to explode?

Big Mountain: I think these are actually very potential, it’s hard to say which one has the most potential, but they all have their own highlights. For example, the BTC Fi track is actually constantly attracting those inactive BTC to be active. Whether they are used as arbitrage trading pairs to obtain trading profits, or as collateral for lending protocols, including LPs to be trading pairs to provide TVL, they actually contribute a lot of value, so they should get income. This cake is very big, you don’t need to be the head of the industry, as long as you can cut a piece of cake and let a certain amount of bitcoin into the protocol, it will be very easy to make money.
As for payment, I think the ceiling in this sector is indeed very high. We know that 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 see a lot of booths on-site, and if you pay with Bitcoin, you can get an immediate discount of 10%, which is to support Bitcoin payments. The Lightning Network’s TPS of 1 million is very fast, comparable to traditional payment systems like VISA and MasterCard, with very low costs. Many people are even discussing combining the Lightning Network with AI payment to create projects for payments between AI agents. We also invested in a project called AILayer, specifically designed to solve payment interactions for AI agents, which I think has great potential. So I believe the underlying layer is BTC Fi, and the upper layer is payment. The combination can increase the overall activity on the Bitcoin chain. With high on-chain activity, miners can earn money, and with higher income, they can iterate to buy better machines to maintain higher network security, creating a virtuous cycle.

May: Yes, very good. So looking at the market segments in this region, will the North American market still be the largest in the future? Are there any considerations to develop in other emerging potential markets?

Dashan: First of all, I have to admit that because Bitcoin was born in the United States, the United States due to its culture, institutions, and especially the strong support for the cryptocurrency industry after the new president took office, it seems that there is no region comparable to the United States at present. The vice presidents are here, and the presidents have tweeted their support, and this support is unparalleled. So I think for a long time, the United States was still the industry leader. We need to come to the United States as often as possible and interact with our American counterparts.
But as Chinese, we see that Hong Kong’s policy is also very good. Hong Kong is even ahead of the United States in many local policies. It’s just that Hong Kong’s entire financial market is much smaller than that of the United States, and Hong Kong cannot be expected to surpass the United States anytime soon. But after all, Hong Kong is a Chinese territory, and we have a lot of layout in Hong Kong than Shengshui Capital. We have cooperated with Pacific Asset Management to develop the brand of Pacific Bisheng Fund, and have issued several funds, including VC funds, pure Bitcoin funds, quantitative trading funds, and hedge funds. Including the recent exploration in the RWA track, these products are made under the compliance framework, and the results are not bad. So I think if the Chinese are more involved in this track, there is no need to say that they have to surpass the United States, but at least they will not fall behind and can cut a piece of cake. Let the share of Hong Kong or Chinese people in the Bitcoin financial world not be lower than the share in traditional finance. We know that Wall Street is also the absolute leader in the traditional financial market, and the proportion may be dozens or even hundreds of times that of Hong Kong. But at least in the Bitcoin or cryptocurrency space, not below that percentage, I think it’s basically satisfied.