整理：Ivan, Aki Wu on Blockchain

At the Bitcoin Asia 2025 conference held in Hong Kong, CZ shared a series of insights regarding the evolution of Bitcoin over the past decade, his views on the current wave of institutionalization in the industry, observations on regulatory changes in the U.S., and outlooks on future trends such as treasury companies (DAT), RWA, and AI. Key points included: the evolutionary path of Bitcoin from early ecosystems to institutional adoption; capacity as the core limitation for Bitcoin scaling; institutionalization and regulatory clarity as significant benefits for the industry; the wave of treasury companies (DAT) bringing new capital to the market, but cautioning against management and cyclical risks; and RWA and AI being important future drivers for the crypto industry.

A Decade of Bitcoin: From BTC Industry to Institutional Adoption

CZ: I remember back in early 2014, when the last Bitcoin wallet app, blockchain.com, was removed from the Apple App Store; it was still called blockchain.info at the time, and there were viral videos on YouTube. So, I think since 2014, or since I entered this industry in 2013, we have come a long way. I believe that from 2013 to before 2017, this industry was more commonly referred to as the Bitcoin industry; we didn’t really call it blockchain or Web3 back then.

In 2017, Ethereum started to gain popularity, bringing the ERC20 token and ICO industry; 2021 was the summer of DeFi. Now we see participation from traditional financial institutions, such as Bitcoin ETFs, etc. Bitcoin is becoming the global reserve cryptocurrency, but I believe that in the future, Bitcoin will become the global reserve currency. So, we have seen this evolution, and I am glad to see that now traditional financial industries, nations, and countries are adopting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies; I think we have indeed come a long way.

However, Bitcoin itself also has some limitations. It has grown a lot, and due to block size and decentralization characteristics, Ethereum has become the computing blockchain, while other blockchains have become meme chains, and some have become blockchains for providing liquidity, etc. So now there are different blockchains for different purposes, and many other innovations are happening. We have tried to bring many innovations back to Bitcoin; some have succeeded, and some have not. But Bitcoin remains the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization and is the gold standard of this industry. I think we are currently in a phase full of innovation. Personally, I hope to see many of these innovations brought back to Bitcoin.

Technical Bottlenecks: What is the Core Challenge of Scaling to Billions of Users?

CZ: I think the main issue is capacity. Currently, Bitcoin still processes seven transactions per second, but there are different solutions to address this issue, such as Layer 2, etc. However, with Layer 2, you must rely on and trust a third party, which somewhat increases centralization. If we are going to do that, we might as well have more centralized infrastructure on the Bitcoin network itself.

But I really believe that capacity is the limiting factor. We need to find ways to continuously increase capacity. This is one of the limitations of decentralization; upgrades are very slow and painful. In 2017, there was a block size war that led to many different Bitcoin forks. I hate Bitcoin forks purely because, operationally, as an industry service provider, you have to deal with so many different forks and wallets to provide services, which is a huge workload.

So, while I hope to see Bitcoin continue to develop rapidly, I also very much want to avoid too many forks. I think the industry still bears some scars from those years of block size wars and scaling.

Institutional Wave: Why is the Entry of Traditional Finance a Huge Benefit?

CZ: I think this is very beneficial for BTC. Of course, a small portion of hardcore cryptocurrency fans might say that we don’t want nations and all centralized participants entering the crypto world. But we must understand that in a decentralized world, anyone can participate, whether it’s an individual, a group, a nation, or a company. Everyone should be able to participate, and the more they participate, the better. So why wouldn’t we want them to enter this industry? They bring more capital, funding, recognition, credibility, and use cases; in my view, the more, the better.

Moreover, once nations start considering national cryptocurrency reserves, they also have to think about regulatory issues. They will make the rules clearer. Although in a decentralized world, you could say everything is software and doesn’t need too many extra rules, having some guardrails makes it much easier for industry participants to judge what they can and cannot do. So I think all of this is very good, and we have seen the price trends reflecting this.

Bitcoin is close to its all-time high. About nine months ago, Bitcoin was still around $50,000 to $60,000, and even today, despite some drops, or over the past week or so, it is still within 5-10% of its all-time high. We also see other cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum and BNB, approaching their all-time highs. So, the price trends clearly indicate that this institutional adoption is a good thing.

Global Regulatory Landscape: Globalization Trends Led by the U.S.

CZ: I think it’s quite surprising how quickly the U.S. has adopted so many things. I attribute this to the Trump administration, which acted very swiftly. I think they also received good support from the industry. Bitcoin Magazine helped a lot, and many other participants in the crypto industry also provided assistance. About nine months ago, many other countries were leading, including the UAE, which was very forward-thinking. But now I think the U.S. is leading the way in openness and forward-looking regulation. Even yesterday or this morning, the CFTC announced that they might be considering allowing U.S. citizens to trade on international platforms, which is big news. From my conversations with different people this morning, it seems that this was an old rule that they are just bringing more to the forefront.

All of this is very positive, and the U.S. has such a significant influence in the global market. So now all other governments must consider that we cannot fall too far behind. I am sure the UAE is trying to go further and become more crypto-friendly and innovative. We also see Hong Kong genuinely opening up. Just three days ago, I was in Tokyo, and they are also working hard to embrace cryptocurrency in a strong way. So I think the U.S. is basically leading every regulator and national leader in the world to think about cryptocurrency and blockchain. This is excellent for our industry.

