Strange! $BTC dropped from 120,000 to 70,000, yet I see the ultimate divide between the "Cathedral" and the "Casino."

As $BTC falls from the high of $120,000 down to the 70,000 range, market panic once again spreads. During sharp price swings, I tend to think about a more fundamental question: which parts of this market are like a casino, and which parts are building a cathedral.

Short-term price battles often provide immediate dopamine feedback, but the long-term returns are usually determined by those things that require decades of continuous investment and are insignificant in the short term. Recently, I watched a video about “transcendence,” which gave me a more systematic understanding of this metaphor. Many investment disagreements are not due to information gaps but differences in cognitive levels. Standing in a casino, you see only chips and odds; standing in a cathedral, you see time, faith, and collaboration.

Investment cognition can be roughly divided into three levels. The first is animalistic cognition, driven entirely by instinct—chasing gains and avoiding losses, relying on immediate feedback, often becoming the target of repeated harvests.

The second is rational cognition. Investors begin reading financial reports, calculating valuations, building models, focusing on revenue, profit, and moats. This is the cornerstone of traditional value investing, but this path is necessary yet insufficient. Excessive rationality can lead to path dependence, like Nokia once, which could precisely calculate that the cost of touchscreen phones was high and the experience immature, yet completely miss that Apple was redefining the phone species.

The third is transcendental cognition. Investors need to see through financial data to identify whether a company carries a mission beyond short-term profits. Truly mission-driven companies can foster large-scale long-term collaboration, attract top talent—people who are not short of money but crave meaningful work. Such companies can turn users from consumers into believers; people buy not just products but a sense of identity and belonging. They are not just running a business but pushing a sufficiently grand long-term narrative.

How to judge if a mission is genuine? Not all visions deserve that name. It can be examined from three dimensions: whether the founding team is willing to sacrifice short-term returns for long-term goals; whether the mission has a history spanning decades rather than being a temporary patch during fundraising; and if this company disappears, would the world lose important value—whether the social value it creates is significantly greater than the business profits it captures.

So, is value investing still the same in the AI era? I think it needs an upgrade. I once shared my holdings with AI for analysis. I considered myself a value investor, but was evaluated as “a high-cognition growth trend investor with options and leverage amplification in an aggressive style.” This made me reflect.

Traditional value investing emphasizes moats, while transcendental cognition focuses more on the “lighthouse effect”—whether a company illuminates a completely new value space. This requires shifting from calculating value to identifying narratives. Classic value investing is about buying certainty at a discount, but transcendental cognition involves judging which things worth a dollar today could become a hundred in the future because they are opening up new continents.

Therefore, market volatility can actually be a friend. When $BTC drops, and the market questions companies with huge long-term investments but blurry short-term returns, it’s often the stage where transcendental cognition diverges most from mainstream rationality—and also the window most worth observing and studying deeply. Based on this, I remain optimistic about $BTC; it’s more like a long-term narrative that needs time to verify rather than a trade that requires frequent entry and exit.

Builders of cathedral-like enterprises are more like companions than traders. This requires farmer-like patience, accepting phases with no feedback over the long term. Retail investors are like plants, craving daily sunlight and price changes; top investors are like those building cathedrals, thinking on a scale of decades or even a century. The higher the niche, the stronger the ability to endure hunger and lack of feedback.

Which contemporary companies possess these transcendental features? I think of a few examples, especially those under Elon Musk. I look forward to SpaceX’s IPO this year.

SpaceX adheres to the ultimate mission of Mars colonization, reconstructs space launch costs using first principles, and has established a monopoly in capacity. Its true value isn’t in revenue from individual launches but whether this technological route can ultimately push humanity toward interplanetary survival.

Tesla is trying to break free from the inherent linear growth constraints of manufacturing, continuously investing in full self-driving and embodied intelligence. Essentially, it’s betting on AI’s redefinition of productivity in the physical world—whether this will happen exponentially.

$BTC builds a value network based on mathematical consensus rather than centralized trust. It proves that even without a CEO or financial reports, relying solely on code and shared belief, it can support an economy worth trillions of dollars. Every sharp retracement is more about squeezing out short-term speculators while reinforcing long-term consensus.

NVIDIA has spent nearly fifteen years continuously advancing an integrated hardware-software computing ecosystem, gradually shifting the computing paradigm from general-purpose to accelerated computing, ultimately positioning itself at the infrastructure level of the AI era.

Palantir has spent seventeen years in an unlisted cycle refining core systems, focusing on solving the most complex and critical data problems, establishing an irreplaceable niche in defense and key industries. Its value isn’t reflected in quarterly revenue but in whether it becomes a foundational capability of the digital world.

OpenAI and Anthropic are centered on the mission of benefiting all humanity through AGI, continuously gathering top scientists for long-term research, forming a leading advantage in the fundamental paradigm of artificial general intelligence. Their long-term value isn’t determined by current revenue models but by whether they truly shape the next generation of AGI.

How to find the next generation of such targets? First, look for companies that are currently undervalued or even ridiculed. Truly transcendental companies often resemble science fiction in their early stages and may be seen as jokes. Just like Nokia once mocked Apple, and Akio Toyoda publicly stated that Tesla’s pure electric route was overhyped, believing EVs were unrealistic and hydrogen and hybrid were the right directions—now, that judgment was wrong.

Second, observe the direction of talent flow. Not short-term profit chasing, but whether top engineers and scientists are willing to accept lower salaries to join, and whether long-term capital is willing to support in non-standard ways. This is often more convincing than any financial indicator and explains why many top engineers are eager to join SpaceX.

Third, examine whether the developer ecosystem is thriving. The density of developer communities, upstream and downstream entrepreneurs, and research activities are key signals of long-term positive externalities. A prosperous developer ecosystem fosters system prosperity. One reason Apple’s AR glasses failed to succeed is that its internal developer ecosystem was far less active than mobile app development.

Fourth, accept current ambiguity and non-linearity. These projects may only have input and vision for a long time, then suddenly explode at a critical point. Remember NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang once went to Xiaomi’s launch event to rally support—looking back, it’s quite insightful.

In the noise of the casino, staying sober involves three reminders. Beware of overconfidence in rationality: using a perfect model to prove that disruptors are overestimated is often the most dangerous moment because disruptors are not priced that way.

Let time participate in judgment: true missions often seem absurd in the short term but become obvious in the long run. You need patience to see the flowers bloom slowly and nurture them patiently.

Maintain patience when no one is paying attention: when narratives are ridiculed and prices are low, it’s often a window for research and layout. When it becomes widely accepted and the public starts to enter, it might be time to consider exiting or reflecting whether you’ve misjudged its transcendence.

Truly long-term excellent businesses are almost always driven by ideology. Organizations with transcendental missions, even if weak now, are more likely to grow stronger over time. Organizations that lose their mission, even if strong today, tend to decline—this is just a matter of time. Apple in the Jobs era belonged to the former; under Cook, it’s more like the latter, with a clear difference.

In a market full of casino noise, identifying and long-term accompanying those still building cathedrals—avoiding short-term volatility and not betraying long-term judgment for immediate profits—may be the most scarce and most important investment skill of this era.

Finally, I want to clarify that I am still at the beginner stage of learning, far from the depth of seasoned investors. The above thoughts may be imperfect, and I do not recommend uninformed investors blindly follow. This type of investment carries extremely high risks and requires utmost caution, as it could lead to significant losses.

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