Zhang Zi

CEO & Co-Founder @podcastaqua | Decoding macro, Web3 & exponential tech | Writing The Genesis Block
For collabs & inquiries: [email protected]

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

Digital art isn’t dead. It’s being repriced.

Most people still look at digital art through the lens of the last cycle - hype, speculation, fast flips. That misses what’s actually happening now.

The real story is that culture is moving onchain, attention is becoming financialized, and digital objects are starting to behave more like premium internet property than collectibles.

The best digital art won’t just be “content”. It will be status, distribution, identity, provenance, and scarce cultural real estate all in one.

If you still think this was just a 2021-2022 trend, you’re probably underestimating one of the most important asset classes of the internet era.

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

Exactly! that’s what makes it interesting. It’s not just one repetitive farm loop, it’s someone moving up by combining real activity, testing, and actual feedback across the ecosystem. That kind of climb feels way more organic and proves the system is rewarding people who genuinely engage from different angles, not just spam one mechanic.

If conversion is something you’re exploring, feel free to DM.

[Andy @andyyy]

Perps, stablecoins, tokenization, prediction markets, and vaults.

The Starting 5.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

“After relocating from Berlin to Silicon Valley, boredom at a new school led me somewhere unexpected: my dad’s SAP Lab, where fast internet, endless reading, and early exposure to technology sparked a lasting obsession.”

Our host @chainTzi sits down with @michaelh_0g of @0G_labs to unpack that journey — from early curiosity and a deepening fascination with tech to his entry into Web3 and the path that ultimately led him to found his company.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

“What if your Web3 identity begins not as personal branding, but as a commitment to prove something to yourself?”

@chainTzi sits down with @dcbuilder to unpack the story behind the DC Builder name, the role of pseudonymity, and why crypto made it possible for merit to matter more than pedigree.

They revisit the 2021 analyst era, the influence of DeFi Twitter, and the unique dynamic of entering the space through ideas first — a path that took DC from research and writing into a deeper desire to actually build.

The episode also explores how the word “Builder” became a kind of personal pressure mechanism, why pseudonymous identities can create sharper contrast and stronger recall, and how Web3 reshapes status by rewarding what you create and contribute over who you are in the offline world.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

“What if AI is giving us a rare opportunity to rebuild the internet on entirely new foundations?”

@chainTzi sits down with Karan Sirdesai (@karansirdesai), Founder of @miranetwork, to explore the story behind Mira and the early belief that AI was never going to be just another passing technology wave.

The episode follows Karan’s path from teaching himself how to build, sending cold DMs, and experimenting with crypto arbitrage, to working alongside figures like Balaji Srinivasan and Sandeep Nailwal — experiences that helped shape his view long before the broader market fully understood where AI was heading.

The conversation also digs into why Karan has repeatedly taken the unconventional route, how his time at Accel gave him an early look at frontier AI companies, and why the speed of progress in AI made one thing impossible to ignore: this shift won’t just transform startups or software — it will redefine how people work, create, think, and engage with the internet itself.”

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

“Bitcoin was the first distributed systems paper I read that had an economic layer built directly into it — and that changed everything.”

@chaintzi sits down with @averyching, Co-Founder & CTO of @Aptos, to walk through his path — from working on high-performance computing and supercomputers, to scaling massive data infrastructure at Meta, to the moment he came across Bitcoin and realized crypto was essentially distributed systems with incentives baked in from day one. That realization eventually became the foundation for co-founding Aptos Labs.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

Zhang Zi @chainTzi sits down with @david_enim, Co-Founder of Valory, for a deep look at what it actually takes to bring autonomous agents into crypto at scale.

His time at https://t.co/eszxMRSo8w made one thing obvious: building on a single chain can sharpen your focus, but it also boxes you in. Sooner or later, the work shifts away from agents themselves and turns into selling blockspace, pushing ecosystems, and packaging infrastructure stories.

Valory was born out of rejecting that trap. The idea: treat agents as chain-agnostic power users — entities that move freely across networks, work alongside humans, and unlock entirely new ways of interacting with on-chain systems.

The early bet on DAOs as the first customer didn’t play out as expected. Sluggish decision-making, fuzzy ownership, and broken feedback loops made them tough partners.

But the underlying thesis never cracked: agents and crypto are a natural fit as primitives — and the market may finally be ready for what that combination unlocks.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

Zhang Tzi (@chainTzi) sits down with @david_enim, Co-Founder of Valory, to break down what it actually takes to build autonomous agents in crypto today.

Years at https://t.co/eszxMRSo8w taught David one key lesson: a single chain can sharpen focus, but it also locks you in — every new environment adds friction instead of momentum. So rather than trying to scale within one ecosystem, Valory took a different path: building infrastructure that lets autonomous agents operate across chains, coordinate at scale, and act as real participants in open markets.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

“My starting point was central banking. Then MIT happened — and before long I was mining Ethereum from my dorm room.”

In this episode, @chainTzi sits down with @annakaz from @Vana to unpack the shift from studying institutions and monetary policy to entering crypto through MIT’s deeply conviction-driven Bitcoin community at the dawn of Ethereum.

[Aqua Podcast @podcastaqua]

“Gary Gensler was teaching a class while I was on campus. I skipped it — and I’ve regretted it ever since.”

@chainTzi sits down with @annakaz, founder of @Vana, to talk about the small moments that end up shaping how you think in a big way — from crossing paths with future regulators to realizing, a little too late, which rooms and conversations actually mattered.

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

🫡

[Adel Bucetta @adelbucetta]

@ChainSp4ctra the real story is that onchain culture doesn't just represent a new asset class, it owns the narrative now. that changes how art, identity, and value intersect

[CoinDesk Podcast Network @CoinDeskPodcast]

Intercontinental Exchange CEO Jeffrey Sprecher says Hyperliquid is bigger than Nasdaq in daily perpetual futures volume, Paxos wins SEC approval to clear U.S. stocks on blockchain rails, and Kalshi sues Minnesota over its prediction market ban.

@SamEwen has what you need to know.

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

@perkmaybe BYE

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

@maisha_anj63027 wait for the market to drop and stock up

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

@Xeer -300$ and swap

[Zhang Zi @chainTzi]

xddddd

[@aaronjmars @aaronjmars]

holy fuck, a hair dryer at a Paris airport broke Polymarket weather markets & made someone $34,000 richer

- polymarket was settling Paris temperature bets on a single Météo France sensor sitting near the Charles de Gaulle runway perimeter - basically unguarded

- the guy bought the long-shot outcome (like "22°C" when everyone expected 18°C) for pennies, since nobody thought it'd hit

- then he walked up to the probe and briefly heated the air around it with a portable heat source, spiking the reading just long enough to register as the daily max

- temperature snapped back to normal in minutes, the market resolved in his favor, and he cashed out - twice, on April 6 and April 15, before Météo France caught on and filed charges

hyperstitions.

[HFI Research @HFI_Research]

Well done JPM.

It is just math.

[Will Slaughter @BamaBonds]

Considering that the S&P500 has compounded at 11.05% per annum over the past 40 years (a 65x multiple on capital), one insight that emerges is that the ultra-rich (specifically the centi-millionaires & billionaires of the 1980s) must be really terrible at managing their money.

[Reads with Ravi @readswithravi]

“To be happy you must eliminate two things: The fear of a bad future and the memory of a bad past.”

— Seneca