CZ Says Bear Market Money is Hunting, Social Capital Founder Says Skip AI Chips
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Binance CEO CZ says abundant liquidity is hunting for investments but is not flowing into crypto as Bitcoin trades near $63,037, down about 45% yearâoverâyear, signaling continued bearâmarket pressure on token prices and fundraising. Investor Chamath Palihapitiya is reallocating to LPS (land, power, shell), acquiring almost 6 GW of capacity and targeting long leases (e.g., a 401 MW Kentucky site tied to an estimated $19 billion, 20âyear Anthropic deal) while ~75 dataâcenter projects worth $130 billion were blocked in Q1 2026, shifting capital toward power, AI infrastructure and mining rather than token launches or onâchain adoption.
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In Brief
- CZ says plenty of money is hunting despite the bear market.
- Chamath Palihapitiya says the fastest AI returns are land and power.
- Bitcoin trades near $63,037, down 45% over the past year.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) says this bear market has no shortage of money. Plenty of it is hunting for somewhere to go.
Elsewhere, Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya said where he thinks it should land. Not in artificial intelligence (AI) chips.
The Bear Market Has Money. It Is Not Buying Crypto
CZ did not say where the money should go, but acknowledged that there was a lot of liquidity floating despite the bear market.
We might be in a bear market, but there is a lot of money looking for things to invest in. đ¤ˇââď¸
â CZ đś BNB (@cz_binance) August 1, 2026
The numbers show why it is not going into crypto. Bitcoin (BTC) trades near $63,037. It is down 45% in a year. That is almost exactly half its October 6 record.
Bitcoin (BTC) Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto
Chamath Is Buying Land, Not Chips
Meanwhile, the Social Capital founder Chamath Palihapitiya, a venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and investor, buys three things at once. Land, a power connection, and an empty building to hold the computers.
âLPS (Land Power Shell) is still the most obvious and fastest path to cash on cash returns,â Palihapitiya wrote.
Palihapitiya is a former senior executive at Facebook (now Meta), a renowned SPAC sponsor, and former minority owner of the Golden State Warriors.
His reason is simple. Towns keep blocking data centers. Every site that already has power gets rarer.
The numbers back him. Data Center Watch counted at least 75 US projects blocked or delayed in early 2026, worth about $130 billion.It was the worst quarter on record. Opposition groups doubled and now operate in 49 states.
More than 75 data center build-outs worth $130 billion have been successfully blocked in Q1 2026 https://t.co/TI7AOwTVsx
â Tom's Hardware (@tomshardware) June 13, 2026
Politicians joined in. More than 300 state data center bills were filed in six weeks. Maine missed becoming the first state to ban them outright by one House vote.
Why He Quit the Chip Business
He says he helped start Groq in 2016. Nvidia licensed Groqâs technology last December. The deal was not exclusive. Groq founder Jonathan Ross moved to Nvidia.
Groq has entered into a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Nvidia for Groqâs inference technology.GroqCloud will continue to operate without interruption.Learn more here: https://t.co/yg4TeBpuqa
â Groq Inc (@GroqInc) December 24, 2025
Neither company gave a price, but Palihapitiya says $20 billion. Still, he would not do it again as chips have to run too fast, factories have to be too exact, and a startup cannot get enough memory.
How Much Power He Has Bought
Palihapitiya says he and his partner Anita Vlallian have acquired almost six gigawatts (GW). It arrives in stages through 2029.
One deal shows the going rate. Nasdaq-listed TeraWulf used to mine Bitcoin. In July it leased a 401-megawatt site in Hawesville, Kentucky, to Anthropic. The lease runs 20 years and should bring in about $19 billion.
$WULF SECURES ANTHROPIC AS TENANT FOR KENTUCKY SITE âĄď¸đşTeraWulf has signed a 20 year lease worth approximately $19 billion with AnthropicThe first tranche of power delivery is expected for the second half of 2027 https://t.co/dzAHTYgwld pic.twitter.com/CRHGJaPJhL
â Blockspace (@blockspace) July 6, 2026
Here is the part that proves his point. That site is not built yet. Power starts flowing in late 2027 and reaches full load in early 2028.
The money is committed anyway. Palihapitiya holds roughly 15 times that much capacity. His is not leased out yet, so the figure shows the size of his bet, not its value.
However, miners got there first, and already own cheap power, land with grid hookups, and empty sheds. Coinbase chief executive Brian Armstrong disputed the mining warning in July.
Interesting point. The first one feels temporary.The second one more durable. But hash power or energy going to Bitcoin mining doesn't determine its price (the network difficulty adjusts if miners go offline to keep the same pace of block mining). Long term, Bitcoin price isâŚ
â Brian Armstrong (@brian_armstrong) July 20, 2026
What Could Go Wrong
Jordi Visser of 22V Research says easy money is over in AI. He expects about 30% a year now.
The land bet also needs the protests to keep coming. If towns start approving data centers again, the scarcity goes away.
TeraWulfâs $19 billion is a forecast too. Its own filing calls it expected revenue.
CZ is right. The money is out there. The question is whether it buys power lines or comes back to Bitcoin and crypto markets.
Read the article at BeInCrypto
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