Binance founder CZ said crypto liquidity is healthy, just parked. Chamath Palihapitiya is betting on land, power, and shells for AI data centers instead of chips.
Alpha Score of 76 reflects strong overall profile with strong momentum, weak value, strong quality, moderate sentiment.
Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, said the current crypto bear market is not a capital drought. Investors have money. They just are not finding the right places to put it yet, he argued at a conference this week.
Bitcoin (BTC) is trading near $63,037, down about 45% over the past year and roughly half of its all-time high from October. The broader crypto market has been stuck in a range for months, low volatility and thin retail participation.
Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya, speaking on the same panel, said his own capital is flowing elsewhere. He has shifted away from AI chip startups, despite helping launch Groq in 2016, and toward what he calls "LPS" -- land, power, and shells. The strategy is to acquire sites with existing power connections and convert them into AI data centers. Suitable locations with access to electricity are becoming harder to find, he said, which makes them a faster cash return than most tech equity.
The scarcity is real. Data Center Watch reported that at least 75 U.S. data center projects representing roughly $130 billion in investments were blocked or delayed during early 2026. Community opposition has spread across 49 states. Lawmakers introduced more than 300 state-level data center bills within six weeks. Maine nearly became the first state to ban new data centers entirely; the proposal failed by a single House vote.
Palihapitiya and his partner Anita Vlallian have secured nearly six gigawatts of power capacity through 2029, he said. A recent benchmark deal shows the economics: Bitcoin miner-turned-AI infrastructure firm TeraWulf leased a 401-megawatt Kentucky site to Anthropic under a 20-year agreement expected to generate about $19 billion in revenue.
Chip startups face a different set of problems. Palihapitiya said manufacturing complexity, demanding performance requirements, and limited access to advanced memory make the sector harder to bet on than infrastructure. Nvidia licensed Groq's technology in late 2025. That did not change his view.
Still, the AI infrastructure thesis carries its own risks. 22V Research's Jordi Visser expects AI returns to normalize. The value of land and power assets depends on continued shortages and permitting delays. If the bottleneck eases, the premium on those assets shrinks.
CZ, for his part, said capital remains abundant. The bigger question, he said, is whether that capital returns to Bitcoin and crypto or keeps flowing into AI infrastructure.
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