Beyond Code: Why Shenyu’s Call for Human Will in the AI Era Is the Most Critical Bitcoin Thesis Yet

There is a quiet irony in the fact that the most important statement about Bitcoin this quarter did not come from a developer, an economist, or a central banker—but from a man who has spent over a decade building tools to help people hold their own keys. When Cobo co-founder and F2Pool co-founder Shenyu sat down for a recent interview, he did not unveil a new protocol, announce a product launch, or offer a price prediction. Instead, he made two assertions that, on their surface, appear almost too simple: that in the age of artificial intelligence, human will matters more than ever, and that Bitcoin is simply a better form of gold. For those of us who have lived through the cycles—who have audited sharding implementations in Go, who have sat through governance debates that lasted until 3 a.m., who have watched the industry betray its own principles in pursuit of vanity metrics—these words carry more weight than a whitepaper. Because they are not about technology. They are about intent. And in a market that has become increasingly automated, increasingly synthetic, and increasingly disconnected from the humans it claims to serve, that distinction is the only one that matters. Shenyu is not a philosopher by training. He is an operator. He runs one of the largest mining pools in the world. He built a custody solution that protects billions of dollars in assets. He has survived bear markets that broke stronger men. So when he speaks of human will, he is not speaking abstractly. He is speaking from the trenches, where the difference between a well-intentioned protocol and a malicious one is often just a single line of code. I have spent the past nine years in this industry, moving from protocol-level product management at Zilliqa during the ICO boom to leading lending protocol strategy during DeFi Summer, and now, in 2026, overseeing the integration of AI agents into decentralized identity protocols. I have seen the industry at its best and at its worst. I have watched projects that promised decentralization quietly centralize their sequencing. I have watched governance models that claimed to be democratic devolve into KOL-driven oligarchies. And I have watched brilliant engineers burn out because they believed, wrongly, that the code alone could carry the weight of human trust. So when Shenyu says that human will is more important in the AI era, I do not hear a platitude. I hear a warning. Because the uncomfortable truth is that AI does not just automate tasks—it automates decisions. And when we automate decisions, we outsource responsibility. The blockchain industry was supposed to be the antidote to that. We built immutable ledgers and trustless protocols to remove the need for intermediaries. But if we are not careful, we will simply replace human intermediaries with algorithmic ones, and call it progress. This is not a hypothetical concern. It is already happening. Look at the rise of AI-driven trading bots that execute strategies in milliseconds, with no human oversight. Look at the proliferation of AI-generated content that floods social media, shaping market sentiment in ways that are nearly impossible to trace. Look at the new wave of decentralized identity protocols that use AI to verify users, raising profound questions about bias, consent, and accountability. The technology is advancing faster than our ability to govern it. And in that gap, the only thing that stands between us and a system that runs on indifference is human will. Now, consider Shenyu's second assertion: Bitcoin is a better form of gold. This is not a new narrative. It has been repeated ad nauseam since 2017. But Shenyu is saying it in 2026, at a moment when the global financial system is more fragile than it has been in decades. Central banks are sitting on gold reserves that they have not audited in years. The Federal Reserve is navigating a path between inflation and recession. And the U.S. dollar, despite its dominance, is facing challenges from de-dollarization efforts led by the BRICS nations. In this context, the comparison between Bitcoin and gold is not just a philosophical exercise. It is a practical assessment of which asset is better suited to preserve wealth in an increasingly uncertain world. Let us examine the technical basis for this claim, because it deserves more than a surface-level reading. Gold has been the store of value for human civilization for over 5,000 years. It has certain properties that make it ideal for that role: scarcity, durability, portability, and divisibility. Bitcoin, however, improves on every single one of these properties. It is verifiably scarce, with a capped supply of 21 million coins. It is perfectly durable, existing as data rather than physical matter. It is infinitely portable, capable of being transferred across the globe in minutes. And it is divisible to eight decimal places, making micro-transactions feasible in ways that gold never could be. But the most important improvement is not technical—it is political. Gold can be confiscated. It has been confiscated, most notably by the U.S. government in 1933 under Executive Order 6102. Bitcoin, when properly held in self-custody, cannot be confiscated by any government. This is not a trivial distinction. It is the fundamental reason why Bitcoin is not just a better gold, but a fundamentally different asset class. As Shenyu's point implies, in an age where AI can track every transaction, every movement, every digital footprint, the ability to hold value outside the reach of algorithmic surveillance is not a luxury. It is a necessity. During my time working on the Compound governance mechanics in 2020, I wrote a whitepaper titled 'The Illusion of Sovereignty.' The central thesis was that algorithmic stability relies on fragile human assumptions. We were building a lending protocol that was supposed to be 'code is law,' but the code was only as good as the humans who operated the oracles, who wrote the governance proposals, who showed up to vote. The market crash of March 2020 had already demonstrated this. When the oracle prices lagged, the protocol went into liquidation cascades, and the humans had to step in to fix what the code could not handle. We called it 'decentralization,' but what we really had was a system that required human intervention at the worst possible moments. This is the lens through which I read Shenyu's interview. He is not saying that code does not matter. He is saying that code, without human will, is just a deterministic machine that will eventually fail in unpredictable ways. The 2022 collapse of FTX is the perfect example. The code worked. The exchange functioned. But the human will behind it was corrupt, and the entire system collapsed. We can build the most elegant protocols, the most efficient markets, the most secure custody solutions—but if the humans who operate them do not possess integrity, the whole