CZ, Chamath Palihapitiya, and Anthony Pompliano took center stage at Binance Online 2026 to discuss capital allocation strategies.
The three figures addressed how AI infrastructure, crypto, and traditional finance are converging.
Their panel, “Where Smart Money Is Moving Now,” moved past the old crypto-versus-equities debate. Instead, it focused on where the most informed investors are placing bets today.
CZ revealed that his personal allocations outside crypto are concentrated in AI infrastructure. He favors what he describes as “picks and shovels,” meaning the physical and technical layers powering AI models.
“I’m actually very interested in the AI infrastructure. So all these AI models are really interesting. I think they have huge potential. But I like to invest in picks and shovels, like all the infrastructure aspects that power AI,” CZ said. YZi Labs, however, keeps 70 to 80 percent of its portfolio firmly in Web3.
Smart Money in 2026
Binance Online featured @cz_binance, @chamath, and @APompliano on where capital is heading.
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Chamath took a broader but equally structured approach to capital deployment. He presented a four-layer framework he calls “dirt to token,” covering the full AI technology stack.
“One theme is this idea of going from dirt to token. And what that means is the land parcel that wraps the data center, that wraps the racks, that then wraps the chips that generates the token,” Chamath explained.
The framework then moves through battery storage, rare earth materials, the AI control plane, and distributed compute.
Chamath is actively building the control plane layer through his platform, 8090. He described it as a model-agnostic harness sitting above individual AI providers.
“That workflow can be broken down into tasks that maybe should go to Anthropic over here but then other tasks should go to OpenAI over there. You reassemble the constructs,” Chamath said.
The logic ensures no single AI model handles every task, with cost optimization built into the system.
The two also revealed contrasting investment styles on the panel. Chamath anchors decisions in what he calls a “prepared mind,” researching a sector before committing capital.
“It’s always rooted in learn first, and then do later,” Chamath said. CZ, by contrast, opens a small position first and uses that exposure as motivation to learn more about the asset.
Pompliano framed the broader conversation around one key observation: crypto and finance are becoming the same thing.
He pointed to BlackRock as a clear example of this shift already happening at scale. “I think that we’re headed in the same way that the internet, right? It used to be internet companies, internet assets, internet entrepreneurs. Now we just call them companies, assets, or entrepreneurs,” Pompliano said. For him, crypto is simply following that same path.
CZ added that Binance is actively pushing all its infrastructure toward agentic compatibility. “We want to make all crypto infrastructure agentic-ready. So when agents want to use crypto, they can call a skill or API, and the agents can just use it,” CZ said.
He envisions AI agents holding wallets, moving stablecoins, and executing trades without constant human input.
At the same time, he cautioned that letting AI manage large sums remains risky given the current state of guardrails.
Chamath is also moving into AI-driven financial services through two incubated firms. One is a next-generation quantitative trading operation run by a former hedge fund portfolio manager.
The other is an AI-enabled wealth management platform he is backing alongside a friend. “All of this stuff that should just be like a prompt and a yes/no answer by a human and then flawless execution,” Chamath said.
CZ closed by addressing stablecoins as a financial access tool in underserved regions. “We already see that in countries or regions where banking penetration is low, like Africa, Southeast Asia, people use blockchain to access stablecoins that they couldn’t access before,” CZ said.
For CZ, Chamath, and Pompliano, smart money in 2026 is following exactly that kind of real-world utility. Blockchain technology, in their view, is no longer just a speculative vehicle. It is a practical infrastructure for billions of people still outside the traditional financial system.
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