Jackee is a veteran crypto researcher who has held positions at JPMorgan, Terraform Labs, and Highlight, with extensive experience in business development and leadership with an impressive track record.
In this edition of our Ecosystem Focus series, we take a closer look at him personally and his journey with AIGI. This interview is published in text format.
Jackee, could you briefly walk us through your career background — especially how you got into crypto?
It was quite an interesting journey (smiling). After graduating from the University of Washington, I joined a financial firm for two years — that was my first job. Then I moved to JPMorgan, where I was responsible for strategy development, and by my third year there, it was early 2014 and I was only 27. One day, a colleague mentioned Bitcoin. At first I didn't pay much attention, but as more and more colleagues kept bringing it up, I started taking it seriously. I went through most of the material I could find on Bitcoin and began to realize it was far more than just a digital asset — its underlying system established a new paradigm of production relations with the potential to overturn centralized structures, which is essentially the materialization of blockchain. Being young and brash, and having earned a decent income, I left JPMorgan that same year and pulled together a few colleagues to co-found a venture fund. We raised $6 million to invest in cryptocurrency. We made our first Bitcoin purchase at around $900 and gradually built up to an 80% position (laughing wryly) — we were far too aggressive, well beyond any prudent risk management limit. We held for over a year as BTC dropped to around $200, trading sideways for months. Eventually the fund's investors, anxious about the uncertainty, demanded a forced redemption. Although we had made some gains through swing trading along the way, our total losses still came to nearly $4 million. We dissolved the firm, and my dreams were temporarily shattered.
But I remained a Bitcoin believer. I started relearning the space from scratch, mostly investing on my own. Fortunately, I caught some good moves in 2017 and 2019. Then in 2021, I joined Terraform Labs (the Luna Foundation) for a year before leaving for certain reasons. In 2022, I joined Highlight to lead strategy and business development — a well-run NFT infrastructure company that had raised $11 million. After roughly a year and a half there, I wanted to build something more aligned with where the market was heading, so in March 2025, my team of five co-founded AIGI Protocol, focused on AI and crypto applications. Today the team has grown to 17 people.
Roughly estimating your age, you must be around 40 — but you look so young in your LinkedIn photo! (laughing)
Ha, no — I'm 39. That photo was taken over a decade ago. This question feels a bit out of place, doesn't it? I do care about appearances though, and I'd like to leave a young and presentable impression.
Ha, sorry about that — I was just genuinely curious, it wasn't on our original interview list. You also mentioned working at Terraform Labs for a year. Can you share how that came about? And there are still many unanswered questions out there about the Luna collapse.
Ah, that's certainly a big topic. In January 2021, I met Do Kwon (founder of Luna) at a dinner in Singapore through a mutual friend, and we had a great conversation. About a week later, he called me and invited me to join Terraform Labs. I already knew Luna had reached a degree of success by then. We spoke for almost two hours on the phone, and I accepted the invitation to join Terraform Labs to handle business development. During my time there, I helped expand financial use cases on Anchor and Mirror, and through our collective effort we achieved solid results — TVL reached billions of dollars. But I also identified a fundamental vulnerability in Luna's algorithmic stablecoin model: it was purely algorithm-driven, the design was insufficiently mature, and it lacked reliable asset reserves to back it up. I raised this with Do Kwon — that they should adjust the algorithm design proactively and gradually accumulate BTC during Luna's upward phase to guard against potential bank-run risks. He didn't act on my suggestions in time, and I eventually left due to a number of philosophical differences. Although Luna did start accumulating BTC in 2022, the holes in the algorithm design were never patched, and the collapse came in May of that year. Luna — which ranked in the global top ten by market cap — evaporated over $40 billion in value, with prices collapsing to near zero.
In truth, the primary trigger for the collapse came from external forces — I'd rather not go into too much detail on that (a serious expression). Although I had already left before it happened, I still felt compelled to do something. Several former colleagues and I publicly called out major institutions engaged in malicious short-selling on Twitter, which ultimately got our accounts banned (laughing wryly). After Do Kwon was arrested, those of us who had been involved were all compelled to cooperate with investigative inquiries. I also reluctantly removed all Luna-related posts from my LinkedIn. Some former colleagues even unfriended each other over the Luna incident — you can check my LinkedIn, actually. I only have three former Terraform Labs colleagues I am still in contact with. But let's leave it there — it's not something I want to dwell on too much.
What are your current plans for AIGI Protocol and the upcoming token launch?
AIGI Protocol is more than just an application product — we position it as an on-chain technology and financial entity. On the enterprise side, we provide foundational AI services to businesses, including structured data provision and model training. Our clients include major tech companies such as TikTok, ManusAI, and Kimi. The net profit from this segment has already exceeded $2 million — and that's just the beginning. We're now gradually incorporating compute supply services into our enterprise offering. Our Tentacle Procedure — an edge computing aggregation machine — has a natural advantage here: through its distributed computing grid, it aggregates globally idle computing power to provide computational support for enterprises. Previously, we used this aggregated compute to collect and process high-quality data for enterprise clients; now we'll be directing a portion of that compute directly toward enterprise compute supply.
On the user side, we offer AI-powered on-chain trading and infrastructure services. Products we've launched or are developing include AIGIClaw, AIGITrading, AIGI Network, and AIGIMarket — I hope everyone gets a chance to try them. The upcoming token economy represents our on-chain financial layout. Simply put, we're bringing traditional financial industries onto the chain — including banking, wealth management, and insurance. This is fundamentally different from prior DeFi: while past DeFi products were plentiful, they lacked user and capital stickiness. We've developed a unique economic model that addresses this challenge in its design — one that encourages users and capital to stay and circulate within our on-chain financial ecosystem long-term, benefiting all participants. The details are quite interesting — please refer to our official announcements. Supernodes sit at the top of the token economy architecture and participate in ecosystem governance alongside us. Going forward, we will gradually integrate other on-chain project ecosystems to continuously strengthen our on-chain financial value anchoring. Having lived through both the rise and fall of Luna, we've become far more cautious — we know what to do, how to do it, and what to avoid. Our economic model has been more thoughtfully designed and optimized. In the face of potential future bank-run scenarios, we have continuous asset reserves to provide support.
We also plan to raise capital to launch a new venture fund dedicated to investing in companies and projects with significant growth potential. The crypto market is currently in a bear-market bottoming phase — I believe a new flywheel will start turning before too long. Our strategic philosophy: lay the groundwork and build during the bear market, then harvest together during the bull market. It sounds blunt and even ironic, but it's the financial law of survival that works for everyone.
And the question everyone wants to know — when exactly is the token launching?
The token will be launching very soon, and the official channels will give advance notice when the time comes. Everything is ready — we want to make sure the TGE is as polished as possible and aligned with our long-term goals!
Finally, with all your experience, we have to ask — what advice would you give to someone just entering this industry?
Don't be afraid. Stay curious. Curiosity drives learning, learning drives growth, and growth ultimately creates value for others in this space. Let go of any arrogance, but don't sell yourself short either. When you consistently learn from others and contribute to their knowledge base, opportunities will always emerge. When the timing is right, the team is right, and the protocol and mission you're passionate about appears — that's when you act.
Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. Looking forward to meeting again.
Ha, looking forward to it.