edifice is built on sand. This brings me to the contrarian angle that I believe is missing from the industry's current discourse. We are obsessed with decentralization as a technical property. We measure it by the number of validators, the distribution of token holdings, the level of governance participation. But decentralization, as a technical property, is meaningless without decentralization of will. You can have a network with 100,000 validators, but if they are all running the same code, with the same biases, in the same jurisdiction, you have not achieved decentralization—you have achieved redundancy. True decentralization requires diverse human intent, which means individuals who are willing to disagree, to fork, to challenge the consensus when it is wrong. This is why the current push for 'decentralized sequencing' in Layer 2 solutions has always felt hollow to me. We have been talking about it for two years, and yet the vast majority of Layer 2 networks still rely on a single sequencer operated by the founding team. The technology exists to change this. Threshold signatures, shared sequencers, based sequencing—all of these have been implemented in testnets. But they have not been deployed in production, because the human will to decentralize is not there. It is easier to keep the sequencer centralized, to extract more value, to move faster. And so we trade away the very thing that makes blockchain meaningful. I have experienced this tension personally. In 2021, during the NFT explosion, I felt a profound sense of spiritual hollowness. We were building a financial system that was supposed to empower individuals, but the market was treating it as a casino. I took a six-month sabbatical in the Cordillera Mountains, disconnecting from all crypto networks. In the silence, I realized that my role was not to hype projects but to protect the community from exploitation. I returned with a renewed sense of purpose, but I also returned with a deeper understanding of what Shenyu means when he talks about human will. It is not just about having strong opinions. It is about the discipline to act on those opinions, even when it costs you. This is the real message of the interview, and it is one that the market desperately needs to hear. We are in a sideways market, a period of consolidation where the noise of the bull run has faded and the fundamentals are exposed. It is in these moments that human will is tested. The projects that survive will not be the ones with the best technology or the most aggressive marketing. They will be the ones whose founders possess the will to keep building, to keep shipping, to keep fighting for their vision, even when the market gives them no validation. I have seen this in the projects I have worked with. The grant program I helped design within the Polkadot ecosystem prioritized foundational research over marketing-heavy projects. We funded teams that were working on interoperability standards, on governance frameworks, on privacy-preserving technologies. These were not glamorous projects. They did not generate immediate returns. But they were building the infrastructure for a more resilient ecosystem. And when the market turns, as it always does, these will be the projects that endure. Now, let me address the elephant in the room. Some will argue that Shenyu's comments are self-serving. He runs a custody business. He benefits from a narrative that encourages people to hold Bitcoin in self-custody. I have heard this critique before, and I have heard it applied to many industry leaders. But I do not think it holds up. Shenyu has been consistent in his views for over a decade. He has never been a maximalist, but he has always been a realist. He knows that Bitcoin is not going to replace the global financial system overnight. He knows that it will coexist with other assets, other protocols, other forms of money. But he also knows that the principles behind Bitcoin—scarcity, transparency, self-sovereignty—are timeless, and that they become more valuable as technology advances. There is also a risk that his words are taken as investment advice, which they are not. Shenyu is not telling anyone to buy Bitcoin. He is telling us that in a world where AI can generate infinite content, infinite analysis, infinite predictions, the ability to think independently and act with conviction is the rarest resource. This is not a call to action. It is a call to reflection. I think about my own journey. I entered this industry because I believed that blockchain could empower individuals. I stayed because I saw the potential for a more transparent, more accountable financial system. I have been burned by the hype, by the scams, by the betrayals. I have questioned whether the industry is worth the cost. But I always come back to the same conclusion: the technology is neutral, but the human will behind it can be either a force for liberation or a force for exploitation. The choice is ours. Shenyu's interview is a reminder that we are not just building protocols. We are building a civilization. And in that civilization, the most important asset is not the code we write, but the will we bring to the table. As I continue my work on integrating AI agents into decentralized identity protocols, I am constantly confronted with this challenge. How do we ensure that the AI agents we deploy reflect human values, not just human instructions? How do we prevent them from becoming tools of surveillance rather than instruments of empowerment? The answer, I believe, lies in the same principle that Shenyu articulated: we must imbue our algorithms with empathy, and we must never delegate the responsibility for our values to the machines we create. The market is quiet now. The chop is wearing on everyone's nerves. But this is the time for positioning. Not just financial positioning, but philosophical positioning. The projects that will define the next cycle are the ones that understand the importance of human will in an age of algorithmic indifference. Bitcoin, as the ultimate expression of this principle, will continue to stand as a testament to what happens when a group of individuals with strong wills and shared values decide to build something that cannot be corrupted. It is not perfect. It is not finished. But it is true to its principles, and that is more than can be said for most of what we have built. I leave you with a question, not a conclusion. In a world where artificial intelligence can simulate consciousness, generate art, and trade assets better than any human, what is the one thing that no algorithm can replicate? The answer, I believe, is the will to choose—not based on prediction, but on principle. That is what Shenyu is telling us. And it is the only thing that will save this industry from itself. Code betrays when we do. Burnout is the tax on innovation. But human will, when directed with integrity, can build systems that outlast any algorithm. The question is whether we have the courage to exercise it.