Geopolitics still hot? Earnings slowing down? Where's the next move? We're going live with @GoRogueTrading to answer that and more. 🗓️ May 7 at 10AM UTC 🔔 Set your reminder

As global finance undergoes structural transformation driven by AI, geopolitics, and digital infrastructure, on-chain finance is emerging as a new layer of financial connectivity. In this latest @caixin feature, Dr. Ba Qing, Hashkey Group Chief Economist & General Manager of Corporate Strategy, discusses real-time on-chain settlement, the rise of the AI Agent economy, and Hong Kong’s new strategic positioning under the “Asia Connect” era of digital finance. Read more 👇

Primitive Weekly POV Snapshot This week, our team dives deep into how geopolitics is reshaping China's commodity strategy, why China is leapfrogging the West in AI adoption, the Pokémon-ification of software development, and the inevitable unemployment of VCs. Here is the breakdown from the PV team👇 1/ 👀 The Petroyuan Pivot @DoveyWan on the geopolitical move that changes everything: Trump locked his China visit before Khamenei died. Timing too perfect. China just lost its Iran escalation card—15% of crude imports, gone overnight. What happens next: Beijing pivots hard to Gulf states and Central Asia. More barter deals with Russia and Africa to cut USD exposure. Manufacturing accelerates out of China. Trump's real message: "Your Belt and Road ally just got decapitated. Now let's talk Taiwan." 2/🚀China's AI Adoption Curve @adaYen72 calls this China's "mobile payment moment" all over again: Remember when the West was stuck on credit cards while China moved to QR codes? Same thing happening with AI. West still hesitant. China already sprinting—no legacy systems holding them back. Why this matters: Less baggage means faster adoption. China isn't trying to fix old infrastructure. They're just building new. 3/ 🦞Pokémon Dev Era @YettaSing on what software development is becoming: A friend's GitHub is flooded with agents—scanning repos, submitting PRs everywhere. How does a regular programmer compete with that? Answer: they don't. It's not human vs human anymore. It's trained agent vs trained agent. The new game: Software development is now about who trains the best agents. We've entered the era of computational Pokémon battles. 4/ ☹️VCs Getting Automated @0xtony0x just added AI Brad Pitt to Primitive's investment committee: "Future of VC is unemployment." The reality: If agents can run due diligence, what's left for human VCs? Taste, relationships, and the ability to train even better agents. Everything else is getting automated out. Stay tuned. Stay primitive. 📷

People often ask whether China or the West is “winning.” That’s the wrong question. The more useful question is: how do different systems work, and what trade-offs do they make? When you look at history, geopolitics, and economics together, you start to see repeating patterns — and those patterns matter far more than day-to-day noise.

The US Dollar and oil prices have never moved this closely together: The 60-day correlation between Brent crude oil prices and the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index is up to 0.55, the highest since the index was launched in 2005. A reading above 0.50 has only occurred once before, in late-2025. This positive relationship emerged in early March, following the outbreak of the Iran war, and has persisted since. Historically, the two move in opposite directions, as most oil is priced in US Dollars globally and a stronger US Dollar makes crude more expensive for foreign buyers, weighing on demand. Meanwhile, the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index has closed higher for 5 consecutive sessions, while Brent crude has closed up in 4 of the last 5. Geopolitics are redefining the US Dollar and oil markets.