CZ: Crypto industry has weathered the harshest "winter" and its fundamentals are healthy.

Binance founder CZ recently attended Bitcoin Asia 2026 in Hong Kong and gave an exclusive interview to Hong Kong 01. CZ stated that Hong Kong has a more progressive mindset, essentially serving as a "sandbox" for China’s exploration of digital currencies and financial innovation, making it well-suited for Web3 development. To retain its leading position in Asian finance, Hong Kong must keep experimenting with financial innovation—"simply clinging to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange will likely not suffice." CZ is particularly optimistic about RWA tokenization, arguing that on-chain assets can overcome time zone and cross-border barriers, connect global investors, and boost the liquidity of assets in small and medium-sized markets. However, he noted Hong Kong still needs to expand regulatory flexibility, as some local markets face the issue of "either no regulation or overly strict oversight," requiring a balance between risk control and innovation space. On global regulatory progress, CZ pointed to the UAE as the current leader, with the U.S. advancing more on stablecoin and trading platform regulation, Japan holding a positive stance, Hong Kong making rapid strides, and Singapore remaining relatively conservative. He also added that the crypto industry has survived its harshest "winter" and boasts healthy fundamentals. After 8 years of development, decentralized exchanges have grown more mature in both technology and user adoption. Should global regulatory policies continue to loosen, the industry will see a major boom. On the AI sector, CZ said Hong Kong is not a hub for internet and AI industries, but the integration of AI and cryptocurrency is an irreversible trend. In the future, when billions of AI agents engage in automated trading, negotiation, and transactions, they may first use stablecoins, before gradually incorporating Bitcoin and other public chain assets.