However, I don’t think I fully understand the implications of what is allowed and what is not. Historically, this issue has been very tricky; I got into a lot of trouble with the U.S. government early on because we had U.S. users on our platform without proper registration and other issues. Personally, I hope the whole world becomes a free economy, which means anyone should be able to trade with others. Anyone should be able to invest and finance anywhere in the world. Of course, there will be some restrictions, such as legal restrictions against sanctioned countries, but the fewer restrictions there are, the better the world economy will be. I am more of a global economy advocate because I am a businessman, not a politician; I don’t draw territorial lines. I think we should have as open an economy as possible, and blockchain technology can easily achieve that.

We just need regulatory permission, and I firmly believe we need to improve old regulations to adapt to a more globalized world. I know every country needs to protect its economy and wants to develop its economy. We have borders and corresponding rules, but the more transactions that can occur between every citizen on Earth, the more resources we have, and the better the economy will be. With a better economy, we can do more amazing things, like going to Mars, curing cancer, and so on.

The Rise of Treasury Companies (DAT): Opportunities, Risks, and Bidirectional Integration

CZ: Regarding treasury companies (DATs), I think this is excellent for cryptocurrencies or Bitcoin, and what is beneficial for Bitcoin is also beneficial for the entire crypto industry. Besides Bitcoin, we also see many other cryptocurrencies doing the same thing, mimicking the MicroStrategy model, with treasury companies emerging for BNB, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies. The scale of the traditional stock market is much larger than the crypto market, especially in the U.S.; I believe 90-95% of the funds are institutional funds, all managed by institutions. In other countries, this ratio is lower, but basically, in the world’s largest economies, most of the funds are in institutional hands. So far, these institutions have not been able to participate in the crypto market on a large scale, except through ETFs.

But now, publicly listed treasury companies provide more options and diversity; ETFs are more like indices and a basket of products, and you still have to pay fees. Treasury companies now allow many people who previously could not purchase cryptocurrencies to gain exposure to cryptocurrency risks by buying shares of listed companies. So, we are basically bringing the stock market into the crypto space, or bringing the crypto space to them, depending on how you look at it. At the same time, we are also trying to introduce cryptocurrencies into this massive stock market, and this is happening not only in the U.S. but also in Hong Kong, Japan, and every country with a stock market, which opens up a small asset class to a broader audience.

Another direction is happening, which is the tokenization of assets, namely RWA. It is still in the early stages, so there are some issues, but it is a good thing that it is happening, as we will eventually solve these problems. Now we can tokenize stablecoins, treasury bonds, commodities, buildings, real estate, anything you can imagine, even people. I also believe AI will greatly help the crypto industry. I think most people do not realize how many transactions AI will generate, and it will generate these transactions in a programmable way because they must have programmable money, but the fiat currencies we have today, whether it’s the dollar, Hong Kong dollar, or renminbi, are not programmable money. Therefore, AI will leverage cryptocurrencies to create massive transactions that people have not yet realized. So we are now bringing various assets into the crypto world. These areas support each other; these concepts are not new, but they are gradually being realized now, and we see the treasury company market is very hot, raising hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars to bring this money into the crypto space, and this is happening more and more.

So I think this is overall excellent. Of course, there are some risks; some people might exploit treasury companies, like a listed company that just inflates its stock price through some cryptocurrency or Bitcoin asset reserves, which is obviously not good. Moreover, many of these companies lack good management in how to handle cryptocurrencies; some companies have more complex structures, holding a basket of cryptocurrencies. So who maintains this basket? Who keeps it balanced? Some companies even do additional things, like investing the raised funds in cryptocurrency companies, which is another business. I am not against them, but you must conduct an independent assessment of each treasury company.

These different businesses require different skills. We will also see some failures in this field, so it's important to remember that not every treasury company can achieve multiple growths. Ultimately, we are currently in a bull market, but the market has cycles; there will be winters and bear markets, during which stock prices may decline and prices will fluctuate. Therefore, most treasury companies will need to experience at least one winter to average their costs in the future, thus maintaining a lower average holding cost. MicroStrategy went through this process; their first cycle was quite painful, but now they are doing well because their average price is very low. So, sooner or later, there will be a market winter in a few years, and we will all experience cycles. So, keep an eye on this and understand the risks involved.

I think two scenarios may occur. First, more funds entering an asset usually increases its stability and reduces volatility. Essentially, the larger the market capitalization, the greater the total value of that asset class, and the more stable it becomes. For example, if you have an asset, token, or publicly listed company worth $100 million, and someone wants to buy $10 million worth of stock, the price will go up. But if you buy $10 million worth of Nvidia stock, which is now a $3-4 trillion company, the stock price will not move. Therefore, the larger the asset size and market capitalization, the smaller the volatility. This is actually physics; just like a larger ship is more stable.

However, for some smaller market capitalization assets, the risks are much higher. Fundamentally, you need to look at what the token itself or a basket of tokens represents and whether the underlying ecosystem is genuinely developing. In other words, is the practical value of the underlying tokens really increasing? Of course, the newer something is, the greater the risk. The more mature and larger an ecosystem is, the smaller the risk, but its rate of improvement may also be slower, depending on your perspective. So, some newer projects may have higher risks and higher returns, while those that are more mature may be safer choices.

However, more funds flowing in definitely helps stabilize things. At the same time, the incoming funds come from the stock market, where there are also many speculative traders. This is a highly liquid market, which is good for liquidity, but at the same time, it is also a trading market, so prices may fluctuate more sharply in the short term. But in the long run, I believe this is absolutely good, and it may eventually tend toward stability.

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